canine couture and wellness

I decided to buy a house.  I have decided the time is right for me to settle down, at 44, I feel all grown up at last.  for years I felt like a second class citizen, I did not buy into the property mania.  I stuck to my core values, people thought I was weird and crazy not to buy a house.  You will be too old to get a mortgage, you cant rent forever, why cant you just take out a loan, everyone is doing it. I just could not .  As my dad said they are all out of step except you. 

 and they were.  I wondered why people were borrowing huge amounts of money and how they could afford it.  I could barely afford my lifestyle and yet the cars were getting bigger and bigger as were the houses, the beauty treatments, the holidays, the presents.  How could I compete, and what was wrong with me. So I just paddled my own canoe as always , generally upstream against the flow.  But I ran out of paddle power and went a drift.  Last summer I spent a very beautiful day with a friend walking the riverbank looking at nature.  It was the first time either of us had stopped to just idle away an afternoon with nothing else to do except enjoy the sun and each others company.  We discovered our common love of medowsweet and told each other stories of our childhood memories of the country side.  I watched two boys on a raft float with the river downstream.  they were really enjoying themselves.  they saw us and shouted over what a lovely day it was.  It was remarkably lovely , a day I will remember as one of those fond memories I will look back on when I am an old lady.  

I am still crocheting my st Bridget's blanket with the left over wool from my mother and granny and it is bringing back happy childhood , and some unhappy, memories , memories of what eh wool was made into.  I have bought a few balls of wool just to mix through it to add texture and colour to some of the school jumper greys and daddy's sock browns.  The blanket is turning out well and I am just the first section already to cover my feet at night.  

It is important to have an integrated life, to have balance to enjoy things and not try to fit into other peoples view of the world.  I stuck to my values of only buying what you can afford( not fully) but of not over borrowing I suppose , I did not buy a house just to have a house.  I have always wanted my own home and i was not ready to make a home as I did not know how.  A home is made of love, It is made of memories, good and bad.  A home is where you know you are safe, safe and secure.  I finally realised I am ready for my own home again.  Because my childhood memories were shadowed by a discovery at 21 I negated all the happy memories I had.  I felt ashamed that I had been happy in the home that house a lie and a secret.  but the secret was not mine and I did not lie.  My memories are real as was my shock and my sadness.  My shame was not mine and I have given it back to where it belongs.  I have forgiven them, it was not their fault that I felt like that and I did not even know I did until recently.  I no longer trusted myself and looked to others for guidance.  I did not choose the right guides either.  Now I have healed.  I am fully aware of my pain and hurts.  I am entitled to my opinions and if other people disagree I can ask them to support their argument with evidence.  I am facing up to my limits and I can no longer work beyond them because my body has said stop.  Now I am happily floating down the river of life, going with the flow.  What about the canine couture of the title.  I am minding a dog , the cutest little pappion.  As part of my reconnection with the past, and the happy memories, I am sewing and designing clothes again.  I made clothes for my dolls and progressed to clothes for myself.   I was inspired to make some clothes for him and am off to get out my sewing machine and start on the happy afternoon of canine couture.  A fez and a waist coat I think.  I bought some silk ties in the local charity shops and should be able to make some lovely outfits from that.  His owner is indulging me and I am planning on making a few more outfits for other peoples dogs.  If you told me 6 months ago I would be having breakfast in the garden on a picnic rug planning a full scale picnic for the family and designing clothes for dogs I would have told you you are crazy.  but that day by the riverbank opened up my life to me again.  I went and bought the picnic rug later that week so that me and my friend could enjoy other days out like that.  But life conspired against me and we never did.      I wonder what life would have been like if we had.  I probably would never have had this life altering episode.  I would never have reconnected with myself.  I might even have lost my relationship with my children entirely.  but that awakening, although painful , lead me to here and to happiness.  

Happiness is a warm dog in a fez, chocolate Brownies and raspberry jam on a picnic rug in the garden.  It is all about realising that you are enough as you are. 

You are enough as you are and so am I.

Indulge yourslf and your need to make canine millinary or what ever else you think is a bit eccentirc.  I love this Dali clip. 

