Pastures New

In a bit of a rush and a bit of a hurry, a new home may be heading our way. After spending many months detesting our chunk of Swindon, a spot of criminal damage (thankfully, not to us), some unpleasant incidents with my kids and the locals, we started looking around to find the way out of here, and things have been much easier than we anticipated. With some help from my mum, a bank that is paying less than 0.5% on one of her savings accounts (thanks, Barclays. If you'd offered decent customer service, none of this would be happening. I seriously, seriously owe you one. They quoted us a stupidly high interest rate for the mortgage as well, which is the ironic thing) we're on our way onto the home ownership ladder. And frankly, it's terrifying.

I love the house so much, though. It reminds me of one of my favourite places in the world, Mackintosh's Hill House up in Scotland, with the way they've placed the windows. The stairs have a fantastic twist- a full 180 degree turn- and look like something out of an Agatha Christie novel, and the living room has- get this- BOTH a bay window and french windows opening into the garden. Which is huge, at least by the standards of a new build in 21st century Britain. Oh, I love this house so much, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong. If things continue at this speed, we might be exchanging contracts before Easter and in shortly after.

And in other news, my sons' handwriting is now considerably more legible than when I last posted. There's hope for them yet :) Even more shocking- well, that's another post. I'm crocheting.

Well, what goes around comes around...

Ironically the next thing in my life after my Big Revelation was parents evening, and this time it was brutal. My oldest child is making some poor choices. He isn't bringing his homework home from school, and he isn't taking it back to school. In lessons, he's gazing out of the window or wool-gathering instead of just biting the bullet and getting on with things. His English teacher is exasperated, his maths teacher is just fed up- because certainly in maths, he really can do it. He just isn't. In literacy we have no idea how much he can write, because he isn't trying- to put this in perspective, he's at the same level of the national curriculum now as he was three years ago. Something's going on.

In case this helps anyone in the same situation, we've taken drastic action. All pocket money has been cancelled and is being held in trust until further notice. A written application to the board is all that's required to unlock funds for any one purchase- a minimum of fifty words. As Isaac is also struggling in literacy, we're doing the same thing for him. To do fun things at the weekend, all that's needed is 100 words planning a family outing. No ifs, no buts,no arguments. If they suggest we take a 13mo paintballing we'll find a way around it. The money is set aside. It's down to them now.
And then, of course, Alex came up with the brilliant idea of a sponsored silence for Red Nose Day. The things he couldn't say, he'd write. It hasn't dawned on him yet, but it struck me early on in the process that this could get him past the anti-write. I'm anticipating that today is going to be expensive (there's £50 to comic relief at stake) but fun. Let's hope so.

Resolution

With today being the 1st of March, it seems like a most excellent day for Resolve and Resolutions. It's been a tough week emotionally here at Chez Chaos, for many reasons, but I've come out of it with some deeper understanding of myself.

I lost- well, you can argue it's been more than half of my life- barely functioning due to depression. I've never actually allowed myself to acknowledge that depression profoundly and deeply influences who I am. For most of the time, I am mildly dysfunctional and would rather sit on the sofa than get on with life and live it. I'll forget things, get it wrong, be unable to cope with a problem or a crisis. Often, the depression will take a minor problem- like money- to a huge, insurmountable crisis. Sometimes, however, things get so bad that self-abuse starts creeping in- neglecting myself or overeating.

Critically, my teenage depression has had a legacy on my education. I made it through school with decent results, but that wasn't because I worked or learnt anything. That's because I'm a bright girl with an outstanding memory, I can write a decent essay and I can cram when I have to and I'm told to. When I'm faced with self-directed learning- like at university, like now, with my entry-level OU course- I don't have the skills I need to succeed. I didn't learn them. And the old black dog of depression, soaking up all my time way back then in my teenage years is a large part of the reason WHY I didn't learn the skills that mattered. If education is, in fact, a whole of life process then the end exam results are not what matters. What matters is that you learn how to learn, a lesson that will carry you throughout your life, and if this is what counts then I failed. There's some pretty hefty lessons in there for me as a parent as well, feel free to extrapolate and discuss if you wish.

I have a plan in place for how to deal with this, but that isn't what's most important. For me, it feels like I need to acknowledge this, acknowledge the huge impact that depression has had on my life in order to be able to move on and past it. It doesn't matter what other 31 year olds are doing, for I am me and my experiences are my own. I have resolution, in and of myself. It feels good.

