Friday 19 April 2013

News

Top: Rochester Cathedral and Castle
Bottom: Toilet window in Rochester Cathedral Tea Rooms

Well the news around here is that I seem to have developed Impaired Glucose Tolerance, without any of the risk factors present: no family history, not overweight, not sedentary, not got high cholestorol, no gestational diabetes in my pregnancies, not over 45, etc. Then I blamed my comsumption of sugar (shut up) but apparently it's a myth that it causes IGT or diabetes. So for now I'm blaming my slightly faulty pancreas. And please no one bring me cake or biscuits or chocolate ever again!! 

I am on Day 2 of eating no sugar and I have had headaches and heart palpitations and general weird feelings but I am fine and determined.  I am a bit mournful though as I truly love chocolate.  I will allow myself to have some sometimes but it'll have to be just a bite for the taste.  I think I can do this.  I have wanted to for ages but even trying to imagine my gravestone (dead before my time) didn't stop me.  There's nothing like a kind but firm doctor telling you in the flesh that you need to cut down or you will develop diabetes in 10 or so years.   

Thank the lord for tea and coffee, that's what I say.  

Saturday 6 April 2013

*Yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwn* ramble ramble

Gawd this blog has got a bit boring.  I think my blow-by-blow account of the stapedectomy recovery didn't help.  And also the fact that I haven't slept properly for at least 4.5 years.  Really.  Before Feb 2009 I actually used to write posts I was proud of!  Now my evenings are short and I am usually in the state of just about being able to slump in front of the TV with maybe a glass of wine.  One day, I may have my more lucid brain back again.  In the meantime you're stuck with this version of me, anyone reading this. 

Also I think I have a weird sort of guilt about this blog being so much about my children, or rather the danger of that happening.  Because once upon a time (fairly well documented on here), I really thought and feared that my whole life lesson was going to be something along the lines of 'how to learn to love life without being a mother even though I want to be a mother more than anything else'.  Now I'm a mother of two and I still remember how almighty shit it felt to want children but not have them.  It hurts so badly.  I know.  But I'm no longer in that situation, for which I am so ridiculously grateful that I am worried about saying what I really want to say.  I so desperately don't want to hurt and piss off those who are still in that boat.  But what I really want to say is that, for me, being a mother is that absolute best thing which has ever happened to me, and living it every day, while being VERY VERY HARD is also very very amazing and life affirming and ohmygod I could go on and on and on.  It's as good as I thought it would be.  And the hard oh so hard bits haven't taken me by surprise because I watched my sister have 3 children long before mine came along.  The sheer amount of love...well, it's as the poems say.  It's big.  There is nothing else really, just love.

I want to also add that Adriano and I have been having quite a rough time with 'us' which I would never ever write about in detail on here, but I'm mentioning it fleetingly because I want to balance that out with this next bit.  I think we both struggle to feel gratitude from the other.  At least I struggle to get it, I'm not sure that he needs it like I do.  And that's really bloody hard some days when it is a problem which repeats and repeats.  But today I was reminded that actually we share such important values together, about family, about how to educate and raise and love our children.  And I have gratitude for his downright wonderfulness (a real word?) as a father and relief that we are easily in agreement about how to be with our totally amazing girls.  We witnessed some parenting today which we felt was the opposite of what the child needed and it really upset us both.  Particularly me, possibly, but we were both really affected by it and knowing that we felt very similarly reminded me that there really are some things which we share and see eye to eye on with no effort whatsoever.  I really hope that the closeness we feel about this can thread through now and always to the rest of our relationship because after 13 years he is still the one I would like things to work out with. 

While typing this the TV has been on and it's Derren Brown 'Miracles For Sale'.  Briefly, I trust Derren Brown but because my mum is so religious, I feel a bit betrayed when I hear him imitating people who genuinely believe in their God.  I trust that he is being factual in the things he is revealing, but I also know that my mum would be so upset if she was watching.  Or maybe it would be anger.  I daren't even go there with her to be honest!  I don't see the point in upsetting her; it's not going to change what she believes and I want her to be happy.  What a can of worms.  I could say a lot more about that but I won't. 

Slightly related, I was reading a Pema Chodron book last night and she was saying about the difference between theism and non-theism.  This is paraphrased without looking at the book so might be a bit misrepresented but here goes.  She was saying that theism is like looking for the being/thing/deity that you can pin your trust on and who will make it alright.  Non-theism on the other hand is knowing that the ground is always moving beneath your feet and constantly changing so it's no use waiting for it to become firm before you feel safe because it won't.  If you can accept the constant change rather than trying to make it stay still, then you start to relax with it and can live from that.  That rings so much truer for me, even when I am feeling afraid of death (as I am a lot, my thoughts are very morbid!) than theism of any sort.  

Anyway shiiiiiit it's gone midnight so I must go to bed. 


About Me

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* proud new mother * last child * youngest daughter * tallest sister * favourite auntie * honest lover * furtive photographer * diary writer * compulsive dancer * tree hugger * mooncup promoter * chocolate taster * house plant murderer *