Month: April 2012

Greener Grass

Well, I guess you’ve picked up that the April A-Z has fallen by the wayside! This time it really isn’t my fault. Honest.

We’ve been looking to move house for a while and during the Easter holidays we saw a house, fell in love with it and decided to go for it. The problem is, there’s not really any hanging around with a rented property. When you buy a house (I’ve heard) you have to wait for contracts and surveys and solicitors and whatever else. With a rented house, the estate agent/landlord decide if you’d be a good tenant and that’s it, you’re good to go as soon as you arrange a date to pay your bond and first month’s rent. The estate agent here has a policy that once you apply for the house it’s off the market for four weeks then it goes back on and is fair game for anyone.

So we had four weeks to pay our bond and rent.

But we can’t pay rent for the house we’re living in and the one we’re going to live in.

So we have to move in four weeks.

But we had to wait a week to get approval from the estate agent.

So we have three weeks to move!

Yikes.

Three weeks to move a family of four, five years of accumulated STUFF (we’re all hoarders), baby STUFF, working-from-home STUFF. And the books. Lord help us, the books. We sold 6 boxes of books, we took another 10 boxes to Oxfam and we still have at least 7 boxes of books. That’s not including the babies’ books. Of which there are many.

Basically, I’m meeting myself coming backwards. So all writing, blogging, even twitter has gone out of the window. And I miss it – I miss tweeting my friends and writing the blog and writing full stop. Thankfully I know my friends will still be there when things have calmed down, as will my blog and my works in progress. I’m addicted to pinterest still, and being visual it’s easy to switch off from the house for twenty minutes and browse mindlessly. Plus there are cool ideas that I’m going to implement in the new house. But everything else has been put on the back boiler.

It’ll be worth it though. The new house has a garden – imagine the change from being in a first floor flat! There’s a bedroom each for the children and a converted garage where Andrew will have his office. It’s close to a small village school so Daniel will be near his new friends and it’s about ten minutes drive away from our parents.

I know it could be a case of the grass being greener on the other side. There will be downsides, such as getting used to having neighbours again. That’ll be nice but it will be hard having to watch our noise and putting up with other people’s. Umm…yeah, I’m sure there will be other things that crop up that take some getting used to. I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, my sudden enthusiasm for housekeeping and homemaking and getting organised has happened at just the right time! I’ve developed on from my last post on getting organised and I now use a filofax and a home management file – more another time – and I’m about as organised as I can be at the minute. Tomorrow we go to visit the two possible schools and at the weekend we’ll have a packing marathon. It’s all going swimmingly…so far. Wish us luck!

Game Night

We were in Smyth’s toy shop yesterday. Emily had fallen over in the previous shop and bumped her head on the concrete floor so in the classic manner of paranoid parents we were walking around trying to decide if we should get her to hospital or if she would probably be ok. Smyth’s seemed a good place to distract Daniel while we quietly panicked. We decided that Emily was, on reflection, absolutely fine and turned our attention to the toys.

The board games aisle was like a flash back twenty-0dd years. Daniel, being Nearly Five, is right at the age where we could start playing family games and I was looking at what was available. Now obviously there was Cluedo, Monopoly, Scrabble and junior versions of these. I mean, y’know, these are classics. I was more surprised by some of the others. Here’s a few of the games I saw yesterday that had me exclaiming “Eeh, I remember playing that!”

  • Hungry Hippos. My cousins had this and it was played almost every time I went to their house. I never won but I remember shrieking and jumping while pounding the levers frantically to try and get the last little white ball. Which always rolled away to the opposite corner of the board.
  • Buckaroo. Brought out in a million different versions, whether a cheap one trying to be virtually the same and just within copyright limits or special editions (like a Zingzillas one we bought for Andrew’s little cousin).
  • Guess Who. Now in an “Extra” edition. What? Extra what? Sheesh. Don’t mess with a classic.
  • Mousetrap. Not one I actually ever played but I remember it doing the rounds of my schoolfriends. And I vaguely remember a tv advert for it.
  • Operation. Now this was fantastic. One of my primary school friends had this and I was always quite good at it. I think I took it a bit too seriously; I have a memory of trying to remove the poor patient’s heart with utter concentration while my friends were rather enjoying the buzz when they touched the side. I may have shouted at them, I’m not prepared to commit myself.

I don’t really like it when they update the games, as you might have gathered from my comment on Guess Who above. I mean, take Monopoly. Now I’m not against a regional edition as a special; we have a French edition which we love. BUT. Why do we need to make a Monopoly with credit cards? I don’t want my kids getting the credit card habit when they’re eight! Not unless they’re buying stuff for me and paying it off with their pocket money anyway. Ahem. And Game of Life – another one I didn’t actually play but it was everywhere. Now it’s Adventure edition. Like Life isn’t enough of an adventure? Pah.

Of course, that could just be me getting old. We drove on a road that we haven’t been on for a while the other day and they’re completely rejigging the layout. As we passed the sign saying “New Road Layout Ahead” I actually muttered to Andrew “What was wrong with the way it was?” He didn’t reply. He was too busy laughing.

Failure & Finishing

Uh oh. That was a bad start to the A-Z Challenge, wasn’t it? When I realised I’d missed C, I thought I’d combine it with D in a post. Then I didn’t get to do one for D either so I thought I’d try really hard to combine C, D and E (while thinking “Oh crikey me how on earth am I going to do that??”). But yesterday was a bit mad too, so I didn’t get that done. Now, there is no way in the world I’m going to be able to combine C, D, E and F so I’m going to admit failure and consign C, D and E to the great blog heaven in the sky.

