Pants to 2013 - or is it?

Sitting here freezing cold because HE is on an economy drive (I forgot to fill up the oil tank before Christmas) and all I can think is it’s been a PANTS 2013.

Blogging wise I may as well have  got a monkey to do it for all the sense I have made or actually not done anything at all – it’s not been a stellar undertaking.

I had such high hopes!

It was meant to be my year and… actually it wasn’t. Things just sort of got on top of me and then I decided to do something about it and then things REALLY got on top of me and yet there is a chink of light at the end of the tunnel as long as I keep digging, as long as I keep on going - perhaps 2014 could be better.

It’s not as if 2013 was ALL bad. It was just a bit like a curates egg; bad in parts which tends to make the whole thing rather off putting.

Bad in parts: well I had several visitations from the Black Dog cumulating with a massive appearance over Christmas coupled with mountains of work, too little time and a 10 year old boy with teenage attitude problems.

Hey – what can I say

All of that was over shadowed by the fact that HIS  company came up for sale at the beginning of the year and it was rather touch and go for the rest of it as to whether he would A) keep his job; B) like his new bosses; C) stay in  his job…

We are still out on C but at least he HAS a job and so do I – for the moment and that cannot be a bad thing.

But with all the uncertainty comes stress; a low lying thrumming stress and that has lead too many Black Dog visitations and hence my belief that 2013 was PANTS.

So as an exercise I will catalogue the good and bthe bad and if I am right then 2013 WAS pants and if I am wrong…well I’ll get my arse into gear and prove 2014 is  going to be even better…

January

Sassy Whippet aka wickedest whippet gets pregnant on purpose - good

Hubbie’s work up for sale. Will he still have a job at the end of all this?– bad

Boy passes LAMDA exam – good

I take back the reins and go horse riding after 20 years – good

Hubbie celebrates one year of weekly commuting: I miss him – bad

Boy gives up piano: no battles as I try forcing him to practice - good

Bog Boy (youngest)  takes up piano: now have to FORCE him to practice - bad

February

Got invited out for Valentines night – good

Drowned car – bad

Missed Valentines night  out – bad

Got new car – good

Used up all holiday money to buy new car – bad

March

Had puppies – good

Good mate had massive heartattack – bad

April

But survived – good

May

Boy off epilepsy drugs – good

Sold puppies - good

But fell in love with one puppy and still had to sell it - bad

June

Mums 70^th she is still alive and kicking! - good

I get amazing article to do – good

Having written article get amazing opportunity – good

July

Boy wins school prize - good

College mate dies of cursed cancer – bad

August

Had staycation – surprisingly good!

Article published and everyone thinks it’s – good!

September

Boy takes up trombone: WHAT more practice battles!!!!– bad

Bog Boy takes up recorder – bugger…

Boy gets girlfriend – good

Boy gets dumped – bad

Mate tries to kill themself – very bad

October

Keep getting work opportunities – good

Had amazing birthday party – good!

Boy gets girlfriend back – good

Boy gets dumped again – bad

Boy gets cool haircut – good

Boy gets girlfriend back again - good

November

Have amazing trip for work – good

Meet extraordinary people – good

December

Best friend gets annoyed with Boys flicky fringe and cuts it while I am away – bad

Get back from trip too close to Christmas – bad

Boy gets dumped by girlfriend yet again as not cool with dodgy fringe - bad

Boy pisses off mother on virtually daily basis with severe teenage attitude problems - bad

Fail to write Christmas cards – bad

Major major major crisis of confidence (I can’t do all this! I am going to fail!!) – bad

Manage to meet work deadlines so far – good

Plucking up courage to write all about trip – good

Feeling fragile but hopeful – bad and good

Good: 27  Bad:  20

Roll on 2014….

And woman invented wine...

There is no doubt about it a woman invented wine.

A man may refine it and take over it and play god only knows what with it, but a woman definitely invented it.

