a true story

Blogging used to come so easy to me.

At one time I had blog posts queueing to be published.

Then we moved country twice in two years, lost some family members, a new job for Mr Wah had some personal stuff to deal with and my blogging mojo dried up.  Not just my blogging mojo, my doing anything mojo went walkabout for a while....I even put my camera away and there is a layer of dust settled on the case. 

But.

There are things I want to talk about.  Big stuff and small stuff, but having been away so long I'm not even sure where to start, so I'm going to start by telling a true story.  Chances are I don't even have any readers left, but in case I do - hello :-)

I have struggled more with this move than I wanted to accept.  Mr Wah has slotted right in, he grew up around here and there are still plenty of people who know him.  Part of me hates this, mostly because some of those people assume that Mr Wah is still the nightmare teenager he was, and so are waiting with baited breath to see if he sets fire to any more sheds. 

I was happy in Wales, I liked the people, the pace of life and the general odd ball, eccentric atmosphere of the place.  I fitted right in, and it was liberating to live somewhere where home education was almost normal.  Now I live somewhere that is most definitely not, and the pressure to education mainstream is ,quite frankly, HUGE.  We even went for a tour of the school, but my need to run down the corridors (because the sign said not to) put us on awkward terms with the headmistress, and I could see that our relationship was doomed to fail when I cheerfully admitted that end of term reports for primary aged children are a load of old bollocks.

So, yes, we considered school for all of five minutes.

I considered skipping back to Wales, but it isn't a practical option and aside from the odd nosey person enquiring why my children are not in school on a Monday morning, there is an awful lot of good things here, we are truly spoilt for fun and activities. 

Mr Wah changed work, he is now fully self employed but still travelling regularly.  When he isn't globe trotting, he is working from home, and this dear reader is a whole new set of challenges.  We have had to some serious working on our relationship to make this a pleasant experience for all parties concerned.

The house....where to start?  We still don't have a heating system, we have a wall coming down in a few weeks, I still don't know what the switch in the landing does and I have tree guilt because I had to get a 200 year old yew tree chopped down as it was planted four feet from the front of the house and creaked dangerously in the frequent high winds.  We kept some bits for bow making experiments.

I love the house, it has a history but it is so big.  I have lost children in it (don't worry I found them again).  There is never ending to do list of maintenance and cleaning jobs, and sometimes when it all gets too much I look at the new builds a short walk away and think about whether we have made the right choice.  Then, the light shifts and floods through the big windows and I forget about the mounting costs and admire the imperfections in the glass.  The bedroom in particular has a mesmerising window with original victorian glass so deformed you can never be sure if it is raining outside.  Being that we live in Scotland, it normally is.

I'm aware there is a slightly negative overtone to this whole post, and I'm uncomfortable with it as I don't want to sound like a whiner.  In this current era of high living costs, I am well aware of how lucky we are to live the way we do, and no one forced me to buy an old wreck, or home educate, or anything for that matter.  I am very grateful for the abundance we have in our lives.

I just find that sometimes, life in all it's technicolour, messy glory is somewhat overwhelming, and when that happens I revert to being the most rubbish of people, spending vast amounts of time staring blankly at walls, avoiding dealing with the things that need my attention and generally being slack in too many areas to mention.

So, I gave myself a mini holiday at home, started running and getting fit, and generally working on me.  I let the children play without interference ALL day, whether it be Xbox, outside, lego, Minecraft or board games.  I tried, with some success, to let go of what I deemed worthy play, and started to really let my kids determined what they valued without judgement from me.  I still have a hard time with this, as some of the Xbox stuff I truly don't get, I've tried to play but I get motion sickness.  The boys let me off as they know that whilst I can't endure it for health reasons, I've got no problem with them getting their kicks this way.

I have talked to my kids, and I mean really talked.  With all the moving I'd felt a disconnect that needing putting right.  I couldn't tell you what they were into at any given moment, and I'd lost all track of what everyone was reading or watching.  We haven't had a proper TV since we moved here - instead we got Netflix and Love Film for £5 each a month, and this combined with the On Demand service available online has satisfied everyone's screen needs.

I feel stronger in body and mind.  It isn't anything new but eating well, exercising regularly (and by regularly I mean every other day) and getting enough sleep has made a big difference in how well I cope with the demands thrown at me.  In the words of Daft Punk "Better, Stronger, Faster"

I'm going to leave it there.  But in my new frame of mind I hope to be back here twice a week. 

Starting Monday.