me.....
and baking....on a rainy, grey, carrot cake kinda September Monday, with utterly bemused dogs.....all totally keeping me going this morning. However, there is some very British red, white and blue rule Britannia colour on the tv today 'pomp and ceremony' wise, as I see we are celebrating our Kings accession today. I do hope he's going to be okay in the end, as it's not been an easy two year reign for him or the Princess of Wales thus far. Wishing them both a good recovery in their own time.
Yes, I do have moments just like you, when I feel overloaded, overwhelmed and completely over it all, mother to everyone and at 56 years young, I do not feel the need to hide or edit these emotions when they pay a visit. Instead I welcome the chance to wallow, reflect, have a bit or a lot of a moan. I truly feel the British stiff upper lip is a load of twaddle and only hurts oneself in the end. Talk it over, talk it out and let it go! Moving forward positively is way healthier than sinking don't you feel?
Honestly, I've always felt that dealing with negative emotions when they arrive, being loud and proud is better than soaking it all up to the point of combustion and boy have him and I been regularly blowing a gasket, over one thing or another lately! Angst is so the otherside of renovating in France, I mean, there's a lot at stake but we must pull up those big pants and get on with it! What it isn't, is romantic when renovating and never is a room done in a 40 min episode, sadly. I wish!
He's been quite poorly recently and I am always dealing with the effects of a chronic illness flare up which is a lot worse at the moment for some reason and both of our tempers have been entirely too short.
Yesterday, I called time on the bad home atmosphere with a bottle of Fizz and he was bemused? "What are we celebrating" he said......'Life love and laundry' because it's better than being dead".
Brutal I know!
I'm right though?
We are so blessed to be alive, fed and housed, the rest is just nonsense.
We also have to grab hold of ourselves and find or create those glimmers of the good life we are supposedly building or what? Fail and freak out? We are not that kinda couple or individuals. Yes, we may have some challenges ahead, who doesn't, but in amongst the quagmire we have each other always and that makes us quite the force. That's our collective superpower.
I guess we can make our lives as difficult as possible by slinging insults at each other, have it made that way for us by others, or we can crack on best we can, muddling through those tough times together, as we have for over 3.5 decades. Life gives us lemons and we should absolutely make dirty martinis and dance in the rain!
Ping!
The oven timer has just gone off and I'm fondly reminded that I still retreat to the warmth of my kitchen and away from the weight of anyone and everyones expectations, even though it's just the two of us now. It still feels like home, my kitchen. The kitchen I feed souls from including mine. The heart of the home and it always will be and is possibly why I insisted on the kitchen being finished before all else. My happy place.
Renovations do get worse before they get better, that's what they say! Who are 'they'? Does anyone know? No matter! I do know this to be true actually, but I really wanted a magic wand of glitter and gumption yesterday, in order to vanish the mess and speed things up a bit, especially a nice toasty log burner please and thank you. The timer is really ticking on this renovation now, the bank account is draining way too fast and Christmas looms large, we need this house done, doing what it's supposed to do, amen.
Incidentally and super unrelated....I wonder where my autumn and winter clothes are? He says he's reconnecting the heating soon and I will be super grateful as it's a little draughty at the moment. We still need to insulate under the lounge and dining room floor from the cellar and do something about the wind whistling through the original front door!
To me, the rollercoaster of this renovation, the deadline we've set ourselves and the awful weather, which kicked in on the very 1st day of September no less, nearly had me begging to go 'home'. 'Home' is of course here now and obviously it would seem that in retrospect I'm not bought in enough? I thought I'd kicked that can down the road, who am I fooling? This place is still very foreign to me and I have yet to find my place here. Meanwhile, I can find some peace by standing in my kitchen which is very me and very lovely. The carpenter arrives this weekend to finish his bits which is exciting! I will get my new pantry and vanquish that awful cupboard, finally but it's not a priority, so cross your fingers for me. Oh and we are having a bar built to house the new undercounter freezers, makes sense to me! The same freezers that never turned up and so we will have to set about ordering some from somewhere else.
