Hello, all!!
How have you been?!
Blogging fatigue
I have read that bloggers get to a point, after a year or so in, where they find it all overwhelming. I slammed into that unwelcome milestone around mid-May.
I beat myself up about things like this, but the truth is that I have never been comfortable with a lot of ‘musts’ at once, so sometimes I abruptly drop the non-essentials and refocus to keep sane. The mothering side of my life got steadily more intense this last school term, and I also had a few health niggles that were slowing me down, so I decided to not let the blog become something I resented instead of the source of release and pride it had been up til then.
Thanks to all those who asked after me and my writings, it’s nice to know I was missed!
Bring on the holidays!
Youngest has now left nursery behind him for ever, Eldest has finished Primary 3, and we have entered the third week of the (Scottish) summer holidays as a family unit (Hubby is on annual leave). We have directed our attention towards decluttering our garage once and for all in the afternoons, having spent lots of quality time with the kids in the mornings.
We all flew back from West Cork on the evening of 
Friday the 13th(!), after a gloriously sunny time with Hubby’s parents and brothers. We managed to: celebrate my Mother In Law’s birthday, hit 3 beaches in 5 days, visit more family members, see the Schull Sunday Market, wander around the Model Railway Village in Clonakilty and pose with the statue of Danno the Wrestler (to whom Hubby is distantly related) in Ballydehob; among other things.
We did not have access to WiFi in the cottage that we rented for the week, and we flew over, so I didn’t bring my fully-functioning laptop for blog/Facebook updates while away. I do have a few photos to share from our trip, however. You will see that our boys and their uncles continued cementing their friendship for the duration 😉
Crocheted Creations
Although May and June seemed awash with events to help with Youngest’s transition into Primary one/birthday parties to attend/Primary Three homework and endless notable dates…etc etc…I did let my creative side out to play now and then.
I made a ‘worry holder’ (as opposed to a ‘worry eater’) for a friend who had suffered a recent bereavement, adapting this pattern by Sarah Sloyer (@critterbeans on Instagram). I held two strands of yarn together so that the finished cat came out bigger, added a pocket on the front to slip pieces of paper into, and made the front paws longer (and stripy to match her back) so that I could position them to appear ‘huggable’. I chose to make her have closed eyes to try and put across a non-judgemental vibe, as sometimes what comes up in grief can seem trivial or self-indulgent, but needs to be expressed nonetheless.
To me, the cat appeared matronly and as if she could make one a nice cup of tea in the end, so I was pleased with her 😉
Next, I whipped up this little pattern by PurpleDragon57, for another friend who was also needing a yarny hug. I went with the colours of a well-known beagle, and had fun doing it! (Youngest gave it extra hugs to send along before I packaged it up)
Pièce de résistance?
Then Youngest handed me one of my biggest challenges yet: he drew a picture of his ‘Nursewy Teecha’ and asked me “can you make a dolly of my pictcha, please Mummy? I think she’d really like that…”.
Youngest changed the design brief of her dress and eyelashes to yellow and wanted her hair to be black, but he said that the rest of the dolly should look pretty much like his drawing. Youngest helped me pick out yarn from my cupboard stash, then came to visit me over the next week or so as I sat near bedroom windows and wrestled with how, exactly, one judges the number of stitches’ difference there should be between a dolly’s lopsided limbs; or where one should hide the stray ends of dark blue yarn so they don’t mar painstakingly worked out yellow stitches…
Youngest chose the button for the dolly’s tummy, personally approved the levelling of the plastic eyes, and okayed the length of the toes. He was rather liberal with his praise during the process too, and hugged me a lot, which always helps my critical side to back off!
A Request
I was also commissioned to write a poem in honour of a 40th birthday, and luckily both the recipient and the ‘client’ were happy with the results. (I wrote a poem for a Hen Night a few months ago, and that had spurred the request). It is satisfying to collect someone’s personal anecdotes and details, and then weave them into rhyming lines for them. I might do more of this kind of work in the future…
Audible Goodies
My journaling may have fallen by the wayside a bit through the busy Spring/Summer term, but I am still very interested in all the psychological insights my Audible library’s picks have been turning up for me. I started listening to The Awakened Family by Dr. Shefali Tsabury the day I finished her first book, then alternated this with incessantly consuming the Audible series Kick-Ass With Mel Robbins.
Have I mentioned before how much I like these two ladies’ take on life?!
I found myself giggling on the school run come mid-June, while listening to David R Hamilton’s self-depreciating tales in I ♥ Me: The Science of Self-Love. I also realised his musings on consciousness match up to my personal suspicions…
A Series – of Unfortunate Events
There is a free (to members) Audible series I have listened to in its entirety twice over these last few weeks: West Cork by Jennifer Forde and Sam Bungey. This tells the sad (and yet often bizarre) tale of Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s (true) unsolved murder, that occured near Schull in West Cork just before Christmas 1996 – and the subsequent investigation. As I mentioned at the start of this post, my family and I are just back from West Cork: we hired a cottage not far from Schull and we even visited the Sunday market and saw the ‘main suspect’ at his stall (we had planned to go to the market anyway, then Hubby and I were listening to episode 9 together on the Saturday night and it dawned on us who we might see there).
It is a surreal experience to walk up to someone, knowing so much but being a stranger. I just attempted to look through the ‘paranoids’ that he wears – and smiled. He smiled back after a second…and then my boys pulled me away to look elsewhere.
On a Lighter Note
As a bit of a reprieve from all this deep serious stuff, I have downloaded Agatha Christie’s Poirot’s Finest Cases to my Audible account (why do I find more tales of murder comforting?!) and Emma Davies’ Letting In Light to my Kindle app (with audio added), and I am enjoying them while doing housey things, and in between hanging out with the kids and Hubby.
So, I think I have had quite a varied sojourn away from the blog, but it’s high time I scooted back here and did some regular writing again.
Any requests/suggestions/orders…??
😀
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