Merry Christmas

It's time to open the Pandoro! Our breakfast tradition - the Christmas cake of Verona, with coffee, now that the holidays have started in the Coffee House.


And to indulge myself I'm putting up my favourite Christmas photo of the Eldest Latte - it may be Christmas 2004, but it always makes me smile.


A very happy Christmas.

The Day We Met Badger Claws

So Cheery Tim, my therapist (I have decided that Chippy Tim could be misinterpreted to mean that he is a carpenter, so I have reconsidered) said that on some days with this illness you might decide to go all out and do something that you're really not up to. You pay for it afterwards with a few exhausted days unable to get out of bed.

So that's just what I decided to do. Because I wanted to take the Little Lattes to see the alternative Christmas Grotto organised by the Storey Gallery.


Badger Claws was well worth it. Attended by live human squirrels, approached through a woodland trellis, he was tucked away in his little sett decorated with twinkly lights and shelves piled high with interesting trinkety objects. He was warm and chatty, and a bit bonkers, and led me to believe that only arts organisations should be able to do Christmas because it was done so well.

The Lattes got to write letters to Santa and post them down a shiny tube, then were sent away with a golden walnut to grow in the Spring.

And then later they got to go to their friend's house, and while we waited for the friend to get home they got to explore the frost on the grass in the frozen playground, and play and slip on the ice, like proper winter children.


(If you're wondering what on earth the Littlest Latte is dressed in on this arctic day, rest assured she never goes anywhere unless she is properly attired in her Snow White Princess outfit.)

So all in all, a day worth going back to bed for.

Sad. Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad.

Today I am Wallowing. It is a good day to Wallow. It is a sunny winter day and the hope of Christmas is around the corner and I still can't stand up for more than 3 minutes without feeling dizzy and wanting to go back to sleep.

Today I went to see Chippy Tim, my cognitive behaviour therapist. Hello Tim, I said. Let me tell you my ironic little story. You remember how I started coming to see you at the beginning of the year for my health anxiety, how I couldn't stop worrying at the tiniest thing e.g. my little finger feeling a bit funny = I have a neurological disorder? And how in July I was doing so well that even the couple of times I went dizzy I thought, well really, what are the odds of me actually being ill? I was cured! Praise Be!

Well, guess what, Tim old chap. I am Ill with a big fat capital I. And those dizzy spells never did go away and now I have post-viral fatigue and haven't done a thing for three months and I miss my children and I miss my work and I miss standing up and I am scared I will never get my life back and - good god, do you have any tissues?

Well Tim didn't laugh. Which I would have done in his situation. And Tim says I should challenge myself which I think doesn't mean attempting to walk home from town and putting myself back to bed for a week, but actually means try to do little things and stop holding onto lampposts and kitchen worktops and my two-year-old's hand for heaven's sake and try to adopt a 'What if I did fall over? Would it be so bad?' mentality.

Oh and I am not allowed to think about if I will get better or not, and whether I will go back to work before the work goes away or whether I will get to look after my children and take them to the park on my own or swimming ever again before they get too old to be bothered wanting to go. These, the only things that I want to know more than anything else in the world, are Too Big and Far Too Much for me to take on now.

So today I have:
- put out the recycling
- stood up for about two minutes
- cried
- cried a bit more
- put on my relaxation podcast and cried again

So the positive thinking is going, well, well how the hell do you think it is going?

My new thing for today is - Beth Irvine

Since I've not been well enough recently to do any housework, I've been mainly deleting my emails from flylady and trying to remember her adage, "We are not behind - just jump in where we are". Eventually - eventually - I think, I will be well enough to start again, and I don't need to worry about what the house is like now, I just need to concentrate on resting.

But though my endless trawling google sessions have come up with a couple of ok relaxations, if you're listening to them daily like I am, you soon get very bored of them.

Amazingly I didn't delete the email from flylady about Beth Irvine, who is now putting up weekly relaxations on blog talk radio here. My search is over!

