Flibbertygibbet

I feel I think too much.

It’s Sunday morning. In my case, an extremely lazy Sunday morning.  I woke about eight, because the sun was doing an admirable job of penetrating the black-out blinds – I must put up GALMI* to put up the effing curtains so that I don’t feel interrogated by nature every morning.

Well, every morning that there’s a suggestion of natural light out there.  The skies have darkened considerably and it’s all just damp.  Damp is not good (with the sole of exception of Nigella’s ‘Dense Damp Chocolate Loaf Cake’ in How to Eat which vies for the accolade of World’s Most Superlative Baked Creation with the ‘Quadruple Chocolate Cake in Feast) because let’s face it, it’s the merest step away from that odious word ‘moist’. Makes my skin crawl even typing it.

So, I’m propped up in bed, cocooned from the greyness, with laptop and books and writing materials, wearing the spotty dressing gown, and I’ve just had fish food for breakfast.  Oh alright, before you go putting in a call to St Gobnait’s Home for Bewildered Youngish Ladies, I did feed the cats first, and I’m not on their Whiskas.  It was Phish food for me.  Now that you understand that I had chocolate ice cream, swirled with marshmallow and liberally studded with dinky ickle chocolate fishes, you feel so relieved, don’t you?
I have decided (bear with me here) that it’s time to do whatever feels best for me.  Including having chocolate for breakfast and lounging about in bed until half-past lunchtime.  Perhaps that sounds somewhat selfish, but I don’t feel that I am generally an overly self-indulgent or selfish person, though my moment in that sun may be coming. If anything, I’ve rather taken some mantras too much to heart (“It’s Nice to be Nice”, ‘If You Can’t Say Anything Nice, Don’t Say Anything At All” “Nobody likes a Show-Off”) and that’s put me at a definite disadvantage – in relationships, in my career and in terms of realising my hopes and dreams for myself.  I have spent far, far too much time in pursuit of “shoulds” and “would be best ifs” and “I’d betters” and gazing lazily and longingly at others' achievements and exuberances, beating myself up a little more each time.   It’s time for “Guess what?!s” and “I’m so excited abouts” and “I shouldn’t buts”.  I don’t want to keep looking back at my life – even though I’m only a shade away from a mere thirty-three, and keep saying if, if only.  So brace yourselves. It's bound to show up here in some shape or form.

I talked to an intriguingly interesting and challenging counsellor woman on Friday, as part of the whole ‘I Will Not Allow This To Make Me Mad[der]’ campaign and she was asking me how I felt about what’s happening, how it had made me feel and I realised as the hour drifted on, that with an almost pathological though undeliberate obstinacy, I started each answer with ‘I think’ – even ‘I think I felt…’ which partly accounts for “how well I’ve been handling” the separation, to quote others.  The fact was that I retreated into crafting and creative pursuits – good; making connections with new friends and renewing links with old friends – good; and only paid lip-service to the notion that I’d had my heart broken and felt thrown on the scrap heap.  Not in the usual ‘heaps of stash scraps for making wonderful creations out of virtually nothing’ sense either. 
Right now I need to accept that pending legal solutions and indeed dissolutions,  I have a Phantom Husband, a little like a phantom limb: though the actual appendage is gone, I still feel the pain. I will allow myself to feel it, rather than over-analysing it as a way of denying it, and it will stop being part of my identity as more positive things take its place.   Because soon it will be gone, and I will have recovered fully from the amputation.  Fighting fit, as they say…

* Get A Little Man In – from a old sitcom many years ago, it has evolved into a family saw.  A bit like “Enter fairy through gap in hedge,”, “Charge” and “MFT”.

This post was brought to you by the Over-Arching Influence of Capital Letters, the Heady Intoxication of the Wide Open Blog Page, and the Power of Sugar.

Conversion

Ok, I'm not saying I won't ever go back to top-down, particularly as I've only knit one toe so far, but thanks to Helen and Sara I have discovered the Figure Eight cast on and with one darnable, forgiveable exception, it's going pretty well. I didn't get the hang of the crochet cast on, and made things rather difficult for myself.  But this is so much easier.  Just watch me become a sock geek  even more of a sock geek.

XH is moving out today - or moving a percentage of his possessions somewhere else, at any rate.  He isn't calling it moving out. Well, whatever works for him, I guess.

