Below are the 8 most recent journal entries recorded in smallphoenix's LiveJournal:

Thursday, January 26th, 2006
11:25 pm	Message in a bottle What a long time ago... I remembered, just then, that once upon a time I had a livejournal, and that if I could find out what my password had been I could launch these word in my head out into a bottle on the net, to find who they will and leave me in peace. You see he's been away six days, and that's the magic number, so that now the wine and the time's kicked in, the not quite enough sleep, and suddenly I'm awake and buzzing when I should be tucked under my duvet, though I've been downstairs and checked I took my pills. Naughty pills (that's for another time, perhaps). So this, maybe not quite as addictive as writing or surfing (surfing in the night, now there's a thought, if the air was warm enough and the sea at the end of summer, would you feel the wave behind you if you couldn't see it, that rush just before it hits when you need to kick off and bear down on the front of the board, only body boarding, not athletic enough or brave enough to stand up, and I don't need to show off, just feel the surf beneath me, that's enough) and perhaps if i get these words out I can turn the computer off again (bad sign that I turned it on) and go to bed. At least I am punctuating. Bad sign too that I couldn't sit down at the vets. Bad smell, didn't help, I suspected poor Lauren of shitting in her basket, instead some other animal had done something foul and they couldn't get rid of the stink, which anyway propelled me round and around the waiting room, hope they don't think I was rude, they weren't running particularly late. It will be self limiting. He will come home and I will sleep because it is bed time, get up because it is time to rise, and then my system will equilibrate. Unless it it doesn't, unless the wave is already underneath me (cool image, didn't know that was coming) and carrying me out and on into the fearful dark; i know even through the flowing words where I don't want to go, to be, to end up making marks on paper that make no sense to anyone, least of all to me. OK, OK, enough, you know now how I am spinning (I remember times long ago when drunk and the whole room would spin, not around my head but tumble down and over as if I was in the drum of the washing machine, infinitely appalling) and having thrown the words up and out to fall where they will I can go to bed. I hope. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 29th, 2004
8:15 am	Short of time, yet again I'll try not to do the same whinge as usual. Last year I went on a walking holiday in the Lake District with the excellent organisers Walking Women. I was worried that I might not be fit enough, so I went for several long walks and spent time on the gym treadmill with it set on maximum incline. I was particularly worried about the hill climbing aspect given the complete absence of hills where I live. I was fine, in fact I did as well as anyone and better than several women who claimed to walk in hills regularly. This year I'm going on a walking holiday in the Lake District with Walking Women. I have had absolutely no time to go for long walks or spend time on the treadmill. I was going to do one or the other of those today but now my daughter's ill and I can't leave the house. Tomorrow I have some commitments, Wednesday I'm busy all day going to a conference on Arts and Mental Health. Friday there's end of term stuff to go to at school and laundry and shopping to sort out. I also have seeds and plants to go in the allotment and at school, that I really don't want to leave until mid April. Saturday I leave for the Lakes. So I'm worried whether I'm fit enough all over again, particularly since this time we are doing a five day holiday instead of a two day one. ARRG (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 22nd, 2004
8:17 am	Fabric and Fables Sorry, this is a bit long, but it's two pieces really. I've been in Writers Workshops on and off for more than twenty years. The main one I'm in meets about every 3 months and we each contribute a short story, play or chapter(s) of a novel, which is distributed so that we can all read it in advance. We then discuss the pieces in a scrupulously fair round robin fashion so that everybody gets to talk, uninterrupted, five minutes about each piece, and then the author gets five minutes to reply followed by five minutes general discussion. This is all very intense, takes about five hours plus sometimes a good deal of travelling time, and doesn't happen all that often. So a group of us decided to set up a smaller, more informal group in our home town. We meet once a month on Friday the Thirteenth or the closest Friday to that, just for the evening. The format that we seemed to have agreed on is that one person circulates something to be discussed, but in addition if there's time we'll do a writing excercise out of Ursula Le Guin's excellent book 'Steering the Craft'. This week we started wtih the first exercise; seemed logical. The challenge was to write something that gloried in and played with the sounds and rhythms of prose. The interesting thing is the variety of responses four people managed to produce in just twenty minutes. - A winding, often onomatopoeic and alliterative stream of consciousness piece that started from oil on a puddle and reached Louis XIV via a Viking longship and Dorothy Dunnett... - A childlike but gruesome story about four tigers in which as many words as possible began with the letter T. - An intense description of claustrophobia experienced in a supermarket, using lots of repetition of words and phrases. - A descriptive and sensuous snippet about two children entering a house that they believe to be