Chill your beans...

I've been absent; time spent battling away with a million little things that have added up to form one big thing, resulting in these life observations:

With me, stress has its effect at least three months after the event itself. It's a delayed programme.
I am not such a good housewife. But conversely the chaos of mess really bothers me.
I am predictable in my emotional reactions to things.
My husband is a patient man.
My children are oblivious.
I ask everyone I meet what they think about x, y and z and yet still can devise no single solution or plan for myself.
I write about it here and imagine long term readers sighing quietly into their coffee and thinking 'here she goes again...'
I am rather too hard on myself as I read this back. Type, delete, type, delete.

As an aside - it remains utterly bizarre to me that people sit in their houses, or in their cars scrolling through this blog reading my thoughts and musings. I had a lovely anon comment recently saying 'I so love your blog...' and it warmed my heart, as when you hit publish, sometimes it's hard to imagine that the content goes anywhere that will actually reach someone. Nice.

But back to life observations.

The sun has come out for the first time in a week today. As I walked on the beach this morning, I thought to myself how the weather makes such a difference to mood. Hard to get excited about the day when it rains constantly, there is mud everywhere (rural life) and the sky is low and grey. As my friend Tania The Writer would put it: dreich. I would like to be known as Louise The Writer one day. I have a friend, who sensing my need to not be stuck at home housewife-ing, offered for me to join her in her funky TV production office in order to get my creative juices flowing. The tenderness of this offer floored me. She knows me well. She sees the signs. Home alone is not good for me.

Meanwhile I spent last week having lunches with ladies. All very interesting; these are the demographic of the population, of which I suppose I am now one, who don't do paid work. What they do is learn french and craft things and do Pilates and generally 'keep themselves busy'. This observation belittles the work rate they maintain of managing a home and husbands and children. It is a never-ending, up at dawn siege interspersed by driving and cooking! It's not 'hard' of course, but it can be somewhat draining in its monotony. More kindness and offers of company and entertainment and I see for the first time in a long time, that the inclusive embrace of the school mums can open up and give support and validation. I enjoyed this at the school my children previously attended, but as time has gone on, it has lessened. The schedule demands of two children at different schools and a corporate (absent) husband can count me out of many of the activities that bond women together. Rightly or wrongly. Turns out making friends after 40 is as hard as making friends when I was 8. It's just a different playground.

I can report that the leather leggings have not yet had an outing. I am painting a floor in the house white (surprise) with thick boat paint; I want it to look like a glistening deck. The mantra I keep saying to myself is 'Lou: chill your beans'. I can't even get my head around Christmas - my son tells me its is 38 days away. Eeeek. I downloaded an app called Gratitude where you enter a journal every day of what you are grateful for. It's meant to be life changing if you do it for a month...shall we see?!

images via annixen blog