All things must pass

I'm a bit Buddhist...all things in moderation I say. My scientific friends dismiss this as irrational fluffiness and my religious ones know that I am a damned heathen! The thin strip of middle ground where you can see god in the particle and believe that He doesn't exist suits me just fine, (and yes, the case choices were deliberate there!). 

I have compassion for those who have attachment to either knowing what's been proved, or believing in what can not, as that kind of entrenchment requires strong fortresses for support. And anything you feel you have to keep strong you fear becoming weak. I was minded of this the other day watching an episode of Dragon's Den where the team seemed horrified at the suggestion they invest in an on line funeral/will/wake arrangement firm. They were so negative about this, not just as a business opportunity but as a business idea at all. They were sure nothing to do with end of life would work and seemed a bit miffed to me that they were being asked to consider mortality existed at all, let alone that it was something they might suffer from themselves. Deborah Meadon said that if she wanted to talk about something so unpleasant she'd do so with her family thereby missing the point that a) families don't want to talk about it either and b) you may not get round to the awkward discussion before you actually become incapable. On line is a great way for individuals to make these arrangements and everyone is going to die so I was puzzled as to why they had no kind or encouraging word for the lady who presented the pitch. And then I realised...what the Dragon types of the world hold dear is based on a a great deal of attachment. Death doesn't fit into their model at all.

I give thanks that I've had so many opportunities in life to learn to invest in non-attachment. People, places, objects, conditions - they are none of them permanently in the in the mode of being that one might prefer and if one prefers some modes very strongly over others then disappointment and dismay will inevitably ensue. I don't think you need to sign up for any spiritual regime to see the logic in this, but I still prefer shedloads of modes and have a long way to go...I have become very attached to the idea of my urostomy equipment staying attached in all the right places, for instance, and sometimes struggle to remain equanimous when it does not, though I guess when it doesn't I appreciate clean clothes and bedding and a washing machine and running water more than most, and breaking my Streak again makes me give thanks for all the time that it's working OK, how a little piece of not even especially modern technology can enhance my quality of life so much...

I'm grateful for feeling a little livelier today and even working up a bit of an appetite again at last. For there being ready made food to eat - veggie curries and apple strudel to follow, cosmopolitan and convenient with enough time to get this written whilst waiting for them to cook! To Laura for coming to help me with some finishing of the decorating, and renovations of what's been decorated before and is now in need of repair! Also for taking me to a local carpet shop where a very helpful chap got all the suitable offcuts out of the pile for us to choose after being told what we were looking for...and even carried the selected one out to the car for us. As the piece only cost £15 this seemed very good value in service as well as goods. Right I'm off to help strudel to pass from the state of being on a plate to something very different indeed!

For Carol

First and foremost, I'm giving thanks for having known Carol Hubbard, even a little bit. I loved her humour and optimism in adversity, her ability to see the good in people and events. She will be so missed, even by those of us who were merely her virtual friends, and while I'm grateful her suffering is over I wish she hadn't had to leave us so soon...

Everything else pales into insignificance next to this today. I'm grateful for a taxi to take me to the library on a pleasant day weatherwise for the halftermers visiting the town and beach. Good to see out traders doing so much trade...and that there's even a new cafe opened, though I didn't feel in the mood to try it today. Instead I sat a while marvelling at how clean and neat and shiny the waves were today...hardly any froth or sparkle at all as they broke. I'm still feeling rather weak and unwell and so was especially grateful for my sofa and a fish finger sandwich welcoming me home...If I could just train the sofa to make the sandwich I'd be sorted, eh? I appreciate how fortunate I am for having so little that I absolutely have to do am greatly grateful to iplayer, my Skybox and for keeping me company and entertained with very little effort.

Re:

I'm grateful for getting a few more little chores done yesterday of the kind that free up your head space as much as streamline your living area. Amongst other things I rerehung a picture, the first rehanging of having failed some weeks ago. This involved fetching assorted bits of kit which I knew just where to find through having sorted out their various living areas before. Great gratitude to self for being so organised! I'm particularly pleased too with finding a use for some redundant items that could neither be recycled nor given away and which now can have a fresh lease of life before landfill finally claims them.

