A Comfy Kind Of Restless

Hey there 🙂

Today’s Random Word Generator selection seemed pretty straight forward.  I just thought about the fall-out a woman might have from a past fling with someone while she was married…and put pen to paper.

I wrote the first verse, then decided to try and follow the erratic syllable ‘pattern’ in the second verse.  I’m quite pleased with the result 🙂

Distant  Source  Affair  Sail  Photocopy  Month  Tempt  Graze  Network

He was always a distant source of disquiet:

The whole affair would sail through my mind

On a regular basis.

It didn’t help that his son was, in fact,

A veritable photocopy of him;

Or that every month’s passing

Would do little to lessen my guilt.

That day, those actions, this reach into the future –

Why was he sent to tempt me?  Seems cruel

To graze a good man’s heart so.

Every time I look at my husband now,

I glimpse my tumbling network of lies and tears.

A wound never acknowledged

Still seeps its poison into one’s life.

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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!

How do?!

I have been working on a crochet project this last week (will probably put a post up about it after the weekend) and therefore I have been watching a LOT of YouTube after the kids have gone to bed. 

*None of the links in this post are making me money, I’m just sharing the love here*

As I mentioned a while ago, I had been binge-watching Hoarders to give myself a kick to start getting our house decluttered, but I was running out of episodes, and also feeling a bit depressed by them.  To lift my mood, I decided to search for more upbeat decluttering videos…and stumbled across Brittany’s channel. 

Well, this woman is amazing!!  She makes the first time mother gig look gooood, but somehow doesn’t annoy me 😉  I am in serious danger of sending her some fan mail (and lots of hugs, because she works incredibly hard on her videos, spends 14 hours a day with her baby and is a fellow breastfeeder to boot.  Anyone who has a note about the La Leche League on their Google Keep app deserves a high five, if you ask me!)

Go check her blog out if you like beauty tips (her family have a skincare line: Vasseur Skincare) and catch her YouTube videos that touch on routines, planning, cleaning and organisation in the home; with lots of gorgeous camera work (and family time).  I loved looking at how she has evolved her routines from before she gave birth (she was even gorgeous mere days before her due date) to the beautiful vlogs she produces now!  (Youngest is very taken with baby Carter)

Brittany has a motivational style and is not afraid to tell her followers how she has battled anxiety in her life.  She was fab company through my creative endeavours!

I finished the crochet project yesterday afternoon (Tuesday), but by the small hours of Monday I had moved on to watching TED talks.  One on finding your life’s purpose, then another about how we should be taught emotional hygiene – I watched LOADS.  Uplifting and inspiring stuff, even at 2am! 

By yesterday evening, I was even learning about the top tips we should glean from the likes of Oprah Winfrey.  

Today (because I was in creative comedown) I discovered Mel Robbins and her 5 Second Rule that proposes that ‘motivation is garbage’.  I also listened to a touching TED talk about creating mental strength, as I was tapping around a few blog related things while Hubby bathed the kids.

Eventually I found my way back to my usual motivation guru, Brendon Burchard.  He has such infectious enthusiasm and drive, and I love how his backstory gave him a lightbulb moment that went on to change his life (and many others’).

By this time, my guardian angel (or whatever) obviously had a big eye-roll moment.  Inexplicably, when Brendon said: “you can do anything, if you stop trying to do everything” on my tablet, the Google functionality that lets you speak to confirm what you want to search activated itself on my nearby phone…  The first article, in the Google recommendations I clicked on, opened with: “All that porn isn’t helping you.  Productivity porn, that is.”

My angel doesn’t pull punches 😀

Anyway, I thought back to all I had been listening to when I read today’s generated words, and wrote the below about an imaginary person (because that is my kinda productive!):

Mailbox  Wild  Notice  Nutritious  Can  Nail  Powerful  Sack  Ask

As another rejection ‘slip’

Landed in my mailbox,

That momentary wild notion

To take notice of what other people thought

Seized me.

I repeated my success mantras,

Dropped the offending email

Into the trash;

Had a nutritious snack

And thought about what I CAN do.

I didn’t ruin a healthy nail

With worrying motions;

I remembered that victim thinking

Stops me from being powerful.

That night, I hit the sack early, too.

This universe will give me what I want –

I just need to figure out

The best way to ask for it…

It’s amazing how many times I have gone to pick up this book, read to the middle and been distracted…!

