Tidy

I can't blog about the most exciting thing that happened today as I don't have permission from the certain young person involved. So here's the second most exciting thing:

Fig1: Expired products removed from food cupboard. Oldest item had date of June 2014.

Fig2: Plastic clips retrieved from expired food products. Bought some new ones last week as I thought we'd lost them all. Plastic clips now in abundance.

Fig3: Food cupboard now orderly and within date.

Thank you and goodnight.

1010

This free app should carry some sort of warning. It is not free at all. It costs you hours and hours of your life. I have downloaded then scrubbed it from my phone on 4 separate occasions. It is an OCDers dream slash nightmare.

Remember Tetris? It's just like that, but without gravity. You place blocks within a 10x10 square grid, then once a row or line of 10 is complete, it disappears. If you are smart / lucky, you can clear multiple rows or columns at once eg:

L: Orange block is placed in bottom right corner
R: Both the completed horizontal and vertical lines disappear at once. Boom!

After realising the true cost of this game I repent, screenshot my current high score*, scrub it off my phone, then a few months later I cave and download it again because:
• we are planning a long trip in the car
• I get the flu
• I kid myself I am now mature enough to make sound gaming decisions
• Some other flimsy rationale
And the whole cycle starts again.

I like tidying up actual things that you can touch and read and trip up over. I enjoy putting things away where they belong or reorganising them so the space in the room works better. This character trait is the nearest thing I have to explaining why 1010 affects me the way it does. It's like tidying up a never ending supply of pixels in the most minimalistic way possible. I have this fantastic notion that if I manage to clear the game board completely the blocks will stop appearing. Although this has actually happened twice and the blocks did not stop. This made me anxious.

And now I have the flu and have ingested many over the counter drugs and am dreaming about a constant stream of objects which need to be tidied up. It's quite exhausting. The virus is totally messing with my brain and the blocks represent real tasks that need to get done- like food shopping and updating a website and taking a shower and answering emails and reading to the kids and some other stuff I can't remember the details of, but in the dream it's really important to do them all.

Sometimes the blocks are so difficult to place I'll struggle for ages thinking I've lost in real life - then suddenly a space is there and wayhey! a whole row disappears and the game plays on. Until I wake up exhausted and sweating and coughing and reaching for the brufen before I've opened my eyes.

But it works out in the end. Both when dreaming and awake. Despite the odds - which makes me think that the block order is not random, but divinely purposed in order that a solution is always possible. Sometimes the blocks are a pure GIFT - the next one fitting in exactly the same spot I was focussed on and clearing 3 lines and 3 columns in one move. Bam! The block giver knew what was needed and gave it. Other times it's far more congested and scary and things are really tight and I think this may be the last round, but I've got to just not panic and remember that gravity has been suspended. Like bullet time in the Matrix, there's time to look around. And even a poor decision now can be overturned with the next set of blocks which will offer an alternative. The game is rigged so I win.

These life lessons are interesting, but not worth it on balance. I should scrub this game off my phone again... after the flu goes...

*16543

Life begins...

They say life begins at 40. I'm not sure that's true, but I have experienced some recent revelations in this new(ish) decade so it will be interesting to see how things pan out. OK- So far we have:

1: Cooking is less painful when planned and shopped for in advance. (See more details here).

2: Parenting a teenager is very different to parenting a toddler. Toddlers can do your head in, but they're easily distracted by bubbles or twigs or Milky Way stars and they sleep for half their lives anyway, leaving much respite time to drink wine and watch trashy TV. Teenagers have far more clever arguments at their disposal and are unbelievably stubborn and less prone to the allure of twigs. And they need less sleep - even if you give them wine. Teenagers can also make a parent behave like a toddler, which is annoying.

3: If you like things clean and organised and share a home with other people who are old enough to make things clean and organised but don't, just ask them. Then ask them again. And again. (thanking them in between times when stuff gets done). They are not ignoring the mess and disorder that is so apparent to you - they just don't see it. In the same way I have a mental block in finding Bristol airport and rely on the sat nav EVERY SINGLE TIME, so it is with some people and mess. Clean up together then watch Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners and marvel at how mentally unhinged everyone else is.

