punishment stew and scrambled blog

my duties at home: care of children aged one, five and fourteen- includes negotiating problems as they arise, calming irrational behaviors, educating on how to approach problems as and when they arise.
finding activities for them to do, toys to play with.  assisting/ encouraging.. homework.
negotiating ructions between them and father of house-quick to anger difficult to subside.
tidying continual mess of toys, snacks, shoes, clothes, banana wrappers, mugs left in bathrooms, school clothes tossed asunder....wet towels on floor...empty loo roll tubes....books moved and dumped.... toys everywhere underfoot, tiny Lego type pieces everywhere...
repeated reiteration of tidying up, replacing, putting away duties...
daily laundry of clothes for work, school and play- sorting, washing and drying and folding and putting away (rarely ironing if i can help it).
weekly food planning- is there anything else to eat except what we eat all the time?
shopping for food and household items.
cooking from scratch.
washing up, putting away, hoovering, cleaning kitchen floor regularly.
most recently, emptying and redecorating their rooms in snatched times when baby asleep.
decluttering and managing household waste.
daily outings for one year old.
also extra curricular- caring for an elderly aunt once a week- shopping/ form filling, tidying etc...
and a few other bits plus other stuff i don't feel like sharing cause it will taker to long (helping another person declutter-paid work!! and practice of therapy i am trained in until i can afford to become insured, supplement my qualification with further courses and earn money from it...)


the emotional fallout of all of the above is surrounding me like ashy remains of a nuclear bomb.
so due to lack of money and companionship in the life i live i am going to make the next week's diet surround the theme of chick peas.

you see, i just sat at the PC and completed three different online shopping journeys around three different stores- asda,, tesco and waitrose to see which was the cheapest. having printed up some recipes from the internet i gathered together my ingredients for things to make like Jamie Oliver's modern Greek salad, j/o spinach chickpea and feta parcels, chorizo and chick pea stew, aubergine parmigiana,spinach and chick pea curry with sweet potatoes, squash and ricotta bake and j/o green tea salmon, coconut rice and miso greens and then maybe a chicken roast.....plus extra bits and bobs you need like loo roll and washing powder the shop ranged from about 50 quid to about 80 quid for the different shops- plus you get money off for doing your first online shop,,, blahdy blah...

anyway, i felt my taste buds prickle and i felt a hint of interest at the idea of cooking next week.
the last few days we have lived off chick pea varieties and i made a lovely spinach and tomato lasagne the other day. i joked to my mum that we don't like chickpeas and i am secretly punishing my family with them and other vegetablely things generally.
you see, yesterday i felt the only way to punish my family for agonizing me was to dole up punishment stew- chickpeas with everything.

then today i sat down and experimented with the online shopping experience.

having compiled my list, the man i live with said,

 rather than getting all this stuff why don't we get a bit of beef

i don't know why, i don't know if i am being irrational, but this felt like a concrete slab falling on my energy. (the irony being that is so sweet and a desperate reach out for a good plate of food it nearly brings tears to my eyes)
i am tired. i have mountains of laundry still to do and i have to think about what to cook for my family who to be crude will simply shit it all out anyway. ew.
people say that nature is indifferent to human suffering, yes, well my family seem indifferent to my human suffering. i feel i work my metaphorical fingers to the bone and yet the lions my family are just seem to fight over my fallen body and tear bits of my exhausted limbs.
any reader out there who has has not gone away due to my lamentations, please forgive my dreadful imagery and outpourings of self pity!!!!!.

anyway i am now planning to buy lots of chick peas.
he can go get his beef.
i can't be arsed to think about what they can all eat and will probably resort to the usual food born out of depression-
 fish fingers and chips and beans.
Shepard's pie-yawn
spaghetti bolocksnase - so done
and lots and lots of chickpeas.

clutterbugs

i have been enlisted and  employed to help someone declutter on a mega scale which is quite funny as i struggle myself though mostly due to a lack of space - especially storage space. i am very into decluttering and removing baggage that we hold on to because it does contain clogged up and messed up energy and we should not have it. that said, i am surrounded now by clutter and my shelves are messy and unclear, but in time i will sort that....

anyway, this woman has a definite issue with hoarding and just spending five minutes with her as she reluctantly threw away some leaflets and receipts on the utter surface of the mountain of clutter filled me with a misery, realizing that this person who comes across so well balanced has in fact some mega problems with letting things go to the point where you cannot enter a room for the hoard. it was like this professional woman suddenly turned into a small helpless child when confronted with a surmountable problem. i felt my positive energy zapped as i suggested getting rid of a pile of old newspapers and was told she was not ready. and she wants to get the room cleared by Christmas....it is like something from the hoarder programs; the room ranges from knee high to neck high clutter and is only just accessible.

i agreed to a once a week meeting (will take forever!) and i am now researching the best approaches to subliminally helping someone let go of material shit that they really do not need, yet think they want. i am  into basic feng shui and am reading a great little book on it. and i may take some photos and see if we progress which may be difficult because she came over all funny and shaky after i tentatively but calmly picked up small paper item after item saying..... how about this? this looks out of date. 

