Press Pause

Tiredness, the scourge of the modern world.  We seem to be constantly busy and constantly tired.  There is too much to see and do and experience and it is eating up all our time.  I watched a movie recently called The Bookshop and it made me think about how people spend their time.  The film was set in the late 50s so there was no television, computers, internet or mobile phones.  If people wanted to communicate beyond face to face interaction, they wrote a letter.  If they wanted to pass the time of an afternoon they went for a walk or read a book.  They had the same 24 hour days that we have now but they spent them doing things that now seem difficult to achieve.  

When was the last time you spent a quiet afternoon reading?  Yes, yes I know, work, children etc.  I mean the last time you had the option of what to do with that most precious of things, a free hour or two, what did you choose?  Did you use the opportunity to get stuff done or did you choose to switch off and slow down?  

Too often my choices involve to do lists and random scrolling.  I have been trying to reduce my social media time to concentrated bursts.  The thought of turning off my notifications seems like a huge step yet I manage to survive on days where I am busy doing other stuff and don't have time to look at my phone.  I quite like when Instagram tells me "you're all caught up".  It's like it gives me permission to stop mindlessly scrolling.  

There is an unspoken pressure to always be making the most of your day, using up those random little pockets of time - waiting to go into the dentist, or in the supermarket queue.  It's hard to resist the temptation to have a quick look at my phone when there always seem to be a little light telling me there is something to see.  

But always being on and up to date doesn't leave any time for just sitting, just looking out the window, just stopping for a minute or two to catch your breath.  Maybe that's why we're tired all the time.  We work ourselves into a frenzy using every available minute yet somehow we're surprised when we can't wind down at night and get a restful night's sleep.  If Instagram can convince me to stop scrolling, why can't I give myself permission to just stop and pause for 5 minutes?

Knock me down with a feather

When was the last time you were surprised?  Like really, full on surprised?

In the October school holidays my project with the kids was to make a piece of art to enter into the 200 Show which runs every year in The Arts Village.  There were 3 canvases in the pack so the kids insisted that I make something too.  I didn't like my first attempt but it seemed a shame to throw it away so I decided to paint some dots over it.

We dropped off our pieces, we went to take some pictures with them once the exhibition opened, we went to visit them one day we had lunch in town.  Other than that we pretty much forgot about them till we got the email saying the exhibition was over and it was time to pick them up.

In we went to collect them.  Dara found his, Kiera found hers.  Couldn't see mine on the first table, couldn't see mine on the second table.  Figured there must be more stored somewhere else.  No, everything that's left is on the two tables.  "Someone must have taken mine by mistake" I thought to myself "that's a bit weird". 

Then it finally dawned on me.  Someone must have bought it!!!!  No, surely not?  Went to check with the office, lo and behold, someone did buy it.  Surprised?  I was gobsmacked.  And how often can you say that in your everyday life?        

Daily Constitutional

We live the next street over from school so for the last year I have been walking the kids to and from school (much to their dismay).  I am choosing to believe that the dismay is due to the walking rather than their walking companion but I can practically hear the clock ticking away the seconds until we hit teenage strops so I fear my days of arm in arm walking are numbered.

It's not a long walk.  If we're cutting it fine we can make it in 7 and a half minutes but even at a leisurely pace it barely takes 10.  Twice a day, 5 days a week, I walk to and from school.  When the kids are with me there are questions and stories and sometimes a bit of grumbling.  When I'm on my own there is thinking and planning and sometimes a bit of grumbling.  

Walking the same route where not much changes from day to day gives me the freedom to switch to auto-pilot.  The equivalent of those days when you drive home from work and don't even remember the journey.  I have tried to use my walk to engage in some active mindfulness but the nagging ever present mental load at the back of my mind always seems to butt in and take over.  

Maybe this is why women need more sleep than men.  We are tired from always having to remember.  Remember what?  Everything.  The stuff that needs to be added to the shopping list, the optician's appointment that needs to be booked, the birthday card that needs to be written.  The French graphic artist Emma wrote a piece which sums up the mental load up really well.

I have given up trying to be present and zen while I am walking and have allocated this as my getting organised time.  I figure if I can think about this time more positively then I might just be able to claim back some time later in the day for getting my mental house in order.  

Thinking I can do on the move, mindfulness I need to be sitting still for.    

I know what you did last summer

The other day I was looking for an address in town so this being 2019 I googled it.  "You visited here on 6 May" popped up on my screen.  "Eh, what?".  I had never been to the place before, hence my needing to google where it was.  After clicking on the message I discovered there is this thing called Location History in Google where if you have it switched on (and apparently I did), it tracks all the places you have been.  If I clicked on a certain date, Google could show me where I had been at any given time on that date.  