There's also a show where she answers people's questions, which is already giving me lots of ideas for how to be less stressed when I finally am better. I know I'm usually all about the sarcasm, and I honestly believe that I will be back to that very soon, but this is a great new thing for me and I'm really really pleased with it.

And she doesn't talk about dusters. At least not so far.

It's a good idea not to expect too much of me

The lovely lady from the Magpie Files (mmm, chocolate) popped over to my blog the other day (ooooh!). Her blog is one of those with pretty pictures. There are some blogs that I visit - like domesticali and Swallowfield (oh soooo Christmassy) to look at the pictures and drool with envy in a wish-my-life-looked-like-that kind of a way. Anyway she said she wanted more photos on my blog.

Okay, lady, here's the thing. There's a reason why talented people with an eye for a good photograph have blogs full of pictures, and exactly the opposite reason why people whose talents are mainly confined to nitpicking about other people's use of apostrophes don't.

To demonstrate - here are my attempts to capture the wonder that is our family's new Christmas tree.

Exhibit A - blurry Eldest Latte

Exhibit B - blurry Littlest Latte

Finally below is Exhibit C - Mr Coffee's attempt, which as you can see is no better, and shows off yet again why we are so suited as a couple.

So while it is very flattering to assume that I have any right to start bandying photographs about on this blog like someone who knows what they are doing, it is also ridiculous. It's like when my friend RA stands me in front of a whole heap of the most gorgeous cushions and scarves that she has made to sell at a gallery, and asks me - me, for pity's sake - what I honestly think of the colour palette.

I am lost. Floundering and lost and alone. Thanks so much for your interest and your belief in me, but really - I am not the person to ask for photographs or advise about colour palettes. Come back when you're unsure about whether or not you really need to use a comma.

Ho Ho Ho and a big bag of tat

So after the careful spreadsheeted planning that was Christmas shopping, I took the Little Lattes to the school fair this morning and came back with a big sack full of tat.

A plastic guitar with attached flashing specs which didn't really work and made a jangling kind of churning sound. A My Little Pony chest of drawers full of hair accessories. Two Santa presents - glitter (quite good if I can pry it out of the Littlest Latte's hands before it goes all over the floor) and a tacky foam pencil case in the shape of an alien.

Why would Santa think we wanted that?

The School Fair consisted of a long table groaning with all the games, dvds, videos and stuffed toys that everyone else was trying to clear out in anticipation of Christmas. These same people were wearily carrying bags full of it home. There was also a room where children could buy their parents secret presents and have them wrapped.

So the Eldest Latte and I climbed the stairs up to this wonderful place, I loaned her a pound and I sat on a landing watching the Littlest Latte play her disgruntled guitar, until eventually the Eldest returned bearing - nothing. "Couldn't think what to buy you," she said. So we went to queue for Santa.

I know this is probably the last year we'll get out of the Eldest Latte as far as Santa is concerned. She has already told Mr Coffee that she thinks Santa is 'a man in a suit' and has kept her Christmas list deliberately spare in the expectation that more presents will come if you don't ask for much. So what we do not need in the queue for Santa is for one of her mates to swan up and tell us that it is Mr B dressed up as Santa, ha ha, because she saw his beard come off. Especially when, once inside the grotto, it is clear that this is not Mr B at all but some other guy, and you can't work out why the child would ruin it for everyone by making up a fake fake Santa.

I think I am just sad because I can't remember a 'wonderment' Santa experience and I think the chance has gone past. I don't even have any pictures, because I really didn't think they were that big a deal. But maybe they were magical to her. My memory of the 'real Santa' involves actually seeing Santa flying across the sky while I waited with everyone else, chatting to the elves. My mum's version of it was an absolute fiasco of a day out with no magic whatsoever.

Who knows what kids remember? It's not up to us to decide. If I could I would erase the memory of this bl**ding pencil case, especially since a bit of it is already falling off.

