Boocat.

Today the cat we inherited died. Next door left her behind on moving ten years ago and she's been ours ever since. She lived with us - I say lived, but it was more like tolerated us, she wouldn't come inside and instead resided in the clearly far more comfortable propagator all through the snowy Winters and the hot summers. 

She had no teeth at all, she only had two when we inherited her. I reckon she was about 16 or 17.  She was old and tired and skinny and cross but I liked her very much. 

Grumpy old cat.  She wouldn't really come and have a cuddle, although you could stroke her on her terms. But yesterday we managed to catch her, a feat in itself and so we knew something was wrong. She was dragging her leg so badly her paw was sore. The vet said massive ligament damage, no idea why, likely it's just snapped in her old age. Surgery was the only option but she was unlikely to benefit and anyway, trying to look after her outside whilst she recuperated would have been a nightmare. So no more Boocat. 

Goodbye lovely green-eyed yowly crosspants. I will miss you. 

The Perseids.

Last time the Persieds came the same thing happened; I ended up sitting in the park watching them on my own because you were angry, again, for who knows why, again. 

It was probably my fault. Again.

This time I sat there with a 15 year old boy who is rapidly growing up, learning to discern much earlier than he should the sudden signs of raging anger that come in you, the propensity to blame others for the feeling you can't deal with in yourself. He is starting to want to protect me, fighting you, swearing at you. 

A year ago today, give or take, the same feelings in you, give or take. A lack of ability to control them, and no desire to either. Another man; one that I don't know, don't much like and very much fear comes here instead of you, the same times each year in crashing cyclic waves.

I don't think there is a pattern you say. 

The Perseids would disagree, I say.  

I'm frustrated and tired of worrying about money, fretting all the time about how we will manage. Everything I spend even a tiny bit of money outside of the business I feel so guilty it makes me feel sick. On Saturday we spent £60 on paint and masking tape and now it's like a little worry worn with teeth, eating me from the inside out.  My back hurts because my chairs so old and I need a new one but to get that I need more customers but I'm a crappy businesswoman, so I can't/don't do the things I need to do, like PR.  And to top it all I'm hungry but I'm on day 5 of the 7 day juice detox so I'm not spoiling it now.  

Things I know to be true - List number five

1. A little bit of regular physical exercise goes a long way towards long -term emotional well being.

2. The need for a fire is a primal instinct in all of us and is why men like barbecues and garden centres sell so many Chimneas. 

3. If people were once worth knowing, they are always worth knowing, and time really does make a difference to how everyone feels.

4. Even in the Summer insomnia is crappy.

5. People that play Roller derby are both physically brave, and often using it as a way to fight emotional demons. 

6. Adrenaline sports and trying to conceive do not sit well together - it's like trying to get pregnant whilst running away from a Sabre Tooth Tiger.

7. Finding a past time that completely overwhelms you is a vital part of being alive and if you don't have it you need to find it. 

8. Emotional drama is insidious, and is never, ever part of a successful relationship.

9. You only get what you want through sheer hard work so if you haven't got what you want yet you need to work harder for it. 

10. Scented plants in your garden are a simple but indescribable pleasure and investing in Jasmine is a surprisingly easy step towards being inwardly peaceful. 

The three 'wise' choices.

I suppose this should carry a warning: 

Some aspects of this post may be upsetting to read, both emotionally and in the graphical description.. 

When you lose a baby (lose, like you accidentally mislaid it somewhere, wrapped in the knitting or the fish & chip paper or something...)

When you have a baby die before it is born and it's far enough along to be distinct they give you three options. 

Option one: 

Stay in hospital and take drugs. (Bonus!) but no - they're the drugs that make all the 'products of conception' come out quickly. (They can't say 'baby'. They say it once during the scan when you know something is wrong but you are still looking for the baby, but then after that they say 'products of conception' when referring to the baby and miscarriage when they are referring to what has happened to you.)

So with option one you stay in over a few days, you have lots of very heavy, lumpy, clots expelling from your insides and then they send you home, tickety boo.

(Too much information with the lumps and the clots? That's sadly what it's like. Identifiable parts. Placenta, amniotic sac, actual child. My baby was nearly ten weeks old and they do a lot of growing by then.)

