I've Changed My Picture

The lovely view of Brookend Locks is from where I used to live, where I've walked with children and families for 25 years.  In my previous life.  In the town where I lived from age two, grew up, had children and lived my chaotic life until I was 46.

Friends, Children and Bella, doin the lock walk

That was then.  This is now.  Now I live 25 miles away and am finding new places to walk with my family and their dogs, and my friends and their dogs, and some of my children.  Now they are older, they can choose whether to scrape their sorry butts out of the door and are sometimes too lazy or computer addicted to come too.  Also, a little aspie thing, they don't know this place and these walks so don't want to do it.  I have to find another good walk for them to become familiar with and until I find it and drag them round it a few times the boys aren't keen.  Not for two of my boys is the exploration of the unknown, they need the familiar.  

Ruby's a good walk tester though.  She has wanderlust, like her dad.  Likes to look round a corner to see what's there.

View across the fields to our house

So what I need is new picture of where we live now.  A sort of this is where I'm at kind of a picture.  No, not a huddled jumper over clothes under dressing gown freezing in the corner of the sofa kind of picture.  No  beauty or inspiration there.  What is needed is a trawl through the computer files.

Jarrod hiding at the top of the sea wall on a day at the beach

The first thing is - gosh it takes so long for a technically inept person like me just to attach and arrange photos just how I want them.  The second is I am not and will never be a talented photographer.  The bit that goes from wow I want to keep that view/sight forever to oh that's a lovely photo just don't match up.  It gets lost in translation.  I'm a happy snapper.  I look at my family and think I ought to snap just to give them a reminder of a day or occasion.  A visual memory jogger.  

For years we didn't have a camera (couldn't afford one and couldn't have afforded development if we had).  The first camera we owned we bought (third hand) when I was pregnant with Kurtis.  It was great, it took two pictures for every one.  You had to send the negatives off to be developed though, which wasn't a problem in that slo mo world but the problem lay in finding a chemist that would do it.  Then when I was pregnant with Ruby the kids dad bought me a camera of my own.  Gosh I was so chuffed.  My sister and I took the kids on holiday to Worcester and I dopped it lens out, face down on a concrete path in a park.  That was the end of that.  Then I had a couple of camera phones.  Then I didn't.  Then last year, in order to start this blog, for my birthday, the kids dad's mum bought me a camera for my birthday.  It is my prized possession.  So prized, I rarely take it out and rarely use it. Duh.

I do have one picture that I took that I like though - this one of Kurtis on the beach at Brightlingsea.

So, at the top is the picture I have chosen.  I didn't take it.  Ruby did.  On her phone.  Doesn't need a posh camera, makes up for it with a good eye.

Other Peoples Blogs - Post Inspiration

Hello sweeties.

Over the past couple of days I have read two posts, one from John at Going Gently and one from Gertie Pye at Quiltingforengland and they have both inspired me to write a little anecdote from 1988.  

When he was 18 the kids dad had a motorbike accident and had a hind quarter amputation.  He was my toy boy I was 21.  At the time we had been living at his mums to save a deposit for a house.  In the autumn of that year we were given a council flat.  I worked in London at the time and used to leave at 7 in the morning and get home about 7.30 ish in the evening.  His mum used to come round in the day to check he was alright, make him some lunch, wash up, tidy round, do a bit of washing or hoovering.  She was checking on her lovely son she had just nearly lost and helping out his young, stressed, stretched girlfriend who was trying to be all things to all people.  I used to pitch up in the evening all knackered and bad tempered to find the old busybody (old ha she was younger than I am now) had been in my house interferring in my life, telling the world I couldn't cope and was crap at everything.  Now the truth is I couldn't cope and the more anyone tried to help me the more defensive and angry I got.  I would whisk myself into a frenzy and shout and bang and go to bed and get up the next morning and do it all again.

