Where I live, in my head:

Other women wake up with perfectly applied (natural, naturally) make-up and hair that just needs a bit of a shake before they’re good to go.

[they don’t need to shut the curtains and pull the bedcovers over themselves AFTER they’ve left the bed for fear of husbands catching an unsightly glimpse and demanding a full refund]

Other women still have their natural, although sometimes highlighted, hair colour (yes, Trina I'm talking to YOU!).

[they don’t have to book their husbands in for a root re-growth touch up every third Sunday in the kitchen]

Other women reach tantalisingly manicured hands into their capsule wardrobe full of beautifully organised clothes that compliment and flatter (is that the same thing?) their body shape and colouring. They automatically know that anything they pull out will make them look effortlessly stylish and enviable.

[they don’t keep everything they bought for £2.99 on E-bay just because they can’t be arsed to re-list it, hoping that one day they’ll wake up with snake-hips and a 36DD bust because that wasn’t how it looked in the frikkin photo.

They ALSO don’t systematically go through everything they have, even if it’s ten years old and try it all on, get into a sweat and a lather and then cover it all up with the faithful long cardi they wore yesterday, the day before that and the decade before that one]

Other women know exactly how to walk in a nice straight line with pointy heels on. Without looking the slightest bit like Dick Emery in his “Ooh… you are awful” days.

[they don’t have only ONE pair of heels that only ever come out for a wedding or something. Maybe a New Years Eve – so long as it’s an entirely sitting-down affair]

Other women know precisely what to say in any given situation. They have poise, they have command, they know some big words and they even know what they mean.

[they don’t fumble and bumble and look – literally at times – deep into their cavernous handbag for some kind of inspiration, resorting to a meaningless moan about the weather because that’s the only certain, albeit changeable topic of conversation, in such a cruel, uncertain world]

Other women have a confident attitude to everything they do. They KNOW what they want. They KNOW where it is and they KNOW how and that they WILL get it.

[they do not have airy-fairy ideas that change with the wind, the season, the underwear. Ideas that are only good for as long as they’re still listening to the person who has them. Mostly a TV/Radio personality. Because they HAVE what they WANT. Which IS a personality]

Other women go to the gym three days a week, they cycle, they swim, they jog with aplomb (whoever she is) and they have a cardio-vascular system that demands accolades. And still their hair looks lovely and bouncy when they’re performing these health-giving feats.

[they don’t have to swill back a handful of tablets and coffee before they have the energy to pull the bedroom curtains back. And then find the stretchiest thing to pull onto their body without putting anything out in a major muscle area. And then have to have a quick lie down through the exhaustion of having got in/out(shake it all about) of the shower. This is cardio-vascular taken to it’s limit. No, seriously]

Other women’s multi-tasking skills include holding down a high-powered job, putting on a wash AND hanging it out before going to it; being all high-powered and bolshy in an executive position for 8 hours, coming home, making dinner for 5 (maybe even entertaining an extra 8 really important people from high-powered career place after putting the kids to bed) Twittering about how fun life is, putting pictures on Facebook of how happy and shiny and healthy their family/house is and then blogging about it before finishing off the latest book in bed (that’s writing it, not reading it).

[they don’t spend 4 hours in a part-time job where the biggest worry of the day will be if there’s a spare box of staples in the cupboard or not,  whilst working out whose turn it is to fill the kettle up next. After which, deciding the prospect of watching Loose Women on demand is a lot easier than having to visit Sainsbury's on the way home and then having a small wail about how there was just “no time” to start anything for dinner and forgetting that the chippie is shut on Monday and so having to eat stuff from tins at the back of the cupboard]

My husband is one very special man, that’s all I can say.

Here's what I've been doing...

Just in case anyone's been wondering if I'm still in the land of the living... here's what I've been busy with...

The school stage had to be turned into a background scene for the summer production of Aladdin.... and even though there was ONE teeny tiny meltdown in my immediate vicinity (i.e. me) on just the one occasion, where I spent the entire day sobbing every time anybody dared to even mention the words 'paint' and 'scene' and/or 'Azkhaban', it did finally get done - after a whole five days of blood... okay  then, vermillion paint, sweat (proper sweat, it was VAY hot in there) and many aforementioned tears...

Even the Girl got involved and made the greatest bouncing melon in the history of.... well, bouncing melons (a papier mached netball "borrowed" from the PE Department)



And if anyone is thinking of zooming in on this to embiggen it - yes, it does look like we're 'painting by numbers' and that's because we had manly assistance in the form of the caretaker (thank you Mr Peddar) and several cohorts as we're not ladder trained and this is a very important thing to be... if you're up a ladder that is...


