Storm brewing outside. We’ve let the kids know that it’s going to be noisy, but they are safe inside. I think they believe us (mostly).
I feel a bit the same, writing. Some days, it seems a gale goes on before I can sit down and write, and I’m only really writing once a week.
But once I start to write, I feel safe.
I like the blogs where I feel safe when I arrive. I know what to expect, to a certain extent. I like to be surprised at times, too.
I mostly feel safe through the choice of the writer’s words, their topics, their take on life. They’ve shown up and done their work; I get to sit and enjoy it.
This way round, doing my own writing, I’m reminded of that choice to put things down, for others as well as for oneself. To be real. To be me.
Here’s another week. It’s me, it’s real, and I feel safe thinking it over, hands above the keys.
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Over the weekend, Dan and I both get ill at the same time.
Head colds, not the worst things in the world, but it means we’re vying for spare hankies, and hot drinks, and trying to give each other a break while really just wanting to be in bed asleep.
Still. It is a good excuse to stay put, let the weekend unfold. On the Saturday night, there is a concerted Put the Kids to Bed, as we just can’t hold it together much longer.
But the reward is in the takeaway curry, which no doubt helps our colds too. Certainly our spirits.
By the end of the weekend, we’re doing better. We do a bit of perspective-setting: could have been worse. Easier over the weekend than on school pickups. No one was actually being sick, etc.
It helps that there’s been a birthday, and there’s marzipan in the house. (Actually, marzipan just helps. Full stop.)
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Time for a craft order – or rather, the happy aftermath when the box arrives and you can look over everything. With luck, this will keep us going for a good while ahead.
The kids love their craft stuff. There is general oohing and aahing over thin pens and thick pens. New decopens, probably our favourite item, that can colour on pretty much anything: wood, china, glass and so on.
I get a pack of different colours of wool as part of the order, and try to do something about the noble art of darning. Having found a good post about it recently, I decide to have a go.
It helps that I rediscover a pair of wool slippers this week, ones that were worn and worn and then developed holes. I was sad, didn’t know what to do about it exactly, hung onto them in hope.
So now I get to benefit from putting them back into active use – but no one is exactly checking out the quality of my workmanship on them. Unless I put my feet up conspicuously.
I am wearing my slippers as I type. Fairly soon, I’ll try washing them, and see if the wool felts as promised, to fill up the holes a bit more.
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I’m finding that sewing is helping in the evenings. Some of it is family mending-type stuff. Some of it is more of an experiment (like the darning).
But there is something about having something to do with my hands as part of winding down at the end of the day.
Colouring is taking a bit of a back seat, for now. It’s still something to do with my hands, true, but not as active, or something like that.
In the meantime, we are on to a new box set of a favoured TV series – one that doesn’t need me to keep my eyes on the screen all the time. Sewing is fitting in with it just fine.
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Mini and I read The Paper Dolls this week. I am informed that we have had it out of the library before, but I’m pretty sure we haven’t.
In brief: mum makes girl a set of paper dolls. They get names, they have adventures, indoors and out.
There is a moment of high drama, which I won’t spoil, but by the end, the girl has become a mum herself, and is making a set of paper dolls for her daughter. Cue new adventures.
There’s that natural pause at the end, and you think: well, we’d better make some paper dolls, then.
With a bit of thinking, and a couple of goes, we created a couple of sets of paper dolls. One (round head shapes plus trousers) was criticised early on; the next set incorporated skirts and longer sections for hair.
The trousers set were given girl names, but soon became boys when it came to playing. The skirt set also got girl names (think Betsy, Getsy, Gretsy…etc), and soon the two sets were playing together.
Well, for at least a few minutes.
Mini was taken enough by the idea to want to make some more, later in the week. I demonstrated the arms bit so that they would stay linked up; Mini came up with much of the rest.
(And learned, fairly quickly, that drawing lines for high heels means that you can’t cut them out. Cut alternate footwear solutions.)
Whether or not Mini will go ahead and make sets of paper dolls, far into the future, I don’t know. But I do like planting a seed, and seeing what happens.
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I am trying to do Paid Writing too – aka copywriting. I get some done this week, but it seems to take longer to get my brain in gear.
Once I’m underway, it’s all right, but it seems to take a surprising amount of procrastinatory cleaning to begin.
The house is benefitting from it, though.
Fiction writing still seems a long way off, for now. But I am in that January phase where I want to do new things. Even if it’s tiny things, like fixing a sock or a woollen slipper.
Maybe the words are more like migrating birds. Usually, they flock in around September, jostling, ready for some time indoors as the weather turns colder.
I’m not really sure where they are this year. But I keep turning up, once a week, to see if some of their friends are available. Maybe they’ll come and join them soon.
I hope so.
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Rain upon rain. Cold winds too. It’s January, and I do understand why people find it so hard.
(It helps to have a January birthday, so there’s something to look forward to after Christmas. Even if your expectations for your birthday can include snow, torrential rain, or just greyness.)
We do what we can. One foot in front of the other. Keep the warm gloves ready for school pick up.
Mini continues in drawing mode. Junior has been set a Minecraft challenge by Dan, and both are delighted with the results.
I stick with some more baking for another week, generally enjoying the results. A little bit of a rhythm is building up.
And there’s generally about enough time left, at the end of it all, to restore the kitchen to relative normality. (Aka normal levels of food debris. You know the deal.)
It’s not all creativity. There is also the overdoing it that brings on colds; the ongoing issue of the sheer impossibility of eating breakfast and getting dressed, Mummy!
But alongside it, there seem to be fewer friendship issues for the kids at school. More of a sense of continuity.
The long autumn term is over and done; the pattern has been set, and actually a bit of routine is doing us all good.
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I too am settling into coming here, once a week, putting down some words.
They are no great shakes, really. They are bits and bobs; the ongoing run of life with kids.
But writing about them allows me to pause. To feel the safety of it, for me, in the routine. Hopefully for the kids too.
Tonight, I can still hear my thoughts against the noise of the wind. And that will do for now.