4: If your evening could involve either running a bath while putting the kids to bed then soaking in it for 2 hours with a book and a cup of tea until your pulse is pounding in your head and all the hot water runs out, OR having a 5 minute shower before climbing into bed before 11pm to a strategically placed hot water bottle or the prospect of intimate relations- choose the latter. Always. Time is money, people.

5: Care must be taken while multi-tasking - or it just becomes multi failing at different things. Like cooking the meal you planned then writing this blog during the simmering phase with no timer. See?

Annoying. The pan has only just recovered from the last distraction disaster.

(To be continued)

Socks and sanity

Feeling rather anxious and unable to remember the way to my happy place.

Storage

I recently found myself back in the house we used to rent. Only one kid was present and he was a toddler again which is very weird as he's the middle child and there was no sign of the other two. My cousin was pleading with me to help her die as she could no longer cope with depression. After explaining that an overdose would take too long and anything involving blunt or sharp instruments would create too much mess, she outlined her method to me. I accepted her rationale, helped her climb into a duvet storage bag then vacuumed packed her to death with the hoover hose. Then I hid her body in a kitchen cupboard, which was now no longer in my ex-kitchen but in Molly and Arthur Weasley's. Disturbingly, there were MORE vacuum packed people in the cupboard, all stacked neatly in the fetal position, head to toe. I knew nothing about them. I don't think I did anyway.

Oh.

Dear.

God.

Maybe I do...

I have never been more relieved to wake up. Ever.

My dream hangover lingered way longer than one cup of tea. Normally I wake from much more pleasant (or at least neutral) scenarios and can literally feel the details slip away from me as I become aware that the thing that just happened was a dream. The very decision to recall the finer points of events only speeds up their escape from my head.

Not this dream.

Honestly, this is concerning.

Would the argument for efficient storage and containment of bodily fluids be compelling factors for my subconscious' agreement to participate in assisted suicide? Perhaps on more than one occasion?

There are many reasons I left the NHS. This should have been one of them.

Persistence

We spent a week of the Summer holidays on various beaches with a bunch of friends and an assortment of windbreaks, towels, buckets & spades, camping chairs, cool boxes and flasks of coffee. It was ACE.

One beach in particular was just breathtaking. We ended up there on one of the warmest days of the holidays and swam and played in the sea without wetsuits. Apparently the beach, Barafundle Bay is one of the top 12 in the World and we didn't even have to leave the country to get there.

After a few hours the tide began to creep up the beach. The gradient of the sand was such that there was a steep-ish bank and a ridge of sand about 30' or so from our camp.

Wouldn't it be cool, we thought, if we could create a massive sandcastle at the top of the ridge that would withstand the waves and allow the kids to STAND on top of it? The kids were too busy playing in the waves (and failing to save a long-since abandoned sandcastle from being swallowed up by the sea). But the adults in our group got to work. 

The spot at the top of the sand ridge was chosen and digging implements assembled. I don't know if you have had first hand experience of this, but adults can quickly build an impressively huge sandcastle without children getting in the way. We had a system. We had plastic spades. A common goal. Five of us chucked the sand on, and one stood on top and compressed the sand down, flattening it layer by layer and making it strong enough to support the weight of the 8 children we collectively own.

Within half an hour it stood imposing and strong on the beach. It wasn't an ornate or decorative thing, but it was fit for purpose, topped with a large flat sandy platform to accommodate 16 feet (maybe more- if everyone huddled up like penguins). The tide was still a few feet away and we still had time to save ourselves. Yay!

I scrambled up to join the bigger children. I pulled the smaller kids up one at a time. It was a squash. But it didn't matter because no one stayed long. There were still holes in the sand to be dug. And seaweed to collect. And it's far more thrilling to climb up a massive sandcastle then immediately jump down again than to simply stand atop it and wait for Sandcastle Armageddon. 

Apparently. 

I didn't try it.

