Envying the Extraordinary

I have just finished The Raven King, the last in The Raven Cycle, by Maggie Stiefvater.

Oh. My. Lord.

Mind. Blown.

I loved the first book in the series, The Raven Boys, when I read it way back when (three years ago, apparently), and was bereft at how it just ended dead (well, bloomin furious is probably closer).

Then I read Dream Thieves and darn me if it didn’t happen again, although the beautiful organic prose made it almost okay. So, when Blue Lily, Lily Blue came out, I was still a little resentful, and not quite ready to re-read the first two and catch up.

I’m glad I waited because it meant I could consume all four books inside a month.

I’m trying to describe how I feel, without giving anything away: it’s a series that has to be appreciated without anything resembling a spoiler. The reveal, the experiencing alongside the characters, is the heart and soul of it.

To borrow a shadow of Maggie Stiefvater’s masterful imagery, I feel like I have hiked up an impossible mountain, thinking the view couldn’t get any better, certain I’ll be disappointed. And then the top is a panoramic view of a magical world. And then – and then – there’s a crystal ice-clear lake, and I jump in, and I’m shocked and shaking and tingling and alive all at once.

That.

I want to hold the book, the characters, the story, the journey, hold it to my face, like I do the guinea pigs, and sink into the warmth and comfort and escapism of it.

And yet.

I also want to write like that. And I know I can’t. And it’s okay.

Sort of.

It’s like at school, when I didn’t do A Level Art, because I was never going to get an A, and I wanted to go to Cambridge University (or other people thought I should want to, I can’t really remember) and because the other kids were just so amazing at all sorts of artistry I couldn’t even dream of, and I was never going to produce something like that out of my mundane and stubborn imagination.

So I did History and Maths and English Literature, and quietly slowly smothered my creativity and turned myself into an academic and then a number-cruncher.

*Shudder*

I can’t let my awe-ful (in the full-of-awe sense) admiration, hunger and desire for these books, this writing, this powerful imagery and incredible world-building, I can’t let it stop me being the writer I am. Just because I can’t get an A, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t continue to create.

But oh my. To write like that. To be able to give ten years to a set of books – ten years! To persist and dream and create and build and then – let go! How hard must it have been to finish? Just finishing reading them was hard enough. The only thing I admire more than the talent and vision is the sheer dedication and determination. I get bored writing a book after ten weeks.

Anyway, I’m still rather swept up in the Raven Cycle , the hyperbolic, dreamy, electrically charged world. So, sorry for the slightly dreamy hyperbolic post.

I’m not quite ready to come back to earth.

Normal service will resume when I tear myself away from the mountain top. Just a little bit longer.

A New Page

My new obsession!

2016. We’ll that happened.

Whether you look externally or internally, whether it was euphoric Andy Murray world number one male tennis star, or terrifying politics both sides of the pond, or tragic loss of too much talent (and about half my teen idols) it was a year to remember. And forget.

I don’t do New Year generally. Since the children started school, my fresh start and broken resolutions begin in September.

But, like many, I have dragged myself over the finish line of 2016 so very ready for a new beginning.

Not resolutions, well not like lose weight and quit wine (as I read somewhere on Facebook, no one likes a skinny sober b!tch anyway). More like kick up the bum thoughts.

I got to the end of 2016 without really knowing what happened. Personal achievements were few and hard to recall. I only wrote one book and I feel ambivalent about that one. I did help edit a memoir, and found it rewarding. And we did loads to our house. But still.

I’m a mess of anxiety and contradiction. My kids called me lazy yesterday because I keep hiding in the bedroom, often asleep for hours at a time. I did point out that their 5.30am starts might have something to do with it (although that just makes every parent I know smugly point out that their children have been trained not to wake them until at least 7am. I must have missed that section of the parenting course. Oh, wait…)

But actually I’m hiding from myself. The mess of guilt and duty and boredom of being a work/stay at home mum. I loved helping another author bring their book into the world, but working on someone else’s deadline was ‘real’ work. The kids did childcare (and hated it). The house suffered. People ran out of clean/ironed clothes. I realised however much being a SAHM sucks sometimes it’s easier than self-employed mum.

But.

I was a person, I was appreciated. I was paid.

So, 2017, my plan is for structure. Goals, achievements. The children can adapt to a working-a-bit-more-often mum, just as they adapted to karate mum. This time next year I will have written novels, plural. Perhaps edited a few for others. Maybe even sell some craft on Etsy. Exercise. Read more. Hide less.

Yesterday I took the children swimming and was able to swim away from them (while watching over my shoulder) properly for the first time. They didn’t drown. They did fine.