Christmas shopping. Check.

It is done.

Let us breathe out. Being the anal person that I am, I have spent a week faffing around with a spreadsheet trying to even out presents for the Little Lattes to the extent that I was going to make a two-year-old who has never owned Lego open three Lego baseplates as one of her stocking fillers.

I have also taken the advice of a colleague who, about 10 years ago, told me to buy myself a case of champagne because the presents you received were undoubtedly going to be a bit, well, disappointing. It's a three-bottle case, because unlike my former colleague I'm not married to a marketing consultant, but still I am immensely looking forward to having bubbly in the cellar.

It's my first completely online Christmas, because I'm still not well enough to get out to the shops. It's lovely knowing that I'm expecting all kinds of parcels, even though barely any of them are for me.

A list, just for a list's sake

I just got thinking this morning when I was in the bookshop about some of the books I've read over the past year and thought I'd revisit a few of them just to amuse myself.

And to try and remember if I can remember anything about them, which is always a good test of a book.

So here goes

Empire Falls by Richard Russo - As soon as I thought of this book I remembered that I had to read more of this author. This book won a Pulitzer Prize, which amazed me not because of the quality of the writing, but because of how enjoyable it was to read. After ploughing through some heavy Booker Prize entries it was wonderful to know that somewhere, someone awarded prizes for books that were warm and funny and readable and human. It's the story of a cafe owner, his teenage daughter, his ex-wife, and his cafe regulars. There was an extra moment of joy when suddenly at one point in the middle of it I realised that the chapter I was reading was actually a completely self-contained short story as well as being part of the novel. Yes. Must read more like that.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving - The story of Owen Meany, through the eyes of his best friend, whose mother Owen accidentally killed with a baseball. This was a critically acclaimed book, very funny and very moving, but although I enjoyed it I did find myself a bit irritated by it. Firstly because it started out so comic and engaging and then subtly changed so that at the end it was a tragic, serious political book. I don't mind that at all in a tragic, serious political book but I felt a bit turned-upon in the middle of a comic one. Secondly because there were moments where the author had got just a little bit too amused by his scenarios and he had taken them too far. Also a couple of times we got told the same anecdote twice. Sorry. I mean it was a good read and all, but I didn't lose myself in it.

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger - Oh this made me cry. But it also made me want to throw it against the wall. If I had been that woman I would just have kept the hell out of his way.

Wicked by Gregory Maguire - honest, guv, my bookgroup made me read it. We find out why the Wicked Witch of the West was so annoyed about the red shoes. It was because her sister had no arms, and her lover was bludgeoned to death in a flat. Oh and there was something about a goat. The fact that they made a musical out of this drivel is amazing.

It is advent, so bring on the hockey

Note to self - on Boxing Day pack up the endless bits of Playmobil advent calendar and put them all back in the correct tiny boxes. How you will love your last year's self when you open the box on November 30, anticipating a big ole fiddly job, and find it all stacked away neatly. Flylady would definitely approve.

Yes it is advent, and this year we have the two calendars. We have the olde worlde gi-bleeding-normous wooden advent calendar given to us by my father - but on reflection, calendar seems too small a word. What about furniture? It took us about 15 minutes of wandering round the house trying to find somewhere with space enough to put it.

Then there is the Playmobil advent calendar with accompanying touching cardboard snow scene, in which a lone two-dimensional child gets to peer out of the window of a chocolate-box house as an exciting scene of rapture, gifts and ice hockey is set out before her over 24 painful days.

Yes, that's right, ice hockey. That famous British Christmas tradition. Opening the box reminded me of the first year we used this calendar when the Eldest Latte was four. It's perfectly fine opening the first box and finding a snowman - what's not to like? But as the days go on the boxes begin to contain items such as hockey pucks, which to a small child is like being given a dot to play with.

Watching their bemused little faces - it's magical. It's what advent is all about.