White-knuckled ride...

I go through a series of life phases which take up residence and then last a few months. Lather, rinse, repeat. At the moment things feel...how can I say?...tiring. Tricky. In fact as I write that I wonder whether they are in fact tricky or whether it is me who finds this to be the case? I wonder about my tenacity. I wish I were stronger. Then I wish I could be kinder to myself because I know deep down I can be strong enough.

I knew that this Spring would represent a bit of a strange time. We have a house to finish, I have time to kill before I start my Masters, my children are growing and changing every day. I am still locked into the daily life of a housewife and not getting any better at it! It feels like I have been the parent of a teenager for the longest time and I remind myself that it has ONLY been a year! Teenage parenting is a bit like childbirth; when you are in it, you just get your head down and hope to come out the other side! And when I do I suspect I will block out the truth of it and forget just how challenging a time it was!

I don't want to do my beautiful teenage daughter a disservice; I am sure one day she will read this and think: wtf? Actually, she is doing fine. It's me and my reactions that are not. There are some people who breeze through life - the glass-half-full people - my husband is one, I can attest to their existence. But being a glass-half-empty person? Yep, it's a white knuckle ride.

In amongst this there's other baggage about keeping my cool and actually being the grown up. I can still listen to music from the 1980's and literally feel my heart clench with nostalgia for my youth. I wonder, on a daily basis, how did I get to be a 41 year old?! Much as I am 'owning' being in my 40's and like many of the good things that come with it, it is still a shock to me that I am this age. And the biggest observation I would make about all of this is that the more time you have to think about it, the fewer answers present themselves. Funny how that goes.

Meanwhile, I long for sun and heat (no change), I found the perfect white blazer (still shopping, still having the guilt-sweats), I am thinking of upping my yoga classes to three a week. I found these very achingly stylish kicks when in Brighton with a friend. I didn't purchase them though!

There are rooms in my house so in need of renovation that I can barely bring myself to walk into them! There is an inevitability about the building work that is to come; we can't not do it, we are neck deep and must complete. But the prospect of it makes me need to take a deep inward breath. No one likes living like that. I concentrate on the end point and the styling and how it will all be worth it. I try to imagine the farmhouse we currently have and what it will look like when the entire back wall of the house is taken off and replaced with glass. I idle away hours looking for the perfect image of the interplay between old and new. I fret about whether my slightly strange, Danish, quirky interior style will translate. Let's see...

But most of all I try to remind myself that all of these things - these so-called 'First World Problems' pale into insignificance really. I have a healthy, happy family and we have a roof over our heads. That should be enough shouldn't it?!

Oh and I started writing. Like properly writing. A password protected document on my computer with the title 'book'.

Have a great weekend!