2017 I’m going to swim away from Mummy towards Amanda. But I’ll still be watching them. Because Mum is a job for life. Just maybe not my only one.

Happy New Year.

Cadge me a Curse Word

Recently my use of ‘Mummy Words’ (mostly ending in uck) has increased exponentially. I seem to be in a permanent grump, with the children, the dog, the weather, the traffic. And it expresses itself in short sharp swear words.

I did wonder if it’s because of some of the parenting blogs I follow on Facebook, that make swearing not just okay but a fundamental part of surviving parenthood. My favourite at the moment is Peter and Jane. If you haven’t come across it, and you have children living at home (or indeed a husband addicted to gadgets or a judgy dog) and you don’t mind more than a few words ending in *uck and *wat, then I highly recommend it. It’s easily the highlight of my day, although possibly it contributes to my rage by vicarious experience and empathy.

But, thinking about it more recently, I have realised what swearing is to me at the moment. It’s a packet of cigarettes.

I started smoking when I was fourteen and realised it was the only way to get a break when working in catering. I did a summer stint in a posh burger bar at Goodwood Races, and soon joined the girls having a crafty fag in the ladies toilets.

I rarely smoked excessively. Only when I absolutely hated my first proper job, shortly before having a breakdown and quitting everything, did I reach anything like a twenty-a-day habit. Then it was because two other girls I worked with were having a hard time too, and the ‘Fancy one?’ email used to come from one of us to the other two at least every half an hour.

I quit smoking when I went travelling in New Zealand and realised I couldn’t possibly afford it. Until I fell for the manager of a hostel I was staying in, and learned how to roll my own so I could cadge a light on the hostel steps – the only way I’ve ever known how to strike up a conversation with a stranger. It worked too, we lived together for a while.

Of course I quit smoking for good over eight years ago, when I discovered I was pregnant. I can honestly say I haven’t had a single one since. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’ve inhaled deeply a few times when passing someone with a roll-up or a Marlboro Light.

I am a hypocrite too, because I hate smoking now with the zeal of the quitter. I don’t even like people vaping near my children, and I’m amazed anyone still does it.

Except…

At times like this, when I’m super-stressed, and the world feels out of control, and people are asking things of me left and right, and the children are being vile, and the weather is awful, and I just want it All. To. Stop. I miss it.

I miss drawing deeply in anger on a burning stick, I miss the camaraderie of the cadged fag. I miss the control. The doing something. The reason to be still for five minutes to do nothing but breathe, even if it is breathing toxic life-ending chemicals.

I realise that my current addiction to coffee, my previous need for a glass of wine every night, my constant search for chocolate or cakes or something to feed the soul hole, are all part of the same thing. Trying to fill the void. Trying to find control in chaos.

And my latest addiction? (Apart from wine and coffee and chocolate and sleep). Swearing. Being able to use forbidden words. Relishing the bite of them. Giving myself permission to tell the family to FO to their face, however wrong it is, just to take back the wheel of my life and who I am as a person.

I love my family. I love my life. I remember being shocked when my doctor asked me in a judgemental way if I didn’t like my children and regretted having them, when I explained my antidepressant dose didn’t seem to be enough to survive the summer holidays. And I couldn’t put into words the dichotomy of love and hate, of giving everything for them but yearning for something for me, the finding of self in being a mother but the massive loss of the self I used to be. The loving being needed but the suffocating prison of it. The days when I can’t breathe because of the pressure of needing to be a person I’m intrinsically not inside: calm, patient, loving, tactile, organised, nurturing.

And on those days I go back to my life working in a bar, or travelling, or hanging out with educated women who say fuck, and I swear.

And I love it.

Can I cadge a swear word?

Life

The more the world goes crazy, the harder it is to write a blog post. I can’t gather myself enough to write anything meaningful about Trump or the NZ earthquake (tearing up roads I remember driving along fifteen years ago) or the gutter press (too many horrors to mention).

But equally a trivial post about my little personal battles with depression, children, writing, builders or being an HSP seems too frivolous to mention. (I hate the term HSP – Highly Sensitive Person. it makes me sound like Mrs Bennett: ‘Oh Kitty, stop coughing, have a thought for my poor nerves nerves.’ Although actually that pretty much sums me up at the moment.)

I went to Remembrance parade with the children yesterday, as they marched proudly, and stood silently and respectfully for hours, with their Beavers and Brownies packs. When the Brigadier addressed them all at the end, she said, ‘We were blessed with wonderful weather, although it’s always cold in November. Yet we parade whether it’s sunny, or raining, or pounding with hail. And it’s those times, when the weather is atrocious, that we come closest to understanding, albeit for a short time, what our soldiers endure for us.’ [I’m paraphrasing, obviously, but that was the gist.]