Once up there I stayed. Initially this was to pluck the smaller members of our group from the jaws of the approaching waves. But pretty soon (probably due to OCD-related reasons) it swapped and became a battle of wills in my head. If I get off of this thing before the sea washes over the top of it, then the sea will win. I don't want the sea to win. Therefore I will stay here.

When the sea is only a few feet away, but those few feet are slopey, waiting for the tide can take a lonnnnnngggg time.

Sometimes there were 5 or 6 of us up there. Sometimes I was alone. Although the sun was still shining, it was dropping in the sky and lack of movement made me shiver. The constant scrambling up and down of many small feet dislodged slabs of sand from the sides, so I patted them back in again. And waited for the end.

I was cold. And horribly sandy. If I could only get down and rinse off in the sea I could get dry and warm and maybe there was some hot water left for TEA?

But that would involve getting down, and then the sea would win.

By the time the waves reached the foot of the castle, some of the kids had got too cold to be wet and were already back in clean, dry clothes. Those left ran up the castle wall and waited for the structure to collapse.

But Armageddon was still a while off yet. We had built the sandcastle pretty high. The game of choice changed from climb up sandcastle and immediately jump down into sand, to climb up sandcastle and immediately jump back down into sea. It looked fun. But if I tried it, that would involve getting down, and then the sea would win.

So I froze a bit longer as the waves slowly eroded our fortress and (rather excitingly) flowed over the ridge and back towards our camp, leaving us stranded on our artificial island. 

After another 10 minutes or so the next wave washed over the entire sandy platform, and the game was over. The sandcastle had gone, but we had WON!!

The remaining islanders washed off in the sea and rejoined our group to a round of applause. When we turned to leave, all that was left was a flat expanse of sea and sand with only a broken spade handle suggesting anything had happened.

OK. F/Fwd to this Sunday and we are in church. Singing a song I've never heard before. Part of it went:

You are everything you've promised, 
your faithfulness is true
When we're desperate for your presence, 
All we need is you

I really struggled to sing this. Not just because it was unfamiliar, but because it wasn't true. At that point in time, if I had the chance to itemise the things I was desperate for I would have said:

1. For my in-box to be empty
2. For the rain to hold off so the 4 loads of washing I did yesterday can dry
3. For the children to be head-lice free (a process I embarked on this morning which took the best part of an hour and a half and resulted in 3 of us being half an hour late for church, and probably the reason why I'm not desperate for anything else right now).

What's wrong with me? 

Then I remembered the beach. And some other things too.

If I can:

• waste an hour and a half of my life sitting like a pixie on top of a pile of compressed sand in order to win a self-created mind game with the Atlantic Ocean

• complain to HMRC via repeated recorded delivery mail over 4 years, 2 MPs and several house moves until they finally lose interest in me and my alleged 'overpayment'

• find 90 seconds every single day to breed dragon pairs and collect fake coins

Then surely I demonstrate my capacity for stubbornness and persistence which can be channelled into something that means something. I just need to be obstinate about things that matter and not give up praying about stuff when it doesn't happen right away.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Suppose one of you should go to a friend's house at midnight and say, ‘Friend, let me borrow three loaves of bread. A friend of mine who is on a trip has just come to my house, and I don't have any food for him!’ And suppose your friend should answer from inside, ‘Don't bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.’ Well, what then? I tell you that even if he will not get up and give you the bread because you are his friend, yet he will get up and give you everything you need because you are not ashamed to keep on asking. And so I say to you: Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For those who ask will receive, and those who seek will find, and the door will be opened to anyone who knocks. (Luke 11, 5-10)

Just say an individual wave got disheartened from crashing into a huge sandcastle then just gave up? A single wave dislodges and rearranges several hundred thousand particles of sand and nothing more. But wave after wave after wave can do this.

Ask

Seek

Knock

And Play in the Sand

Clutter (pt 2)

I have a mild form of clutter paralysis. It's like the opposite of hoarding, and something I believe will soon be recognised as the mental disorder obsessive-compulsive spartanism.