I'm giving thanks for a delicious brunchtime smoothie that came about because I found some tinned fruit needed eating up. I'd already bought some cheapy ripe bananas to go with it, though I hadn't realised they were there so grateful for my foresight. Thank goodness for blenders and mixers too, and Aussie soaps for showing us what we were missing! I'm grateful also for a new multi tool I got to make opening bottles, jars and the ring pulls on cans a bit easier.

I'm grateful I've been to the postbox and recycling bins and to admit the Tesco driver and unpack the supplies he brought because this later afternoon, after finishing off that lovely spicy lentil stew, I'm in need of my reconstitutional!

One of those days

I gave up on the idea of going out yesterday...or perhaps I should say I changed my mind as that sounds less negative I think, don't you? I decided to make the best of things and had a happy half hour doing nothing but looking at the internet. I found these wonderful pictures...
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/flickr-your-pictures-water-19102012.html

and read about a young man with Down's syndrome who has just become a parish councillor and a young boy with it who has become a catalogue model for some major clothing chains, which seemed to me to be steps in the right direction. Then I came across this and thought I was being unnecessarily feeble and ought to try getting dressed and ready to go out and see how I felt after that...
http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/tisha-unarmed-s-inspiring-everyday-life--no-arms--no-problem.html

Getting dressed and ready to go out is quite challenging and tiring for me, and afterwards I was thinking I could do with someone making me a cuppa and maybe a bit to eat...and I decided Mr and Mrs Eastcliff were the folks for the job and so went out after all. My cunning plan worked ha ha!

It was one of those days when I turn the corner of the terrace and there's this great slab of seashine between the end of the road and the horizon and I cannot help but catch my breath, when the wind direction means the seafront is cosier than the town, when a paper cup of tea and a foil bag of tea cake seems like a banquet, when the height and time of the tide and formation of waves mean that the front ones hit the sea wall and then bump back into the ones behind making splashy sparkly plumes. For all of the above I give great thanks!

I'm grateful too to cheerful Adam in IT support for sorting out a simple problem without making me feel a numpty. And for a Come Dine with Me Down Under which included a gay embalmer who had some maracas containing his cremated grandparents remains, a prototype for a commercial commemorative idea he had. The same day I had a certificate of right to occupy a plot in the woodland burial ground I've chosen. They include a packet of wildflower seeds to be sprinkled on the spot. At least that's what it says on the packet...the rattling sound makes me somewhat uneasy now...

Easy peasy

In 1977 my then boyfriend had a screw in lemon squeezer that I was somewhat taken with.  He left it behind when he left and it gave me years of sterling service instead. In 2010, a friend’s husband was enthusiastically squeezing lemons in my kitchen and it came apart in his hand. And no, none of these are euphemisms! The original had come from Lakeland Plastics but they had dropped the Plastics by then and this item from their stock. It took me a while to think of eBay, and when I did I found some. Yay! Sadly I didn’t buy them then and there because when I looked again they had gone. A fine selection of squeezers and reamers were on offer but none of the type that got my juices flowing (sorry, couldn’t resist!) However, at last I found something that looked similar and it has arrived and I have tried it and it is good! Incidentally, anyone who wonders how can I remember so many details? Well, if you don't have a boyfriend or husband you don't have to keep remembering where he has left his car keys and/or specs and can use the brain cells for something else!

Making some crochet flowers for my jumper was easy peasy too...eventually...as getting the pattern right took a while. I’d done a couple of prototypes in the initial design stages but after a bit of practice I tend to think it will be all right on the night as it were and it turned out there was rather a lot more practice required. It would be easier for sure if my hands weren't so stiff/numb/painful but I've not forgotten what it was like to have a hand that didn't work at all for a while and give thanks for what I've got...besides what I've lost in manual dexterity I've gained in patience - almost anyway!  I’m grateful I didn’t feel much like doing much yesterday as I was able to persevere and get to finished product stage. Product placement must ensue...