Option Two:

Have a D&C. For the uninitiated a  Dilation and Curettage) means scraping out all the bits of baby and baby survival parts (sorry, products of conception) out of the uterus during an operation, those parts then get taken away for testing and eventually thrown in the bin. You can choose to be awake or not awake for this. And straight after it you can go home and its all over, hygienically dealt with, no blood to see, a quick hand sanitizer on the way out and we will see you soon hopefully Mrs Stokoe, good luck with the next one!

Option Three:

Go home, wait it out and grieve. Going home is not for everyone. You have to think about how you will deal with it all. Will you look at what comes out? Will you flush it down the loo? It hurts, it's painful. It's exhausting. When will it come? It's a lot of cramping and bleeding. WHEN will it come?

If you physically look at what comes then you will have your baby's blood on your fingers and a lot of people can't deal with that. How will you deal with that? 

You have to take a lot of painkillers and spend a small fortune on menstruation pads. You do a LOT of sleeping.

And. Whether or not it it true, you will still feel like you smell like death whilst the baby is still inside you.

You'll think why didn't I do this the clean and hygienic way? When you're running to the loo, and in between your legs is stuffed with tissue but there's blood everywhere anyway you'll be screaming for the D&C and the neat and tidy, and the 'permanent floor runner on the cream carpet' 21st Century version of how to have a miscarriage. 

But not us. Of course not us. We chose the hard way, the natural way, the messy, sobbing, bloody, ancient, timeless, traditional, historical, ritual way. 

It was the only way we knew.

We were sitting at the kitchen table and I said to husband, there's a lady in the Birch tree, can you see? "Come up and see me sometime". She's got her arms wrapped around the tree and sometimes the leaves are her hair blowing'.  'Birch, Berkana, Holda.' he said. He saw her.

And then my body knew what to do. I felt a pull and a big heaviness and cramping, horrible pain. I ran upstairs half undressed to the toilet and when the baby (the products of conception) came we scooped her up and wrapped her in tissue, carried her downstairs with the dogs in tow like a little funeral procession, dug a hole under the Birch tree which was all ready to welcome her with open arms and I laid a Camellia flower with her and Mag laid a block of slate onto her. 

Camellia for perfection and love and because that was the nearest beautiful thing we had to hand. 

The Birch Tree already has the placenta from Solly. It likes it. 

We did the right thing. 

 

 

Starting from the beginning

I'm in the crappiest place. I've lost the baby, my knee is still fucked and I've put on about two stone because of not skating and the pregnancy. 

I don't know what to do. I'm so sad. 

It's sunny outside but I just feel paralysed with deciding how to move forward. I haven't gone to work for two days. I need to pull myself together and sort myself out but I don't know how. 

Things to be happy about:

1/ I've got two lovely children already

2/ It's sunny. 

3/ We are having a multi-fuel Eco stove fitted. 

4/ I am going on holiday in August.

5/ We can try again for another baby.

6/ I finally have a Physio appointment booked on Monday. 

PISS. 

Yellow rooms always bring bad things.

This particular room was yellow with a hint of pale grey, more of a weary, washed-out lemon than all-out holiday citrus. 

The last one was vibrant and joyous yellow as far as I recall. I'm not sure why anyone would choose to paint a 'quiet' room such a vivid and hopeful colour; perhaps I have misremembered it and actually it was the same weak and ineffectual shade as this one. If it was me I would paint it a wistful sea blue or a gentle olive lichen or even just reflective, contemplative white.. 

Regardless. 

Last time I was in a room of this colour it brought the news that my father had terminal cancer and was dying. 

This time I hear that my unborn baby had died, that all the bleeding had been a miscarriage and that what I had left was the 'articles of conception' which was causing all the pain. 

But the colour, in the end, doesn't matter it seems other than to act as a visual reference. It doesn't matter how yellow or green or pink the room that you hear the bad news in really. 

Or maybe it does matter. For in my house where all our laughing and living is done I shall never, ever paint a room the same colour as the hospital 'quiet' room where they take you to tell you all about death. 

