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Sunday 28 October 2012

Darkening changes


This coming wednesday is Samhein.  Which I think is the beginning of the celtic new year.  

So a good time to take stock and do a bit of soul searching.  As we move into the cold.  The dark.  With the clocks going back today, tonight will come early.  Will I rebel & rail against it as I often do.  Or shall I make this year a different experience.  After yesterdays sunshine, today is a grey day.  Pale grey, with a sky almost low enough to touch.  How can I make this day of change work smoothly for me and mine?  
Like yesterday, I think some outside time is the best option.  Nurturing food.  Warm soup.  Porridge.  Lighting the fire and sitting together around it.  An early night.  

Its a crazy plan but it might just work!

Saturday 27 October 2012

Sunshine at last.  Today, moved into those cold bright autumnal days where you start to get a sore throat and runny nose.   Well, maybe it was there all along and just chose today to show its pretty face.

Today though was spent with my family.  Almost all of my siblings.  Both my brothers & their assorted people were at my mothers for the weekend.  So we all got together and chopped logs.  Isn't that normal behaviour?  All together there were 15 of us.  The young lad at the chip shop couldn't quite believe that we needed that many chips!  I didn't tell him we were missing 5 who were awol abroad.


Friday 26 October 2012

Nearly there!

Turns out its rather challenging this writing everyday lark.  I really need to work out how to schedule this into my life better.  And to ignore the distractions of emails & the book of faces.  And a world of weird on youtube.  Oh, and did I mention my kindle addiction.

Thursday 25 October 2012

Gadgetry and wizzamibobs


Oh my goodness, but we are being so thoroughly modern its making my head spin.  We seem to have suddenly catapulted ourselves into the 21st Centurary.  And we are running to catch up with our own tails.

In our attempt to not become (or to stop being, perhaps) old luddite codgers, we have both got ourselves smart, touch screen phones with cameras, a central control storage box, movies on laptop to TV, not to mention this apple macbook pro I am writing on.  Oh yes, and a won Kindle.  And we have given ourselves the added complication of mixing both PC, Apple and Android technologies.  We don't do things the easy way.  We really just hurled ourselves in at the deep end.

At the moment we both feel like we are frantically splashing around trying to find the shallow end to put our feet down and catch our breath.

I know it will get easier.  I had a similar feeling when I decided to start this blog & get to grips with the digital camera & blogging world.

And that eventually we might remember to take our portable technology with us & I will not get calls from my beloved, as I did the morning, asking me to check his phone on the side to see what appointments he had today.  But oh my he does look hot in negative effect on the new camera phone.  Think I might need to have a lie down.

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Scrumping Lemons

Normally at this autumnal time of the year, it is traditional to go scrumping apples, or pears if you can find them.  Basically scrumping,  for those who don’t know the word, is nicking ripe fruit from someone else’s trees.  Usually involving a clandestine bit of hopping over fences and good old fashioned trespass.

Being the law abiding citizen that I am, I tend to err on the side of just climbing on the fence if I can reach the apple.  And now we have generous neighbours with an orchard of trees who take all the fun out of it & say pop round any time.  Although this year is an abysmal one for apples, leaving thin pickings.



However.  This autumn we have spent a week in sunnier climes.  We have just got back from a week in Cypress, visiting my sister.  Which demanded a different kind of scrumping.  Oh, yes indeed.  We got to scrump some lemons for our tea.

One very proud nearly-4 yr old with his lemon.  Yes, it looks like a lime, but its a green lemon, honest.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

When I am going to bed I am going to be 4, mummy?.

Well, it finally happened.  Roo turned 4 on the weekend.  As my youngest brother put it, 'He seems to have been 3 for an inordinately long time'.  I guess we must have been saying he was almost 3 for a month or so before his birthday.
Self portrait with a bit of camera stealing!
Sunday, however, he woke up to find himself 4.  Which he was very pleased with himself about.  Sadly we were all too jaded from our red-eye trip home from Cypress to really make a big old song and dance about it.  But over the past week he got to have a cake in Cypress with cousins, Dorset with Grandparents & Auntie and next weekend another family celebration with more Grandparents and Uncles, in Hampshire.  Its all good, being an international jetsetting 4 year old!

Monday 22 October 2012

Jus' writin'. Everyday.


It is time.  About bloody time.  I am going to just write.  For one week.  For seven days I will  write, write, write, even if it is total drivel.  AND I will hit the publish button.  Every day.  One post a day, imperfectly.  Wish me luck.

It is an interesting one, this desire for perfection.  The classic ‘what is your weakness’ in an interview question.  A stupid question if ever there was one, for which there seemed to be an expected answer.  'Oh, I can be rather perfectionist.'  Which was secretly considered a good thing.  Aha, here is someone who will really care about their work.  So I did on occasion use this on the ole CV/application form, although I never really believed that I was a perfectionist.  I was far too slapdash and disinterested in minutiae.  Which employers were less than enamored with.  (Case in point, before spellchecking these sentences, minutiae and enamored were incorrect.)

However, as I have gotten older, I have realised that I do have perfectionist tendencies.  A tendency to overplan, analyse and overthink things.  Spending far too much time in the planning stages and failing to get to the actual doing stages.  Like my imaginary blogging.  Like waiting until I have the great photo to go with that post, until I am ready, until all my ducks are in a row.  And guess what.  Those darn aquatic birds fail to line up so frequently that it never gets done.

My brother D is a great one for just doing it.  He doesn’t spend time agonizing over whether he made the right decision.  He just makes it and moves on.  Lives with it.  And gets things done.  Now, his way of living might just make me feel breathless, I need to live at a slightly slower pace I think.  

But I am willing to learn something from him.  And its probably going to be his latest ‘kick Jac’s butt’ saying of “Better Right Now than Right.”  Or as Christine Kane advocates in her Uplevel your Life program,  Take Imperfect Action.  I have even made myself a poster of that phrase.  I took that sentiment to make me start my Happy Ever Arter circle.  And it worked.  I started, adjusted and continued.  It is a whole lot easier to continue than it is to start.

Sunday 7 October 2012

One of my favourite Renaissance souls

I would like to introduce you to one of my favourite Renaissance souls, who has just started his own blog.  With a bit of persuasion from me {read nagging sister}.

Oh yes, ladies and gentlefolk, this is none other than my own sweet brother.  A true renaissance man and multi passionate creator.  His latest post on his foray into cravat making really made me laugh.

G Rex
And yes, I do believe he did actually make that hat himself.  A multi-talented man who is also a scientist and a gardener.  Check him out!