And sitting here now, finally in silence after my own personal few weeks of awfulness, on my own micro scale, it occurs to me that – trivial as my problems are – perhaps my context allows me to access the world’s suffering in a way I couldn’t if life were always sunny.

And when the sun does shine again (When my HSP stops being Hell is Sound and People and becomes Haven in Serenity and Personal space), I can imagine the world finding sunshine again too. When it feels, like now, that I’ll never not be teary and tired, angry and wired, I can know that healing comes to everything eventually. Trump isn’t president yet, and can be booted out in four years (unlike Brexit 😔) New Zealand will recover and thrive, as it has done so many times. The Millennials will come together and fix the world, if only we 80s kids will step out of the way and let them.

Hope will survive.

Until then, HSP can mean Hoping Sanity Prevails.

Cake and Karate

Karate Exam

Once again I have had a heap of blog post ideas floating around my head, but life keeps getting in the way of me writing them down.

Typing, housework, birthday cakes, after school club forms, karate exams, a new book idea.

So this is just a quick update to keep the blog plodding along!

I passed my first karate exam last Saturday, and my son passed his latest grade easily this time too. Despite feeling for my little girl who I think regretted choosing not to Grade with us, I was very proud of us both, particularly my son. Even without his sister, he walked in with head high and 100% focus and breezed an exam I was sure he would fail. His drawing of his exam shows how much it meant to him.

On the flip side I didn’t do so well on my first Proofreading paper. I got a B- which doesn’t sound too bad until you know that I need a straight B to pass. It turns out I edit too much. Ahem.

Wobbly Cake

I made my son the requested Lego cake. It didn’t rise and was nowhere near the image my son picked out, but he liked it and it tastes great!

But oh my that lettering was far harder than it should be. Despite my many talents, manipulating fondant icing isn’t one of them!

I’m trying to make space for writing something new. Not that there is very much space at the moment between the school run, paid work, and party prep.

But I have an idea and that’s a start. I’ve challenged my husband to write something for the Chicken House competition (deadline December). Not sure if either of us will manage it, but the race is on.

Thankfully I’m at the ‘carrying an idea around in my mind and world building’ which is just as well. I don’t know if it’s the antibiotics (my ear infection came back and it’s definitely made me feel bleh – MTMcGuire I think you’re onto something!) or whether it’s an excited child getting out of bed at 5am yesterday, but I’m definitely a bit fuzzy. Writing a dystopian novel probably requires me to be a bit sharper.

In the meantime I’d better get back to typing and party prep. Who says SAHMs have it easy? 😀

Circles

Lego Party Bags

I spent this morning cutting out circles.

There’s nothing like a monotonous task to make you reassess life. And there’s nothing like trying to cut out neat circles to make you feel like a failure. (Try it, it’s impossible.)

September is like January for me. It’s a time of new beginnings and resolutions. A mixture of hope and ache, looking forward and feeling lost. The mornings are chilly but the days are warm. The children go back to school, and I’m free. But free to do what?

It’s also a birthday month. I love doing prep for birthdays because it’s fun and creative and the sole purpose is to make someone else smile. I like doing things for other people.

I’m not so good at my own birthday. I want to feel special, but don’t like being the centre of attention. I want people to lavish me with gifts, but I hate waste and can be a horrible sulking six-year-old feeling sad and guilty in equal measure if I don’t like what I’ve been given.

Poor family.

And today, for the first time in a long time, I feel lonely. Crazy, huh? I’ve spent the last six weeks pining for five minutes to myself and now I feel vulnerable in the emptiness.

The first week of school was okay. There was so much to catch up on, and I was on the ball. I organised clubs and Brownies/Beavers uniform. I dug out football boots and ironed shirts. Filled out forms, wrote cheques, and monitored homework. I even got around to finishing and posting off my first proofreading assignment.

Can you tell what it is yet?

But now the novelty and urgency has worn off. I still have birthday party prep to do – I’m dreaming about Lego cakes and spending my days making chocolate bricks and a Lego head pinata. But I’m trying to do it on a budget because I’ve had a spending splurge recently and no income to off-set the guilt.

I don’t even feel like knitting.

I think the gaping hole is meaning. Without the children at home, I don’t have an identity or a purpose (or an excuse). Without working on my books I’m not an author. But I’m also not a very good house-person or a very nice wife either. I don’t want to iron or paint my daughter’s room. I don’t want to do romantic things for my tenth wedding anniversary. I don’t really want to do anything.