Having too much stuff around me stifles my ability to function, so I'm forever assessing what we need then recycling the things we don't. This can make visitors nervous sometimes. They fear they may find themselves either placed in a cupboard or put in my take to charity shop pile. I say 'mild' because I've read of people who suffer this far more intensely than me who constantly give away stuff they actually use or wear on a regular basis, whereas I only get rid of things that are actually redundant. (Although there have been a few fairly big exceptions to this over the years including a wardrobe which we could have done with 3 months after giving it away as we moved to another rental property and an external hard drive, which in my defence edged slowly towards the bin in the garage over a 6 month period. (I was giving it a chance you know? It didn't even try).

Spartanism extends to my digital activities too. My desktop looks like this:

If I'm working on something and save a few files on the desktop for convenience I MUST file or delete them before logging off, or deal with them FIRST THING the following day. Otherwise I feel like this:

Reports indicate that people will compulsively discard items like clothes, books and even expensive electronics and furniture in an effort to free themselves from what they consider to be clutter. It seems that people who compulsively throw objects out — the opposite of hoarding — are overwhelmed by possessions. Fewer belongings makes them feel more in control of their life and surroundings. (WiseGeek)

I totally relate to this. The more manic my life becomes, the less likely I am to ask the kids nicely to come back and pick up their nerf bullets / hello kitty trump cards / hand drawn tributes to our dead hamster Omnon / other assorted kiddie crap that is strewn around every room they've played in so far today, and will instead pick up a bin bag and yell 'I'm tidying up now!!.....'

The off switch to this behaviour can be triggered in various ways:

• Go on holiday (stay somewhere else for a few days and the neat rules don't seem to apply)
• Decorate (If the house is tipped up with brushes and rolls of wall paper, finishing THAT job overwrites any mental fixation with neatness)
• Have visitors / house guests over (ditto above- focus on people, not clutter)
• Move house (rather extreme I know, but it does have the same effect. And we have moved house quite a lot recently so it's been helpful therapy)

As long as one of the above happens fairly regularly it will prevent our home from looking like this:

So if you aren't doing anything today, please come round for coffee.

Singles club

Aargh! Who do I disappoint?

Clutter

I have certain OCD like tendencies which manifest primarily in tidying up and the ordering/reordering of my immediate environment. This does NOT necessarily mean cleaning by the way- because if you tidy a room it will LOOK clean without it having to be so. (Write that one down).

I fully appreciate that not everyone lives with this affliction and I am secretly jealous of the ability some have to be surrounded by mountains of junk and NOT CARE. But I do. I really can’t help it. Actual physical clutter congests my mind and suffocates my thought processes to the extent that even if I have something pressingly urgent to attend to, the presence of more than 4 icons on my desktop, a pile of filing or a single piece of un-opened mail can rudely jump the queue in my head and demand to be dealt with first. Much to the frustration of Keith (who incidentally possesses a normal brain).

I should also point out here that I don’t care if other people are surrounded by junk of their own. In fact, it often won’t even register. If I’m visiting a mate, then I’m there to see them and will almost certainly not see the clutter that they choose to live amongst- unless they invite me to notice, or refer to it in some way.

So take my order-possessed brain and put it in a situation where I am suddenly surrounded by rubbish that is not mine and the culprit (my ex-tenant) is not present. Now imagine that the location is a house that I used to live in and am still legally the owner of. Now suppose that the potential new owner is imminently arriving to this house of junk and may or may not still want to purchase it due to its current condition. In this situation I have an acute and overwhelming awareness of how much clutter there is, along with the urgency to do something about it.

The quantity of rubbish was massive. Perhaps our newly ex-tenant had been subletting to kleptomaniacs or vagrants or a family of badgers? We moved house ourselves 4 months ago with 3 kids, a cat and a business and and we didn’t generate this much stuff. The rubbish had clearly been accumulating for some time. Most of it was bagged up (helpfully) in the front garden, but much of it strewn around the back garden and sneakily hidden in the two-foot wide 'L' shaped gap between the boundary fence and the playhouse, which slowly became visible as said playhouse was dismantled. My personal favourites hidden here included:

A hamster cage (Madi now wants a gerbil for her birthday- I wish I'd kept it now)

The rotting remains of a cot-side

A mouldy Bertini pram (chassis was still in good nick though)

A sodden wet rug (it left the living room a long time ago)

A double duvet (covered in mould and crawling with wood lice)

Ah, but the crème de la crème of crap was actual real crap which I presume originated from from the boxer dog which the tenant owned.

