Today, I felt okay.

It's late September but today the sun was out & soaking the City of York with its warm comfort.

After a few days of fragility I was in two minds as to whether to leave the house. A familiar voice was telling me that perhaps I shouldn't bother. Walking to the station let alone the 35 minute train journey would be such effort, & it was probably cold outside. Ear ache comes with the cold & you haven't a suitable hat.

But, it was too late. I'd told Daughter that if she was good we would go for cake with our friend. Currently she wasn't being at all good but any bribery to snap her out of it was worth the effort.

So we wandered to the train station & hopped aboard. It wasn't so much effort after all. It also turned out that a hat wouldn't have been necessary. Nor would the boots or coat that I was wearing, but never mind. We proceeded to amble through the city in the sunshine, not buying anything or going anywhere in particular, just taking in the day.

Then there was a modest lunch: hot ham & cheese bagel & cake to share; cloudy apple juice for her; iced tea & a delicious coffee for me. We were joined by someone lovely & the conversation was honest & theraputic.

It's entirely true when they tell you 'it's the simple things...'

We wandered back across the city & caught the train home.

On the walk from the station to our house we collected acorns & conkers - our current favourite activity - & by the time we were home I was feeling content. A game of catch with some scrumpled-up tissue preceeded Daughter's bed time.

That's all - nothing profound, but today I felt okay.

Today was a good day.

Gloss, Spin, Pretence & all the other messed up stuff.

This week it feels as though a lot has been happening. 

My daughter was in hospital for a few days. Thankfully it turned out to only be a viral infection. I stayed with her, of course & actually, it proved a distraction -- maybe not a welcome one given the circumstance of her being quite ill, but a welcome one in that it meant I didn't get the chance to think about much else for a little while.

I haven’t written in quite some time & the guilt & something else that I can’t quite describe seems to be welling up inside of me.

I lay in bed tonight with my eyes wide open – I wasn’t sleepy & thoughts were whirring around as they do before the inevitable happens & I come to place them on paper. Tears started rolling from my wide-open eyes onto the pillow as all that I was contemplating rolled in & out of the forefront of my mind. Various notions, all in a similar & fairly selfish vein.

When I began writing Our Pea Green Pod’s blog I tried to keep it glossy. Keep it about the hearty, wholesome family stuff – detailing the great things that had happened & maybe a little of the rubbish, but always trying to take positives from them & put a sheen on things. My aim was to take the best from all of the good stuff that happened, but I think now that by doing so this wasn’t truthful. It’s not consistent with life to just take from the happy bits. You take from all aspects of life the best that you can. Sometimes, you have to go with the crap. Sometimes there is no good to be taken, but you must take it & move on. Most of the time, it's easier said than done. Life is not fair & not every scenario, good or bad, is tied neatly with a lovely moral bow. Sometimes you do hellish things & feel shamelessly satisfied & other times you may give all of your self & good intentions to come out stripped of every last wit.

Presently, I’m wading through a hell of a lot of crap. Half of the crap I’m wading through I’m not even sure where it came from, what made it or why the hell I have ended up in the middle of it.

As I have said before: Sometimes I just feel sad.

I don’t know when it started. I always remember some inkling of feeling this way, but as I’ve grown older it seems to have become ever more present in my day-to-day life. Sometimes I’m happy: sometimes stuff isn’t in the forefront of my mind & life just ticks by, but recently, a lot of the time I have felt sad.

My Grandfather has always said that I come from a family of worriers. It’s very true – I lay awake at night worrying about everything I possibly could. I envy those people who can just lay their heads on their pillow & be gone. Fast asleep.

I know that my father is the same, & I notice as he has got older his life has crumbled more & more. He is lazy & sad; he has nothing much to be here for; he has no real purpose in life. I see those same traits in myself & I am terrified that one day I will become him. 

My father is also an alcoholic. A few years ago my Grandfather traced our family tree. It seems that alcoholism is a reoccurring theme in our line.

My Grandfather always has a glass of whiskey in the cupboard, whatever the time of day. 

My father always has a bottle of cheapest vodka under his bed.

Though I enjoy drinking – I am a party girl at heart – I have to say that the one thing that doesn’t worry me is what I drink. I have had the years of conversations with my father that by the next time we speak he doesn’t remember; the endless repetition. I have seen & learned enough from this that I feel fiercely resistant to ever becoming such a creature. Even when I’ve felt at my lowest point there has never been any urge to drink myself into oblivion.