Which I DO appear to be in this one.  Only, I'm not technically UP it, I'm kind of more gossiping around the bottom rungs with my lovely work friend Luisa and holding a piece of paper which makes me look all efficient and organised. See - even SHE's holding a piece of paper (we WERE really gossiping!).

Come to think of it, I DO pass a lot of staff in the corridors who wander about holding bits of paper.  I always think they look like they're doing something very important too.

So, can you tell what it is yet?!

Why I *heart* messages from The Universe

When you've had the shittiest few days and it feels like nobody *truly* gets why you feel the way you do and the prospect of even stepping foot outside scares the bejeezus out of you and makes your legs turn to jelly (in an actual - no, seriously - way) then when you get a message like this pop up in your inbox it kinda makes your heart lift just a little.  And little heart-lifts are all I can sensibly contend with right now - without my brain turning to mush, and my ... oh, you already know about the legs, don't you?

"Wake up, Debs! Remember what excites you. Think of these things, those friends, and the adventures that can be yours. Focus. Care. Fantasize. Imagine. It's all so near. Speak as if you're ready. Paste new pictures in your scrapbook, on your vision board, and around your home and office. Physically prepare for the changes that you wish to experience in your life. You've done this before. You know it works. You're due for an encore. It's time to amaze. That's why you're there.
And it's why I'm here.
The Universe"

So forgive me if I'm quiet for a little while.  
I haven't given up.
I'm just preparing for my encore.  And when I have the courage to drive as far as the nearest DIY store, I shall be splashing out on a corkboard whereupon all my visions will be displayed for ... well, me, predominately... to see and focus upon.  
And we'll see how that goes, shall we?

dolly steps

Chillaxing

Once in a while I have to remember to take my Chill Pill.  This is no mean feat (as opposed to the meat feast I'd much prefer and which goes down a heckuvva lot easier) because my genetic make-up does not provide for chilling very easily.  I come from a long line of irritable, short-tempered, cantankerous, narrow-minded miserable bastards relations whose main enjoyment in life appeared to be the witnessing of someobody else's misfortune.  You could tell my Grandfather either the most sophisticated humorous tale or else the basest, simplest joke and he would no more raise one side of his lips in a smile than he would swap a pound for a Big Issue. (Sadly, yes, I also have the Tight Genes).  But if he happened to spot Mrs Cranberry from over the road slip on a piece of potato peel and fall arse over Playtex into the rest of her rotting vegetable heap, then he'd live off the image and the retelling of the vision for the next year or so.  Never mind Mrs Cranberry spent the better part of the next three months head to toe in a plaster cast, oh no, this merely served to make the story THAT much funnier.
My mother, I may have mentioned, took a particular dislike to Himself (up There) and accused Him on several occasions of Ruining Her Life.  Even now my brother and I will throw our hands up in despair and wail "Oh God, now it's RUINED!" (in jest - although...) in memory of her favourite expression.  Everything was against her.  Actually, rain mostly.  Which He is clearly in charge of.
My mother would invent scenarios in her head - which were frequently projected into her daily life and, inevitably ours.  She would expect  Bad Stuff to happen.  In fact, sometimes it felt she took a kind of perverse delight in it.  It made her right in her expectations.  "See?!  I told you it would rain.  I said it would!  Didn't I tell you?!" Weird.
And she'd smile in her victory. A crazed, wild-eyed, demonic smile.  Remember Anthony Perkins in Psycho? There y'go.
My father could frown for England.  He didn't so much wait for bad things to happen like mother, but he'd growl and snarl and seem to make it his sole purpose in life to be the Butt of every irritation known to man. His favourite phrase? "Typical!".  Which meant pretty much everything from us unwittingly bringing dog muck into the house on our shoes to Leeds United losing 3-2.  In our house, hands were thrown into the air and slapped back down onto the thighs with Morris Dancing monotony.
And seething.  Seething was Big in our house.  Just the noise of air passing through clenched teeth was enough to send my brother and I stairward to the sanctuary of our bedrooms for the duration - at least until the next mealtime.
Mind you,  I have to remind myself that all this was probably during an age when "Relaxing" was a little-known pasttime - indeed luxury.   Especially with twin-tub washing machines that started off in the kitchen and ended up in next door's porchway, frisky fishmongers who thought nothing of calling round unannounced and slapping their wet Halibut on mother's draining board and days of the week with a "y" in them (especially rainy ones).
So you see, it's no wonder that I find chilling a difficult thing to come to terms with.  Yes, I get incidents that annoy me; things that I'd much rather hadn't happened or wouldn't keep on happening.  But I have to learn that unless it's within my power to actually control these events myself, then there's not much I can do about it, is there?  I have to learn to go with the flow - to let the mop flop where it chooses - to take my chill pill and relax.