My boys were interested in why I had switched my viewing habits, as they had become used to gambolling out of the playroom after ‘Daddy Time’ and finding me frantically folding laundry or sorting through junk boxes while huge trucks were hauling away someone’s possessions on the tablet in front of me!  They also were wondering why lots of videos of “just people talking” had appeared overnight in the history of my account when they went to look for their favourite cartoons on YouTube 😉

The kids were not impressed with Brendon, and couldn’t understand why I wanted to see someone talk at me “when they are not real people”.  Having had to explain to them both many times that Scooby Doo and Shaggy are just drawings (and that is why they can eat so much) this tickled me 😉

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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

The only word I looked up for my poem this evening was ‘honeydew’.  I couldn’t think of how to tie in melons (!) and, as it turned out, the bit in the link about ants helped me write a wee line or two 😉

Hope you like it:

Debate  Farm  Gutter  Solid  Bauble  Honeydew  Adjustable  Heartsick  Logical

It wasn’t up for debate,

But somehow the farm land –

All that glorious nature and air –

Dragged my self esteem from the gutter;

And provided a solid foundation

For seeing the sky’s shiny bauble

As a hopeful beacon.

I was tired of the fight:

Defending my honeydew sources

As a one-woman army

(Wishing I had six limbs)

I am, by nature, adjustable;

But sometimes I become heartsick

Of being told my views are seldom logical.

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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 🙂

Hubby’s work were honouring the bank holiday today, so we hugged the kids into school and nursery together and went into town. 

Very excitingly, we took a couple of things back for a refund to Tesco (!), then wandered around the M&S Food store that has opened here recently.  We also bought some essentials in Asda and mooned about in a retro toy shop – but soon were seated in one of our favourite cafés, waiting for our “Full Scottish Breakfast”.

Hubby and I took the opportunity to scribble in our notebooks, with me getting into the definitions of today’s Jimpix offering, and Hubby thinking about song lyrics.

Our food was yummy, as usual, in fact there was a little too much abundance for me to manage (which doesn’t happen often!) So I was in a comfy place as I wrote today’s poem 🙂

I looked up indices, frot and hield; which are: the plural for ‘index’, a naughty word (I’ll let you look it up from my link *blushes*) and a word for ‘tilt’ or ‘lean’, respectively!

Cardiff  Car  Pursuits  Hood  Unsuitable  Millers  Indices  Frot  Held

At Cardiff we ditched our vehicle

Joking: “what’s the diff?!”

As we locked the car

For the last time.

We plotted our next move –

All our exciting pursuits –

Poring over the map

Spread on the hood.

“Adventure is unsuitable

For cowards” you said;

But my mind whirred

Like 10 thousand millers’ wheels

I like to run through

The indices of anxiety

Before every trip;

Feel the Black Dog

Frot against my will

As I hield towards tomorrow.

Are the characters’ adventures going to be legal ones?  What are they planning, and why did they have to abandon their car?

Hubby and I wandered back to ours, chatting and holding hands.  We managed to be in the middle of the queue at the nursery to retrieve Youngest, and remembered to wave to him at the window while he was pulling his outdoor clothes on.

Later, I got to snuggle up with Youngest on the couch and share a nap.  We’ve not done that for quite a few weeks it seems, and he really is getting very long-limbed and looking increasingly grown up.  I can’t believe he’ll be away from me for whole days by this time next year. 

Don’t think I’ll ever get used to how quickly the transitions sneak up in this Motherhood gig.  Thank goodness I get so many cuddles, or I doubt I’d cope!!

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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 randomwordgenerator.com

A regular reader of mine (*waves*) brought me back some sparkly pens from Spain!  I used one for my poem today, and oooo it’s so shiny!! Pink and glittery, how unabashedly girly, huh?  And why not? 😉

Thank you, lovely pen benefactress!

You will see I caught the page in a patch of sun, so half of the poem is obscured, but (conveniently) I have written it out below for you.  Handy or what…?

Coat  Result  Ostracize  Skip  Latest  Fade  Arrow  Poison  Remunerate

I threw on my coat,

Left in the rain,

Furious with slights

That no one else saw.

All this reaction

The result of years,

Others tried to ostracize me:

Skip past my humanity

And find me wanting.

This latest jibe

Resounded in my ears

And refused to fade

By bedtime.

A historical arrow

Exacting its poison

Through my most sensitive veins.