Catching the train after twenty years of trying.

Last night I dreamt I caught the train. 

I dream of trains all the time and I never, ever catch them. In fact I don't think I can remember catching one in all the dreams I've had. What normally happens is the train comes but I am on the other side of the platform and run but miss it, or it comes but I have too much luggage to load on and things keep falling out on the platform, or it comes but my legs aren't working and I can't quite manage to get on it in time. Something frustrating and horrid like that anyway. 

Then, last night the train was coming and we were driving alongside it racing to get to the station and I was thinking, "Ahhh this old 'not catching the train' chestnut", but as it actually pulled into the station so did we, and unloaded our things and all piled on. Messily, it is true; some luggage was basically thrown into the cabin, but still. We caught it. 

I woke up this morning thinking, Holy shit! I can't believe I caught the train! 

I've been trying to catch that train for all my adult life and quite a lot of my childhood too. Thank fuck I finally have. 

City evening

It's the blue-grey gentle light of the evening. Not dark yet, not even twilight but the lights are on in the houses and the birds are singing about bedtime. She sits in the garden on a wooden chair drinking cider and listening to the sounds around her. In the distance someone is playing a piano. Above her a pigeon flaps in the Birch tree, trying to find a roost.

Gently all the little birds are warbling about nighttime.

There is a police siren.

She listens. 

She can hear the boy racers on the dual carriageway having their Saturday night show-off. Next door are cooking curry and she can hear the sizzle of the frying pan, she can smell the garlic and onion. A bird chip-chip-chip-chips in the big Evergreen tree a few doors down. Is it a blackbird? She doesn't know.  The cat that lives outdoors comes to see her, with it's rubbish miaow and bony body. She picks it up and strokes it, teases out the tangles, tries to straighten the tail that somehow once got broken, strokes it's little Bat-like leather ears. 

It's supposed to be Summer but it's not very warm.  None of the flowers are blooming that should be. 

She can hear the city and the ring road and in the distance the motorway. A car drives up the road, a rap music crescendo. 

Somebody shouts, somebody shrieks. 

It's too noisy and it's too crowded and there is nowhere to go to find peace. 

Another siren passes.

A poem by Alice Walker.

When I no longer have your heart I will not request your body Your presence Or even your polite conversation. I will go away to a far country Separated from you by the sea -on which I cannot walk- and refrain even from sending Letters Describing my pain. Alice Walker

Confession number 2.

They say it's not normal to feel as if killing yourself is a viable option, and that you should tell someone.  It's a 'red flag' in the mental illness stakes, a big ol' tick in the ALERT! ALERT! FUCKING DO SOMETHING box for any kind of mental health professional who may or may not be interested at any particular moment.

But I feel like this all the time, all the fucking time, so it's pretty normal for me, actually. It's normal.  And I'm not doing anything specifically worrying am I? I'm not stockpiling drugs or engineering motorway fates or casually sleeping with clearly unhealthy partners...I'm not measuring rope in Homebase or wobbling on the edge of the Selfridges bridge looking for a hole in the wire fence.

All I'm doing is just vaguely plotting. 

That's all I'm doing.

Constantly vaguely plotting. 

The downward spiral of Therefore.

Since I have not been able to skate (around mid-March) I have put on about a stone in weight, because cake + no derby = maximum storage.

As a direct result of this extra weight, I feel horribly unattractive and want to hide and I don't want to get my body out at the gym or anywhere that people who don't know me might see me. I don't even want my husband to see me and he's already said he loves me in all my seasons, fool that he is.

With nothing to do (or rather nothing I can cope with doing which involves exercise) I stay at home and find other more gentle, nurturing things to do.  I am very good at cooking.

I cook, therefore I eat.

Standing at the cooker, cooking when you know you shouldn't be is a demoralising, horrible, loathing feeling of failure; a lack of willpower and spinelessness.  Often there is cheese.  If there is cheese then I will eat it.  

Therefore I get fatter.

Therefore I feel horribly unattractive and want to hide and...hang on....

I seriously do not know how to extricate myself from this.

I think you'll find it's called roller DERBY, not roller blading, and let me tell you the two things couldn't be more different.

