New Year's Eve

2010 ending, 2011 beginning, reasons to be cheerful, 1 , 2, 3

Healthy, wealthy & wise
Wonderful friends
Lovely family to enjoy especially nephew & niece
Birds birds birds
6music will be there to play ace new tunes
Di's cancer got removed!
Building friendships with work colleagues
We can defeat this philistine government, together united we'll never be defeated!

Happy New Year xxx

It's been a hard week.  Emotionally very up and down, mainly down.  Started to feel quite introverted, tired, tearful.  Then I had some valued chats with friends online - FB last night & Skype first thing this morning which made me feel part of the human race again.  And driving to pick up nephew & niece, I heard Lesley Manville's inheritance tracks on Saturday Live.  She talked about how one song made her feel incredibly sad, and that she listened to it in her dressing room at a time when she was very low.  And she expressed something I've been running away from, that it is OK to be sad sometimes.  It made me cry, but almost with relief.  I've been fighting the 'negative' emotions of sadness, perhaps because for much of my life I've felt that I'm sad without any reason to be, which antidepressants have brought me out of.  So now this is a time when it's OK to cry, and OK not to put on the brave face all the time. And that's made me feel better :-)

Bit of a moan

I started this blog a couple of years ago, with the intention of noting positive thoughts etc, to shift my sometimes negative outlook.  But sod it I'm fed up & I'm going to moan.  Better out than in.  And I can always delete it.  And misery lit is very popular, so maybe this will be the start of a great literary career.  But the trouble is heartbreak is boring as well.  I just feel so boring always feeling sad, and lonely, and rejected.  And that's not a good way to be and doesn't encourage new relationships.  God I am so privileged and so miserable.  And yet I've just looked at this and I feel better!  Phew, thank goodness I'm so fickle & have mood swings.


My sweet niece took in her stride the news today that she won't be seeing my ex-husband again.  I told them that when they come to see me at Christmas, he won't be there because he doesn't live in my house anymore.  She said 'So you're not married anymore?' and I said no, so she said 'well you'll just have to marry someone else'.  Ah, the optimism of youth.

Meaning of liff

Yesterday I felt a bit sad, and was musing about whether there has to be meaningfulness to life, and what that means.  I know somebody who thinks that without children life is meaningless.  Not a view I'd agree with, as without children I still feel my life has meaning.  I think the meaning of life for me comes from the Buddhist view of living in the moment, and being an observer of whatever is happening or not happening.  This piece which my yoga teacher once read to us expresses it well.

Today I don't feel sad, even though I've been on my own for about 6 hours now.  I have to come to an acceptance of the state of being alone sometimes, and if I can realise it's not permanent, perhaps enjoy it for the freedoms it offers.

20/20 vision

I've spent the last 2 days wandering around in a state of amazement - I can see without glasses or contact lenses!

The surgery was very straightforward, actually took about 2 minutes.  I didn't have any discomfort other than blurry vision & tired eyes.  The first evening I couldn't watch tv, use the computer or read, so I talked & talked to Colin who was looking after me.  Fortunately for him I was tired so went to bed early :-)

I've got to put in drops for a week, and it can take about a month to heal fully, and for the vision to settle down, but when I saw the optician yesterday she said it was a textbook recovery, so that's good news.

Will have to change this profile pic to my new glass-less image!

We shall see...

So tomorrow I shall be having laser eye surgery, and will betray John Hegley by throwing away my glasses!

It does feel like betrayal, I've been a committed glasses wearer for so many years.  But the prospect of being able to birdwatch more easily, swim, exercise, and just get out of bed in the morning without reaching for vision is too much for me to resist.

The surgery itself only takes about 1 minute per eye, but I have to be there for 3 hours.  Then I don sunglasses, stumble out into Norwich & go to Col's, who's going to look after me :-)  I'll be off work on Friday, then should be fairly back to normal by Saturday afternoon, although I have to wear eyeshields (?!) for a week in bed.

