odd couple?

My nieces and nephew once came across this cardboard figure amongst a whole set of cardboard figures they were making and thought (or my sister thought, more likely) that it looked like me.  I'm happy with the comparison, not that my brain is generally up to the likes of Simone de Beauvoir these days.  This little figure has sat on my shelf for a number of years, but lately this malfunctioning robot has moved house to be beside her.  Graham?  I'm not sure why it reminds me of him, but it does, maybe because of all the useful tasks he performs around the house without any gentleness or regard for precious-to-me objects :)

empathy

I saw this video on Meet Me At Mike's this week and really wanted to share it.  I especially liked the part about empathy not involving silver-lining people's situations.  That is the worst and something people do a lot, and not just people who are generally not great at these sorts of things.  (I can say that in a non-critical way because I am one of those people.)  I have a friend, a straight-talking American, which may or may not have anything to do with it, whose response to my heart (and related) issues has often been, "Oh, Laura, that sucks," or "Oh, Laura, that's shit," which invariably makes me feel much better than any amount of reminding me how lucky I am in other ways or suggesting I'm viewing things too negatively.

The good thing about having heart failure in Glasgow (there are no good things about it really, of course, but if there were then this would be it) is how amazing the NHS heart failure team here is.  The service has many aspects that are all really well integrated and they take a very holistic approach, which is why I get to see a specialist psychologist who understands heart failure and its implications.  When I saw him recently, I was venting my frustration at how I try to give myself some talkings to and remind myself what's good and how things could be worse, but that this makes me feel no better whatsoever.  He pointed out that doing this was trying to rationalise what's essentially irrational and I think he was right about that, but it's also a case of trying to silver-line my own situation, saying, "At least..." in response to my own problems.  You see?  I told you I was no good at empathy, even with myself...if that's not a total paradox?

I think, when you have a problem that isn't going to go away (like chronic illness or dealing with some sort of traumatic past event, for example) then you get to the point where you just don't want to talk to people close to you any more.  Demanding empathy at all is a big ask, but to demand it again and again and again just seems too much to ask of anybody and, when there is no solution, you start to feel like a broken record to share the same woes over and over for no apparent purpose.  I know certain people I'm close to feel bad that they can't solve my problems when I share them and so don't know what to say.  Really, they don't need to say anything, or certainly not anything more than, "That sucks."  That's definitely more helpful than any practical solution.  Well, except maybe a cure for heart failure, but I don't think any of my nearest and dearest are going to succeed where so many eminent cardiologists have failed!

Another realisation from my recent meeting with the psychologist is that I'm never going to be happy about how things have turned out, but I can aim to be less unhappy than I am, unhappy at a more manageable level.  I don't think any of my friends would ever consider suggesting something like that, as it is sort of a depressing thought, but at least it gives me a more achievable goal to aim for and any improvement is an improvement.  So that's what I'm working on now - finding ways to allow myself to say, "This sucks," without falling apart at the seams.  Doable?  I hope so.  And the more I manage to sort myself out, the less anybody else will have to join me in this hole.  Win, win, win (in the end).

paint, paper, peppa pig... pectacles?

You need to sing the Hartbeat gallery tune while looking at these pictures.

Dulcie really fancies herself as quite the budding artist these days.  Ne'er a day goes by that she doesn't come home from nursery with paint somewhere about her person.

The mess and mayhem levels of our flat can't really handle full-on paints right now, runny poster-type paints, so I thought we might give this solid paint palette a try instead.  The colours were maybe a little subtle for Dulcie's liking (her brush was always very watery) but she enjoyed them nonetheless and we soon discovered the colours were very intense when applied to lips and eyelashes.  Cue much bathing of eyeballs...

As always when paper comes out, Dulcie requested a set of paper dolls to decorate.  It turned out the glasses stickers I'd got for her in Paperchase that week were just the right size for them.  Cute!  This pair (if they were in black) are quite like my new glasses, which, after an initial period of doubt, I am loving.

Dulcie's drawings are still pretty much unrecognisable as anything specific, so I was pretty impressed at how accurately she stuck on all these glasses, just where the eyes would be.  These paper dolls went on to be much more highly decorated, with four out of five having sad faces for some reason, and then were torn into itty-bitty pieces.  Every time...