If I can feel so determined not to go down the alcohol route then why can I not apply this same determination to the sadness? It has all ready taken a hold of me & I'm not sure how to make it loosen it's grip.

The feeling of total blackness, darkness, is quite a different thing. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic but the only way that I can describe it is a feeling of utter helplessness. You are so inside your own mind that you can’t see any way out. Stuck.

Of course, when I’m feeling better & when my sense of humour has returned I tend to think of it as being more up my own arse than inside my own mind. But when you’re there it isn’t funny.

The crucial thing is this: if I see these traits in my own father then what if my children feel like this? What if I have given this to them? How will I support them, as well as my lame self? & how will I deal with the guilt of seeing them suffer because of something I have unwittingly done to them? The thought crushes me & scares me beyond belief.

I suppose that the obvious answer is to help myself, in an effort to help them. I don’t know why this is so difficult for me to do. Admitting I feel like this is, for me, akin to admitting failure. I’m fucked up, therefore do I even deserve the chance to be there for my kids? I have managed to muddle along & survive & do what I think is right by my daughter for over three years now & I’ve done it mainly by myself. I have never really told anyone how I feel – I’ve come this far hiding it & I think I’m proud of the job I’ve done. I’m not proud of hiding it, but I am proud that I’ve more or less kept it together.

My friends think I’m strong. People always tell me how independent & amazing I am. I feel proud when they say this & in some ways I think that I am strong, but I also feel guilty because I know that really, I’m not as together as anyone thinks. I’m just well-practiced at pretending.

So, if I press publish then it’s out there. & if it’s out there then I have to go & sort this out for real.

I think that all I want is for someone to be strong for me, at least for a little while.

I want to write that I think it's time to change -- but I think that's too much gloss. There isn't any moral to take from this yet.

[appropriate title here]

Sometimes I just feel sad.

There are reasons, endless reasons, though I don't always know what they are. It's vague. Sometimes it will be one specific thing that is top of the pile & I think that if I can solve the problem it will go away, but it doesn't. The combined weight of everything else, all the niggling back-of-mind crap is what makes it so unbearable, is what drags me down.

It comes in waves. It's almost predictable, yet every time when everything becomes too much I drown. I'm never prepared. Where the hell is my life-raft? Surely someone must have sent help by now, I've been out here for too long.

So much to say, such little ability to make sense.

Well hello y'all!

It's Friday the 9th of September & finally we have an internet connection!

I've been re-reading the last few posts & all though it is not even two months gone it seems like an entirely different lifetime. So much has changed. So much is still changing & I'm struggling to keep up!

Presently, I am feeling an enormous sense of excitement & have decided to spend an evening to try & straighten out the blog, the Etsy shop & the facebook pages in accordance with my change in focus.

Last night was devoted to making goodies from felt, including owl, cat & monster egg cosies as well as felt softies & I am currently hugely enthused with creating a range of handmade gifts especially for children & babies. In between (or rather in order to avoid) unpacking & painting rooms & doing trivial things such as washing up & keeping the house in the fashion that a good wife should I have been making things such as bunting & Christmas decorations (for our own Christmas tree rather than for sale) & so have had the sewing machine out, dusted off & in action!

There is so much to say, blog-readers, & I shall try to say it in a way that makes sense but I am fit to burst at the moment.

I am so happy to be back & entirely submerged in the flow of this creativity & I don't think I can quite get all the ideas & thoughts from my brain into blog form.

I should also say that apart from an ill two weeks last week & the one before, all is well with my health & more importantly TBC's health. I am round & I waddle but I am told that my bump is "compact" & "petite".

Pregnancy is still hard work - with daughter it was a complete breeze in comparison - but I am looking forward to filling my spare time with more making & sewing & biscuit eating. I haven't done much writing in the past few months, instead I have been pouring all energy into other forms of art but I hope to get back into it now. & to start using correct grammar & make some vague sense.

In brief - this weekend I am beginning to launch a new branch of Our Pea Green Pod, which is especially for children & babies & is called Little Pea Green.

Find Little Pea Green on facebook here
& on Etsy here.

It is still very much under construction. I have got many more products made but I haven't put them up due to being at work & having misplaced the USB cable for my camera & being slightly too lazy to begin a hunt this evening. 

You can still find Our Pea Green Pod - which will still be stocking all my random bits & bats - on facebook here
& on Etsy here.

I cannot promise organisation or sense on any of these pages but please, as always, bear with me & I hope that by the end of the week it will all make a little more sense & there will be things to capture your interest.

I will try & get my technical head on this evening & update all the links on this blog.

