Hiya *waves*

From Random Words Generator

I saw the words today, and thought about a wee incident I witnessed in the playground one morning last week.  It involved the bin, but was not as much of a joyous event as the one in the poem. Apparently one of the kids was throwing contraband in the bin, and another was trying to retrieve it for themselves?! It’s hard to get the whole story out of six year olds…definitely made me worry about germs, however 😉

I liked the fact that the selection was easy to understand.  I’ve been really tired recently 😛

Crowd  Bin  Applaud  Snail  Relation  Mist  Proclaim  Pipe  Taxi

In the centre of the crowd,

There stood a bin.

A smatter of laughter,

Then they saw fit to applaud some exploit.

I had to investigate.

Wipes at the ready

I peered over their heads.

I saw a snail, balancing,

And another, chasing.

A small, happy face

Looked up and said:

“Look! They’re racing!

This one is winning,

He’s left his brother behind.”

I watched as well.

And, sure enough,

The frontrunner was speeding away from his hapless relation.

More Oooos and Aaaaahs;

This time from me.

The bell rang out

And that panicky screeching started

As the girls ran for lines

And boys muscled in.

I became aware, once more, of the fine rain;

A mist upon my spectacles.

The two snails were left.

No one to stay and proclaim

One as the winner.

I felt quite sad.

I waved a few kids in

Along with mine;

Leaning, as I often do,

Against the drain pipe.

Wishing my home was just on my back.

And I wend my way back thither,

Pushing the buggy:

My youngest’s now-empty taxi.

Notebook page

Please excuse the fact I crossed out the word I wrote in the first line of the last verse.  It was really bugging me!  I had had to read the riot act to our eldest about two minutes into my timer, as he has been full of nonsense all day and was REFUSING to be quiet and let me think (hubby was supervising the boys getting dressed after their baths).  So that wasted a good chunk of time, and meant that the beeper sounded just about a second after I had written the full stop after ‘taxi’; meaning I hadn’t time to tweak anything!  Luckily, when I checked, I had actually included all the words I was supposed to.

I like today’s poem, I’ve never actually raced snails and I think it would be pretty cool.  The kids are always fascinated when the critters attach themselves to strange places, so I think a bin with two snails would be a crowd-pleaser in a playground.  Hopefully the seagulls wouldn’t pick them off?!

What story would you have come up with for the snail?

Would someone have applauded it, or would it have slithered off into the mist…?

Let me know in the comments 😉

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hello!

From textfixer

I looked at the words today, and couldn’t think of anything nice to write about! 

I think I’ve watched too many crime scene programs, because ‘bandsaw’ never bodes well in my imagination…

Binding  Hive  Honeypot  Houseguest  Star  Village  Bandsaw  Closing  Emergency

As he was binding

Her legs to the chair

She closed her eyes and prayed:

That soon his talk of her role as

The queen bee of his hive

Would stop.

The ropes were strong,

And he was grunting;

And still, that droning voice

(As her finger broke)

He spoke

Of her honeypot.

This houseguest

Turned attacker

Was at pains to be the star

Of something foul –

And he chuckled as he thought of

The village gossip.

He held up the bandsaw…

And out of nowhere

Came a cry!

His fate was closing in

As a small boy knocked him down,

And brought help running.

Thankful was she,

As she cradled her son,

That she’d taught him the three nines

Emergency dial.

Lurid scribbles

I think the pronouns are a bit too prominent in this one, and the attacker and the son get a bit confused at the end?  I would have figured that out a bit better, but I had no time left! 

It really didn’t help that our youngest burst into the bedroom and decided that he just had to plant a cute little kiss on my left elbow and tickle me under the chin a bit in the middle of me writing this poem…coupled with our eldest streaking and hollering at the bedroom door after his bath, minutes later. 

Lunacy runs in the family and, sometimes, it does it naked.

I can’t help thinking that the family in my poem will need lots of counselling to get over their ordeal.  I wonder how the young boy will process the event while growing up.

Will he be scared to leave his mum alone, or fearful that the nasty man will come to the house again?

What about the mum?  Will she be able to relax at home any more after that traumatic experience?

What do you think?