This was my creation for the day, with Peppa's number-one fan as my very strict director.  These were actually the best I could manage in such a tricky medium (ha!) but I was mildly impressed that they looked like fake children's drawings that you see on TV sometimes.  In the absence of any other making, I'll take what I can get!

(thirty)seven

I found this lovely vintage birthday card on Etsy and it made me think of my friend, whose birthday was coming up.  While pondering whether it was OK to give someone a card with an irrelevant/incorrect age on it, I realised that she was going to be exactly 30 years older than the card's intended recipients, so...

...I created this little appendage.  Pimp that vintage card!  Hee hee!  I find it really hard to use vintage cards that have never been written on, so I made my little banner easy to remove and signed my name in pencil.  Her son will turn seven this summer, so perhaps she can recycle it for him.  Every modern seven-year-old boy's dream card, right?  Hmmm...

If I'm paying postage for something, I quite often like to treat myself to something else at the same time, so I bought this lovely wall-hanging flash-card thingummy from the same shop.  It's to hang on the wall of Dulcie's bedroom.  She's building up quite the collection, her room is going to be so lovely!  I was so delighted when I received this.  It's one of those things that is ten times nicer in real life than you'd ever imagined.  Dulcie likes it too and claims it reminds her of paper dolls.  Right now, Dulcie uses "girl" as a badge of honour, so this picture seems very appropriate for her.  When my dad was in her favour last week, he changed from a boy to a girl.  Even Graham gets to be a girl sometimes now, when he's not winding her up.

The shop I got these from was the lovely and incredibly reasonably priced Thursday Threepence.  When I say reasonably priced, I mean it.  The "girl" poster was only £3.  Go and look!

did not buy

Here are some recent charity-shop finds that I left behind for someone else to discover.  A cross-stitched letter, but (sadly) not one of the ones I was looking for, unless I wanted to spell "hello" as "hellu".  Which I don't.  Still looking for an L and an O if anyone sees them, by the way!

The inside of this book was not nearly so exciting as the cover, so I took a photo and left it behind, even though I was also tempted by a book about small-scale weaving and a Basil Brush picture book.  I think it was four books for a pound or something, so I did well not to take any with me.  The photo is better - let someone who might actually become a glove puppeteer have this.  That is not me.  Well, probably not anyway!

This was also VERY cheap, in every sense of the word!  It did make me laugh, but I knew I could certainly live without it!  I just liked the fact it appeared to be the same make as those "World's Best Grandma" ornaments you see from time to time.  I wonder who had this and where it was displayed.  Prominently?  Who knows?

I don't take nearly so much home from the charity shops these days, or from any shops.  Even when I see nice old things that I like, because I have nowhere to put them, I tend to leave them where they are.  I'm looking forward to a time where our home is sorted and I can buy things I like without feeling bad about it.  It will be nice to buy things knowing I have a place to put them rather than knowing I don't even have a place to store them.

I considered doing a Less 365 type of idea this year, but decided against it as I didn't want to commit to having to record everything I got rid of - if I'm in the mood to get rid, I don't want to waste time by writing down what I'm doing!  I've kind of had it in the back of my mind though and, if I was doing it, I'd be well ahead of the game.  I've already got rid of well over 100 things I'm sure (maybe close to 200, I reckon) and it's still only March.  And you know what?  I haven't missed a single one of them.  Plus I love getting emails from the British Heart Foundation telling me what they've made from my items.  Sometimes it's been in triple figures!  Amazing!  Crazy to think my junk is finding new homes and helping to beat heart disease.  Much better that than stressing me out and gathering dust :)

big girl in the big girl bed

Big news this week - the big girl's big-girl bed finally arrived!  Yippee!  This was her, not dressed for bed, the first time she saw it fully constructed and with its "Peppa Pig cubbers" on.  Very excited, as you can see!

Right now, she has not moved too far.  That's our bed right beside her.  We are working on getting her own room ready as a top priority, but couldn't put off getting the bed any longer and have so much other crap furniture dumped in our room (as a result of trying to improve elsewhere in the flat) that we're not able to move her any further away.  One day, one day... Soon?!  Ish?!

Caressing the covers.