This could be seen as a bit stalkery if I hadn't inadvertently already agreed to it.  It might come in handy some day I suppose.  You know those police dramas where they ask "where were you at 1.17 pm on June 24th?", well at least now I would be able to provide myself with an alibi.  

Even on the rare occasions when I click on the Terms & Conditions section with the intention of reading through it, there are so many conditions and clauses and subsections that I never end up finishing them and just click accept regardless.  Which is ultimately what they hope you will do.  

If we ever stopped and really thought about the access we give to apps and companies, we would probably never touch another piece of technology again. Instead we blithely choose to disregard this aspect of our interaction with our devices.  It is "the price we pay" to stay connected.

On a recent trip to Christchurch I spent the first day walking round the city centre.  As I didn't know where I was going, the map looks like a spider dipped her bum in some ink, had a couple of vodka shots and then wove a crazy web.

#everystepyoutake
#enoughwiththetsandcs
#allovertheplace

The wheels on ...

There is a bus stop 100m from my front door but I have never used it to catch a bus.  In the 6 and a half years I have been living in New Zealand, I caught the bus for the first time last month and it wasn't even my local bus, it was in Christchurch.  I had no access to a car and the bus was the easiest way to get into town so on I hopped.  

What struck me first was the silence.  Here I was on a bus travelling with maybe 20 other people and it was eerily quiet.  No-one was speaking, there was no interaction, most people had their heads down looking at phones.  Having spent my youth on buses going to secondary school and then to college, the quiet made me sad.  My memory of past bus journeys feels like there was always the background noise of people talking.  The students debating where the cheapest pints could be found, the aul' ones discussing who had died, friends dissecting the night before and who said what to whom.  "She didn't!  She did!!!".  A wealth of entertainment for the casual eavesdropper.   

Now don't get me wrong, there were journeys where talking was the last thing on my mind.  I vividly remember a Russian Roulette trip home after the night before's double tequila shots threatened to make a reappearance.  Interesting side note, double shots do not go down all in one go and tequila is evil.  I'm sure as a student there were also many times I put my headphones on and passed the journey home in anti-social silence.  

If I was travelling by bus every day, chances are I would switch off from the outside world too.  It's probably just rose tinted nostalgia that has me fondly remembering the bus journeys of 25 years ago.  On my last day in Christchurch, I caught the bus back to the hotel.  I had been walking round all day, I was tired and hungry and not entirely sure which stop was mine.  Two teenage schoolgirls got on and proceeded to chat the entire journey about school, which teachers they liked, what they were going to do at the weekend and just like that, I was back on the bus to Kill with my faith in the bus going citizens of the world restored.  

    

Tightrope

It feels like I should make an announcement in the style of the start of a support group meeting.  "My name is Denise and I have only just joined Instagram". 

With the Blog and Facebook, I figured I had enough social media going on, so had thus far managed to avoid the lure of Instagram.  I'm trying to reduce the amount of time I spend on a screen not increase it.  All good, valid reasons to not venture any further into the myriad of social media options available.  

Alright, I will admit that laziness also played a factor.  I just couldn't be faffed with having to take loads of pictures and put filters on them and then think up witty hashtags whilst simultaneously fighting the urge to punctuate them properly.  It all seemed a bit like hard work when most of the time I spend my days doing things that are not even remotely Instagrammable.  Here's a photo of me doing the laundry.  Here I am trying to figure out what to have for dinner.  Not exactly influencer gold is it?    

The reason I joined Instagram was because I had the fear.  Not the fear of missing out. It was the fear of being an utterly clueless parent to two teenagers that did it.  I watched two programmes recently that scared the bejesus out of me.  The first one was called Spying on my Family.  It was about a family who gave each other open access to all their phones, devices and social media accounts.  The Dad of the family was appalled when he saw what his 14 and 11 year old sons were following on Instagram.  Scantily clad women featured heavily.  There were admissions that nudes had been asked for and received.  This guy wasn't your average clueless parent either, he was an ex-cop.  If he had no idea what his kids were doing online what the hell hope did I have.

The next programme I watched was called The Hunting.  It was an Australian drama about the ramifications of a nude teen photo scandal.  For me, this was the more terrifying of the two.  The sending and receiving of naked pictures was just accepted as being commonplace, an everyday occurrence, no big deal.  Seriously?  WTF?  Luckily I had recorded both programmes as I had to keep pausing them so I could vent and shout at the screen.  "Don't do it" I yelled at the teenage girl sending a naked photo to the boy she liked, "the internet is forever".  The cavalier sharing of the photo, then the cold calculation of distributing it to her peers and beyond.  The horror of it all.

