Today I put down roots, which is a good thing.

Today I put down roots and bought a filing cabinet.

A cute thing, adorable in fact, which locks and it petite and fits in the space I have in mind.

Isn't it preeeettttyyyyyy.

 

We move house every couple of years and furniture is so heavy.

Today I realised I hire people to move house for me.

My mind moved from fear about having to do it myself again, to comfort that it’s ok and I don’t have to anymore.

 

I’ve been avoiding buying this filing cabinet for 13 years because I genuinely have a personal paperwork phobia.

Business paperwork is easy peasy and an absolute pleasure.  Weird, eh.

 

Historically my paperwork system was a mess, all over the house in every drawer and box.  I had no system, I had no peace of mind on the subject, needing to find something was a mammoth task.  In recent years I’ve been using a holdall as a filing cabinet, a really big holdall, because it is squishy and on wheels so is portable.  I have whittled down the process of moving correspondence from the letterbox to “the system”.

 

All bills are scheduled immediately and filed away, the things that I can’t face go in to the box, which is then hidden in the cabinet, which is behind the sofa, and things I really can’t face, which are scary, go behind the mirror for a couple of days until I pluck up the courage to face the contents, normally after letting out some kind of primeval yell about how unfair everything is.

 

But today I said to myself, “I don’t move myself anymore, the movers move me and they are strong, so they won’t mind moving a filing cabinet, so decision made”.

 

The duffle bag has been a faithful friend, loyal, on hand, quite organised, but I can do better, and from this Saturday, I shall.

 

"Peace I leave with you" is a real thing

Peace I leave with you,

My Peace I give unto you,

Not as the world giveth

Give I unto you.

Let not your heart be troubled,

Neither let it be afraid.

(The bible, somewhere!) (I know where it is really).

I think we might all agree it has been a tricky, teeth gritting, set your stance and see it through kind of 45 years.

It’s been bumpy, it’s been joyful and less joyful in equal measure.

We’ve had people tell us our qualities and our faults in equal measure too.

We’ve had people blame us for things which were not our fault.

We’ve blamed ourselves for things which perhaps others didn’t even know about.

We’ve conquered and we’ve messed up in equal measure. 

Nearly always for me, within the last 28 years, there has been an undercurrent of Peace in these daily occurrences.

Not a flim flam, wishy washy wishful thinking kind of peace.

Not an explainable kind of peace.

Just, a peace.

Even in the roaring, tiger parenting moments.

Even in the “oh crumbs, this is serious!” moments.

Even in the countless moments of laughing so hard with friends that we see stars (really! I really laughed so hard I saw stars! How beautiful is that!)

Even in the wee small hours the peacefulness co-exists with the worry, companioning the joys and the sorrows.

An eternal kind of peace, a firm hope and belief it’ll work out somehow, that these awesome moments with friends are moments of awe. 

On paper, life for most folks would read like a total wreck.

But it’s oh so much more than that.

If we can acknowledge the difficult bits and deal with them, but embrace the amazing things in our life, and be thankful for small mercies, and maintain hope when there appears to be no way through, and never surrender to the darkness your attitude of gratitude, and rise each time we think we cannot get up again, and when we find ourselves back on our feet we feel that our soul is smiling, that, my friend, is a beautiful life.

 

X

3 years, 36 months, lots of days

3 years ago today was 'the incident', an act of violence. Happy Anniversary!


I used to wonder why someone would so such a brutal thing, were they emotionally scarred in childhood, is it soldier PTSD? but now I just don't care about their opinion or their feelings or their motivation. They were intelligent enough to make sure they managed their behaviour in front of others for years, only rarely slipping up, they knew what was happening was unacceptable so no sob story justifies their intent to cause harm and dominate.