It's been a lot recently but it's important to realise that it also rains in the UK, so running back there really wouldn't solve anything now would it?
Also, I didn't realise how much my youngest daughter's recent predicaments had affected me since July. I can only trust now things are more even in her world, that she never accepts less than she deserves ever again. Hard boundaries all the way.
Don't want to do it, then don't. Don't like it, then don't put up with it.
Problems? Come home and tell all. There's nothing you can't tell us.
Note to you my third and last child....you can't fix people, they have to do that themselves. Supporting and loving sometimes has to be from afar and metered out carefully.
Save yourself first always.
Love is great until it makes one's own life an absolute mess eh? Sometimes, love just isn't enough and I hope she will learn to put herself first from here on. She's a very caring, kind soul, I think she has her mother's gumption, truly I do! We can't take on other peoples problems when starting our own lives and we mustn't give ourselves up to care for others before we've learn't to live well ourselves. I did gift her the caring gene but I do sincerely hope she learns to use it wisely now and not later when those buckets of empathy leave her drained.
I'm super proud of her anyway, as she'd absolutely been through it since April when we left for France and yes I have a good dose of guilt about that, because she wasn't quite ready to leave home again. She didn't get angry but she did get sad and very lost. In picking up the pieces with her, I felt just how far away we were and how I just wanted to pack up and go back to cushion her a while longer. She needed a mummy hug and a whisper of 'it will be okay'. She didn't get that and the pull back from foreign climes for me is very strong when my baby bird falls out of the nest into the wild yonder.
The mother load eh!
It's a lot!
It is but also this December she will be 23! Not a little girl anymore and able to make gorwn up, informed choices.
She does have a good support network in friends and her sister in law, but what's become achingly clear, is that our close family support is hugely lacking. We don't have a close family bond with our relatives, mostly because we've moved so much and also with H in the south, them in the north, it doesn't make things easy on any of us when something goes wrong. Still, thats been the cost of our interesting life of bouncing around the globe. I know her friends have her back but I still worry.
I don't like cities but she is a city girl, loves it and honestly, I find it all a bit too fast and a little scary. It's not for me. She equally loves her new job and is near at least two of her girlfriends and whether they fall out occasionally or not, they can sort that out for themselves. I decided a long time ago to leave girls to sort their own shit out and they generally always do. I think parents interfering in friendships as old as the hills is at best misguided. Listen but don't judge, because you can bet your bottom dollar we don't have the full story.
It's the same approach I have to my long term friendships these days, I put in what I get out and don't worry about being a high maintenance friend, I'm not one naturally. I try not to expect anything. Also, I'm a bit like Nanny Mcfee, there if you need me, gone if not. I let people live their lives their way in their own time. I guess sometimes it makes my friends feel a little neglected, but I can absolutely promise them they are thought about often and with love.
So whilst I've kept myself busy with the dogs, baking, cooking and writing, the plasterer has finished the salon (lounge) and is coming back tomorrow to do the front hall I believe? Then I need to show him the bits that need doing on the top floor stairs and landing. We are about 70% there with plastering which is a miracle. Some has been done three times due to previous bad workmanship, which is both annoying and expensive. The decorator has also been dealing with badly repaired ceilings and she's getting there by hook or by crook. We will have to have the master bedroom ceiling complately redone, which after decorating is not ideal, thanks to a so called previous decorator! I think in many ways this has been the most important lesson we've learnt to date and that's to be there when work is done. We weren't and so a lot of work has been done twice or three times in some cases.
Philip has started the slow job of emptying the lorry into storage and I of course need to go for a rummage soon. I need to retrieve some lights and mirrors and he's just reminded me that the sofas are in storage in the UK still....arghhhhhhh! Oh well. I'm sure we will figure it out.
Lots to do still but it's keeping us out of trouble, mostly!
Right I'm of to have another slice of that cake!
More soon....!
Lots of Love
D x
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