The first night Dulcie slept in the new bed, she kept trying to abscond in with us, but I blocked all her attempts and she backed down quite quickly.  The second night, she just needed a quick hand-hold once or twice.  The third night (last night) she slept for over 11 hours without waking up once!  I honestly don't remember her ever doing that before, maybe once or twice in her life.  The signs are good!  Hopefully by the time we're ready to move her into her own room, she should be totally comfortable and settling herself easily.  In general, Dulcie's sleep has improved amazingly over the last couple of months, still not perfect, but SO MUCH BETTER than it had been.  I don't think it's any coincidence that her improved sleeping/settling happened at the same time as I finally stopped breast-feeding all together.  Dulcie wasn't really keen to give up her bedtime feed, but the time had definitely come and, after a few nights of having to talk her out of feeding, she quickly adjusted and seemed less manic/anxious somehow.  She soon started dropping off more quickly (though I'm still having to lie with her until she's asleep), waking up less often throughout the night and settling back down more quickly when she did.  All of this confirms to me that the time was right to stop feeding and stops me feeling sad that those days are done.  It's all good positive progress, right?

For ages Dulcie has had a penchant for tucking her toys in, so it's very exciting for her to be able to tuck a pal or two in beside her of an evening.  Kimo the Eskimo was given the honour of the first try.

Lying down happily and...

...off to sleep!

Yeah, it's not quite THAT easy, but it's still great and she looks so cute snoozing away in there, with her feet only about a third of the way down.  Aw.

I won't share the tale of the bed's construction.  Suffice to say, two of our family cried and the third swore a lot.  Hey, it's made now...  I just hope we don't have to take it apart to move it to the other room!  Ha ha!

where we've been

That was an uncharacteristically long blogging gap for me, by 2014 standards anyway.  We've been busy hanging out with my parents/Dulcie's grandparents.  First of all they were staying with us to do a spot of house-hunting.  (Don't know if I've mentioned they're planning on moving closer to us?  Yay!  Amazing what the lure of one super-cute girl will do to a grandparent...)  After that, Dulcie and I went up to stay with them in Elgin for a bit.  I was meant to be clearing out what remains of my stuff in preparation for their move, but that didn't really happen.  We were far too busy doing nice things and going on outings.

 The beach at Lossiemouth was FREEZING but good fun.  Dulcie met a friendly baby and was sat on by a friendly pug.  Sandcastles were built and instantly destroyed, ad nauseum.  Rock pools (well, puddles) were searched and treasure found - a shiny 10p piece that looked surprisingly similar to the one that went missing from my pocket at around the same time.

Dulcie LOVED having the garden to play in.  Here she is digging for wriggly worms with my dad.  She'd been going on about wriggly worms for weeks prior to this (she made an imaginary compost heap from a cardboard box following an inspirational episode of Peppa Pig) but seems to have gone quiet on the subject since getting up close and personal with the real deal!  She was rarely without her spade, watering can and plastic secateurs over the week.

 Here, she's shouting "Yee ha!"  She did this so much (always waving a plastic golf club round her head while she did) that the ladybird came to be known as Yee Ha.  Yee ha!

 And here she is sitting in a fancy dining chair eating porridge and generally looking like Goldilocks... minus the locks.  It's much easier to get a nice photo of Dulcie when she's in a nice house as opposed to our dung heap.  Everything was much calmer too, even when Dulcie was afflicted by a giant new tooth and screamed for about two days.

Will we ever be sorted?  Work continues behind the scenes (Graham has been snatching spare half hours to strip wallpaper and I am to phone the gas man today) but I'm perilously close to doing a TMI photographic post so you can all see what we're living amongst.  The cats, Puky and Hairy, are not helping matters in the least.  If Graham and I were married, I think he'd be using the threat of divorce as a bargaining tool to get rid of them.  As it is, he's powerless!  Ha!  (If he liked it then he should have put a ring on it etc.)  Anyway, back to the original subject...

Too cute!

As well as all these activities, we went charity shopping a couple of times (Dulcie got a few bits and bobs and I got an amazing vintage baby item for my friend's forthcoming offspring, but I can't share it until the baby is born for fear of ruining surprises), had giant pancakes at Baxters and visited the GIANT rabbits who live in the nearby garden centre.  Everything is bigger up north!  Ha!  Honestly, these rabbits were huge, easily as big as Dulcie, and were dragging their handlers around at the end of their leads.  Dulcie managed to get a quick cuddle with one of them, to her great delight.

Anyway, we're back now and I have a few blog posts lined up in my head, I'm just struggling to find my old rhythm and can't quite remember how I got things done while looking after Dulcie on my own.  I'll be back on top of (er, underneath) things soon!