Thanks to the wonderful people at Women's Aid, I graduated from a course of study called The Freedom Programme which teaches about how to spot the early signs of baddie-dom and how it is never too early and almost never too late to make the right decisions for your health and happiness. They taught us the root causes, societal tolerance of crummy behaviour for a quiet life, they looked at the myriad of ways that people become ensnared in awful situations. One was happily married to a lovely fella and one was happily single so were a walking advertisement of authentic living.


The generalised root cause of abusive behaviour is "because I can". Nothing you do or didn't do is going to change that frog in Prince clothing. They do not care, they feel perfectly justified and unrepentant.


You are not on your own. There's Social Services, the Police (who take these things very seriously), family (those that stick around, anyway) and friends but a person does have to stand by their own convictions and make their own way. If the ex is hanging around outside school, that's a situation for the police, if they won't be reasonable and choose selfishness over doing the right thing, that's for the courts... you have to decide, act and pay but you are not in this on your own.


The day you escape (by the way, get expert help on that, it is by far the statistically most dangerous period because they're losing control of the situation) is the day you begin to grow again.
 
Now, today is 3 years since "it" occurred and we have to wait until March 22nd to celebrate Happy House Day, but aside from the old "what kinda dad? eughhh, total Futher!!!" feelings, all is well. I say all is well, I still just reached to pat the bruises on my stomach which have long since faded.


Never been more balanced, relaxed, takin' care of business than now.
This would not gave happened if we had stayed.
I have a Ph.D. in hindsight but what the heck. This is good enough because it is better than what was.


Now, to get this boiler properly fixed once and for all! Life goes on.

The Holocaust and the Call of Duty Generation

There was a teen who is studying History at GCSE level.
It was on the curriculum to review video of the extermination camps as part of the coursework.
A German walked up to a Jew in this archive footage and shot the Jewish person in the head at point blank range.
The Jewish man fell to the ground, dead.
Only one child in the class flinched.
That was the only child who was affected by what they were seeing on the screen.


After the footage had ended, the teacher started pleasantly asking the child questions in front of the class.


Teacher: "You seemed affected by what we saw, can you explain why?"
Teen: "I know we are required to do this as coursework and that is fine because we need to understand what happened and why, but to see someone, a real person, be shot in the head and fall to the ground is very affecting.... that is a life we just saw snuffed out, that person will never be alive again, this is not TV or a game, it really happened to a real person.".
Teacher: "Was anybody else affected in a similar way?"
Class: "Nah, not really, we've seen worse on TV, and we play Call of Duty and stuff on the Xbox".
Child: "That's pretend, and these things numb us to reality so when something really bad happens it no longer seems really bad"
Teacher: "It's rare to find a child who still feels that way".


That night the Teen said to their parent, "I know that you are careful about what we bring in to our house through media and games and stuff, and you talk about how it desensitises you to life and it was just annoying to me but I never really appreciated it until today... Thanks, Mum."

Quick way to figure out what's important...

Good morning,
I've devised a quick way to figure out what's important, what can be left for an hour or day or so, and what can be completely forgotten about.
I'm not sure you'll all go for it but here it is.


Throw your back out.


No really, it's the quickest way to help you determine what really cannot wait vs. what you'd normally do.


If putting on your clothes requires all kinds of leveraging implements, you determine pretty quickly if where you are going that you're getting yourself all gussied up for is really worth the effort.


If your saucepans you need to prepare dinner are stored in the lower drawer, all of a sudden a dingable dinner from the freezer sounds mighty appetising at mid-torso height. And as for dishes in the sink, we can buy new!


All kinds of choices abound.... breathing versus blinking, pick up your handbag or just leave it and hope someone hands it in one day, 250mg ibuprofen vs 500mg paracetomal (duh).


Definitely sorts the wheat from the chaff.


Try it, you might like it.

