I'm still thick in a fug of snot and snivels and aches... It gives the world an odd, fuzzy quality so that I end up feeling not quite in the world. My thinking gets muddy, my dreams seem to lap at the edges of waking, needing me to shake my head or blink in an attempt to find certainty in which world is real.

And I'm not good at being ill! I know, I know, what a ridiculous thing to say - who is good at it?! I swing between feeling shamefully sorry for myself one minute and frustrated with it and determined to ignore it the next - today's bout of ignoring how ill I feel involved a fairly major (for an ill person!) clean and tidy of the house. Needless to say, it left me totally exhausted and feeling far worse this evening than I did yesterday. Foolish woman...

I'm trying to unpick some of these waking dreams and strange thoughts and feelings of the last few days. I've felt a sadness - not a heavy sadness, nor threatening, but a sadness none the less... Perhaps it's just slef-pity at my depleted state... I have regrets, and that, I think is the crux of it. I am not a person who has had regrets - there have been times of horror in my life that I still do not regret, but all of a sudden I have them. Not about horrors or dramatic things - mainly about spending such a long time allowing myself to remain unhappy, when it has been so transformational for me to come here and become happy again. Regrets feel sad, especially after so long without them. I wonder if they go away over time; if one can work at letting go of them and them be gone; or if they just are, despite one's efforts - if they exist despite me and are just something I have to learn to live with...

Nothing seems to soothe today... not honey and lemon, not the big bowl of home-made meatballs and tomato and garlic sauce, not a hot bath, not knitting, not even FBs cuddles... There's an unease in me that I can't quite fathom. I think maybe I have unleashed something in acknowledging that there would be space for a little passion and desire within me - that in noticing that, in letting the thoughts exist outside myself it spirals and grows in ways which, truth be told, I'm not comfortable with! No, there's more to it than that - there was news yesterday that tapped into those feelings - not something that is mine to share here, but suffice to say it seems to have awakened a sleeping dragon in me... But then again, I can trust little in this state where reality and fantasy or dream seem to be so hard to distinguish through my fuggy wee head...

I'm ok. Just processing...

On colds and self-indulgence

The sky is heavy with the weight of wet snow. It began as rain this morning, but I noticed it was falling thicker than water on the windscreen and by 9.30 it was definitely rain no longer, but fat, wet snowflakes. It isn't settling yet, but the air has grown steadily colder all morning, so there's time yet. I have guiltily let the central heating thermostat creep up a couple of notches as we've struggled to feel warm. But the damp seems to find infinate ways into this house and I wonder if we will ever feel truly warm and dry until the seasons move on again!

The world feels grey and heavy and my own vision is clouded and weighted by a cold that has left me not only with sinuses full and sore, but every joint in my body (even the top joints of my fingers!) aching and complaining at even the small movements. FB too has been under the weather and I'd thought maybe he was out the other side - perhaps he is but emotionally he's all over the place. This morning the pair of us met headlong in a horrible combination of both of our sadness and heaviness and less-than-top-form-ness. And I'm sad and I'm sorry that these moments happen, when my energies are depleted and I haven't the resources to meet him as he needs me to. It isn't awful, it isn't some terrible thing, I haven't failed him, but neither have I been enough, and it's a sad old feeling...

And sadness hangs doesn't it?I feel an emptiness today, a space inside that would really like to feel that it contained something... I am very loved but I no longer remember what it is to be desired and sometimes it would be nice to remember what it is to crackle and fizz under another's touch, to know that someone somewhere is anticipating me, to know warmth and softness and hunger and searching... I need not for another, but it doesn't stop me wanting at times!

I'm looking for a place to root myself again as my cold leaves me feeling floaty and ungrounded, I'm trying to catch a hold of that contentment that usually holds me so well, I'm trying hard not to launch into flights of fancy, or to entertain fantasies that can't sustain, trying to find a route back into my body even though it doesn't feel a very welcoming place today!

Oh what a self-indulgent post! Forgive me! Bare with me - I'll be home again in myself very soon, just need to allow myself a little wonder and a little wallow!

Cold days and a lovely long boy...

It's been days full of icy cold, breath freezing as it rises, pale moons that never set, bloody red sunrises and lilac, pink and grey sunsets...

We had a walk with some friends on Beverley Westwoods - FB had fun spotting things (most exciting find:- dead leaves!) and finding dens to play in. But the cold chased us home after an hour or so. (mental note: where can I get thermal long johns to fit a coming-up 4 year old? Or maybe I should just buy him some tights... I used to when he was a baby...)

He's growing so fast - clothes not long new to him are getting shorter in leg and sleave. He's a great long boy - always was. I shall never forget the moment he was lifted out of me, held up for me to see, and as they lifted he just seemed to keep on coming and coming and coming... I thought 'where on earth did all that baby come from?', this great long, lean boy being lifted out of the hole they'd made in my belly...

And now here he is with all that fine straw-coloured hair, charging round the woods, jumping on my bed and growing out of his clothes... Looking like his mama...

... And his dad...