I fear no amount of growth

Will adequately remunerate me

For their unceasing onslaught.

My memory is violent –

Even gentle words

Can twist in its storm.

Does this poem resonate with you?  Were/are you dealing with bullying?  Do you feel it is hard to interact without the echoes breaking in?

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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 Randomlists

Ever since Hubby and I visited my university on our last ‘date’, I have been reminiscing.  I got my first email address while there (in 2000!), and did type everything up on a computer etc, but I loved disappearing into the carrels of the huge library and breathing in all the atmosphere… 

It really feels like you are acquiring knowledge when you lift down a heavily bound set of pages and flick through them, much more so than just tapping keys and scrolling ever does (in my opinion).  It takes a long time, but it registers as more rewarding at the end; and I always felt connected to the hallowed scholars before me, ruining their eyesight over candlelit ink! 

Nauseating  Poor  History  Library  Frog  Mine  Ball  Horse  Drain

I opened the book

And almost smelt

The nauseating stench

That housed the poor

At that point in history.

In that dense library

I spent a productive afternoon

Leaping from tome to tome,

In my book-frog way,

Making extracts mine.

Ball-point poised,

I traversed the years.

Each different horse:

Colour set to drain

Through what happened next.

Did you spend a lot of time in libraries when you were younger?  How do you feel about reading these days?  Has technology enriched or detracted from an earlier love of books?

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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,

Today I thought about injustice and sandwiches when I saw these words from Textfixer:

Cruel  Guerrilla  Anchovies  Subway  Orphanage  Fearsome  Game  Rum  Fierce

It seems cruel

That whenever my guerrilla hunger attacks

The greatest dilemma I have

Is whether anchovies would be a good topping

From my local Subway.

I am not left in some squalid orphanage

Fearsome, traumatised by what I’ve seen

Out on the streets – where men fight

In some brutal game

Where no one wins.

(Pillage enacted

Worse than in films

With rum-soaked pirates)

How fierce must the growl of their starvation be?

Why this awful injustice

Mere continents apart?

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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!

Hiya!

I never was much good at Geography.  I used to blame it on the fact that we weren’t taken abroad as kids, and that I am not someone who can draw, so I got lost in my High School lessons (pun intended).

But really?  Maps were never consistently presented to me in a way that fired my imagination when I was young. 

When we were learning about WW2 in History, it was quite interesting to see which countries bordered with Germany and why the invasion of Poland was so significant.  I could get on board with the idea of the personification and anthropomorphism of each country in the various propaganda posters and understood about allies etc., but beyond that it was all ‘boring’.

I only started taking all the world’s interconnections and politics seriously once I left school, and at uni while studying how religion affects collective attitudes and global relationships.  In the last few years of watching the news more closely, the Scottish Independence debates and now Brexit, it has become a little more of an everyday interest (!!)

The Jimpix generator is trying to give me an education by stealth, however!  I did not know Lussan was a commune in France, or that Ganish was a village in Pakistan! (Did you?!) How devious to make me regularly look up geographical information in the course of my creative exploits!

While I was tapping about, I also checked what the Limbic System does in our brain.  Apparently, it is believed to be responsible for most of our dreams, emotions and memories.  So there you go 😉

Ganish  Lussan  Bradley  Infinity  Pog  Piper  Dislike  Limbic  Commonest

Ganish is so much bigger than Lussan.

I miss Bradley and his

Talk of infinity

Not coming close

To his love for me.

And how are Pog and Piper?

Pat their heads for me?

I dislike this constant travel

Taking me from you all.

I dream of the drums

From the old fort here –

See my other self

Running to collect my weapons

And fight raiders in the streets.

My Limbic System is at meltdown,

I’ll need to come home soon.

Loneliness, here, is my commonest companion.

I love you, please stay well

X

I probably cheated by using three of the words as names, but meh 😉

What do you think the back story is here?  Why is the speaker travelling so much?  Is he based in Lussan or was it just another place he visited?

Answers in the comments, please 😉

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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 🙂

From Random Word Generator

After I had proceeded

To murder my good mood,

My thoughts weren’t satisfied

And moved onto obscure stuff

Said decades ago.

Each line was cast up:

Every last jibe from the school yard;

From a night out when I

Worked for some retailer or other…

All the bitter fruit

Arranged upon my sheet

Decaying as I watched;

The ooze morphing,

Collecting,

Becoming that final mutation

That will swallow me whole one day.