There are some days when I bemoan getting older but I am truly grateful that I was a teenager well before social media was around.  It is hard enough for teenagers dealing with zig-zagging emotions, hormones and a body that seems to be working against them.  Now they are expected to be able to think about the potential future ramifications of their actions every time they take a picture or post something online.  When your brain is still developing and all your friends are doing it, how the hell are you supposed to say no?    
My kids are 11 and 9 so I only have a year or two to get up to speed.  To try to be able to adequately parent them through the shit storm of their teenage years and get them out the other side without having a digital footprint that will haunt them forever.  So I am starting with Instagram and even though the app they will end up using has probably not even been created yet, when it is, I will gamely join that too.  Because I don't want to be that parent who has no idea what their kid is up to.  I don't want to have to pick up the pieces when social media eats them alive.  I'm going to learn as much as I can so that when the time comes, I can teach them to walk the tightrope between being involved online and being safe.  Wish me luck. 

Same old same old

I had a rubbish sleep last night so when I woke up this morning I was tired and cranky and took forever to drag myself out of bed.  A shower woke me up somewhat but generally the going was slow.  When I started to make the kids' lunches I happened to look at the clock and noticed that I wasn't that much later than normal, especially considering my slow start.  Maybe I wasn't as late getting out of bed as I thought.  Maybe my slow, is actually quite quick.  

I thought back to mornings when I was still going out to work and always seemed to be rushing.  Then it hit me.  I wear a uniform now.  Yeah it's an unofficial one but looking in the wash basket, the evidence speaks for itself.  I wear the same thing every day - jeans, top, hoodie.  I don't even think about it anymore, it's automatic.  There's no "does this top go with those trousers and have I got a cardigan and necklace that will match".  When I think back to how much time I wasted figuring out what to wear in the mornings.  

I can see how people with limited time on their hands or a lot on their minds would gravitate to wearing the same clothes every day.  You can get a lot more done when you are not wasting brain space thinking about what you are going to wear.

Netflixin'

There hasn't been much in the way of comedy on TV here lately.  Well not decent comedy anyway, so I have been turning to Netflix when I need a laugh.  Here's what's been tickling my funny bone of late.  

Workin' Moms - I am loving the new series, have laughed out loud multiple times.  This show makes doing the ironing bearable.

Derry Girls - The mix of nostalgia, teenage shenanigans and blatant swearing never fails to crack me up.

Atypical - More laugh out loud moments from this quirky comedy. 


This quote has nothing to do with Netflix, it just makes me smile every time I read it.

The little annoyances

When you're not a dress person but you see a dress you like and you go to the effort of taking your clothes off to try it on and the dress actually looks quite good on you but you think to yourself "when would I even wear it?", so you hum and hah in the changing room and finally decide you will sleep on it and if you still like it tomorrow you will come back and buy it.  

So tomorrow comes and you're still thinking about the dress and working out ways to justify spending money on it when you don't have a job but when you think about it, it's not even really that expensive but then again Christmas is coming and new school uniforms need to be bought in January.  Then you remember that you have been meaning to have a clear out so if you sell some stuff online then that will pay for the not even very expensive dress and will also reduce the clutter in your house.  Bonus!  

Happy with your sound reasoning and thorough thought process you skip back to the shop to reunite yourself with the dress which has by now acquired "already planning what shoes to wear with it" status, only to find someone else has bought it and there are no more in your size...

Curious Company

On my blog Facebook page there is a suggested groups section.  These are groups that Facebook has decided might be worth joining as my page to "reach more people who may be interested in your page".  

The suggested groups include - Survivors of Emotional Abuse, Loving Someone with BPD, Brain Injury Survivors, Making Ostomies Cool and somewhat bizarrely, Casefile True Crime Podcast Discussion Group.  

I think I may need to focus on writing some more cheery upbeat posts...

Enough

I did a two hour restorative yoga class a while back.  It was a great way to wrap up one month and head into another.  The poses are supported taking all the effort out so you get a really good stretch without having to do very much work.  Just what you want on a Sunday afternoon.

Along with the extended holding of poses, there was loads of extra time for relaxation and meditation at the end.  Despite my best intentions, my mind started to wander.  Amongst the random thoughts and things to add to my to do list, came the wishes.  I wish I was more like her, she seems to enjoy being a SAHM, hosting elaborate birthday parties for her kids and posting weekly Insta-worthy #preciousmemories.  I wish I was more like her, she never seems to lack ambition or goals.  I wish I had her ability to chat to people and make friends.  I wish I had her openness and trusting nature.  I wish, I wish, I wish.