Happy Sunday 

mothering the mother revisited, mothering the world

Today was a weird day again, I recently had my first night out with my colleagues since I have been off work and I realised that going back to work will not be the insurmountable Himalayas of my imagination. They were all so nice and caring and invited me to share in the celebration of the birthday of someone who has been one of my signposts on the road to recovery, nudging me back onto the road to recovery when I start to stray, rather like a sponsor from AA he has coaxed me along the road to recovery.

the joys of a blue sky and birch trees

I was lying in bed contemplating what I would do after my now regular bubble bath.  I was acclimatising to the day while looking out at the sunshine thinking was it warm enough for a waterfight as last night it was warm enough for dinner in the garden.  Yesterday the swallows arrived, only four so far , and the day before the bluebells finally appeared.

The first bluebells in Newtown Woods

These are facts, not metaphors, for a change. lol, any way to make a long story short there was a competition on the radio about where was the best place in Ireland to enjoy the sunshine and I texted in that my garden was and I won a wonderful a very fun day out for me and one of the children, so it is official my garden is the best place in Ireland to be on a sunny day:-).   As I spoke to the host I thought about the need for mothering and I realised that I am finally able to be a mother again.  I have been searching for help in parenting my teenager as I see her going off the rails.  I realised that the mothering is within me and just as I need it and so does eveyone else.  We all need to be nurtured and loved, we all need to be cared for and have a safe place to call home, we need a sanctuary and place to gain respite from the confusion of the world, from all the messages from the media, advertising, our peers, our family.  We need a place where we can retreat and just be ourselves.  The years of the celtic tiger did not value mothering, we were seen as a means to an economic end.  We all need to heal from the awfulness of the  messages we received from that tiger's roar.  We need to be not celtic tigers, but celtic mammies.  The Irish mammy is a legendary figure.  The need for a more inclusive society which values the female side of life, that value the nurturing side of people is so obvious to many people.  We no longer want to run this country like a business. I want to live in a society not a business, I want the nation to be mothered not used as slaves to the machine.  It is time for mothering us all, so I am off to mother my mother tomorrow.  She of course would disagree that she needs mothering but we all need mothering and not just by our mothers.

I am off to hook up my bubble sprinkler, slash in the paddling pool and enjoy the day fueled by cadburies roses and 7 up. My inner child will enjoy the pleasures of chocolate and 7up during lent and my adult will enjoy the guilt free day.


Todays blog was written to the sound of happy children and dogs, also to the sound of south american tango music.
So go off today and mother yourself, create a coocoon of blankets, make a tent out of sheets in the kitchen, do the things that you did as a child with your mother and find that inner child who can help show you the mothering you need.  Alternatively just go and lie in the sun , in a park, in the garden, on the beach or just get out and be happy to be alive.

Garrus beach at sunset

Happy Saturday 

building my happy place and other projects

I am a very visual person.  I think in images.  I find words hard to use to describe unless it is in a series of visual metaphors so when I initially started to move beyond the awful despair and crying associated with the early days of my episode I looked to pictures to try to understand what was happening to me.  The first image I worked with was a black well surrounded by grey stones in a dark place, without light , without colour.  I tried in so many ways to colour the picture but each time I closed my eyes all I could see was the bottomless pit.  I was now fortunately kneeling at the top of the pit looking in, previously I have been hanging on by my fingernails trying to claw myself out.  Thankfully the help of family and a very good doctor pulled me out of the pit.  Time and counselling have turned the bottomless dark well into a very pleasant place.  Now it is a lovely stone labyrinth that I can journey through to an inner sanctuary of calm, the pit is now a beautiful still pool in the middle of the labyrinth .  It is surrounded by a wild flower meadow.  In my new found sanctuary it is always summer.  Not the sweltering heat of mid summer rather the beautiful early summer weather in May , just hot enough to lie out in the sun.  Where the ground is warm but still sit has the slight springyness of the damp winter rain.  I have added it to my projects: to build that beautiful sanctuary in real life so that other troubled minds can find a place to revive and renew themselves.
I started this post in order to describe how I started to overcome the despair.  Essentially I sought to visualise a happy place to counter-act the dark pit I felt I was in.  I tried to find images on the internet, then I tried to take photos and piece them together, I tried to draw it.  Eventually I started to collect images from books magazines and the internet.  It lead me back to my love of art.  I found that I have sky arts on my tv and started to watch art programmes.  I was inspired by the film The gates.  I had forgotten how much I loved Christo's work as a teenager, his wrapped landscape was so different from my previous view of art it was inspiring.  What drew me to the film was the total vision he had and his inspirational self belief.  This film should be compulsory viewing for the depressed.  Pure joy was what he created.  How long had I lived a life without joy, where I sought pleasure rather than joy and happiness.  I did not even recognise the difference until last week while reading the art of happiness.  Pleasure is fleeting but happiness comes from within and does not depend on pleasure for its existence.  So I started to compile a list of projects that I would like to complete.
The first was a collage of Gustav Klimt: The kiss.  I spent days and days looking and examining the image.  For me it represented the pureness of female submission, something I had explored last year.  I was still at odds with my desire to be submissive and could not reconcile it with my intellectual belief that I was equal with men.  Who knows where this exploration will end up but for now I am working on the collage.  at present I am collecting things to use in it.  I examine the image form books and from the Internet.  I have plans to go view it.  Next year or later this year is a significant anniversary of his birth, 150 years and there are a number of exhibitions planned so I hope to travel to see them in reality, possibly by train but who knows yet.