Or I might just sit & chat to friends whilst drinking tea & eating biscuits. I really like biscuits at the moment.

The Last Night

Tonight my beautiful Daughter & I bathed together.

For some reason, one which entirely escapes me, we have never before had a bath together.

I remember that as a child always I would frequently have baths with my mum. I suppose I thought nothing of it at the time but I realise that it really was a relaxing & natural way to bond. There is something about water that is so soothing, so healing. I realise that bathing seems to be a recurring theme these days - see Contentment - so I'll try & keep the talk of nakedness to a minimum from now on.


After we were dry we got into our pyjamas & went to the chip shop. As you'd expect, we got quite a lot of funny looks, me in bright pink leggings, complete with vivid green JLS hoody (yup, JLS the crap band) & daughter in her stripey pyjamas nicely matched with wellies & wet hair, but who gives a damn! Tomorrow we shan't live here!

Fish & chips were delicious, as expected & then a story was had & currently my little babe is curled up in my bed, or rather on my mattress as I took down her bed & my bedframe earlier today.

There is something entirely fulfilling about the feeling you get when you get out your [enormous] toolkit - steady now - & take something intricate to pieces, knowing that you are fully capable of putting it back together again.

I'm the kind of girl who does not need a man for any of the DIY related things. I'm practical & proud.

So what do I need a man for? Security? Love? Sex?

All of the above, I guess, but being the fully capable type of girl I am still not 100% comfortable with sharing my time. It's something I'll have to get used to, something I have little choice in now - the deed is done. having said that, this is all I've ever wanted & I am excited, I just didn't want it quite so soon.

Now that I re-read, I'd like to add that I am certainly not a fully capable type of girl in an all-round sense. I am fully capable in the technical/practical sense, but emotionally I guess, as we all are, I'm a a little bit fucked up & it's fair to say I function better when I'm loved. I suppose, then, that means I'm covered in all aspects now.

I don't know. I don't have the answers to how it will pan out or whether this will be exactly what I need. It feels scary, but at the same time it feels right. More right than any decision of this sort I've ever made in the past & that can only be a good thing, can't it?

All I do know it that I'm looking forward to curling up with my sleeping beauty tonight, just the two of us, for the last time. I know that I'm looking forward to pledging one half of my bed to my wonderful man tomorrow evening & I'm looking forward to him sharing it with me for the forseeable future. I'm looking forward to it being just the four of us. I'm looking forward to love.

I'm not, however, looking forward to painstakingly unpacking these & all their friends:

I should probably apologise in advance as we shan't have internet for at least 3 weeks. I think that I may go crazy, but apart from my loss of sanity it means that the Etsy shop shall be on vacation & I shan't be blogging for some time.

On my return I hope to have miraculously created a whole shop full of wonderful items, but something tells me that between unpacking, decorating the childrens' bedrooms & the arty commitments that I have all ready signed up for (an art exhibition & some pieces for the cafe, amongst other things) that wonders should not come so easily!

In the mean time, I wish you all well.

Yours, Gwin.

Aaaargh!

Boxes.

Newspaper. 

Dust. 

Mess. 

Dirt. 

Miscellaneous objects.

Refuse sacks.

Bags.

More Dust.

Sneezing.

Put the kettle on.

Contentment

I sit on my bed & I smell of coffee grinds. I ache, particularly my feet, though not in a painful way & I feel fulfilled yet tired. 

I finish writing Saturday’s blog & I do as I wrote I would & move from my bed into the bathroom to have a bath. I turn on the hot & the cold taps – the former is on slightly faster than the latter. I need to wash my clothes for tomorrow because pregnancy doesn’t allow a huge wardrobe, particularly not in regards to work uniform, & my laziness combined with the chaos of my house has prevented me from doing much washing lately. As I leave the bath running in a satisfactory manner I go to the washing machine & stick some white tops in the drum. I undress down to my knickers &, crouching beneath the window so as not to startle any unwitting passers-by, I put in the rest of my clothes. It's less than half a load – I select a rapid wash & dry. I know I should do a proper load, but not tonight.

I return to the bathroom. I am looking forward to my bath & I urge the water to fill the deep tub quicker. As I do so I pour shower gel carefully into the flow of the hot tap so as to give bubbles & aroma though I know that bubbles will soon disappear.

I close the door. Usually I would not do so when showering, I’d keep it open in case Daughter needed the loo & to allow the steam to escape through a larger space than the constantly open window. Today I close the door. I am alone in the flat so it does not keep anybody out & there is no need for it to be open nor for it to be shut but today I need it closed. 