Maybe it's time to stop with the wishing.  Maybe it's ok to not have figured out what I want to be when I grow up yet.  Maybe this is what I am supposed to be doing right now.  Comparing myself with other people only ends badly for me so maybe I need to focus on being good enough for me.

Stress

Things that are guaranteed to raise my heart rate.

• Arriving late for an appointment.
• Driving somewhere new.
• Cooking a new recipe with lots of ingredients.
• Going into a shop 5 minutes before they are due to close.
• Baking with children.
• Overtaking.
• Fitting everything into the case at the end of a long haul holiday.
• Walking into an unfamiliar bar trying to find the friends I am meeting.
• Parallel parking when it's raining.
• Catering for large groups of people.
• Going to a new hairdresser for the first time.

Close to the Edge

When my kids were babies, crying was the only way they had to communicate.  I learned to tell their different cries - the tired cry, the hungry cry, the I'm having a complete and utter meltdown cry.  When they learned to talk, interpreting their needs became a lot easier.  There was still crying but not as often.  

As parents, how well we deal with crying kids can be relative to how much sleep/food/caffeine we have had and also who is within earshot.  We have all been that mother with a clenched jaw and a fixed smile telling our kid "come on now, you're alright" when really we want to screech at them to "stop that crying or there'll be no screens till you're 25".  

It's Friday today.  The last day of the kids' two weeks holidays and I think it's fair to say that I have reached saturation point when it comes to "quality time" with my darling children.  You know you are close to the edge when you hear one of them crying downstairs and rather than wondering if they are ok, you think to yourself "Really? You had to wait till I was in the loo to start crying?  Can I seriously not even have a wee in peace? FFS".  

Roll on Monday morning school drop off.....

Death Row Dining

If it was your last day on earth what would you eat?  

I think they only get to choose their dinner on death row but I'm going for the full day.  Also, I'm not gluten free on death row and I can eat garlic without feeling the need to curl up into a ball of cramps.

Breakfast
Eggs Benedict with spinach and bacon and some Superquinn sausages on the side.
Toast with marmalade with no bits in it.
A never ending pot of tea.

Lunch
Chicken soup with my Granny's wheaten bread and loads of butter.
A giant chocolate eclair from Avoca.
Another never ending pot of tea.

Dinner
Mussels in a white wine & garlic sauce with fresh crusty bread.
Linguine with prawns & clams in a garlic & chilli sauce.
Tarte au Citron with whipped cream.


Whatever I cook for dinner tonight is going to be a disappointment isn't it...

I would be more productive if I stopped...

• Aimlessly scrolling through Facebook when there are 50 million better things I could be doing.
• Checking notifications as soon as my phone beeps (see above).
• Doing laundry so frequently.  (Our washing machine broke recently and when it came back 10 days later we were still nowhere near running out of clothes.  Definitely time for a wardrobe cull).
• Cooking every night.  Leftovers are the way of the future.
• Checking Pinterest for the perfect picture to go with these posts and then realising half an hour has passed and I still need to finish the damn thing.
• Channel surfing when the programme I was watching has finished and it's time for bed anyway.
• Going to bed late but then still reading for way too long.  Morning me curses night time me on a semi-regular basis.

Book of the Year (so far)

I find it hard to remember what books I have read in a month, never mind a year and then to have to narrow down which were my favourites?  Goodreads to the rescue.  What should have been a quick scroll back through this year's books went on a few tangents so I could click on various books to jog my memory.  Usually an indication that it's not going to make the short list for best book if I can't even remember what it was about.

These were the ones that stood out for me this year*.  

Fiction
Normal People by Sally Rooney
You know when your friend is seeing someone that doesn't treat them well?  This is like awkwardly eavesdropping on their entire messed up relationship.  You feel like you shouldn't be listening but you can't help yourself.  I've just read another of her books, Conversations with Friends and really enjoyed it too. 


Non-Fiction
2040 by Damon Gameau
I liked how this book gave practical examples of how we can all do something to help slow down climate change.  He doesn't gloss over how bad things are but when I finished this book I felt hopeful rather than depressed.

  * These books weren't necessarily published in 2019, I just happened to read them this year.

Fun & Games

When I was growing up there were 4 houses beside each other with kids of similar ages.  There were 11 of us in total, 4 girls and 7 boys.  This was before play dates were invented.  There was no working around after school activity schedules in those days.  Everyone just went out the front and played with whoever was around.  If we needed more people to make up teams we knocked on the door and asked if they were coming out to play.  