Picture the scene- I have spent the best part of an entire day cleaning and hoovering my soon-to-be-ex-house with the help of some fantastic friends and neighbours and between us we have almost eliminated the smell of incontinent dog (yeah!) and replaced it with the peachy aroma of shake’n’vac.

Between us we have disposed of 2 skips worth of rubbish and an unmarked white vanfull of scrap metal (which conveniently appeared just after the second skip was dropped off -otherwise it would have been 4 skips).

All that remains now is to wheel the green garden-waste wheelie bin from the back garden to the front kerb, scrub the (manky slimey) decking underneath where the bin used to be and voila! Time for a bath then Costas with the lovely Michele.

However, on grasping and pulling the wheelie bin, it does not move. I do. I literally skate right into it, sliding on the thick layer of algae and motor oil which coats the decking. I try to tip the bin to manoeuvre it, but it refuses to budge. I open the bin to inspect the weighty contents- and almost puke right there on the spot.

It contains approximately 2 years worth of fossilised dog crap, a handful of children’s play balls, some carrier bags and a smattering of leaves and twigs on the top - which will maybe fool the recycling people - you never know.

No wonder the neighbours reported never having seen her walk the dog.

It took a whole 20 minutes, strategic planning and 2 of us huffing and puffing and pushing the wheelie bin over the manky slimey decking, around a manky slimey corner, up a slightly less manky slimey step and into the front garden. And then a call to the environmental health agency– who obligingly emptied the whole thing 3 days later. Free of charge. Maybe they forgot to ask for a forwarding address for the invoice. Or maybe the woman just took pity on me because I wasn't responsible for the fossilised dog faeces.

Anyway.

The last memory of our old house is a sad colourless version of the one I had when we left it, over 2 years ago. Even with the rubbish gone there was wear and dog-related tear throughout which couldn’t be fixed in one weekend. There was damage to the front door that suggested (according to the locksmith who fixed it) that the door had been kicked hard at some point - perhaps more than once. And a couple of kitchen cupboards were damaged at head-height. The whole house was soulless to me - tainted with an undercurrent of dog urine and domestic violence that I couldn’t imagine having ever lived there - or even wanting to.

Back at home, and after a few hours of self pity and slight over-reaction to the kids leaving toys around (‘I am NOT here to pick up your things. Put that away NOW otherwise you will grow up to be an overgrown child who thinks their mess is someone else’s problem!’) I thought about what God maybe felt like after it all went pear shaped in Eden.

Just picture the brand new perfect world that he’d made, loved and delighted in. It was absolutely perfect in every way- fresh and clean with no rouge DNA or viruses or anything. Did the whole planet smell of new-born baby and freshly mown grass? Did newly created reds and greens and purples sparkle with vibrancy?

Then when Adam & Eve cocked it up for the rest of us, how did God feel? When sin and the stench of death came to a spotless planet that was hardly - I don’t know, a day, a week, a month - old, what did that do to the heart of its creator?

Was he like ‘You’ve wrecked it now- I can’t live here anymore. I love you but I can’t look at you or have you look at me. You broke my creation.’

Does he look at people today and say the same?

- To one who claims to love another yet lies and manipulates and lashes out: ‘You’ve broken LOVE’

- To the inadequate and insecure parent who constantly yells at their kid, crushing another's spirit and stealing joy: ‘You’ve broken my CHILD’

- To those who put their own selfish needs above others and abuse and rape and assault: ‘You’ve broken SEX’

These thoughts offered perspective. It was only a house. I didn’t build it- with my own hands. Keith and me didn’t even own it outright when it WAS ours. There were lots of things about it that we would have changed had we stayed there longer. But I still grieved for what it once was.

I guess God cries even more.