It's very difficult if people don't know about derby or understand what it is, to make someone realise how awful having it taken from you can be.

My consultant said, "I know you're worried abut your roller-blading" in a somewhat patronising voice.  Number one: It's not roller-blading, I don't swan up and down by the duck lake on the occasional saturday in the sunshine, I play a full contact aggressive sport that involves a lot of twists and turns and pivoting movements, which is the exact thing my knee is fucked from doing.

Number two: The longer I am not skating the fatter I get, the more unfit I get, the less relevant I get, the older I get.  I'm 40 playing a contact sport in a world where everyday the skaters are getting younger.  There is not long for me and I do not have much time.  Sitting about wasting three months isn't my idea of recuperation. 

But you see, that's the plan. I've got an official diagnosis:  I have a partial Anterior Cruciate Ligament tear in my right knee.  I was informed about this on Monday when the consultant was imagining Starlight Express or something equally as ridiculous.

Because it's only partial and my knee is strong they want me to do physio for three months and see how it goes before they think about operating.  Operating is bad and recovery takes a long time, I get that.  But you cannot repair an ACL naturally, the body doesn't supply blood to the area so it remains permanently torn.  What you can do is either strengthen all the muscles around the knee, or operate and sew up the tear and graft a piece of new ligament from somewhere else on.  Hurray then right?  Because option one will work, my knee will get strong and everything will be ok, yes?  Well...no.

No, because that usually only works on people who are fairly sedentary in their life and I am not.  I play a full contact sport, a full contact sport I practice 4 times a week which involves a lot of being...er not very sedentary at all.  I also do cross training for it. So either the consultant (who specialises in sports medicine) is confident that by some miraculous means it will be alright just by physio, or he has underestimated my activity level drastically.

I am reckoning on the drastic underestimation.

Another thing is that I need a knee brace but clearly the NHS being what it is these days and David Cameron basically deciding to personally sign the chit for every cup of doctor's tea, I'm not going to persuade the hospital to give me one, so I shall have to fund it myself.  The correct sports knee brace for an ACL tear is a CTi Off-the-shelf and comes in at the tiny little price of £399.  Which is just ridiculous, even if it does come in a range of exciting colours.

So now I'm stuck.  

Things I can do: I can cycle, and I can swim.  I HATE swimming. It makes me want to stab people.  Really, actually.  I can do weights and kettlebells.  Did I mention I hate the gym?  And I'm going to have to do all these hideous exercise type things that I hate not even to get better at skating, but just so that I don't get fat and unhealthy, whilst all the time trying to strengthen my knee, and what if non of it works in the end anyway?  

What if that?

All the everything is too overwhelming. 

Misery

Today I got the results about my knee from the consultant.

I am completely, totally and utterly gutted. I don't want to talk to anyone or see anyone. I just want to stay in bed and cry, I wish it would all go away. 

Things I know to be true list number four.

1. The rain in Spain doesn't fall mainly on the plain, it mainly falls over the Northern mountains, actually.

2. An afternoon nap is invaluable if you work at a job which needs dexterity and concentration and the twenty minutes you invest in sleep manifests in several more hours productive work. 

3. If my knee doesn't get fixed soon I am actually going to kill myself and then I won't have to be miserable anymore.

4. Working with my husband is delightful and inspiring. Lots of couples couldn't manage to be together all the time like we are, but it works for us. 

5. Spring came really late this year, the world is going crazy and not many people are even interested, let alone doing anything about it. 

6. There is no such place as 'away'. Where is away? When you throw something 'away' you are just making it a problem for someone else to deal with. 

7. Buying fresh flowers is worth it just for the smell your house is filled with when you come home from work. 

8. When people say they're really busy it just means you're not important enough to be part of their life. If you were, they would find time for you. 

9. On the subject of busy, most people use busy as a way to deflect from having to have time to think. Because thinking causes problems and is worrisome. 

10. Doubloon, indicative and ossify are all beautiful words. Glistening however, is not. 

Confession number 1.

Standing outside in the pouring grey dawn rain trying to feel less alive. Even in the Summer five A.M is an unearthly hour.