While Man was out hunting and doing it large on the I AM MAN front in the Stone Age, Woman was left at home with the kids bored out of her tiny mind with all that gathering, skinning, curing, preserving, hand painting lark waiting for him to make an appearance so she could get out of the cave and let her hair down for a bit like she used to before like when she had a career...

So, there she is looking at a bunch of withered grapes and going how in the heck am I going to make this lot stretch all winter when she says what the heck and throws them at the wall in frustration. A few days later she comes across the mess she hurriedly hid when HE came home and says smells nice and takes a sip. It tastes good and before she knows it she’s rolling and the fact that she’s left for days on end on her tod makes no difference at all.

He comes home and finds she’s way more amenable than ever before and the rest they say is history…

Tonight I have certainly indulged - it has taken the edge off a clearly stressful day of toing and froing and not getting very much done other than dropping off and collecting boys from school, sorting out compulsory after school activities, seeing the community paediatrician, doing the laundry, feeding the chickens, working out how to save a feral whippet from a fate worse than death (here’s hoping Cesar Milan will come up trumps) picking up and dropping off the painter, squeezing in two hours of work and still only getting one story to the editor all rounded off by spending three hours on homework which should have only taken 20 minutes...

I am only two days into the school year but the end of it I will be a certified dipsomaniac!

Depression: Struggling

I am struggling.
It's my fault I know. It's me, trying to do too much. Then getting tired, exhausted and falling into a dangerous place.
A place where the Black Dog can get at me.
It is relentless this beast and sometimes it seems just so much easier to let it devour me, to suck me dry.
But I don't like who I am when it happens. I hate myself when I become too weak to fight it off. I am vile in my own sight.
Somewhere I must find the strength to keep going to keep fighting.
God I wish it were that easy.
For those of you who have no idea imagine your worst despair then imagine you are trying to out run it. Sometimes you can ignore it, pretend it is not there but you know that really  it is forever on the periphery of your vision.
I say I wish it were cancer and my family give me sour looks. Yes, I know one of them has fought cancer and won. I know how terrrified they were and how brave to keep going. I am not belittling their battle, their fortitude. I try to right myself and explain that this is: "a cancer fo the soul" but they think I am overly dramatic and too full of sensibility.
We talk like aliens and I pity them their lack of understanding. I must understand them all. See things from their perspective, see how draining I am; how boring more like. Yep, my illness is boring because you cannot fight it with the wonders of modern science, it will not go away and I will not give in and die. So it is there day after day, month after month, year after year. Some would say I revel in my depression, that it makes me "interesting" that I only go on about it because without it I wouldn't be anything at all.
But that is untrue.
Without it I could have been so many things.
We all of us have a propensity for depression. Luckily mnay of us will not be triggered into it early.
My trigger was a severe bout of Glandular Fever coupled with a host of outside stresses which if I had had them but a few years earlier or later would not have made me intolerant to stress and caused me to develop a clincal depression.
I believe you don't just get drepression you develop it (unless of course it is Post Natal Depression which is entirely different). A series of triggeres/stresses brings it on, for many it is fought off but for a few  the combination is too great and a full blown clinical depression ensues. You never get rid of it. It underlies the rest of your life.
It can be managed and it can be held at bay but  we don't yet know enough to work out exactly what to do. So sometimes I am too tired and I fall and I hate myself for failing to manage it properly, for opening my mouth and saying stupid things, for shouting at my children, for not struggling hard enough, well, for not being normal....

It's been a hard couple of weeks, I am tired and struggling, but I will be OK. The safety nets are holding. I wish I didn't get so tired. I just wish I didn't have depression.

God! I need a holiday just to go on holiday!

ARRRGGGHHHHH I am trying to go on holiday and I am going to, if not already in the middle of blowing a fuse! Talk about stressful! God I need a holiday just to go on holiday!

First I have to get hold of all the paper work. Where is the Euro Tunnel paper that I MUST have with my boarding details and times? It’s somewhere among the piles of detritus on my desk. Buried under research and newspapers and stone cold cups of tea. I knew it was a bad idea to leave it on my desk but at least if it is there it’s not on the floor. But I had a deadline to meet and well I only finished that article at 9am this morning. Then there are the passports and the insurance documents, the wee triangle thingy is in here too I am sure. The boys were playing with it and I confiscated it. All things that get confiscated land up in my office….it gets crowded.