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hey 🙂

I am well aware that one of the reasons I decided to write my poems inside 15 minutes, using a generator, in its decreed order, blah blah; was to curb the inner critic.  But today?  That just ain’t working for me, and I’m in a funk about it!

I don’t think it helps that it is a Jimpix day, either…

From Jimpix

I looked up puddling and shortstop (definition 14!) and brockeye, wrote down their meanings at the top of my notebook page, and got to work.  It only took just over seven minutes to come up with my poem, but I hate it.

I picked out one bit that I kind of liked, then went grrrr to myself about the whole situation for a while, then decided that the only thing for it was to write another poem, using the same words, in another 15 minutes – to talk down the critic.

I hated that a little less, but not much.  My toys went flying from the pram, and straight into the freaking  road!!

I don’t want to put the poems in this post and show my lovely readers my ‘ugly’ work.  I don’t want to have to put my lovely blog through the shame! 

I want to rip out the notebook page and pretend it never existed, pick out all the pesky bits that get caught in the spirals, pretending I’m plucking out its heart or something – and then breeeeeathe. 

(It’s not like I’m numbering the stupid pages, or anything.  No one would know)

I have random poems that haven’t been published here yet, ones I wrote before I started taking screenshots of the generators.  I could substitute one of them, surely?  Say it was today’s work, and I lost the generator pic. 

Or claim “artistic temperament” and just tell you that you are NOT getting to see my drivel, I have my pride, too!

But all the above is not true to the spirit in which I started this venture.

Once, I was neglecting to write anything for weeks and months at a time. Now, I am producing quite a lot every day. 

It’s not always going to be any good, it’s just meant to do me some good. 

So I am sticking to my higher goals, and I am posting the poems my inner critic loathes.  I hope you judge them a little less harshly than I have 😉

Obtainable  Flakey  Machinist  Stuffy  Puddling  Shortstop  Curse  Magic  Brockeye

I am beginning to think

Peace is not obtainable

To a flakey mum like me;

When every move they make

Rattles through my head

Like clanging metal from

The great machinist of doom.

This house is stuffy –

I’ve been puddling about

With numerous stupid things –

Every time I get somewhere,

Some kid performs a shortstop!

Curse this blinking role of mine

They think I’m magic!

While they give the tablet ‘brockeye’?

I their lives all organise…

So that was the first (hated) one.  Below is the poem I wrote to try and see reason:

Obtainable  Flakey  Machinist  Stuffy  Puddling  Shortstop  Curse  Magic  Brockeye

On days like this, what is obtainable

Is filtered through my mood.

The flakey head is on,

And no amount of compromise

Is shifting it.

But that’s ok because, I know,

In a few tomorrows –

Or even by sunrise –

I’ll pop on a new one;

Sewn by a gentler machinist.

This pokey, stuffy outlook

Can be blown away

By something simple.

It’s not a lifechoice,

Even if it looks ingrained.

These tears, puddling ‘round my feet,

Will dry on shoulders.

These things I deem

So important today

Won’t always meet a ‘shortstop’.

Just now, I’m under a curse –

But in books there’s magic!

In YouTube, there’s humour.

In writing, there’s release.

(In chocolate…?!  Brockeye!)

Rest assured I am about to toddle off now and eat my way through a big bit of cake and some Teaser bar! 

Have a great evening, folks…

😛

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hello again 😉

I am perched on my stripped bed, surrounded by boxes and notebooks and general pieces of nonsense.  I have been trying to instil in our boys the habit of moving furniture to vacuum behind it, and dusting etc.  This week they were to help me and hubby with the main bedroom. 

It, of course, started off well: the kids vying for the heaviest boxes from under the bed to help carry through to the nice open spaces in their rooms, arguing goodnaturedly about where they should be stacked, and so on.  They even reminded me that the boxes needed dusted before they were stacked, and eagerly wet microfibre cloths to get the job done.

from Random Word Generator

Then, after less than half an hour, they decided that mum and dad had kindly set them up an OBSTACLE COURSE and proceeded to play a noisy game of tig amongst the rubble!

There was a half-hearted attempt to help me vaccum about an inch of carpet, then they told me it was all too much hard work and instead went outside with their (equally bored) dad and left me with displaced furniture and possessions all over the top of the house.  Sigh.