Oh,and if you're reading, Rachel, thankyou.

The Mothers Day Project.

There are many things I hadn't expected to think or to feel as I stitched the name of Jessica Ann Ellis on to a simple piece of fabric yesterday for the Mothers Day Project. As I worked the stitches that I haven't done in several years now, I hadn't expected my mind to wander back to primary school, or to wonder whether Jessica was taught cross-stitch at school. My mind spontaneously wandered even further back, to antique samplers worked with the names of anonymous women long gone and long forgotten. My daughter climbed on my lap and asked to help, pushed the needle through for me whilst her brothers watched Tom and Jerry cartoons. At one chilling point, she looked at the screen and said "he's dead now" and I did not understand that she was talking about the TV. Death isn't real when you're 3. When you're 31, often it's very vague too.

After I finished my stitching and wondering who this stranger was, I turned to the computer and what I read there is heartbreaking. Jessica hadn't had time to become a mother yet, she was only 24 when she died- the same age as my baby cousin. She had skills and talents I've never had- she was an athlete, loved hunting and fishing with her family and had trained as an army medic. She was stationed in Baghdad when she died working as a medic with a team of engineers. She saved lives, literally, and personally, not just as a member of the armed forces. Her hands meant that some of her colleagues made it home safely.
I wonder how her life would have taken shape, whether she'd have met someone as special to her as my husband is, have kids of her own. I wonder if she'd have grown into her own skin in her late 20s and early 30s, the way I did and so many of my friends have, or whether her job gave her that gift of self-acceptance already. She sounds like one of the girls. One of the lads. A heck of a lady. The first comment here made me think.
I want to add something profound and meaningful here, like "let her death not be in vain" or something along those lines, but the truth is that it would be singularly meaningless. She's never going home to her family, and there are so many other families grieving right now as a result of this senseless war. I just don't have the words to express my anger and grief at the futility of it all. No more, never more.

Marmelade

 

 

 

Oranges and yellows aren't normally my favourite colours, but I love these. A splash of cheerfulness in the middle of a sea of mud.

Half term means wind, and sludge, as the last of winter vanished and left us with the dim prospect that spring might happen one day soon. So we did the only thing you possibly can do at a time like this, and headed for the coast. We got wet, and windy, and a bit wetter, and a little bit windier. We discovered that sand doesn't taste good, even if you are only a year old, but the seaquarium at Weston does suprisingly good french fries. We painted in the sand, and made ginormous footprints, and rode on the poor minimum wage donkeys. These beasts, they have one heck of an attitude. I know donkeys have a reputation anyhow, but there was a real air of chain-smoking rebellion about this lot. They WERE the donkey equivalent of the Tesco cashiers who can't be bothered to interrupt their private conversations to remove a couple of hundred quid from your wallet for the monthly shop. But they made the kids happy, and for the rest of the day they galloped up and down shouting "carrots, carrots, carrots" and giggling wildly- this being, you understand, the verbal command necessary to increase productivity. Perhaps someone should tell Messrs Brown and Obama?

Texture

I've been thinking a lot about textures at the moment- my knitting basket shown above has an eclectic and unusual mix of blends in there at the moment. There's the cashmere of the Wabenschal, the itchy, scratchy, earthy feel of the mystery yarn from the charity shop, a litle crochet cotton all piled onto the banana fibre bowl, balanced on the polished rosewood veneer. My needles are wood, bamboo, metal- I love how sensual this craft is.
Outside, too, texture is everything. Every footstep is critical, landing safely on the crunch of snow, the squish of grass or mud or the stomp of tarmac. A patch of ice is likely to send me tumbling, yet again, to the ground. In the kitchen, I have a gloopy pulp of orange juice and pith, waiting for the magic of heat and sugar to become marmelade. The stickiness that is a boy and a banana.

I have two major works in progress. A simple bag for myself, where the addition of some friction, the slide of soap, the heat of water will take the hairy yarn down to a thick, solid, dense fabric. Simple magic, especially when done with a washing machine, but I never cease to be amazed. The other, of course, is lace- where a pattern is created with a simple sequence of increases and decreases. Simplicity itself, but fun and fulfilling.

What about you? What are you working on?