Grumpalot and the Crochety-Witch

Yes, despite my 30-days of Happiness, I have been dwelling in the land of Grumpalot behaving like a right old fish wife for the last week. In my defence I have been heavily, pre-menstrually hormonal and therefore a bit of a weepy, irritable and waspish mess. This leads directly to Grumaplot without passing go and without getting anywhere near $200.

So - I have been trying not to give in to it and have focused my attention on the little things in the day that make me happy. (*Generally anything containing chocolate). And I have found happiness every day which has been uplifting if only for a moment or two.

The second reason for my Crotchety-Witchypooness is due to my darling daughter deciding to wake up at 5am instead of 6am for the last 3 days. She has also been waking up screaming at 12.30 every night for the last 3 weeks, necessitating the Hubble moving into her roome very night from then until morning! Lonely bed for mummy and uncomfortable nights for Daddy. Our sofa bed needs throwing out to be honest. Every time you get into it all the blood rushest to your head! It's never been the same since the stupid 12 year old removalists we hired let it drop out of the unsecured back of the removal van. These are also the boys who put our microwave on top of our beautiful wooden table with nothing in between resulting in two deep scars in the wood! Dickheads!

Third reason for crochety state is that aforementioned darling daughter has stopped eating anything remotely resembling food and osscilates between demanding 'Bic! bic!' (her word for biccies) and 'Weeuws' (her word for, you guessed it, the Wiggles). this has been very frustrating for me because she flat out refuses to even taste the food in front of her most of the time. If she does eat it she will pick out the pasta, or the cheese and leave whatever veggies are in it. It drives me craaaayyyyzeeeeee.

So - for these three reasons I have been less than chipper in general. I have been short tempered with Hubble and frustrated with bubsy. I have also been beyond tired. If there is something magical that I can do that will make me feel somewhere approaching human, I would be glad to know of it. I am taking vitamins and tonics from the naturopath but still I feel like a washed out dishrag.

Anywhoo, I am about to begin week 3 of my 30-day meditation programme and I am slowly working my way through all the of the tasks in my Artists Way. It's been interesting to see from where the blows have come to my creativity. It took me a few days to remember the abusive principal of my post-graduate drama course in Oxford and the way he systematically made my life a living hell. He is, for the record, a tool. A tool who should NEVER, EVER be allowed to teach - ANYONE. I won't go into the horrible, stupid and selfish things he did to us as students nor the very obvious dislike he had for me. I told him I thought he was a terrible teacher (though no perhaps with a tad more diplomacy than he ever used)so I at least didn't lie down and let him walk all over me like some of the more timid students did. He was responsible for almost destroying my love of Shakespeare - thankfully it was rescued by a lovely voice teacher from The Royal Shakespeare Company at the end of the course. Anyway, as an actor he made me feel less than useless and he never took a single minute to think about the way he talked to me or whether what he said was an honest appraisal or just vindictiveness. Mostly it was the latter. Like the day he told me taht I had never felt anything deeply, he could tell by my eyes. I was, at that moment in time, in the midst of the most painful separation of my life and was struggling to stay on top of a crippling year long depression (only realised in hindsight). Like I said. A tool.

So - the creative process is unfolding, the wounds are being revealed, the scabs are being peeked under and the healing is underway. At least I hope it is!

I'm going to grump off now to the coffee table for a muffin and some tea.

Of Crafts, Creativity and Jumping from Frying Pan to Fire

Lately I have been suffering greatly from craft envy. I have found myself bemoaning my complete lack of talent in the crafty sewing stakes and have decided that instead of being such a wussy when it comes to making things from scratch, I will throw myself in at the deep end and have a bloody go. Now the problem with this enthusiastic (if terribly naive) approach to the whole business is that I am a horrible, horrible perfectionist. I have been blessed with one main talent in my life and that is that I have always been able to do pretty much anything I put my mind to without too much effort. I remember it began with ice-skating back when I was a tweenie. My mum had a friend whose daughter had had lessons and we all went to the ice rink. I sailed (literally) through my first ever experience on the ice including learning how to skate backwards, while said friends daughter clung to the side like a limpet. Same with horseriding, same with dance (for which I had a gift when I was much younger and less portly). However, this gift is not all its cracked up to be. Firstly it meant that my mum always had me (unconsciously) in competition with everyone else and that's a kind of pressure that no kid needs and secondly, it meant that I became very impatient with any personal failure. This all translates to, if I can't do it perfectly straight off, I am liable to set fire to it and myself.