Every one of us has done something in their lives that they are ashamed of and that they cannot undo. I have done several. When I was 14 I pushed my Mum down the stairs in a fit of teenage temper. I forget what I was angry about, I expect she'd told me I had to be in by 10pm or something equally as reasonable.

I pushed her down the stairs and she hurt her knee quite badly and the next day she was due to go on a skiing holiday, the first proper holiday she had had in years.

She didn't get to ski much.

Things I Know to be True, List Number Three

1. You should never open the cheese before you need to because you will just eat it in tiny little slices.

2. It doesn't matter how careful you are with your children's attitude to gender, as soon as they reach school age someone else's kids will tell them boys don't cry at sad things and only girls wear pink.

3. It is always worth spending money on an excellent haircut.

4. Dogs leave massive holes in the material plane when they are dead, or even just not where you expect them to be.

5. It is impossible to feel gloomy on the first day it is warm enough outside not to need your coat.

6. If your child saves up all the toilet rolls to make a forest for dinosaurs you should definitely find the time to do it. My child did this once and I put it off and put it off and never made the forest. Seven years later I still feel bad about it.

7. Running away for a while sometimes works.

8. The investment Birmingham is making in its infrastructure will pay off.

9. Waiting is hard.

10. The Buzzfeed '50 people you wish you knew in real life' is always funny, however many times you've looked at it. I've looked so many times and I still like it just as much as I did the first time.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-you-wish-you-knew-in-real-life

What's the time, Mr Zombie?

One of the most interesting things about having children is how they start to want to look after you as they grow older, and they start to feel that you are their responsibility. This morning son number one showed me a Zombie Apocalypse bracelet he had made for himself out of four rubber bands. 'You should get one' he said, 'What if you need it and you haven't made one and you don't take my advice? Then you'll be dead.'

Obviously I don't need a rubber band bracelet, however necessary it might be during an actual Zombie Apocalypse but now because of son number one's insistence I'm starting to feel as if I might be unprepared and regretful if I don't fashion one, forthwith.

But it's alright though because apparently Even though I am hideously unprepared and not taking it seriously enough he's going to look after us all anyway and would never leave us to defend our weak selves. He with the four-rubber-band defence system of possibly being able to snap the arses of Zombies. Or something.

The subject of Zombie Apocalypse is so prevalent in my house that husband and he have an exact and specific objective for what to do in the event of one and I feel like I'm letting the side down if I haven't at least considered a basic survival plan. (I have, but I'm not telling you because it's a really good idea and I don't want anyone to steal it.)

So yes. Prepared for Zombies we indeed are.

Relief abounds.

In other Zombie news the smallest child revealed this evening that his favourite playground game is, 'What's the time Mr Zombie?' My mind boggles slightly at this; whatever happened to, 'What's the time Mr Wolf?'?

I asked if he knew what a Zombie was. 'Yes' he said, 'It walks along with its hands out front like this (holds hands up) and goes Wooo Woooo. And if it touches you, you're dead.'

So there you go.

The ghostliness of nothingness.

I don't have a list of three things, or two things or even one thing that is good about today. I don't have something clever to say.  I don't have a spiel about Feminism or a fancy little argument about the toys we foist on girls.  I don't have a deep rooted anger about supermarkets, or child-rearing or the lack of creative invention in a mono-culture, mega-factory based world.  I don't even have an inherent sadness and a willingness to detach myself anymore, which is slightly depressing; at least the overwhelming despair and secret plotting of self-destruction is an actual feeling.  This lack of anything is like being the pale grey mist on a drizzly Monday morning.

People keep emailing me.  Some of them are telling me they like what I write and it resonates.  That makes me sad, don't feel like me.  it's a crappy place to be.   Some of them are asking for advice (I don't have any).  Some of them are asking me to give opinions on things I genuinely wish weren't happening, some of them are cross with me for caring.  Some of them want me to pay them money I don't have and they're not even from Nigeria, they're real legitimate people with genuine monetary requests.

I'd like to go to bed and wake up somewhere else, as someone else, but ideally with none of my own memories too.  Someone else can be me. Like Orlando. I can be Orlando and Orlando can be me.