Why do they all assume I hold cleaning in any higher esteem than they do?!  That my time is any less precious?  That I have a higher boredom threshold…?

I am going to try and sort through a few things before bed tonight (oh, and put the duvet etc on…) so it doesn’t look like I’m getting to bed before 2am.  Again…

The words that came up today were relatively easy to fit in to a poem.  But the subject matter became a little scary.  I definitely need to get some more sleep…

Have  Waste  Friendly  Traction  Mind  Cultivate  Utter  Mutation  Cousin

It is hard to look at all I have

Remembering I waste.

This friendly town I moved to,

Gaining traction as I aged;

Has much good to consume the mind,

To cultivate much joy,

But also tempts an utter horror –

My ‘mutation’ could destroy:

The understanding shoulders

The smiles, the trust, the hugs;

If I don’t keep slaying Black Dog

(Cousin of the friendly ‘doug’)

If I let the Dark Pooch off the lead

I’m sure he’d run amok

Mowing down these cheery faces –

(I hear a ticking of a clock)

Instead of knowing that he’s shut away?

I often hear him growl!

And one day, maybe, he’ll burst out

Commit deeds all find foul…

Notebook page

Do you find it hard to be your best self, and worry that there are just some parts of you that are too awful to look upon?

Do you find yourself wanting to run for cover as you are not sure if you can trust your words to come out properly today?

What do you do to fend off the ‘Black Dog’?

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Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hi!

Quite a few people have asked me how I came up with the idea for my blog, and although I didn’t start writing a poem every day consistently until mid-November – or use random word generators until December –  I like to think the real genesis can be dated back to around the time I wrote the poem about the Muse.

It was late September last year (my sister’s birthday, actually), the season was on the turn, and I could feel the ‘November Melancholy’ starting to settle in already.

I came home from dropping our youngest at nursery (he had only started there the month before) and felt that instead of cleaning up or plonking myself in front of the TV (at that time I was glutting on Medium in my new childless 1.5 hr window in my day)  I would write something.  It couldn’t do any harm, could it?

Sitting on the edge of my bed, in the midst of the school morning madness, I had already taken it upon myself to pop a little writerly post on Facebook:

And so it was: the dark mornings began to close in upon her, and our heroine’s muse fluttered about the room unbidden.

“Start your sentences with conjunctions, while sitting for long periods penning angsty tomes into the small hours” he breathed.

“I can’t, my love” she whispered back “I have grown up too far, have too many responsibilities.”

“Nonsense!” a mischievous smile played across his lips “let me show you the way…”

So I decided to write a bit more of the conversation, this time in poem form, imagining this ‘muse’ was looking over my shoulder and commenting, on the blank page in front of me.  I had a LOT to think about by the time I’d finished…:

“Oh! How black your pen today! No thought for creativity?!”

“I have thought, but I am pushed for time these days…”

His eyes filled as he held her gaze.

“I have waited far too long already.”

“I know. But you’ve had others” she snapped.

“That is true, but none as worthy”

She turned from him and sighed, mourned the enormity implied.

“I stopped so other things could start…” “But you and I weren’t meant to part!!

Your venturing forth without my wings has led to uninvited things.”

“I know! I see! I hear your truth! But my heart is full of others’ youth…

I cannot run without restraint, lest life around me grows too faint!”

“Intoxicating as I am, we shall not deem said life a sham!

Our two realms can coincide, I promise that not much will slide…”

“I remember your florid dance and, frankly, I can’t take that chance!

The time it takes to extricate makes me fearful to create!”

“Just trust in all you have become (and destiny’s not near begun!)

Don’t grow old and all forget – that brain of yours can still be whet!

Use your gift, I beg you dear…for one day I might…” “Disappear?!

Be gone! Desist! Away! Vamoose! Such talk just tugs upon my noose!”

“Your gift is not a threat, dear heart – you’re just questioning the art.

That’s how you grow and reach new heights; furnish the world with new delights!

It’s healthy, not the gloom you see – you’re not surrendering to me!

You’re delving deep, unearthing pain, to purge and make you whole again!

All Motherhood’s bright hue and cry, somehow negates the need to try?!