I take off my knickers & I get into the bath before it is full. I can’t wait. It isn’t warm enough so I spin the hot tap to full & reduce the flow of the cold tap. I swish the water with my hands & feet so the temperature is even. I try to lean back against the plastic but it is cold. Usually I would just force myself onto it until my body warmed it but today I soak the sponge with the warm water & then squeeze it out over the surface until it too is warm.

I relax & lay back. My glasses still on my face & my hair still tied up from work. I sit a while &, occasionally adjusting the taps with my toes, wait for the water to reach an adequate level. After a little while it does.

I sit, contemplatively. Though what I am contemplating is not yet clear. I know that I will not feel fully at ease until the hot water has saturated every part of my body. I take off my glasses & take the bobble from my hair. I soak myself with the sponge, ensuring every tress of hair is reached by the water & I wipe my face hard. I do feel satisfied now. 

I sit back again. 

I look down & I become suddenly aware of my body. I realise that this is the first time I have had a bath since my bump started to show. I remember how, during my last pregnancy, we didn’t have a shower so I always had to take baths. I remember how the bath in that dingy bathroom was metal & harsh, somehow grating to touch. I remember that I did not take baths as often as I should, but I remember so very clearly how much more familiar I was with my body in my previous pregnancy. How, when my bump was big, I would stare down at it but I would not think very much. I remember how my then partner would sit with me in the bathroom & mainly watch me, occasionally chatting. I remember how I never much liked being watched. I prefer it now, being completely alone. With the heavy door shut.

I look at my body again & think how beautiful my bump looks. I do not have my glasses on & the assorted bottles which gather around the bathtub edge are out of focus but I can see my body clearly. My stomach is perfectly round, like a smooth planet surface with a crater exactly in the middle. The crater fills with water from the bath. This pleases me.

I am suddenly thankful that, unlike before, baths are a luxury. I prefer showers but when I do bathe it’s usually by way of loosening tension from my muscles or allowing the notions in my brain to find their place – not through necessity to wash.

I stare at length at my body. My breasts are full, though from them you can tell that this is not my first pregnancy. They part quite widely so that I can see between them almost the full curve of my tummy. My left hand is in its natural resting place: flat; just underneath my bump; only just visible. Beyond this my legs stretch long & slender, one knee raised slightly & resting comfortably on the other. Past my knees I see my toes, playfully & happily poking upwards, slightly turned in, paying their attention to the overflow plug.

I feel proud at just how much of myself I notice & how much I enjoy seeing what I see. Usually my body is a source of anguish & insecurity for me but not today. I turn my gaze back to my bump & a wisp of thought wondering ‘what will be?’ enters, then swiftly leaves my consciousness. I see my tummy rise & fall slowly, keeping a reassuringly even pace as I breathe, interrupted only by small, sporadic twitches & intermittent sweeps caused by my baby kicking & moving. It’s truly incomparable to anything & I could not feel more at one with my unborn.

I decide I shall write about this. I decide I must take a photograph of myself as I see me right now & I must capture this on canvas. I must not forget this moment.

I try to think & to absorb as much as possible but Bob Dylan is singing his song too loudly from the tinny confines of my iPhone. I turn Bob Down & feel better.

I feel the cool air from the window on the parts of my body that are not submerged – my breasts, my stomach & my thighs. It feels wonderful. I am not too cold nor am I too hot, as is often the way when I have previously tried to enjoy a bath. I squeeze the sponge over my bump & watch the water gather, forming a deeper pool over the crater. I squeeze the water over my breasts & smile as the water runs off my body as a stream would rapidly course down a hillside.

I lay & think of nothing much except how still & calm I feel until I know that I am done. I haven’t taken too long. Just long enough. 

I decide that I need to be clean so I scrub myself all over with a stiff brush. I could leave the bath now & feel satisfied but I know that I must shampoo my hair so I do so to the soulful tones of James Brown singing 'This is a Man's World'. But it would be nothing - not one little thing - without a woman or a girl. I smile.

Now that I am clean my thoughts are aligned; my muscles do not ache – though I had not noticed any particular point they had stopped aching –; I am complete. I get out of the bath; I struggle to find a towel, until eventually, after leaving a dripping trail around the house I find one in the hallway. I dry myself off in the perfect space of the bathroom – the rest of the house is too cold – & put on a clean t-shirt & clean pyjama bottoms. I cross the hallway to my bedroom & pull back the duvet. I sit on my bed, pull my laptop onto my knee & I write. It’s been too long since I last did so.