Soooo, it is with cautious enthusiasm that I have set myself this project to be completed within the next 4-months in time for my daughters second birthday. Yes, its a sock monkey. I know it probably doesn't seem like much but its a huge step for me. Y'see I love crafts. I have folders at home filled with pages torn from magazines and downloaded from the internet showing me how to do everything from producing the perfect Macaroni Cheeeeze to knitting myself a Bible. I positively salivate over the perfect images with a maniacal grin on my face. I dream of curling up on my newly upholstered sofa, eating the perfect macaroni cheese, striving not to get any on my newly knitted bible with a sock monkey sitting next to me.

I truly envy these amazing creative women whose blogs I have been pouring over. DocWitch is one such being for whom I have such admiration. Anyone who can do crafty things, raise a child, hold down a full time job AND have any time at all for other things is to be worshipped for the Godess/God that they truly are. Me? I'm lucky if I can get through an average day and cook dinner. I long to be more crafty. I love the idea of handmade things, of giving thoughtful, beautiful gifts to people I love that I have taken the time and energy to create myself. There is something so special about it. (BTW thank you for my Beanie's gorgeous Crayon roll-up - she adores it and the crayons within. Many a wall in our house has been visited by her early impressionistic endeavours!). I've always had this thing, this quiet passion, for crafts and now I've discovered Family Circle magazine and completely fallen in love with it. I know. I'm so middle-aged it ain't funny. It's just that its chock full of great recipes and fantastic crafty ideas with ALL the instructions. And some of them I think I could actually do! So - having written in (blog)stone that I am going to make a sock monkey for my little monkey's birthday, I will have to go ahead and do it. Lest the shame of this post hang over my head like those dreams where you find yourself in school naked and without your homework.



As if this wasn't enough, I have also made another commitment (actually two)that started today. (I am nothing if not insanely optimistic when it comes to starting new things), I have commited to 30-days of Japa meditation. I'm not trying to manifest anything in particular, I just would like to revisit the stillness and peace I once experienced during an impromptu fire meditation and which I have written about in this blog (see post The Stillness We Seek). I need to quieten down my head for it is always so very busy in there. The third commitment I have made is to The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. So this morning, after my Japa meditation, I did my morning pages and this week I will go out with myself on my very first Artists Date. I'm very excited. I hope I bring myself flowers.

And so, it is with a burning hot bum (a result of leaping from Creative Frying Pan to Meditative Fire rather than because someone is sitting under my chair with an open flame) that I leave this post. I will be recording the effects of my 30-day meditation experiment AND I will be recording how I'm going with my sock monkey. I may also mention how things are going with The Artists Way. We'll just have to see if I am still able to move under the weight of all these self-imposed obligations by next week.

PS. This post was rudely interrupted by Mother Nature plunging us into sudden darkness at around 10.30pm last night. We stumbled about in total blackness, walking into doors, tipping things over and knocking things off other things until I found a box of matches and began lighting the candles. Thank goodness for what DocWitch calls Witchypooness - my house is stuffed to the gills with candles and soon the house was lit up like Christmas. It was actually very romantic - I actually look good in candlelight. I retired to bed to read and felt very Jane Austin. Reading by candlelight, indeed brushing my teeth and washing my face by candlelight did have a very Pride and Prejudice feel to it. I almost expected a very arsy Darcy to come bursting into the room to tell me how 'ardently I admire and love you...' Well, a girl can dream can't she? Yummmm. Sadly, he wouldn't have had the time to step out of his britches as the lights suddenly came on again and life was back to its unromantic normality in seconds - though I noticed my hubby had grown a beard.