feeling groovy..

I used to pride myself on my ability to do more than one thing at a time.  I’d actively look for multiple activities just to see how far I could push it. Nowadays I have to actively try to concentrate on doing one thing at a time to get anything done properly at all. And even then I still get it wrong, as evinced by my dismay at putting my jeans on around the wrong way, looking down with confusion at the arse-shaped fabric ballooning from where it shouldn’t.

I suppose I should be thankful I noticed..

Anyway..

The weekend has been lovely, really lovely.  Several things joined together to contribute to the general loveliness of it all – firstly Mr T was home for the whole weekend and he has got over his flu.  He seems to have been ill for the last month at least and so when he has been home he has been cast on the couch of doom, snorting and hacking and feeling like a bag of bollocks.  Not much fun, but now he is well, yay!!!

Secondly – the weather, though forecasted for rain, morphed into warmth and sun and gentle breezes so we could have the tiny house door open and go for walks and generally bask in the temporary relief from freezing southerlies.  This is not to be sneezed at – at this late stage of winter when desperation for sun sets in.  I even cast off my second layer of trousers, (I wear leggings under trousers all the way through winter, and yes I do wash them regularly and they do not have to be cut off come snow melt), and then hastily donned them again this morning when I found the dream was over and I was a little nippy around the nethers.

Thirdly, although I was still brain fogged, I was blessed with a happy, quiet mind.  This is good – very, very, outrageously good.

Apart from book club on Sunday afternoon, for which Mr T made a fantastic batch of Welsh Cakes and Philippa a Rhubarb Crumble Cake with cream, Mr T and I were happily unsocial and spent our evenings cwtched up on the couch with our fur friends watching many and varied – old Red Dwarf episodes, a little Boston Legal (Denny Crane!), cult Australian movie The Castle (for the eleventh million time) and inhaling multi episodes of The Brink with the ever gorgeous Tim Robbins and Jack Black.

Saturday afternoon found us charity shopping, drinking superb coffee and eating Hummingbird Cake at the Arts Centre Cafe and walking the dogs in the park. The town graveyard is adjacent so we had a wander around the early settlers graves.  I was saddened by the headstone of a family who had died in the 1870s, the father first, leaving a pregnant wife whose baby died the following year at 5 months and then the death of the wife the year after.  There can be few activities more guaranteed to make you glad to be alive than hobnobbing with the dead – I wholeheartedly recommend it.

So without further ado, a few photos..

More spring flowers, snow drops and japonica

Waiting for Fur Father to come out of the bathroom

Charity Shop finds include-

A pair of GoodyGoody silk slippers $3

A pair of china elephant bookends to support some of my most loved childhood books

and a 50 cent addition to my small ‘Made in Japan’ vintage china collection, which Mr T takes great enjoyment in mocking furiously when he comes home and finds I’ve acquired another little kitsch orphan, and who would want to deny him that pleasure huh?

That’s it for now – I have been writing this post on and off for most of the day interspersed with walking dogs, and having a lovely friend visit, so now it’s time to get on and make something.

Hope you are all having a good one

a quickie….

It’s daffodil time of year, I just had to buy some at the supermarket.  And we are gradually having some better weather.  I took Mum, Charlie and Toast to Petone beach last week on a stellar day..

Wellington in the distance

The dogs loved it of course and happily joined the other many and varied canines and their people taking the air..

My energy level has crashed over the last week, waking every morning feeling like I have a hangover, brain fog that leaves me feeling flabbergasted (and amused) that I could do such stupid things like try to microwave my coffee in the fridge – twice… And if the blindingly, white hot fury I felt over being unable to find a pen in the house is anything to go by I suspect hormonal trouble afoot.

I had been waiting till I felt a bit better and could maybe string a coherent sentence together to write this blog post but in the end gave up, it seems to be taking a long time, and if I don’t write soon I will give up.  So this is just a quick, checking in post – I am still here, hopefully normal transmission will resume shortly, that is if my head doesn’t explode first.

Sunday morning blessings..