haunted. *************************************************************************** Another thing I did this weekend is go to a Quilt Fair with my daughter. D'you know, not that long ago I thought that quilt making was a bit silly; cutting up yards of material just to stitch it all back together again. Now I'm converted. I've always liked fabric and tended to hoard it so these fairs are like a jewel box to me. Stall upon stall laden with neatly folded squares of fabric, arranged in boxes by colour or design. It's much harder than plant fairs. I covet things mightily at plant fairs, but my garden is sufficiently small and full that I really do have to think of a place I'm going to plant something before I can let myself buy it. Also, I know that even if I don't buy THIS hosta NOW I will probably get another chance to buy it, or one very like it. Fabrics are made only for a short period and will never be available again. But I restricted myself to just these: - A mediaevel millefiori style piece in red and gold and green on cream - A piece with little panels containing Japanese ladies, chrysanthemums, cherry blossom or bamboo, in shades of plum, cinnamon, white and gold - An Indian inspired piece in red, gold and olive green, very richly patterned - Something a little strange in turquoise and purple with gold and black, stylised, rather sinister figures on it, in a vaguely South American feel. - Another rather ethnic piece with cream and brown stripes decorated with gold and black symbols - Half a metre of hand dyed material in shades mostly of purple, fuschia and orange, with a bold pattern of black leaves, crosses and other geometrical symbols I also bought two books on quilting and a bag of mixed braid for various craft and sewing projects. And some little pieces of material for my daughter to make stuff for her doll's house. And a present for my husband (not quite all the stalls were on sewing). After spending too much money we then toured the exhibition quilts. Most of them are indescribably beautiful. Photographs will let you appreciate the overall design, the fabulous choices of colour, but The textures of the fabric, the subtlety of the choice of material, and the details and workwomanship in the lines of the quilting just don't show up, let alone the details of layering, beading and embroidery. Some of them are pictures of real scenes or things; others are abstract, yet others are more conventional bed-style quilts either with a twist of some kind, or simply fabulous examples of their type. To me, they're more worthy of the name of 'art' than a lot of paintings you see in galleries, while the amount of work that goes into each one invests it with meaning and, to the makers, memories. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 17th, 2004
6:40 pm	Hmm, note to self: Next time you go to the garden centre don't buy so much stuff that you can't fit the kids in the car... Actually, it wasn't quite that bad. Indeed, the extraordinary thing was that I went to the garden centre and only bought ONE thing that wasn't on my list, and that was cheap. I didn't buy any plants at all! Mind you, I didn't look at them. However, what I did buy was a piece of 6'x3' trellis, which I need for the plants I bought on Sunday. I didn't think it would be a problem, after all I often buy 7' Christmas trees. (That's often as in once a year, I'm not that strange.) However, Christmas trees are long and pointy, not wide and flat. There was some very blue language. ('Don't swear Mummy') There was consulting the car manual (on how to remove the **** parcel shelf). There was wondering whether it would fall it out if we stuck it through the wear windscreen (which is supposed to open, I hasten to add). There was serious silent consideration as to the practicality leaving the children with a bar of chocolate while I ferried the trellis home and then came back for them. But we eventually got the thing in, with two of the three rear seats folded down. This meant that it stuck right out over K's head in the front, but she's short enough that it didn't matter. It also stuck out over my head, but I still wasn't in real danger of hitting myself unless there was an accident. However it went right next to C's head at approximately jaw level. He was fine if he kept still, but I had to be careful on roundabouts! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 15th, 2004
3:01 pm	What is it with bras these days? I used to wear 36B. Yes, I know, everybody thinks they're 36B but I was properly measured a few times. I got fatter, had kids and moved up to 38B. I didn't get measured, just assumed that if I was a couple of inches wider that would be OK. I did noticed that I couldn't get any underwired bra that felt at all comfortable, but assumed that this was because everyone else is a martyr to their looks - I won't wear heels either. Got fatter still, measured self and decided I needed a 40A. Problem: there are hardly any bras made in a 40A. I got some, but then got very determined and lost a lot of weight. Those 40A bras no longer fitted, even a little bit. A friend told me that underwired bras should be comfortable and I should get myself properly measured and fitted, even recommended a shop. Dear Trinny and Suzanna, harridans of the TV makeover, also indoctrinated me with their weekly bosom grabbing and bra stuffing. I hate bra fittings. It's horribly intimate and stressful, with endless trips to find something that fits, endless polite summoning of the assistant to have a look, all the while getting hotter and sweatier and more and more convinced you're spoiling the bras and offending the nose of the assistant. But I gritted my teeth and went along. She whipped her tape measure around my ribs, much tighter than I'd done, grabbed my boobs a la Trinny and Suzanna, and pronounced that I was a 34DD. DD! Where had all that come from? I'd not been that big when I was breastfeeding and I'd been properly fitted then. I didn't really believe her. But I tried on the (underwired) bras that she brought and not only did they fit, but I looked so much better. I didn't have a short waist anymore! BUT, the same thing happened to my mother recently, and to a friend of hers. So my question is, have they sneakily changed bra sizes? After all, they've changed the standard measurements and shapes of dress sizes*, so why not bras? After all, it's much more ego boosting to be a 34DD than a 38A... *Looking at some 1950's dress patterns recently, I noticed that a 36" bust seemed to be a size 18 and the waists were proportionately smaller relative to the bust and hips. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 14th, 2004