No NO sweet child, this cannot be! (Delude yourself, but please spare me…!)”

She wrung her hands and held back tears: each word of his, her heart had seared.

All that time wasted, pages blank; her ideas into boxes shrank…

He closed the distance, ‘cross the floor, and touched her with his wings once more;

Growing taller, broader, til: he’d shielded her amongst his quill…

**********

I had to put the pen down on the first draft and run to pick up our Youngest, but I went back and tweaked parts through the day, posting bits on Facebook as I went, and getting a few likes. 

The poem stayed with me.

Gnawed at me, actually.

I often speak in this blog about my subconscious being responsible for writing most of my poetry, and the one above seemed like a loud frustrated scream from the depths of my soul 😛

As I reread the poem, I took in the fact that the female speaker doesn’t fall in line with the Muse straight away.  Her first answer doesn’t scan well, and has a weak rhyme, so makes the Muse feel that he has lost (or failed) her, and needs to keep convincing her that their partnership is a good thing.

The first page of scribbles

Her second answer is a blatant dropping of his conventions, because she is angry at him for flitting to other writer types, leaving her in a creative dip as she tackled motherhood and pressing reality.

It is not until her fourth answer that we see the female speaker embrace the rhythm and rhyming conventions that the Muse has started, and it seems to be a spilling over of how she feels: two successive lines of explanation, then another two once he responds; and she lays out her fears and obstacles.

The Muse rebuffs all his charge’s protestations that she can’t attend to her creative life while upholding her responsibilities as a mother.  He takes down all the arguments I would have thrown at him, in the process, of course!

In the end, he envelopes her, and it is not an entirely settling feeling I get from that line most days – though on some hard ones it can be greatly comforting to think I have feathers cushioning me from the world!

So I kept coming back to this, and thinking about the conundrum posed by wanting to be a good mother, but also needing the release that writing gives me.

I thought about how I liked having this sudden empty time to just sit and stare at a screen, or sort out some housework, or catch up with Facebook…now that Youngest was at nursery.

I also realised that I was feeling guilty for ‘just’ doing those things, and I had been silencing a huge part of myself in order to be content doing ‘just’ those things, then pitching back into the hurly burly of motherhood straight afterwards.

Corners of the house started singing to me: siren calls of creativity.  The unfinished novel, the half-crocheted objects, the piles of crafty books and magazines I’d barely touched were harmonizing.

I was restless in this (apparent) comfort. It’s just not me.

I ignored it for a while, but the advancing darkness outside started to affect me as the weeks went by, and I decided that I was going to ride that and use that to propel myself towards whatever the ultimate thing that I needed was.

So here I am: still unsure that these two ‘lives’ of mine are compatible; still under the protective wings, but flexing my own.

Some day I hope to soar.

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Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hello, lovely readers!

I have finally decided to brave Twitter, and I now own @ComfyRestless!  I set it all up a few days ago, but it wasn’t until the early hours of this morning that I actually attached the logo and banner pics.  So exciting!!

from randomlists

I haven’t been on there for 24hrs yet and I have already had close to 60 spam comments to this blog 😉 is it wrong that this makes me feel appreciated?! 

I am running a spam filter plugin and moderate all the comments before they appear on here, so it’s not too much hassle to delete things and move on.  I’m sure I’ll get bored of reading the inane fake compliments soon, but right now I find it all rather amusing…  😛

Looking at today’s words, I went straight for the first image that popped into my head, and the rest just flowed from there.

Push  Advertisement  Trick  Possible  Desire  Structure  Detailed  Synonymous  Arrange

“PUSH!” they said, and WOWSERS

An advertisement can’t match it

Or movie scene enshrine it

That pain was damn intense!

What is this trick of womanhood

That’s thrust in our direction?

How is it even possible

Ladies have more than one?!

(I’ve no desire to put myself

Through that ever again!)

‘They’ said I’d got the structure,

That my body knew the motions;

That my instincts would take over

That I held a detailed plan…

But, to me, that pain’s synonymous

With torture chamber tactics!

(And to get cut open willingly’s

Not something I’d arrange)

Obviously, the speaker is not me.  I had an emergency c-section and the ‘natural’ birth thing three years later *cringes*.