Once you start counting blessings it’s easy to keep going…

Yesterday we walked the dogs in the rain around Henley Lake and on returning to the car found a damp business card under the wiper. “Please ring me.  I have your purse” in pen, on the back.  Yes I had dropped my purse out of my pocket while letting the dogs out of the car and this kind man had spotted it by the car wheel and returned it (and all of my eight dollars in change, plus debit card and library card, how tempting it must have been for him)  How’s that for blessings?  Two lovely people in as many days, doing something for others that they didn’t need to.

Mr T is going back to work tomorrow (not that his flu is completely better, but I can’t dissuade him), so the dogs and I are going back down with him and staying with my Mum for a few days.  I will sort her bills out and do any other jobs that need doing and I can cook dinner for us all so Mr T doesn’t have to.

For any of you reading who do not know our situation,  Mr T works down in Wellington (about an hour and a half away from where we live in Masterton) and stays down there during the week with my Mum in her home.  Mum is elderly now and likes the company and he cooks for her in the evenings and they watch silly British comedies together.

Then he comes home and sees me and the fur children for the weekend.  This is not ideal but it’s the way it has to be for now.  I feel happier now I am within walking distance to town and my friends.  My mental health seems to be better when I am not so isolated..

Talking of mental health – I have finished reading Matt Haig’s wonderful book Reasons to Stay Alive and cannot recommend it highly enough – especially if you are looking for reasons to stay alive.  I particularly like the chapter ‘How to live (forty pieces of advice I feel to be helpful but which I don’t always follow)’ and number 27 “Listen to what Hamlet – literature’s most famous depressive – told Rosencrantz and Guildensten. ‘There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.'”

Matt talks about his book and depression here

Other blessings from this morning – rainbows, tuis warbling in the garden, the BBC’s The Now Show which Mr T has put on and which is preventing me from continuing this blog post because I can’t concentrate and I would rather listen to that than write, be thankful people 🙂

still counting them..

We have had a couple of days of dry spring weather, enough for me to have got all our washing done with one lot still on the line which hopefully will dry before the forecast rain sets in.  House cleaned as well today with MrT perched in bed still while I vacuumed and the dogs shut out of the house because they delight in fighting the vacuum cleaner.

I have just got back from walking the dogs down at the river where I met a lovely older lady also walking her dog and carrying a big bag full of rubbish that she had picked up along the way – apparently she does it every day, doesn’t like visitors to the town to get a bad impression.  The rubbish situation isn’t helped by the total absence of any bins along the path.   People like her are a blessing and I have promised to try to do my bit as well..

I have finished and blocked another shawl, made with a simple pattern to show off the lovely colours of the Lang Mille Colori Sock yarn.

My idea is that eventually I will try to sell my shawls on either the NZ craft website Felt or list them on Trade Me (the NZ equivalent of ebay) and I need to get on with it because I want to wear them myself so I figure at least if no one wants to buy them I will be able to claim them.

Because shawls take such a long time to make (especially using fine yarn) I sometimes feel a great urge to break out and make something quick with lovely chunky yarn and I found myself in that mood on Wednesday night.  Searching Ravelry for a hat pattern I came across The Alpaca Slouch Hat by A Creative Being.  Now as some of you crocheters out there may know Marinke (or Wink as she liked to be called) and who rang the blog ‘A Creative Being’  terminated her life in June.  This was a hell of a awful shock to everyone and certainly to me.   I had been thinking of making one of Wink’s patterns in memory of her and so large hook in hand I had that sucker made and ready to wear the next day.  And it’s a beauty – I love it, as did my two friends at Stitch and Bitch on Thursday evening who put in orders.  What I don’t love however is that I am not able to show it to Wink as she requested at the end of the pattern.

Me in my new Wink hat

Finally I thought I would just like to pop in a gratuitous photo of Charlie in a dolls pram. This was not my idea but Mr Ts who seems to very much enjoy putting small dogs in baskets, bags and prams – i’m not sure how Charlie felt about it but he did hop out fairly quickly..