Good enough

Things work out, boilers get kinda fixed (if you don't count the worsening leak the plumber created - at least we have heat), children dry and put away the dishes eventually like they're supposed to, laundry ends up back in the wardrobe in a wearable condition, work (knock on wood) goes fine, kids will wake sufficiently to make it to the car in time for Seminary, feelings mend, life moves on - slowly at first but then you notice that nothing has changed yet everything is different.
So even on the black dog days, and offsetting the risk of another zombie apocalypse passing through town, and if all the cards stay where they fell for a while, you can hope for a pretty good today and an even better tomorrow.
It's not the end yet, and it may be some time arriving but often times, good enough is good enough.

Romance as a future possibility

You remember when we used to be clueless about when people did or didn't like us... and then there was the family and marriage and stuff so we didn't have to think about that for 24 years pretty much (give or take a squabble or two), but then the marriage ended and so dating as a future probability became a thing on the agenda again? 
Me too.


The thing is, during that intervening period, one would have hoped to have become more in tune with who does or doesn't like us and whether or not they were goodies or baddies. 


I'm here to share that there is no such thing as the "having-a-clue fairy" and I'm here to declare that people do not come colour coded with black or white cowboy hats, gosh darn it.


Just in case you were wondering.


Don't know about you, I'm not ready to date again just yet.
Don't know about you part II, I'm not ready to not date again just yet.


You know when you walk through your own home, by yourself, and you burp or find crumbs in your hair or something equally alluring and you mentally say to yourself "hey, fine catch you're turning out to be"?


Yeah, no, me neither.


There's one lucky son of a gun out there somewhere who has all these joys to come.


Or not.


Either way, don't you love it when life gets complicated?

Ingratitude vs. Just Not Knowing

Sometimes people tell you your faults.

Sometimes they get on such a roll that they have to stop to catch their breath before they can start again like a sprinter getting a pain in their side and holding on to a lamp post to catch their breath and stretch it out before starting again.

Sometimes what they have to say, although harsh, may be rooted in a trace of truth.  But it’s the kind of truth where someone takes a good thing, puts it through the wringer, jumps up and down on it for a while, drags it through the mud and then presents it back to you as a truth.  There’s a trace of the original there but it has become twisted and tainted.

Sometimes, because there was a trace of truth, it stings.

Sometimes it’s just vicious.

Someone took it upon themselves yesterday to tell me as many of my faults as they could squeeze in within a two minute window.

It was only my love for the person that stopped me yelling “Hold My Hoops” as I metaphorically took out my earrings.

There’s only a handful of folks who qualify for me biting my tongue. 

The viciousness of it was the surprise.

We’ve had words since, and it is resolved.

The bit that got me thinking was when they told me in no uncertain terms that I’m “stuck at my level in business because I am stupid and surely my bosses have to put up with my stupid behaviour and treating people like idiots”.

I’m not stuck at my level at work.

I’m rewarded handsomely for my labour.

I declined an opportunity in an adjacent industry recently because although it was significant pay rise, great prospects, opportunities for advancement, company cars and kudos, it would take me away from the time I needed to raise my family, to be on hand, to do what was necessary.  

I chose family.

One of the hardest parts of filling the role of Mother and Father, nurturer and provider, is that something has to give.

My personal sense of fulfilment was set aside in favour of the needs of someone else, and that was a hateful position in which to be placed.

Two conflicting demands, to provide and to nurture, were competing for dominance and I had to choose.  So I did.

So while this person was yelling at me, I had to keep in mind they only had their side of the story, their perspective. 

I still want to tell them all of their faults, and like them I’d be holding on to a lamp post to catch my breath, but that is not the right way nor an effective way to proceed.

Ezra Taft Benson said something like “words are like a kite with the string cut mid-flight, they cannot be taken back”. 

I don’t know that I’d have the wherewithal to refrain from retaliation again.

I strongly dislike having to behave like a dignified adult.

I much prefer the shouty, air all your grievances, get it all out in the open, sunlight is nature’s disinfectant approach but it doesn’t fit with where I live nowadays but internally The Essex Will Out. 

So today, I am tired.  Being dignified takes a toll.  Someone fetch me a desk-pillow please.