Pushing an Elephant up the Stairs

Like Popping Candy

It has been a citrus bright week. Tangy orange and lime green. Lemon sharp and dazzling white. Days that vanish like popping candy almost before I can taste them.  Wide awake hours of surfing, planning, joining, doing. Little remembered, done or achieved.  Too much money spent on things I do not need.  Too much time spent in hectic activity and spinning thoughts that lead no where.

Hmmm or how come things don't work out the way I expect them to?

The layout of yesterday's Thursday 13 post is really irritating me. Once I put the photographs in the list re-arranged itself in a most peculiar way. Then there are the link backs...what's going on there? grrrr. I would like to use the Mr Linkies thingummie that I have seen on other sites but I don't know if I can access the 'head' on Typepad.

101 Posts

I have only just noticed that today's TT was my 100th post on this blog.  Happy blogday to me!

Thirteen Things I have been thinking about this week...

1.     Sunday was the third anniversary of my mothers death from lung cancer.  I feel guilty because I do not miss her the way I should do. I lived with my Grandmother permanently from the age of 10 so I learn ed at a very early age to live without mum around.  I'm not very good at missing people. I cut off instead.  I think this is probably a survival strategy learn ed when I was young.

2.     Friday will be my youngest daughter's 16th birthday. 

3.     It seems like only yesterday...

4.     ...and now she is a young woman.

5.     M. lives with her father although I see her most days.

6.     This evening we went to pizza hut for an early celebration. Daughter #2 has better ways to spend the actual day than with her mum, dad and siblings, lol!

7.     We all went except Daughter#1. S and M are not speaking which is sad.  I sympathise with the reasons, but I hope they sort it out soon.

8.     I wish I could explain to my children how precious siblings are.  I lived only intermittently with mine and the hole in my heart still aches.

9.     My youngest sister and I both lived with my Grandmother from when she was three until just before her 5th birthday. I was twelve when she left.

10.    My other sister, also younger than me, was adopted by my maternal aunt and uncle when she was three years old. We have had little contact.  Which,  although I am as much to blame as her, makes me sad.

11.    My brother is two years younger than me. We are close although we see each other rarely and  only lived together for short times.  Not at all after I was ten. Its strange that no matter how long it is since we last spoke or saw each other, we take up as though there had never been a break.

12.    My children parallel my family in terms of birth order and gaps between.

13.    There are no photographs of me and my siblings all together when we were children.  Which is why during the 'Childhood' project at until  I made one up...

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
(leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

1.Gabrielle                    5.Mandy                         9.Susan          13.Nat

2.Laci                           6.Leanne                        10.Debi           14.Elle

3.Mar                            7.Undercover Angel         11.Julie

4.Lifecruiser                   8.Carmen                       12.K T Cat

      

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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Thinking out loud...

When other people have problems I am very good at making suggestions that might be helpful.  I like people and I think that I am a fairly empathetic person.  What I am not good at is dealing with obstacles in my own life or even defining  the problem.  It is as though I had a blind spot, I look into the mirror and find only emptiness reflected back.  Which is why, I guess, that when the various people I have come into contact with through the health and mental health service ask me what kind of help I would find useful, I have no answer.

Recently I have been involved with a self help group and my inability to define problems and thus find answers to them has become more obvious.  My contributions slide around my own situation.  It is so much easier to focus outwards rather than inwards.  Considering the degree of introspection apparent in my 'Diet Coke' entries this might seem like a false statement, yet it is not.  Blogging is not 'real life'  and for me is a self-indulgent activity in a space that feels safe.  I do not worry too much about upsetting anyone or saying the wrong thing, I just talk to myself.

Another year gone by....

I make no apologies for re-posting  what follows.  I originally wrote it when my mother was diagnosed with cancer for the second time (she had recovered from cervical cancer twenty years previously) and read it, at the request of my brother and sisters, at her funeral.  Last Sunday was the anniversary of her death.

Scarlet Nails

I recently read that red nail polish is the height of fashion once more.  The first lipstick I ever owned was red and made me feel so grown up and vaguely wicked.

The other day while shopping for cornflakes and bread in my local supermarket, I could not resist stopping to look at the make-up and those tantalising lipstick testers.  Twenty minutes later my wrist was covered with little stripes of colour and I had somehow talked myself into buying a new lipstick and a new nail varnish.  I thought I could save the guilt feelings spending money on me always causes, to wallow in later when I had a spare moment.

Later that night, I carefully applied the scarlet paint to my non-to elegant nails.  With each brush stroke the sense of a past revisited became stronger.  An unnamed emotion began to blossom and grow until finally, it triggered tears.

Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to find, a little girl watching her mother painting her nails.  That child knew, without a shadow of a doubt,  that her mother was the most beautiful woman in the world.  Her mammy's hair was so long and deep, dark red.  Her clothes, so elegant and fashionable.  She never left the house without perfect make-up and manicure.  The little girl wanted more than anything to be like her.

She was not a mother you could hug. Who would want to be responsible for creasing or dirtying those wonderful clothes? She was not a mother the child saw very often; her home was with her grandparents.  But that little girl, me, I, loved her. Admired her. And wanted to be close to her whenever I could.

She still dresses with care.  In her early sixties, mammy would still never leave the house without make-up.  Her nails are still painted in brilliant colours.  I still don't see her very often.

I can't stop the tears now.  Ruining my manicure.  Scarlet nails reminding me that mammy is dying.. That cancer is devouring her life.  In a year she will have moved into the past.

Her and her scarlet nails.


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Success...

Importing a blog roll is really simple. It says so on the Blogrolling website and in the help documentation for Typepad,  Besides which, I had previously imported the Thursday 13 blogroll without too much difficulty. So how come my hair has turned white with the effort of getting my list of long time favourite blogs to show up in the sidebar. I guess it's one of lifes mysteries.  At least it's working now. (But then so was my favicon on Sunday. It now seems to have vanished.)

WAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Somehow I have managed to delete my friends links and I am totally incapable of importing my blogroll. I've tried every which way I can think of. This will not defeat me. I'll be back later to tear whats left of my hair out.

Housemates...

I needed cheering up. My housemates are good at that.

Merlin, a chocolate Tonkinese is the eldest.

Harry Potter my lovely dinner jacket cat comes next.

The baby of the family is Pru, a smoke Egyptian Mau. Photographs never do her justice, the b&w one is probably closes to her real colour and shows some of her spots.

Pru likes to cuddle Harry, Merlin likes to cuddle up to Pru, sometimes though a family cuddle is the only way to go.

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Reading my favourite blogs this morning something Peter on Naked Blog said caught my eye:

...He told me his son wants to be a movie director and I said he should encourage him. He said he'd prefer it if he got a regular job. I said phooey to that. If you don't have a dream.

My son wants to be an actor but worries about the future if he follows a dream that turns out to be just that. I point to my life. I did all the 'right' things. Made the 'sensible' decisions. Then one day I realised that 'right' and 'sensible' were dull and unfulfilling companions. My dreams still ached and my life felt unlived. Now, finally, I am reaching for those dreams. Maybe they are just dreams.  Maybe I will never be able to make them into reality.  But at least I will know that I tried.

Sounds about right....

Your Aura Colour is Lavender.

Lavenders are the dreamers and artists. They are in-tune with alternate realities, escapists, solitary, intuitive, emotional, daydreamers. They can have difficulty connecting with reality.

Find out what colour your aura is.