Off to do a workshop tomorrow, at this wonderful place with this very talented lady, you may have seen her cushion contribution to the Guardian Craft supplement last week.  As we'll be refashioning shirts into cushions tomorrow, she suggested I might like to take one of XH's favourites and use that. Damn, he's packed them all already.    

Lessons in becoming myself

I'm watching Oprah at the moment, which really brings me back as I used to watch it when I was younger, in school, to avoid doing homework.  I also watched the Winter Olympics - all the coverage - the year I was doing my Leaving Cert, despite never having had any interest in sports up until then, and I had my mother very worried that unless the luge and the identities of the Candian ice hockey team came up in some shape or form on one of the papers, perhaps as a multi-choice quiz in the English exam, I'd fail it all.

Oprah had Ellen Burnstyn and Cheryl Crowe on, and Ellen Burnstyn's autobiography is called "Lessons in Becoming Myself".  Lately I've been thinking I need a few lessons like that.  I'm feeling a bit stuck at the moment, as there has been little progress on the home front, I should be pushing things more.  I am hankering after my own place and a 'proper' new start - complete with the wallpaper I keep banging on about.

So many friends have announced pregnancies and engagements lately. Though I am genuinely thrilled for them,  I've been moping a little - privately, obviously - about being broody. One of the things I notice about a lot of crafty blogs is that so many of the authors are mums.  And being honest, I'd hoped that I'd be a mum by now too, or that at least we'd still be trying.  Of course, I also thought that we'd still be "happily" married. Sometimes this really gets me down, but then I tell myself that it's natural and will get better, it will.  I've been reading this book today which had made me laugh more than brood about the thought of being a mum, if you're at all familiar with these delightful books, you'll appreciate Becky saying that her husband was humouring all her cravings in pregnancy, such the craving for 'pineapple and a pink cardigan'.

I'm applying for more jobs as I really want to get my financial independence back.  As well as paying for my stash and general entertainment, I want to get debt free and be able to afford a decent holiday this year. Of course, that entails doing more than just 'wanting' it, and I'm reminded of that old saw "I want never gets" - whereas "I get off my arse" tends to be more successful.

Finally the socks are done, and though they s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d dramatically to Bobo the Clown proportions when they were washed, they seem to have shrunk back ok and are now ready to be gift-wrapped and delivered, along with the custom-dyed buttons from the Button Queen in Marylebone which will adorn a vintage Jaeger suit.  So now I need to find a pattern for the next pair of socks which will be for me, me, me.  Various options have been suggested, such as the Jaywalkers or Knitty's RPMs and then I just have to choose which yarn I'm going to use, probably the Colinette Jitterbug in Florentina.  I'm also working on the tank top in the Lux, which - thankfully - actually knits up really well, somewhat more subtle than it appears in the ball. Simultaneously there will be yet another pair of the Louisa Harding mittens for my aunt - apparently she keeps nicking the pair that I made for my grandmother for Christmas.

Things that are good.

Things which are good?  A case of poor sentence construction either way? Who knows, I just work in publishing correcting other people's grammar, oh dear God.  This sort of attitude may account for the decline in literary standards that's regularly declaimed in broadsheets - well mostly in the Mail, which I don't read.  Or I could blame educational systems that allows many people to leave school without knowing enough to correct me either way, and with even less inclination to care. Mea non culpa.  I didn't actually study Latin so I don't know if that makes sense but I'd nearly bet that you didn't either, unless you're one of those very clever bods who went on to study medicine or other sciences.  Apparently in the UK there was a period in the early 80s when it was deemed that grammar wasn't really terribly important after all, and so it was dropped from the school curriculum.  This lasted about a decade.  Um, I wish that was my excuse, but I wasn't educated here...

That all sounds very grouchy.  I am learning to walk a [metaphorical - allegorical?  philosophical?] tightrope.  There is the fairly distant prospect of some balance coming into my life, because I keep telling myself that it has to, logically speaking.  I'm hugely heartened (after first crying, normally) by lovely comments I've received from people recently which made me think I should come back to blogging which I've been avoiding.  I think I hide away sometimes - in person as well on online -  if I feel I can't be cheery, and right now I am either positive, optimistic and cheerful, or a bawling wreck of a woman. There's no middle ground.  A bit like when you're on a tightrope - you're on it, or well... you're not.  You're just not. 

Perhaps if I learn to crochet, one of my ambitions for this year, my first project could be a net.

Good things.