Sigh.

My equivalent of the January blues, except it’s sunny outside so the weather doesn’t match my mood.

Maybe I should carry on writing, despite the metaphorical bruises from bashing my head against a closed door for six years. Perhaps you can be a writer without anyone actually reading what you write.

Maybe I just need a really good idea for a new children’s book.

Or maybe I should shut up, stop feeling sorry for myself, put it all down to deafness-caused-by-a-horrid-ear-infection and get on with things.

Answers on a postcard!

Still Alive

13686492_10154236711202211_93610658222495883_n I’m just beginning week three of the summer holidays and I’m still here. Just.

It’s not that I don’t love spending time at home with the children – I do.

We have a huge garden for them to play in, plenty of gadgets and toys to keep them entertained (not that you’d know it) and enough spare cash to have the odd day out.

It’s just….

I don’t do people. I like silence and stillness.

The children giggling, screaming and singing is as tiring as listening to the children squabble, bicker and fight. In some ways it’s worse. When they’re fighting I can yell, ‘Enough!’ every ten minutes, not that it does much good. When they’re loud because they’re loving life, I have to try and enjoy it and not feel how it’s stripping my skin away like a potato peeler.

But I’m learning.

I’m learning that the shattered exhaustion will go away after I get a few days (hours, minutes?) of silence.

I’m learning that if I take myself off to nap, they will eventually play a game together, and possibly even not fight for a whole ten minutes.

I’m learning that I can work while they’re at home (I’ve had some audio-typing to do) as long as I don’t mind it taking twice as long and sapping the last of my strength.

I’m learning that if I spell it out to them that they can have sweets as long as they’ve had two portions of fruit and veg they will actually listen to that, even if the ‘fruit’ is raisins and the ‘veg’ is baked beans.

I’m learning to lower my expectations of myself and to not try and create a Facebook-friendly life. Although I do post the odd set of photos, it’s usually with titles like ‘just to prove to my children they did have a fun day out’ and ‘trying to be a Pinterest mum’.

13895340_10154251767422211_7588253192972986606_n And we have had fun.

We’ve been to the farm and Anglesey Abbey, we’ve made giant bubbles and crystals and collages. We’ve done some study (to earn iPad games) and baked way too many cakes and cookies. We’ve had mini piano lessons and karate.

Oh yes, I decided I was a grown-up after all and it wasn’t for my daughter to tell me I couldn’t take part in something, so I started karate too. My goodness it’s harder than it looks!

Anyway, that’s about all the words I have in my cluttered head. I’m off to do some knitting whilst being an attentive audience to a piano composition and a drum solo (quite possibly at the same time) before dragging the kids to Waitrose for my much-needed daily caffeine intake.

Survival. With plenty of coffee and cake and a little bit of STFU.

June Journals #30 ~ Hope Glimmers

After my day of despair, I had a glimmer of hope yesterday, with two bits of good news.

Firstly, someone I know through Facebook was looking for an audio transcriber. I did the training for Take Note a while ago, but couldn’t fit their assignments into a school day. Who knew that work wouldn’t be a total waste?

It’s not exactly going to make me rich, but it was lovely to actually do some work, of real use to someone, and know that I was getting paid for it.

The second sparkle came from Twitter. In fact, now I think about it, it was a day of social media success. Turns out there can be a benefit to staring blankly at Facebook and Twitter all the time.

I discovered that The Knight Agency were running a pitch war on Twitter. That’s when you try to condense your 70,000 word novel into 140 characters (less the hashtag) and agents pick the ones they like. I’ve never been particularly good at it, but yesterday I was lucky.

I pitched Refuge at Riley Road (and a couple of others) and one of the agents clicked the heart. That gave me permission to send her the first three chapters.

It’s a teeny tiny flicker of light. The same agent favourited over a dozen novels just while I was watching, and probably many more. But it does at least mean my submission won’t go straight in the bin.

Oh, and it stopped raining long enough for my son to play cricket and get his certificate and medal. Hurrah.

To top it off, for the first time ever today, I don’t have to do the school run at home time. For the first time in three years (or as long as I can remember anyway) I can drop them off at 9am and not look at the clock again all day.

A proper working day and work to do – I almost feel like a normal person.

Post script.

Hahahahahahaha karma’s a bitch, yes? I wrote the above at 7.30am, and then spent the next hour trying to connect the computer to the internet. I ended in tears, screaming at the computer, the kids, the world. I can’t work without internet + computer.

And then my daughter said she felt sick. She’s gone to school, but I’m staring at my phone, waiting for ‘the call’ as I retype my post on the ipad.