The second project is a bubble machine.  I love bubbles.  As I looked out into the garden while washing up I thought how lovely it would be if there were bubbles blowing around in the garden.  At the time I was reconnecting with my interest in kinetic art so I made the connection that I could make a wind powered bubble machine to blow bubbles for me.  I have an endless permutation of possibilities.  So far I am collecting different shaped bubble wands and drinks cans to make the anemometer-like windmill to power the fan to blow the bubbles.  I decided to make it out of objects I find or that I have lying around so it could also even be from parts of old bikes , I love bikes and the rotation of the wheel on the bearings is so pure.

my bubble farm created by the organic bubble machines(children).

  Again a work in progress but such fun to think about.  I love the concept phase of a project where different ideas are considered.  I love the initial creation stage and also the construction bit.  work projects are just no fun for me anymore since it became all about money and paperwork.  I miss the early days of my career where the creation of the project was the aim, not the keeping the stakeholder happy, not the balancing of the books but the essence of taking an idea and bringing it to its conclusion, then admiring the achievement.  Hopefully my art projects will bring me the pleasure I lost in my work.  Perhaps they might bring me the happiness of expressing myself through the creation of things.  Or is that even possible.  


The most important project is to start a business so that I can use my talents to create an income for myself that does not rely on paid work.  I dont want to be defined by what I do for a living anymore.  I invested too much of my time and effort doing things for others now it is time to do things for myself.  Finally I know what I want in my life.  I want a simple happy life, one that I can look back on without regret, one in which I create things of beauty, the life I have always wanted but put aside as I did all the things that I thought I should.  The only should I need to keep in my life is I should take care of myself.  


While writing I always listen to music.  This post was accompanied by Leonard Cohen.  I am off to read my book of Leonard Cohens poetry now.  


Happy Wednesday 

what i saw on the road to recovery

The first snow of winter

More winter snow , a rare sight here.

The most amazing carbonara sauce cooked by a 10 year old

Bubbles created by several organic bubble machines.

young love and an origami elephant

Something very strange at the Viceral exhibition

A swing

 Is it just me of does that look like eyes?

Eyes and a mouth?

wierd monster face or tree?

Adam and eve are in there somewhere, Why did he blame eve????

If you can't be yourself who can you be

Imagine every day was filled with happiness.  Imagine that everything you wanted just happened.  Image perfect peace and tranquility.  Are you finding it hard or easy to imagine these things.  If you are finding it easy give yourself a pat on the back, if you are finding it hard then imagine you are someone who finds it easy to imagine these things.  When I want to change, or when I see someone who has a trait I admire,  I imagine myself to be that person.  I ask myself what would x do, how would y solve that, if only I was a brave as z what would I do.  We all have the answers and solutions to our problems if only we are able to open our minds and let our inner self guide us.  If we stay true to ourselves, trust ourselves, believe in ourselves then we can be ourselves.  If you cant be yourself who can you be?  Sometimes by imagining ourselves as another person our true nature comes out.  By noticing what we like and dislike in others we can get to know our long suppressed self.

So be mindful of how you are reacting to others as they are all part of you.
Be yourself and be happy.

Happy Wednesday.