Supervision consisted of an open window and a parent who was vaguely within earshot.  We played on the road or in the various gardens.  The road wasn't a busy one, it ended in a cul-de-sac so shouting "car" was usually enough to ensure no-one was mowed down.  The worst injury I sustained as a child was when I fell off the wall I was walking along in the back garden into a thorny bush while wearing very short shorts.  My thighs have rarely seen daylight since.    

We played games like Kerbs (where you have to bounce a football off the opposite kerb from various distances), Sticks (where you jumped between 3 sticks which were moved further and further apart) and Tip the Can (a cross between Chasing, Hide & Seek and Survivor).  The games ended when dinner was ready or it got dark outside.  The rules were fluid and oft-debated.     

I was reminded of those childhood games recently when my own kids were out playing football on the reserve (sort of a mini-park) beside our house.  They were joined by a couple of kids from up the road, then a few more from down the road came along and before they knew it, there were 9 kids milling about playing happily together.  It started out as football, then merged into touch rugby before it descended into a complete free for all.  The game ended when I called them in for dinner.  In they came, sweaty and ravenous and full of chat about the games they had played and the goals they had scored, the winners and the losers, the kids with the mad skills and the ones who weren't very good but tried their hardest.  History is repeating itself in the best possible way.

The 4 Seasons

Not the Vivaldi hold music or the hotel chain, I'm talking nature, weather, traditions.  

So here goes, my 3 favourite things about each of the seasons. 

Spring
Walking on a windy day - nothing like a stroll on a blustery day to blow away the cobwebs and make you feel alive.

Downgrading the layers - the joy of being able to go outside without needing a jacket/thermal vest on.

Flowers - seeing flowers bloom in the garden and realising how much a pop of colour can brighten my day when I open the curtains.


Summer
Skirts - wearing skirts without having to think about tights which everyone knows are evil.

Salad - just wash a bit of veg, throw a few potatoes on and some leftover chicken and hey presto dinner is ready.

A cold drink on a hot day - is there anything better?


Autumn
Cosy clothes - I get to dig out my boots and my hoarder like stash of scarves.

Colourful leafy trees - much more interesting than plain old green leaves.

Goodbye suncream - No more having to smother suncream on my extremities every time I want to leave the house for longer than 5 minutes.  Did I mention that I burn easily?


Winter
Frosty mornings - walking on crunchy grass and breathing out in big puffs so it looks like I am smoking (or vaping if it's a really big breath) never gets old.

Soup - makes me warm from the inside out and uses up that dodgy looking veg in the bottom of the fridge, it's a win, win.

Afternoon Escapes - those days when it's horrible out and the only place to be is on the couch with a good book, a large cup of tea and a cosy blanket.  It should go without saying that this experience would benefit greatly from being child free, with the addition of chocolate only serving to enhance.

Unexpected item in the bagging area

One of the many things I miss from Ireland is newspapers, or more specifically the weekend newspapers.  I never had the time or inclination to read a daily paper but I did like the weekend papers, even if it usually took me the full week to finish them.  Newspapers here just don't compare and reading the Irish papers online doesn't have the same appeal.  I especially like the Review section of the Saturday Independent.  It covers a good range of topics and introduces things I would not otherwise stumble upon in my everyday life.  

My parents kept a stash of Reviews for me to read when I was home in July but a combination of jet lag and late nights meant that I didn't have the brain capacity to read them then.  I brought them back with me and put them in my to read box.  I used to put my to read stash on the bookshelf in the sitting room but the pile would look at me reproachfully when I was in the throes of a Netflix binge so I moved it to a box under the side table where it was out of sight but close at hand.  

Yesterday I was dusting (a rare enough occurrence) and whilst giving the lid a wipe, I opened the box to see how much was in there.  The excitement!  I had totally forgotten about the Reviews.  So what if some of the stuff is old and the events have already happened.  There are book reviews galore, recommendations for shows that will hopefully make it to Netflix here and articles that help paint a picture of what Ireland is like beyond the front page headlines.  I am beside myself with the unexpectedness of it all.    

The Fear

You know that feeling when you have to do something that you really don't want to do and it's not even that you don't want to do it, it's that you're scared.  Stomach churning, heart thumping, s**t scared.  It may defy all logic and make sense to no-one but you but still it persists.  The fear.  

Last week I faced a fear that I have been avoiding for quite some time.  I could have dodged it again but I thought "No. I need to get over myself.  How bad could it be?".  You're probably thinking "Well done you, good woman yourself".  Well before you get carried away, you should probably know that even though I did the thing that scared me, it only served to confirm that it was definitely as scary as I thought it would be and I should never do it again.

Let's just say that me and steep driveways where you feel like you are plummeting to your death on the way down and all you can see is sky when you are driving back up, are not ever going to see eye to eye.