That’ll teach me to share my wins! Still, at least there’s tennis, it isn’t currently raining, and the ipad is working.

Ending the month, as I started it, looking for the positive!

P.P.S

Fixed the computer, for now at least. Not just a pretty face 😀

June Journals #29 ~ Drowning in Doubt

Testing Times

I’m glad this is my penultimate June Journals post. Writing every day has made me self aware again, in a way I had managed to hide from for a while.

When your mind is a war zone, mindfulness isn’t the calm serenity it’s claimed to be.

And I’ve no doubt you’ll be glad to no longer have to endure my parenting existential angst.

Because at the moment I just can’t parent. I don’t know how.

My daughter seems so full of rage and sarcasm and disappointment, I don’t know how to parent it. I don’t know what it is she wants or needs from me.

Yesterday she insisted that 10 + (5×10) = 50. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to gently point out that it wasn’t quite right. When she got angry with me, I was on the verge of tears.

I can’t parent that.

This morning she came in at 6am in a rage because her hair bobble kept falling out when she did handstands against her bedroom wall.

I can’t parent that.

I heard her screaming like a fishwife at her brother and ordering him to do stuff. A knot formed in my stomach and I didn’t want to get out of bed, because I know I will make it worse. I’m frightened of her, of upsetting her or enduring her wrath.

I can’t parent that.

She’s angry at the weather for stopping her doing cartwheels, but the endless cartwheels just leave her frustrated and in tears, either because they don’t go right or because I won’t watch and applaud every single one.

I can’t parent that.

I watched Serena Williams falter in a tennis match against an unranked opponent yesterday because of her doubt and self-recrimination. It’s destructive, and oh so hard to live with. I know, because that’s my daughter.

It’s like walking around on a floor of TNT and not knowing where the trigger is. When I said that to my husband yesterday he smothered a laugh. Because it’s also like living with me.

And that’s the crux of it. I can’t parent her because she is me.

I remember once, when I was a teenager, my mum said, “You’ve inherited all my worst traits.” I was crushed. I took it that there was nothing good in me. Now I see if for what it was: my mother’s own self-doubt and insecurity.

I watch my daughter and see all the things I loathe about myself, stropping and stamping around, making everyone miserable. Needing praise but reacting badly to anything that can be taken as criticism.

I hate it in myself, so how can I parent it in someone else? Never mind the recriminations that it’s all my fault that she’s like that.

And that’s just behaviour. Don’t even get me started on my failings in other areas of stay-at-home-mumdom. Like that husband ran out of clean shirts, or that the kids eat nothing but sugar and fat, or that the house is a steaming pit of disgustingness while I sat and knitted and watched tennis all day yesterday.

Sigh.

This was meant to be a positive set of posts. I was going to put ‘can’t even get that right’ but self-pity is an indulgence.

Anyhoo. Let’s find a positive. I wrote to the council and helped get the roadworks put off to the summer holidays, so I can do the school run without screaming.

It’s not raining yet today, so my son might get to do some of his much-anticipated school trip.

My knee feels better and I can walk this morning.

I have food in the fridge, clothes in the cupboard, and money in my purse.

I have a daughter, a son, a husband, who love me despite my failings.

I am grateful. Truly.

June Journals #28 ~ Mummy is Broken

Taken by my son

I’m a little bit broken this morning. Physically and mentally.

I have knitter’s wrist (carpel tunnel, though mostly from ironing all day yesterday), runner’s knee (swollen and sore, actually from swimming), and mother’s head (child up in the night, not enough sleep)!

Mostly I’m broken from too many deep discussions this week.

I’ve reached the point where I’m only capable of reacting like a five-year-old: sticking my fingers in my ears and going, “Lalalalala I can’t hear you!”

Boy’s Best Friend

And don’t even mention the football. I certainly won’t.

But there’s tennis, and the sun is shining. It isn’t raining – that in itself feels like a miracle.

And I spent a wakeful hour in the night looking for knitting patterns for a mermaid doll, for a friend of my daughter who is having an underwater-themed birthday party, so it’s not all bad. When my wrist is up to knitting again of course.

As it seemed appropriate this morning, I thought I’d share a little ditty I wrote a while ago, called A Mother’s Hymn (to the tune of Morning has Broken).

Mummy is broken, tired and yawning
Mummy is broken, shaken and stirred
Praise for the caffeine, Praise for the chocolate
Pass me some matchsticks, my vision is blurred

Mine is the long day, mine is the long night,
Tantrums and nightmares, cuddles and pee
Bring me the weekend, dream of a lie-in
One day when they’re older, and I can just be

Amanda Martin