This morning I got up and washed up and got my spicy lentil stew ready to go in the slow cooker for my tea and will be grateful for that in due course I'm sure but, low in energy and still in pajamas have slunk back to bed. My head is telling my legs they ought to take me out on this crisp cold day and give my arms a rest, test out my new winter coat...and my legs are replying 'Are you having a laugh? You've done so much already. We'll take you to the sofa and that's it! Shut your eyes and stop this blue sky thinking, take it easy peasy again today...'

Breaks

Between my appointments I went to see those churning waves yesterday. There were surfers and clumps of sea foam and the brisk wind making little breaks in the clouds for hazy sunshine to come through. It was so exhilarating and I wanted to take my takeaway tea and cake down onto the sand but the tide was nearly in. 
'Not a problem,' said the sea...'Stay up there and I'll come to you!'

Something I particularly enjoy is the way that the assorted, often solitary, souls who come to gaze with awe and admiration on their faces, turn to one another and share their wonder and delight. 'Isn’t it amazing they say? I love it when it's like this?’ And I love it when they do that. Of course strangers talk to each other round here fairly easily and regularly, but I'm always reminded of being in London during that hurricane that wasn't coming and, as we dodged the flying debris together, folk on the streets who would normally have kept their eyes and thoughts to themselves were making contact, saying ‘Watch out!’ and ‘Are you OK?’. Laughing together with relief if they were, and sharing the moment.

I give thanks for my acupuncture, and an especially relaxed sensation afterwards this time. Also for how lucky I was to find Rachel when I was first looking for someone to give me treatment, someone not only unfazed by my terminal phase, but also one of those rare individuals who see things in the same colour spectrum as I do, to whom I do not have to grapple with explanations as to what REALLY matters, what really matter IS for that matter, and is able to help me remember sometimes too! 

For 'especially relaxed' you could read 'totally bushed' or 'totally bone idle', so I am also giving thanks for all that cooking I did a couple of days ago...not only were there a choice of things in the fridge when I got home but there was hardly any washing up when I'd chosen...and there's something also ready for my tea today!

Sum stuff

Wow, the sea was so loud last night! Eventually the wind joined in but to begin with  there was hardly a breeze so you could really hear the roar of the surf. Sounded almost like a motorway. No, actually, I'm grateful to say, much nicer than a motorway!

I give thanks for a candlelit bath. I love the quality of silence without the background noise of bulbs, and I sang a favourite song to myself.... It's called the Saucy Sailor or Poor Jack and it's been around for two or three hundred years at least. Some people I know are Catholic, but I'm eclectic instead. Boom boom!

I'm grateful for getting the sums right in the jumper I'm making so that there are the right number of stitches at the bottom of the sleeve to crochet the pattern I'd planned for the cuff, and at the top to fit my armhole I'd made on the body, and that the shaping in between has come out arm shaped! It's only basic maths but basically, if you get it wrong the errors can multiply all by themselves! Just got to finish the sewing up and trimming now... 

I'm also grateful I'm wearing a skirt exactly like the ones I used to make and wear in the '80s and '90s. Well, not exactly the same...this one is considerably wider and longer than those were! And I wasn't into ra ra skirts in case you're wondering and wincing at the thought. The sartorial nostalgia was brought on by seeing a pair of flat boots I liked in Stead & Simpson for the remarkably reasonable sum of £25, and then the old fashioned knicker and elastic shop in town here (the ones where they used to sell sanitary napkins, but don't tell the boys OK?) having a sale on coloured opaque tights. I kept thinking, 'Oh, if only I could have one of those little black skirts I used to make again', and perusing the internet without success before finally twigging the solution was in the verb not the noun! They are so easy and comfy and versatile...

I'm grateful that I'm going to the hairdressers today and don't need to try to detangle my hair but can bundle it under a hat. Just for a trim... When my hair grew back after alopecia it was in patchy shapes here and there, like the continents on a globe though not one of this planet, that's for sure! So there's still some areas that are shorter than the rest and it's an ongoing process of evening up as I can't hold scissors and a comb myself any more...Skirt or not, I'm not into exploring my feminine side so far as to get a 'style'. I'm mean seriously...me? Come on!