I think the spare bulb is in the kitchen, the bulb for the car headlights which you have to have when travelling in France.

You have to have a lot of things when you travel in France.

I swear I put the bulb in the Jug on the sideboard so I wouldn’t lose it the last time I mucked out the car but there again I could have put it in the tool shed with all the other odds and sods belonging to the car in a fit of being organised.

I mustn’t forget my Day-Glo cat sick coloured reflective vest so that when I do break down or my bulb goes people can see where I am – probably the wrong side of the road.

Oh god yes breakdown cover! Have I enough time to ring the RAC to see if I am covered abroad? Please let them say yes! And does O2 do abroad as well? Or will I come back to a bill the size of the US deficit? Do you think they’d let me default?

Do I know where I am going? I did look on Google but I got lost when I tried to make it bigger so I could see better. Basically I am heading for Le Mans on Saturday, tomorrow. Hope it’s not like Paris; I landed up on the peripherique for hours then got bored and did an impromptu  tour  at 3 in the morning only realising where I was when  I saw the Notre Dame. It would have been far more helpful if they had just left the lights on the Eiffel Tower, but I suppose they needed to save electricity. It was actually quite cool driving round the city when no one else was there I even got to drive through the Arc du Triomphe and down the Champs Elysee, not sure if that was entirely legal though…

I shouldn’t be going anywhere near Paris this time if I manage to read the map right A28 all the way from Calais then Abbeville, Rouen, Le Mans, Saumur and that’s it…it may take me a while as I am driving on my own with no trusty map reader beside me, no one to do the tolls and no one to swap the CDs for me.

And there will be two tetchy boys in the back….

Joy!

Is it any wonder I am a tad stressed and that’s just at the thought of the journey!

Heck I haven’t packed either never mind documents and other palaver.

Why am I doing this to myself?

Because my family will be there, that’s why. This is meant to be a lovely happy family holiday….you know that just by writing those words I am putting a curse on the whole thing….

Should I just take the valium now?

The problem with Organisation is Discipline....

The problem with organisation is discipline and by that you can discover I have neither in my life – it is a problem.

For living the way I do in a disorganised and undisciplined world, although wildly romantic and sometimes adventurous, is the cause I fear of the one great tragedy in my life; stress.

Stress the modern day scourge of the Western states more prevalent than the bubonic plague and equally as harmful sapping the will from countless millions and in a world where we have untold wealth and freedom the cause of so much unhappiness.

Well basically I have found a cure or if not that a great reliever of stress and that is organisation; I have just got to get it.

If I were organised I would have more time, time to relax and thus stay one step ahead of stress not stress due to big life affirming or changing events such as hatch, match and dispatch but of the more mundane things like running out of underwear or food and failing to keep up with bank accounts and school trips that sort of everyday, low lying stress which niggles and naggles at you and haunts your dreams so you never get any rest.

They say if you can do a thing for 20 days it will become a habit; I’m crossing my fingers that THEY are correct for in the next 30 days I am going to get organised once and for all and the first thing I am going to do is find out what the heck we have and I mean everything. For how can you get organised if you don’t know what you have to organise? This is the nitty gritty of my life. Stuff.

Get a grip on the small things and I’ll get a clearer view of the big picture once that is done I will know what the heck it is I am expected to do and no doubt get a better perspective on how I want to live.

So every draw and pocket, box and bag, cupboard and cubby hole will be gone through with a fine tooth comb. Everything will be sorted out and either put back in the place it belongs or thrown out. There will be no room for hangers on.

It sounds frightfully decisive doesn’t it? Ho hum let’s hope I have the will to do it and not get distracted along the way and that is why in a vain attempt to give the whole task a sense of urgency, a deadline if you will, I am joining Tiddlyompompom on this mad course to see if by stating it out loud I will have the discipline to carry it through.Wish me luck!!!