Notebook page

I really wanted to hypnobirth our Eldest, but he turned breech in hospital and I had been induced twice by the time we discovered this, so was too far along for them to risk manually turning him.  I remember feeling so cheated.  I had not realised how much I would mourn the birth not going the way that I planned, and how traumatised I would feel in both body and mind after the section.

It didn’t help that I lost a lot of blood after the surgery, had been suffering PGP since ten weeks’ gestation, and had also put on three stone.  I was in a pretty sorry state for a month and a half!

I think what helped me through was a feeling of loyalty to the life inside me, and having read this site to the point of obsession religiously.  My mum was pretty impressed with how relaxed I was about my impending emergency section when I rang her from the hospital.  But by that time I just wanted my baby in my arms, and knew that a section was tame in comparison to some of the horrific things other mothers before me had gone through.  Reading sad stories had given me a kind of courage, it is all part of my process “others have survived, so you can, too”.

The rewards I got are still gorgeous and cuddly, so it was a good deal! 😉

Any birth stories you want to share with me in the comments?  Would you go through it all again?

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!

Hi there!

How are you all?

From textfixer

I had the honour of an afternoon nap with our youngest today.  I had been dozing on the couch (due to forgetting my body really needs me to go to bed early once in a while) and he came through from the playroom and snuggled in.  Bliss!

I had our teddy bear throw on, so he just lay on top of me, I put a soft corner of the throw over his back,  and he was asleep in a few minutes!  Hubby was working from home and had a call scheduled for quarter of an hour after school pick up, so he had already said he’d collect our eldest.  He knew if I went, and left him with Youngest in the car, I’d blether and make him late 😉

Youngest and I ended up having a good 90 minutes’ cuddle time!  It always reminds me of having him in the wrap when he was little, I loooove it.  Who knows when the last time will be?  These little gorgeous men of ours are growing so fast!  It’s been months since Eldest fell asleep on me but he’s thankfully still a cuddly bean.

I wonder if the speaker in today’s poem is thinking back to her kid’s snuggly days?!

Numeric  Diary  Delicacy  Fiasco  Crusher  Waveform  Landscape  Blizzard  Harbour

Half the time, when he talks,

I am hoping for numeric references

In his speech bubbles.

How can my diary be full of kids,

And yet I’m so out of touch

With the ‘in’ slang?!

Time with his eyes up from a screen

Is a rare delicacy.  But to confiscate

Is a fiasco I’m not up for.

My voice, apparently, is an instant mood crusher;

Something about the pitch, he said.

My “waveform wasn’t right”?!

I am lost in this teenage landscape –

At times so blurry it’s like

I’m fighting through some blizzard.

Then, out of nowhere, seemingly,

The world outside is too harsh

And I get hugged as if I harbour all that’s good!

I’m sure he loves me still,

(Under that hopelessly hanging hair

And the eye-roll marathons…)

Scribbly wibbles

See what I mean?! 

Hubby and I were also charging about the playground, around 8.50am, giving Eldest piggy back rides today.  I can still pick him up the conventional way, but not for long – and he’s so lanky. It was lovely hearing him laugh and whoop, because we already see the furrowed brows and get called “stupid” a lot.  He’s not even 7 yet… 😉

How do/did you handle the teens in your life?  Were you, yourself, embarrassed by the very existence of your parents?! 

Let me know in the comments!

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Helloooo!

From Jimpix

It has seemed like a busy day today, it’s always a small shock to the system when I walk 9 miles again after hubby has been working from home and ferrying us about!  I also did housework today.  I know! Miraculous!

So I had hoped to write my poem when I came home after dropping Youngest off at nursery, but I got chatting to lots of lovely people on and offline, and didn’t.  To be honest I felt much better for all the chat, anyway.  Helps me get fresh perspectives on stuff.

I also looked at the stats for the blog a bit, and popped a post or two on Facebook, and caught up with the news…all very productive!