And while I'm having my eyes zapped, Di is having her tumour excised & chucked away, bit bigger deal.  Must ask if the convalescence will include the cream cakes the pre-op time has.

ch ch ch changes

So I'm a singleton again, for the first time in 25 years. And there is a lot of emotion churning around in me, which is leading to some sleeping difficulties, so I've decided to update this to let some of it out, and maybe help process what's happening.

My friends have kept me going. I've always thrived on the company of people I feel relaxed with, and it's been so important over the last few weeks.

But I still feel cast adrift, furiously finding the positives in order to mask the deep pain and sense of loss I'm feeling.

Time will heal, and I just want to fast forward to when it has. I've no sense of how long that will be.

I really miss the sharing - laughs, food, entertainment, wonder at nature. I can have that with good friends, but there's nobody for all of it,and I do miss that. Keep thinking about a pet. amyone know a dog who's into the Wire?

I also skirt round the idea that there are lessons to learn. Is it too soon for that? I haven't talked to L about what went wrong, my thoughts are that we could both have behaved differently to improve things. But I felt too tired to keep trying. I didn't fight his decision at all. I don't think that was defeatist, but there are no certainties.

So last day of the working week, going to London tomorrow. I must plan a holiday.

Things I love about summer

Wow.  The whole summer went by and I didn't do this.  And today is apparently the start of autumn.  So a retrospective:

• Fruits - raspberry, strawberry, apricot, tayberry
• Long evenings
• Pub garden after work
• Swifts, nightjars, nightingales
• Ice cream! Ok that's one for all year round
• Waiting to see hummingbird-hawk moth (doesn't happen often)
• Token night camping.

Just realised I started my likes list last summer, and it was similar but there were differences.  So I'll leave this & see how things change in future.

Doom & gloom

I am disappointed that we are again under a Conservative government taking an axe to the services which support the vulnerable. Who only see value in education as a training tool to make more bankers who will then gamble away the country's reserves. Broken Britain? We haven't seen the half of it. Once they've finished with the public sector it will be a sad sad mess.

Things I love about spring

The snow seems to have gone now, and we've had some warmer days, although it's a bit variable. Since taking up birdwatching, spring is my favourite time of year, although trying to think of things I love about it I realise that it's more an overall sense of excitement and pleasure in the longer days, rather than specifics. But here goes, things I love about spring:

• Return of the migrants - swallows, cuckoo, warblers
• First bees buzzing around
• In about a month's time enjoying English asparagus & new potatoes
• Mini eggs
• Lungwort blooming in our gravel garden
• Frogs
• Lambs
• Planting seeds with high hopes of a vast crop of vegetables & flowers
  

A day of gardening

I've enjoyed the last day of my holiday mostly in the garden. It was dry, initially cool then short periods of warmth. The stray cat Mr Winter was sunbathing, and I got a nice photo of him. I've been fiddling with the pond a bit, added some stones and plants. There are now some diving beetles in there. Elsewhere I discovered a possible bee nest - holes in the ground that bees seem to be making. It was a good day pottering and listening to lots of Radio 4 and Guardian podcasts.

Easter update

Not done too well at keeping up with this. Might start to use it to log my moth trapping. Had the trap out twice overnight now, last week got 50 in there, which was hard work.

Excited about new pond , see left. Will be planting up the bank over next few weeks, and putting stuff to attract the frogs. Now the clocks have changed although weather is miserable, at least get bit more light after work for pottering around if it's not raining.

Things I love about winter

We're well into winter now, and I've remembered that I should note some of the positive bits of the freezing temperatures!

• Snow when I haven't got to go to work
• The possibility of seeing waxwings
• Birds swarming on the bird table & feeders
• My new woolly hat
• Bad weather meaning the best thing to do on a Sunday afternoon is watch films on telly
• Drinking hot chocolates
• Turkish delight at Christmas
• Christmas pudding & mince pies
• Christmas, because I'm still very childish