Fast forward a year, kids dad needed operations that needed post op care so I gave up work to do this.  We couldn't afford a TV or a Licence or the electricity to run it so we didn't have one but we did have a radio and I listend all day and half the night.  Like his mum I became an Archers addict.  Ruth was a young farmer and Gill her mother in law used to go to her house to help.  They had a big row over it.  MIL came round when I was listening and said "oh, I'll get a bottle of wine and catch you up".  We sat there long into the night while she caught me up on all the characters and then we had a conversation about the Ruth/Gill situation.  UH-huh you know where I'm going.  Suffice to say, in the words of Johnny Cash "I walked away with a different point of view".

That evening is one of the salient points in my life, when I learnt that no matter how stressed a person is, it is always useful to look at something from someone else's point of view.  I am stubborn and often it takes me while to concede that I am not the most always right person on the planet.  But hopefully, I don't hurt as many people as I used to.

And over the years, those extra bags of shopping, bit of hoovering, washing up etc have been helpful and not just  to me but also to another mother whose children were growing and leaving and who needed to still be needed.  And when my eldest goes to university in September that will be me.

Windows 8 - Its not Grr eat

My desktop  was bought at rock bottom price as a stop gap.  It is basic but it does the job, slowly, noisily but it does it.  It has Windows 7 on it which is very good.  I  did at one time have a lovely swanky, tip top, up to the minute computer with XP.  I had it built for me by a man down the road.  That was in another life, in another town and another decade (well 2006 to be precise).  That man's little two room business is long gone and in January my computer finally bit the dust.  It had had four different cases, three hard drives, two CD readers, a new sound card and a new graphics card over the years.  I miss that Dude, I was proud of it, it did not let me down, often, jam sandwich excepting.  

Anyhoo, I got to thinking I "needed" a laptop.  It would have a webcam (which I need to keep in contact with the course tutor).  It would have a card reader (which I also need to upload photos for my course and of course for this here blog) and more importantly I could use it anytime not just outside of when others are doing their facebook homework.  I went to the shops to check them out.  Then I went again, I wasn't making any rash decisions.  Then I decided on Tuesday I was going to finally do it.  

Off I went into PC World as fast my legs would carry me.  "Can I have that one" I said and out and home as fast as the speed limit on the A12 would allow me.

It works brilliantly, it's fast and joy of joys it's shiny purple.  It was not top of the range so was at the lower end of the price bracket, bonus, but hey I'm a 46 year old sewing enthusiast.  I want a typewriter with a memory, I want to muck about with photos and use the internet.  I do not care about "high end graphics" (Jarrod) nor did I Youtube myself taking it out of the box.  

However, Kurtis did threaten to film and Youtube me shouting and swearing at the crappy tablet format Windows 8.  Grr I am not amused.  Everything is on this screen or that screen which you have to pull up or pull down.  You have to go to the top of the screen then drag it off the bottom just to close a window - there's no click the little cross here.  I cannot imagine anyone using it in a business situation.  Why would anyone want to put a touch screen phone system on a computer.  Its mad.  

I will get used to it I expect.  It came free and if I want 7 I have to pay for it and all the money is spent just buying it so that wont happen.  But GRR right now I 8 it.

Starting Something New

I remember when the kids dad and I bought our old house years ago people saying to me "New house, New baby".  Well that ain't never gonna happen now.  Got lotsa kids already.  So new house, new what?

I am starting the City and Guilds Patchwork and Quilting Certificate Level 3.  I'm doing this via distance learning with Creative Stitch Suffolk.  Nervous and excited, excited and nervous.  The main worry for me is the design element as although I am creative I am no artist.  Still if you don't try, you'll never know, so here I am taking the plunge.

Doin' The Happy Dance

I'm Going

Woo Hoo.  After being so jealous of those who did go this year, I have saved and saved and bought myself one of these.  I'm so excited.  Erm, ... I havn't yet told anyone who will be looking after Rory.   I have not been anywhere without the kids for about eight or maybe nine years so I am probably due a couple of days.  Anyway, I will cross that bridge when I come to it.  