It was a Jimpix day today, so I researched the words ‘ranivorous’ and ‘aquifer’, and also checked I was correct in my understanding/nuances of a few others (see my scribbles after the typed up poem for details) before starting my timer.  So the boys got a late dinner, but they were happy watching PJ Masks’ exploits anyway, so win-win 😉

Again, not a very easy selection, but at least the generator switched up the represented geography…

Revered  Ranivorous  Squish  Siberian  Strange  Puzzle Mumbai  Vigilant  Aquifer

Her beauty was revered far and wide,

But she was known for being ranivorous;

So her father needed an instant prince

To be his daughter’s squish.

A Siberian man, with strange bushy brows

Became her intended.  That posed a puzzle

To her native land; Mumbai a disparate climate

To the icy one he’d left.

As the romance blossomed, her father

Remained vigilant and tense.  What would occur

Should this man’s rush of feeling not find an aquifer in hers?

But he needn’t have worried.

Their love spilled into everything they did,

And their nations both rejoiced.

Scribbly stuff

As soon as ‘ranivorous’ was mentioned, I knew I was going to have a princess-type situation.  With her coming from an Indian background, it lent more weight to her having her father involved in her choice of suitor.  But a Siberian?!

I could have put a twist in the story, and had her match turn out to be a large dog; but I wasn’t sure how to weave in the other words with that tack 😛 I quite like what I ended up with, however implausible.

How would you have dealt with these words? Did you see a different story?

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Hey there 🙂

Eldest did himself proud today, said all his parts at the parents’ presentation clearly and without having to look at the sheet.  It was lovely to see him up there with his peers, dancing away and enjoying it all.

From Random Word Generator

There were a few unintentionally funny moments where the class said their lines out of turn, or forgot their cues, but we were an adoring audience so it just added to the charm 😉

They all did so well, I doubt I would have been able to remember so much text at the tender age of 6 or 7!

Youngest was bopping along to the music on his seat beside me, tugging on my arm every time I tried to take a snap.  He even took random shots of audience members (while I was wrestling with his enthusiasm so other people could see the performance) I later found out. He’s a wee rascal!

I let my subconscious write today’s poem while I thought about what I wanted to eat for lunch.  I don’t think it’s entirely about me…

Year  Lead  Texture  Genetic  Extraterrestrial  Governor  Buy  Harsh  Bullet

The year could only lead to more success

(The texture of which

Was pretty repulsive to me)

I have a genetic aversion to limelight

I do not glow

Like some extraterrestrial’s chemiluminescence

When I’m the centre of attention.

But I like being self-employed:

The governor of my own destiny.

I like knowing that

Everything I buy has been

Paid for by facing harsh realities;

Biting many a bullet

Until the lead wears down my teeth.

I have so many scars

That no one knew existed,

So I’m airing them one by one

From behind my bedroom door;

Hoping to transcend flesh completely,

Transport my message far and wide:

“It’s all ok.

We can do this.”

Purple ponderings

Yes, ‘chemiluminescence’ is actually a real word.  If you look at today’s scribbly purple writing, you’ll see that I had at first written

                                              Like some phosphoric extraterrestrial

Which is a little less of a mouthful.  But, having managed to write the whole poem in under 8 minutes, I wanted to check that phosphorus does actually glow green, and I wasn’t just havering. (Moi?!)  Well!  It does a little, according to Wikipedia, but (technical bit coming up):

In 1974, the glow was explained by R. J. van Zee and A. U. Khan. A reaction with oxygen takes place at the surface of the solid (or liquid) phosphorus, forming the short-lived molecules HPO and P2O2 that both emit visible light. The reaction is slow and only very little of the intermediates are required to produce the luminescence, hence the extended time the glow continues in a stoppered jar.

Since that time, phosphors and phosphorescence were used loosely to describe substances that shine in the dark without burning. Although the term phosphorescence is derived from phosphorus, the reaction that gives phosphorus its glow is properly called chemiluminescence (glowing due to a cold chemical reaction), not phosphorescence (re-emitting light that previously fell onto a substance and excited it).

So I used the big fancy word, after educating myself a bit to boot.  Always a bonus…

I differ from the speaker in the poem in that there is a definite streak in me that was made to ‘be’ rather than ‘do’; and I have liked the stability that comes from not worrying where the next rent/gas/electric/phone payment is going to magically appear from (my landline bills used to be huuuuge when I was single and in my early twenties, and I didn’t make the leap into a decent pay grade job until I moved to our current house at 29, and started to focus.  Then I gave up work to be with the kid(s) and we’re lucky in that hubby can support us all)

I do (mostly) save a house from abject ruin, walk a stupid amount of miles, and keep two little people alive every day, however.  There is always a catch.