I'm failing at the list of good things about today so instead here is a list of some things I would like:

• Some really good smoked almonds from somewhere, like the kind I had in the Albert Hall.  I found the company who make them and I emailed them and they said I could buy 3kg for £40.  That feels like it might be a lot of smoked almonds.  Excessive, maybe.

• Some more commissions.

• For the car to stop breaking down ALL THE ***** TIME.

• Marmite crisps to be readily available in all supermarkets.

• My knee appointment not to have been put back another week.

• Not to always feel stuck in the middle and not really much wanted. I'd really like to have an actual value.

• A good night's sleep.

That old 'Feminism gives women a bad name' chestnut really can do one.

Women who show a willingness to accept nasty or sexist comments about other women, and sometimes even actively support them via social media likes, or laughing at sexist jokes in the pub drive me absolutely up the wall and I have no time for them whatsoever.

Just because they never confront the behaviour they think it isn't relevant to them, that it somehow doesn't apply. But it does. It does! Every time they toss their hair and laugh when a man says his girlfriend is nagging, or 'like' a post on Facebook where a man is condescendingly telling a woman she's said enough what they are doing is tacitly accepting that women should accept and willingly embrace the control and domination of men, and that men have the final say in how much a woman can communicate.

These are the same women who say they hate Feminism because it gives women a bad name. It's sad that they exist but what's even sadder is that they exist in the derby community - a sport so fundamentally female that even the recent influx of boy derby has brought a delightful fashion for men in sparkly shorts.

There is no place for female on female hatred in derby. There's no place for anyone on anyone hatred, it's fucking derby for fuck's sake, where's the derby love? But if you are female and feel the best way to self-identify is by how much the boys think you are one of them - all to the detriment of the women around you I genuinely have no idea why you have chosen to be part of such an inclusive and welcoming sport.

Somebody I really respect said to me once that the thing she really admires about me is a willingness to stick up for what I believe in even when it gets me into trouble myself. But I am weary of always being embroiled in dissent because I insist on sticking up for the underdog.

Husband thinks I am brave.

I think I am stupid.

More not making of the roster. I don't care anymore. I don't care so much that I'm writing about it on my blog.

Collectors

I collect rainbows. I've been doing it for a while. I haven't got very many, perhaps five, but the ones I've got are beautiful, including one over the Stones of Stonehenge and one at the Sunrise festival over all the tents. I'd like some more but the opportunity seldom arises.

I also collect vintage boxes, and champagne boxes and boxes of variousness in general. It's something about being able to put things neatly away inside them and keep the lid shut on the mess.

My friend collects friends. She has many and she knows them all well and spends quality time with them all. This impresses me greatly because number one, it involves phoning people and I am particularly rubbish at doing that. Number two it means socialising regularly and I don't do that very well either. I know a lot of people but I don't have many real, actual friends, those are particularly rare and I try to hang onto them carefully. So it makes me tremendously sad to lose one, especially one I had invested so much time into.

I don't know why people say 'Misery loves company', my feeling is it's best left on its own to sulk, actually.

Today I have made gold wedding rings that look like tree bark, designed a beautiful ring based on Sumi E Sakura or Japanese black ink paintings of cherry blossom and I have started making another tiny Russian doll.

I have generally spent most of my time making beautiful things for people and yet when I stop I realise I have a black heart and I'm harbouring a sort of quiet roiling fury. It's a good job that the art of Goldsmithing allows me to switch off from the world, especially if you believe as I do that you transfer your energy into any object you are making. Today I have really concentrated on closing my mind off to everything apart from how much I like the couple I am making these rings for, and how pleased I am that they chose us.

I can't skate. I feel sad and miserable but I am so sick of feeling like that I've channeled it into anger instead. Anger is just as worrisome but less painful inside, and I'm sick of crying.

On Saturday I've got my MRI to see if the consultant's diagnosis of a tear in my Lateral Meniscus is correct, and if it is I will be fast-tracked for an operation. I am terrified that it will be and I'll be off-skates for months but what's almost worse is, what if it's inconclusive?

I'm most scared of being left like this, hurting inside and out, can't even skate.

Heart breaking.