My tumble dryer also burnt out two fuses last night when trying to dry the last of the school clothes, which is a bit of a pain in the proverbial.  So I'm going back to Chelmsford now to use the kid's dad's one.  

Phew!

Well, I've moved house.  Last week was an epic week of shifting furniture and stuff, running backwards and forwards, packing, unpacking and, unbelievably, painting.

My new house is in a town 25 miles away from where I've always lived so everything is all different and interesting.  One small thing that is weird different (to me) is that there are no wheelie bins.  All rubbish is put out in bags - "kerbside collection" it's called.  Also weird is that so far I have seen no rats despite this.  

My lounge, hall, kitchen is by turns neat (when I have found homes for all our junk) and ridiculously untidy to the extent that there is NOWHERE to put your feet.  Yesterday, the lounge was so organised I was able to vac the whole floor, then I went back to the lock up and look at it now. Ha, ha!

The kids' dad and I are selling our old house too so we went there last night to check all's well.  In the veg plot Ruby was able to fill a shoe box with strawberries and raspberries.  She said there are loads more coming too.  I knew I planted them for a reason.  "There are some other things too", she said, "They are horrible."  "Are they sour" I asked. "Yes", she replied.  "Blackcurrants?"  "Yes, yuk, why d'you plant them".  Can't please all the people, all the time.  There are six strawberries and three raspberries left in the box 16 hours later.

We also painted the house I rented last year in order to get our bond back.  The landlord was going in with the letting agent on Saturday.  I haven't heard so far how much he will give me so it doesn't seem too good.  I feel a bit aggrieved.  I rented the house because it was at a cheap rent for the amount of space offered, this was for a reason.  Nothing had been done to it for years. The landing, bathroom, kitchen and one of the bedroom lights did not work and no amount of bulb changing affected that and it was FILTHY.  Now that is where I made my big mistake.  I thought I can clean this, I can make this lovely.  The landlord had lived there  and it had been his family home but hadn't lived in it for a long time.  There are many sagas about this but all endeavours have not been appreciated by him.  I painted an orange room cream, he originally said I could but then said he had not said it.  Had a go at me for not painting his pink and match pot painted kitchen in the first three months I lived there.  Apparently, as I had been given permission to do so he expected it done and I wanted to get on with it.  God, I better shut up, I could write pages on this horrible house.  Suffice to say I should have rented the new one I looked at.  Still, it's over now.  And breathe.

I feel much happier now.  Even living on five hours sleep for a month and sorting out chaos, I feel better.  Much more myself and at home in my skin.  Phew 

Packing

I have grabbed my friends laptop and 3G dongle for a few moments of internet presence.

I am moving house.  Not by choice, but because the landlord wants to sell, so out next Thursday.  Stuff is being packed and shifted to a garage I have use of which is handy.  It's no secret that two of my boys have ASD/ADHD which means all change is anathema to them so packing slowly a bit at a time sounds like stretching agony out but actually with my boys is just getting them used to the idea.  Also as I can't afford removals it takes one small fat woman a long time to shift stuff.

My modem here got broken last week and with only a couple of weeks to go it is pointless to wait ten days and pay £40 for a new one so I'm doing without.  At the new place I'm going with a new provider so electronic wizardry will come free of charge with it.  On Saturday, one of my sons was nearly crying with the frustration of social networking isolation.  He had to go cycling with his brother instead.

Last week my youngest started his first week at boarding school specialising in BESD, which includes ADHD.  I cried for two days.  He loved it.  Thank God.  He goes weekdays, coming home Friday afternoon.  Good job I was packing, filled up my time instead of teaching him.

In other news, when trying to help me pack my son dropped my sewing machine, then tried to fix it, lost some of the screws, got in a state ...  It's been fixed for a couple of weeks, but is still in the shop as he spent the money he had saved to pay to get it mended.  As moving is expensive and it cost £70.80 I am saving up to pay for it.