the art i think, is respecting that persons right to gather things but trying then to somehow loosen their hold on it and help them gain the courage to part with what feel like significant items..... but the slowness of this is difficult for someone like me who likes action.

ultimately i aim to develop my skills of therapy and positive life enhancement and i will see if i can find any techniques to empower this person to shake off their self harming of hoarding every single bit of crap that comes their way  and helping them to keep only that which enhances their life journey. my fear is that in my consideration i may end up agreeing they need every last little thing they have accrued because i don't like to step on psychological toes. but i will try.

wow, oprah eat your heart out!

erm

i can't really write freely because i think my boyf and son nosey onto my blog sometimes but still i will just say,  times feel tough. and sometimes a woman needs love. yesterday a lovely man in a very understated way,   as we discussed our ages, told me i look young and beautiful ( i am nearly 35) and i wanted to marry him theoretically- it is that easy boys. i sang some songs with my brothers accompanying me on piano and guitar and i felt so good and appreciated , then when i went home to my regular misery i felt old and haggard and tired. why is it that the man you chose to love doesn't say those things to you? why is it in the winter that things get even harder. i miss my therapist. he'd understand!

winter moods

i think there is a pattern that it has taken so long for me to see, that winter can bring with it domestic misery. i think i may be OK generally regarding this, but i have noticed my 'other half' gets quite wretched during this current time. the tension in my home and the arguments and nagging that begins seems to be married with the cold and the dark and the bills and the winter generally.

it actually hurts my very nervous system

dreary time

i don't like these dark evenings when the windows turn black by 5 pm and the day seems to draw to a close sooner. i have just opened a bottle of wine which is way to early and have sipped on a minute glass hoping that i won't keep filling it up although i suppose i could go to bed at 8 and be done with it. these dark evenings fill me with a gloom that i didn't have as a child. it would then beckon exitefully the coming of Halloween and bonfire night and suggest the twinkling lights of a not to distant Christmas. it would mean comforting suppers and cosy nights in and the bright television screen and family. now it seems to feel claustrophobic and doomlike and the night sits before me like a unmoving black lake with no bottom.

maybe i am thoroughly depressed... although i don't know if i am or not anymore as i never really feel happy so to speak. i mean i am pretty down right now in light of many things and my sister's death comes back to haunt me in a peculiar way, her absence still as sudden and unreasonable as it was when she was taken from us back in February.  that sits like a backdrop to my thoughts and feelings, the loss of her and how as the season seems to change once again, she still remains silenced while all about the places that she used to walk, people still walk and yet she is no longer there.

though i don't wish to be morose and blame my low mood on the passing of her, it is difficult to separate now and then. the me that had her and the me that doesn't.
i still have all the same problems of lack of opportunity, crappy attitude to life, hardly any money, and i don't want to continue in these mindsets excusing it because of my grief. but it sits there behind the railings of my consciousness, in the next room, on the other lane of traffic...it sits there like a silent grave being rained upon and offering no word of comfort or explanation. just silently continuing as it will do until the day i die.

this is your life

woke up this morning not wanting to get out of bed. wanted to stay there wrapped up in the snugly duvet and not get up. not do anything. every weekend i have a sort of mini crisis, like it is a day of reckoning every Saturday and i am faced with children and a lack of enthusiasm to get out and do stuff...usually money based. it is really difficult to be enthusiastic when you don't have any pennies. even a trip to the park seems like a long winding road of torment.

today is Sunday and it is a bit different in that the kids are on half term so the feeling of needing to use the day effectively is less impending. tomorrow i suppose is another Saturday. in fact tomorrow i am planning to take them to the science museum- really early because i don't like lunch time crowds. but my brother who works there says half term is busy whatever time of day. 

actually, yesterday against all my less than better inclinations, i took them to the horniman museum and i am so glad i did. there i saw all the families who get off their butts and try to culturise their children. 

anyway, i just need to gripe really. i sometimes find my life like a sustained line of unchanging difficulty. i rarely get a chance to remove myself from children and if i do then some unruliness ensues or shouting arguing esp if signifci is home he has little tolerance of children's behaviour. i know this is a fleeting period of time in the long run of things and i know i may long for these days one day but it is the relentlessness of it and the feeling it won't change and that i can't just bail out.

it is helpful writing this down because it makes me aware of my ability to complain and hear it. i suppose i am just moaning.
well. i will just go carry on. 

losing the plot

or point of writing this anymore. it has sort of served me as a useful diary but i have not been writing regularly and it has sometimes been about just being a blog which is fairly self reflective and just eats itself up.

lots of things have occurred for me lately yet i have not felt like blogging.
now for some reason in a itchy, irritable kind of state i suppose i need some screen time. perhaps that is all this is, an occasional addiction to the pc and virtual world of the web.

i feel weird, sort of wanting.... almost like i need a drink, but i don't want a drink.
i am at home and ploughing through laundry that is days clean and dry just not yet filed away.

well i won't go on about nothing much at all as my small son has toddled to my side and is demanding my attention.