Eldest told me about how good his new teacher was at quelling any silly behaviour in his class today.  He told me that they were now “the best class” and they could still bring in Golden Time Toys on a Friday.

He said that the work he was set felt like Primary 1 tasks, and he sailed through them.  He had ham sandwiches for lunch, and they were not yucky. 

When we picked him up at hometime, he met us with a big grin and was delighted that he got to go ‘up the hill’ at the back of the playground, and scout out the den he had made with a school friend during the Summer.  He also played on the ‘trim trail’ equipment outside.

Eldest had a good cuddly time with Youngest while they watched the tablet together before dinner, and expressed how much he had missed his brother.  We all sat together and had dinner, giggling about Yoda’s Seagull Song that the boys have been watching on YouTube and I have got stuck in my head. 

After dinner was ‘daddy time’, where the kids got to build more train tracks.  There was no homework, it being the first day back 😉

But by bedtime, Eldest had thought of a raft of reasons why tomorrow would be a bad day, and he did NOT want to go back to school.

As he spoke, I realised that I do the same as him: take a great day and tell myself it was a one off and that it would be foolish to be lulled into a false sense of security by it.  I reminded him that no matter how bad a day it was, his family would still be here to tell him they love him – and that there are always good things to look forward to, like cuddles, games and funny videos to share with each other.

He countered with the ‘fact’ that school days get longer from now: that the work gets harder and the people around us are not always nice (or predictable). 

Whereas I couldn’t deny the truth of these comments (who hasn’t felt like schooldays have dragged on for a ridiculously long time?!) I again told him that I was always willing to hear about anything that made him feel bad, and I would unwaveringly have a big cuddle for him, no matter HOW old he gets. 

He didn’t look like the world suited him any better, but he did let me stroke his head for a while before asking me to leave 😉

I wrote tonight’s poem thinking about how nice it would be if I could find it within myself to speak encouragingly in my own ear, to ward off my demons with the fire of self-belief and acceptance every time they tried to surround me.

Wouldn’t that be something…?

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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

Damp  Enthusiastic  Borrow  Unadvised  Wheel  Property  Balance  End  Foot

I was glad it was a damp day:

My body less than enthusiastic

For any kind of exercise.

Instead, I decided to borrow some smiles

From the kids – get excited

About Lego and train tracks.

There were strong arguments

Concerning the merits of both;

So the livingroom became our playground

Despite this move seeming unadvised.

 

Eldest always starts

With the tracks’ ‘turning wheel’;

Seems to devise

A new way to incorporate property –

Like a station, or a garage for electric cars.

Youngest searched the bricks

For each specified piece

To begin a coveted helicopter;

Complementing our fire house build

And letting him tick things off, too.

The balance always shifts in time,

The draw of brotherly collaboration calls,

And soon my boys are ‘testing’ all

Spaghetti-curving lines.

Steam and diesel models

Co-habiting with pleasure;

Happy whoops and giggles

As each story’s told and grown.

And I’m at the branch end

Taking my foot off the brake:

Listening.

Tomorrow is the return to school/nursery. 

I am dreading it.

It has not been the easiest of Summers here, with Eldest being out of sorts for much of it, but I will still miss them a LOT as the whirlpool of term time sucks them away from me again. Plus I am liking the boys’ uber-affection that has slowly reappeared in the last three weeks or so!

I have laid out their uniforms already, checked everything has a nametag and that gym shoes are accounted for.  We sharpened Eldest’s pencils yesterday and rounded up stray work that had wandered into his bag at the end of P2 so we could return it to classmates (!)

I have a note of what the school meals are for the coming weeks, and Youngest is looking forward to his nursery snacks, too 😉

The boys have done the fashion show and know all their school clothes fit ok.  We know that their stress toys I made them (they call them ‘Panenis’) are still hibernating in their bags, and can be told secrets and slights until Mummy can cuddle them better.  We will talk about ‘heart-strings’ tonight at bedtime, no doubt.

It has been a pretty good last day, the boys both said that the ‘shell pasta with cheese and sausage’ was a very suitable ‘last dinner’ (which made me teary).  Hubby has played with the mentioned train track now, and it has been photographed and cleared away so that we can all manoeuvre tomorrow as we try to get out of the door for 8.30am!!

All will be well, but still my heart is heavy.  Primary 3 and the preschool year of nursery.  How did we get here so quickly?!

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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!