But there’s also that fiercely independent part of me that is looking down its nose at the fact I hand over the money side to hubby these days.  A part that cringes when I hear myself tell randoms touting for work on my doorstep “I’ll have to stop you there, my husband deals with that side of things, have you a leaflet I could show him?”.  It’s a good way to fend off pushy salesmen, mind you.  Doesn’t work with Jehovah’s Witnesses, but a squalling kid looking needy usually does the trick.

(The other day, a guy looked me in the eye and said “your hubby’s lucky, my wife doesn’t trust me with money at all!” and I instantly lost respect for him and his company. Not the best advert, is it?! “There is obviously a poem or two in his background” said my subconscious…)

Anyway, where was I? 

Oh yeah, I would love this blog to grow into something commercially viable, but I am not as vehement about it as the poem’s speaker.  Plus I do actually quite like chatting to people face to face while I’m out and about, and seeing how they’re doing.  Success sounds a bit scary, but I’d handle some speaking up ok 😉 Other parts of the poem could be me though.  My subconscious does that 😉

Would you like to be self-employed?  Did you build a business from scratch and feel great spending the spoils?

Are you a habitual bullet muncher?!

[Two asides:

1. The performance my Eldest and his class took part in was this one.

2. I have been in debt, and scraping by on pennies due to preferences for partying on payday before being ‘forced’ to use a credit card to survive the rest of the month.  I bucked my ideas up and paid every penny back (with extortionate interest) by working my butt off and teaching myself to be good with money; why APRs above 4% are the devil (I’m looking at you, Debenhams Gold Card), that material things/parties are not as important as peace of mind, the 0% balance transfer shuffle etc etc.  Just in case you think I judged the guy on my doorstep harshly.  It is just my opinion that one should learn to be good with money in business to remain honest, and be mindful of others relying on a paycheck, too.  Especially if it’s your wife relying on that paycheck!]

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Hiya 😀

I had a laugh writing tonight’s poem! 

From randomlists

I don’t get enough time to fit all my hobbies in my weeks any more.  I think I have mentioned before that I re-taught myself to knit for the 2006 world cup, so that I could keep hubby (actually boyfriend at that time) company on the couch without dying of boredom?  I knitted him a scarf in Arsenal coloured stripes, just to get used to garter stitch again.

Fun and chilled-out, pre-kid times…we were on a different couch, with a baby, by the 2010 football extravaganza!!

I have met a few (!) lovely people online who are not afraid to have a chuckle on knitting sites, back in the days when I was pretty much couch-bound while I was in the latter stages of my first pregnancy. I was thinking, as I wrote it, that they might appreciate the following…

Collar  Toothbrush  Money  Knit  Smell  Wilderness  Sparkling  Delightful  Spade

I was obsessing about the collar

As I loaded my toothbrush.

Oh, if I only had limitless money

And could knit away my days!

Just like the smell that says

“You’re entering a bookshop”-

There is that feeling of having been lost

In a wilderness bereft of colour;

Until – AT LAST – you set foot in a yarn store…

And your soul starts sparkling

At the sight of all that delightful fluff!

Oh! If I could only have my way,

I’d dive into a vat of fibre;

Swim to the very bottom in ecstasy –

Squashing, squeezing, squishing (while squealing)

Hours later: exhausted

I’d have to be dug out, with a spade…

I found my favy pen!

The above is obviously (?) a piece of nonsense, but I do find myself standing sighing at my craft cupboard now and then. Pawing at it a bit, and whining. My parents did a stellar job of helping with fixing this sliding wardrobe together to hold all my crafty lovely things, and I’ve not really had a second to even attempt to sort it out.  That’s what happens when I get a crazy idea to start a blog, and therefore stop procrastinating with yarn.

I need to have another go with my needles, and see what I can create.  It’s been tooooo long.

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Copyright © 2017  Montaffera All Rights Reserved

Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!