Failure is a recurring theme – for me and, I imagine, for most people. Things we haven’t done, or haven’t done as well as we could have. I failed to do many things and some of them I’ve made peace with, some continue to be regrets. Failure can be particularly painful when you suffer from low self-esteem as it reinforces the negative impression you have of yourself. It also tends to be self-perpetuating. You fail at something, so you think “I really must do better next time” and not only do you set up another set of hurdles for yourself, you also put more importance on not falling at them. If/when something goes wrong with this new plan, you’ve failed again, you’ve failed worse, and you’re generally a failure at life. So I’ll start another thing, and on it goes. The achievement of actually finishing something is immense, as when I finished my first draft of Skive which is now thoroughly cooled off and awaiting rewrites. But there are still many, many past and current failures drowning out that little success.

Failure is also very much down to perception. I tell myself I’m a failure because I don’t always complete things, I don’t get done the things that I both want and need to get done, and I have unfinished manuscripts or blog challenges or housework. Beloved Husband thinks I have unrealistic expectations of myself and that I’m doing pretty well to keep on top of the house and look after the kids. I think he’s lovely but biased. Another cycle!

I would love to be able to find a way of changing my perception. I’d love to be able to look at my failures and think “At least I gave it a go.” I’ll give pretty much anything a go, which should be exciting and interesting instead of a quick ticket to “Oops, I Did It (Or Rather, Didn’t) Again.” I think it could be helped a lot by realising that nothing is permanent. Because I leave something to one side for now, it doesn’t mean I’ll never come back to it, it just means that now isn’t the right time. My historical novel has been a Work In Progress for about two years now but it doesn’t mean I’ve failed to write it, just that I haven’t finished it YET because it’s not the right time.

At school I was a languages whizz. It was always what I was going to do, I even did the first year of a degree in Interpreting and Translating. Since I did my GCSEs a million years ago I’ve had two huge dictionaries, one in French, one in Spanish, and a few verb books. I’ve never been able to bring myself to throw them away even though I’m no longer considering a career in languages. We had a book clearout the other day and I put the verb books on the pile of books to go. Then I picked them up and thought about one of my big regrets, my failure to finish my degree. Beloved Husband said “You know, you don’t have to get rid of them. You can always take it back up again any time.” He’s right you know, but don’t tell him. I haven’t failed at languages, I just didn’t finish my degree. One of my ambitions is to do an Open University degree in the Arts; I’m keeping my languages books in case some of my modules end up being languages, and I finish what I started.

 

Blessings

Last year was a bit of a rough ‘un. For a multitude of reasons; I’m not going to go through them now otherwise I’ll have to retreat to the sofa in pyjamas and eat Ben and Jerry’s out of the tub (ooh, actually…)

This year I was determined to leave all that behind. So to keep that resolution going, here’s a quick list of ten blessings: things I’m actually really happy about in my life right now.

  • My kids – they’re happy, healthy, developing bang on target and make me laugh and melt as much as they drive me up the wall. There’s no middle ground – they move me, daily, one way or another. Frankly, it’s exhausting 😉
  • My husband – he’s soft as muck, funny (though don’t tell him I said that), talented (his design business is going fantastically well after only a year) and he would do pretty much anything to look after us all. He’s not perfect but he does a pretty good impression of it.
  • My home – I’m quite keen on the idea of moving house when we’re able to afford it but until then we’re warm and secure and in a nice home.
  • Daniel’s school – we had the extremely privileged dilemma when Daniel started school of having two brilliant schools to choose between. Isn’t that a nice decision to have to make? And the one we chose I just love. The teachers are supportive and have brought Daniel on leaps and bounds and he’s a bright, confident little boy. They really invest in the children, and I don’t just mean financially.
  • Music – I just LOVE music. I recently made a playlist on my phone which gets me in a good mood and it works every single time. 
Half way there…
  • My phone – I won an iPhone 4 in a twitter competition not long after they came out and it’s been fabulous. I sometimes toy with the idea of going back to a ‘normal’ phone and I would really miss it. And despite being nearly two years old and used heavily every day it’s as good as a brand new one bar a slightly sticky button. How many gadgets can say that, eh?
  • Twitter – I’m not on very much at the minute but I pop in and there’s always a friend to say hello. A couple of my very best friends are people I met on twitter. Nettie, you know I’m looking at you.
  • Books – we’re about to have a cull of our books and looking through the shelves I realise how many books I have that I love, but also how many brilliant books are still out there, waiting for me! Recent books that I’ve loved are The Cleaning Bible (by Kim & Aggie, y’know, off the telly), A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell.

Two left. Hmm, this is getting tricky now…

  • Another soppy one – my parents and in-laws. They’re just amazing and supportive and mad as hatters.
  • My health – this is a tricky one as I’ve been feeling pretty low lately, and I’m overweight and unfit. But I have no major diseases, the conditions I have are managed easily with tablets and I’m not housebound or dependant. Way more important to remember those things than the negative things.

Phew! Made it to ten. Actually, it was easier than I thought.

I’m going  to finish with this infographic I found on Pinterest:

Worth remembering! (from http://alexandrasheppard.com/2010/03/31/why-we-are-rather-lucky/)

Source: google.co.uk via Rebecca on Pinterest