Poor Charles, he has a lot to put up with..

counting them..

It is still winter here..

I am totally over it, really..  I am desperately hoping for some fine weather soon.

In the mean time, after my last pathetic post I have decided that is time to take a more positive out look on life and count my blessings.

First off –  thank you to all of my friends who in the last couple of days have sent me love, you are all fantastic and I love you right back.

Although I am fed up with winter, spring is definitely on the way with all the usual suspects budding and blooming, I am particularly thankful for all the scented ones, daphne and jonquils.

Today is freezing however with southerly fronts rolling in bringing brief bursts of icy wind and rain interspersed with blessed, bright bursts of sunshine.  Mr T is home for the second time in two weeks with the flu so mainly we are cwtched up in our tiny house, with the heater on and the two fur children for company.  Charlie likes nothing better than to be perched like a tiny, incredibly fluffy pimple (he is at peak fur) on Tudor’s stomach while he lies in bed reading or playing chess on his phone.  I have crochet to do as well as new magazines from the library which I will get to when I have finished writing this.

I love our local library, it is truly fantastic. Although it’s not huge we are now able to get for free any of the other books from several other libraries in the bigger centres.  Also they stock some great mags including the UK Selvedge which I could never afford to buy over here and the Australian Frankie – a magazine which is totally a breath of fresh air (just what this winter-bound old brain needs), the edition I am reading includes a article about a photographer who has done a series on elderly women in their homes dressed in heavy metal band tee shirts and an article about a women who wishes she didn’t look so jolly and accepting called ‘ The Opposite of Bitchface’.  I think you could happily describe Frankie as quirky.

Whilst we have been trapped in the tiny house over the last four days we have done some serious viewing, including season four of Modern Family (fricking, squirmily  wonderful) and a blast from the past – the wonderful Northern Exposure from back in the early nineties.   We have also watched Mr Turner which we loved, so beautifully filmed, and Timothy Spall should have won an Oscar purely for his grunts.

Other wonderful things – we have chooks.  They are not strictly speaking our chooks but they live in the back part of the garden and give a great deal of pleasure just by watching them.  We also have a large walnut tree in the garden and the chooks love walnuts.  They spend a lot of time grabbing the cracked nuts and running off with the others following. Unfortunately lucky nut finder is unable to actually stop and eat the nut because one of the others will grab it and run off and so it goes on.  We contribute our food scraps and in return Philippa who owns the chooks gives us eggs, some of which are a pale minty green colour.

I could and will go on counting my blessings but it is time for more viewing, see you soon..

No photos today, this is just a little ‘dabbling my foot in the water’ to start blogging again.

We have moved again, from a large house to a tiny house and I mean really tiny.  Basically we are living in one large room which includes a little kitchen at one end and a bathroom off that.  A studio apartment it could be called and we have given it the rather grand name of Stable Cottage.  I will post photos at some point just for fun.  Our reasoning for this move is mainly financial – we want to save money and this place is a lot cheaper.  Also we are now living within spitting distance of town and I can walk everywhere.  As I don’t have a car during the week I was having to rely on friends to help me out with trips to the supermarket and appointments.  Now I am closer to everyone and not as lonely as I was.

I have been to two music festivals since I last blogged, one tiny – four days with 500 people out at the coast about an hour and a half from where we live and the other massive, Womad , up country in New Plymouth.

We hosted both the Autumn Equinox and Samhain celebrations at our old house and was deeply pleased and impressed when our friends Mike and Sue hosted Yule at theirs with a massive pot luck sit down dinner for 24.

I really do have excellent friends and that is lucky because..

A couple of months ago the decision was made that the depression medication I was on was not working and that I would need to stop taking it.  Not fun really and it took around six weeks to do, going through the various evil withdrawal symptoms but I eventually made it out the other side, still crazy but now not drugged and crazy.  It was a bit sad because it is really the end of the line now as far as medication goes – they simply do not work on me and that’s official.

So I walk on, sometimes trudging, sometimes stepping lightly.

Just keep on walking..