- A package for the lovely Denise, finally entrusted to the Royal Mail, embarrassingly late, now winging its way to the US.  I wish I'd managed to see her over Christmas when we were both in the same country, but it wasn't to be. I had to return to mind the mogs, before the neighbours took off for New Year, otherwise the cats would have had to go to XMIL's house and would still be there.  A girl needs her feline companions.

- New credit cards and bank cards in my name, as I'm using my maiden name again.  In Liberty just before Christmas, my Switch card was declined, or rather they said they'd need to phone for authorisation.  After it happened again that afternoon I realised I'd need to call the bank - and it turned out my card had been cloned, or at least the details had been stolen.  So when I was in the branch arranging new cards, I admitted, albeit with a heavy heart when actually confronted with it, that it made scarce sense to have "Mrs..." cards for 2007.   It's a new year, it's time to start to get on with things even if it's scary.  God, if only I felt more like a maiden and less like a crone.  And if the cards were in credit rather than in debit, then they would be perfect things. Um, and magical...

- New bedrooms.  Finally we got the heating sorted out on the 23rd of December, just before we left to see our families, and all the bedroom bits that were previously stuffed into other rooms around the house so that the bedroom carpet could come up, could be returned to correct places. After much schlepping of furniture over the past couple of days - I am strong woman - there are two separate rooms, one for each of us while we try to agree everything. Yes, Helen, I get the bigger one with the nicer linen.  Also I realised last night that I no longer need to sleep on 'my' side.  So I starfished across a 6ft bed, like I was creating linen angels.  Today I did more reorganisation, and it's looking much better now.  I have a feeling it's going to get thorougly girlyfied by the time I'm finished, and I'm not just talking Cath Kidston duvet covers.  I'm thinking pink...

- Fabric Swap.  Apparently this sort of fabric swap - long strips - is called a 'noodle' swap.  I've set up a Flickr group for pics of things you send, you receive and anything you make.  I'm looking forward to it, I want to make myself a bedsized quilt this year, and perhaps  some of the swap fabrics will be part of it.  The office now has a sizeable craft stash too, as you can see, as well as the craft press* in the kitchen.

-  Nearly knitted socks.  They fit me rather well, but they're for him.  If they fit.  Ewww, look at those milk-bottle legs!  The sock stripes don't match, which is deliberate.  There's a couple of dropped stitches on each - you might have spotted the orange stitch marker that's holding one until I can darn it in.  God knows how they ever got this far, but I'm quite pleased with them!  Buying a second set of dpns was actually a good idea - I've taken it turns on either sock, working them to the same stage.  I think I'll do this for my pair of socks (next project!) too, to lessen the chances of OSS - Orphaned Sock Syndrome. 

 

House-keeping

Ages ago Mandy tagged me for a meme, but now I can't find her blog to tell her I've done it! 
The meme is to reveal six things about my weird self.  Gee, only six?

1.  I have always mixed up left and right.  When I was little the only way I could remember it was 'when Mum is driving us to school, we turn right at the castle'.  The fact that I 'write' with my 'right' hand didn't seem to help.

2.  My childhood nickname was Miss Mouse.  Since finding that out when we started seeing each other, XH has always called me Mouse, I guess I feel a little strange about it now.  In other moniker oddities, my given name (the one I use daily) is my middle name - my parents' idea.

3.  The first 'proper' book I read was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott when I was seven.  I borrowed it from the school library, having initially borrowed then rejected Gulliver's Travels because it was written in the first person.  To this day I haven't read the latter.

4.  I ran the London Marathon in 2000, in a faster time than Frank Bruno.  Passed him on the Embankment... (about 25.8 miles in)

5.  Cream - bleugh.  Ice cream - mmmmmm.  Which reminds me -I saw an [innocent] reference to a new ice cream flavour and had to Google it.  Found this and peed myself laughing at the other "flavours" suggested in the comments, and was intrigued by this follow on.

6.  Two years ago I got horrible bloody orthotics for my all my shoes, as I have wonky schleppy feet.  Only now am I almost ready to part with all the now-impractical but gorgeous shoes (slingbacks, mules, anything Camper with their heavy soles) that I can no longer wear.

6B. Despite normally being quite good at spelling, I still remember being kept in during breaktime at primary school to learn how to spell gorgeous properly.  I used to put a 'd' in it - gordgeous. 

I'm supposed to 'tag' six other people to do it, but I'm a little nervous about imposing.  So please feel free to do a post on your blog with your six strange things, if you feel like it, and leave me a comment here to let me know!

* the Irish word for cupboard...