3:22 pm	Is there anything nicer than buying plants? Other than buying seeds, perhaps. My garden is stuffed full but I evicted (with extreme prejudice) an allegedly wall-trained pyracantha which I'm sure the window cleaner loathed. It had got very overgrown and according to my guru Christopher Lloyd once they've gone all straggly and stop berrying it's well nigh impossible to get them nice again. I wouldn't have put it there in the first place; it was a sin of the builders. So I had a good excuse to replant! After trawling through my various books for advice on dry shade, I chose a dusty pink Japanese anenome, a white climbing rose (Mme Alfred Carriere) and a deep blue large flowered Clematis. My only doubt is that the anenome is going to clash chronically with the large hypericum next to it, I just hope that the hypericum does its stuff first. The kids were surprisingly cheerful about being dragged around garden centres on a cold and very blustery March morning; since I knew exactly what I wanted I sent them out on little forays to find the various things, which they appeared to enjoy. C also enjoys pushing the trolleys, even when loaded up with 100L of bark and 80L of manure... I was sure he was going to hurt himself! (Comment on this)
Friday, March 12th, 2004
8:18 am	Another day - the busy goes without saying! This morning I have to have blood taken for a research study and take my daughter to have stitches out. I have a list of things to do. Actually I always have four lists of things to do: Today, Tomorrow, Very Soon and Soon. Typically there are about 15 things on the Today list and the Very Soon list, and a about 8 on the soon. Tomorrow accumulates about five things over the course of Today and then grows overnight when all the things I didn't do Today is added to it. Admittedly I have to write every single thing down that I need to do, even washing my hair and getting the kids to do their music practise, because my memory is completely shot by years of taking (legal) drugs, but even so, it gets me down. Two things in particular are worrying me. I'm behind on the allotment - stuff needs to be going in, tidying up needs to be finished, but over the last two weeks either I've been too busy or the weather's been too bad. I've suddenly got a big catch-up to do before the school holidays starts and it will be even harder to get down there. This brings me to the second thing. For the first week of the Easter holidays I'm going on a walking holiday with a friend. This will be marvellous and we both enjoy the fresh air, company and getting away from our families for a few days. But not only does this mean another week taken out of my keeping-up-with-allotment worry, but I ought to be spending some time on getting fit. However what with my recent school commitments and sick kids etc I've been spending less time at the gym, not more,and I've not had any chance to put my boots on and go for a decent walk. But I'm not allowed to be stressed, oh no. Only people who have stressful high powered jobs with commuting are allowed to be stressed. Must go, just discovered that small son is still naked and we leave for school in 15 minutes! (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 11th, 2004
1:57 pm	Free time but no free time I think people may envy me, sometimes. They see me at liberty, free to do what I want to do. You see, I don't have a paid job. I look after the kids and the house and the cooking and so on, but apart from that I can garden, write, go to the gym, whatever. So why do I feel I have no free time? The problem is that I'm tied to everybody else. Because I don't do any thing 'really important' I am the one who is always, must always be available. I'm the one who stays home for the electrician. I'm the one who stays home when the kids are ill. I'm the one who clears up the kitchen after dinner. I'm the one who must drop everything to listen to other people's problems, look for other people's misplaced objects, help other people with things, clear up everyone else's vomit. Sometimes they are all (literally) shouting for me at once. The things I want to do are fitted in around the cracks, just as if I had a job, but perhaps even less predictably. Weekends in particular often just disappear in a miasma of housework and homework and husband-maintenance-work. I'm just moaning, I know, but I've had a very busy week and I've got a child ill at home for the second day running. Not very ill, at that! Somehow it's less frustrating if they're really poorly. I wanted to do some gardening, or maybe go to the garden centre and buy some plants, but instead I'm stuck inside. At least it gives me a chance to experiment with this Journal thing. I've really not got a clue how it works yet. (At least, I understand perfectly well what a journal is, but not how I'm supposed to find friends or what it means if I do so.) Back to the housework, I suppose. (1 Comment |Comment on this)