I grew up in the 1970s, and my friend Joanne was a very cool friend to have. She had blue jeans with tartan bottoms like the Bay City Rollers.
We didn't have a lot of money, so one day my mother took a pair of my outgrown orange trousers (look, it was the 70s, remember?) and sewed some blue floral fabric on the bottom to lengthen them. She then presented me with this frightening item, saying: "Look! You'll be just like Joanne!"
I don't need to tell you I looked nothing like Joanne.
The reason I am dragging up this sorry story once again is that times are hard in the Coffee House at present, and making do and mending is back on the agenda. I've spent the morning turning the heating off, reading Misssy M's list of vests and browsing the net for January sales of thermal underwear.
If that weren't tragic in itself, I have also been making the poor Littlest Latte her first pair of Frankenstein pyjamas. The Eldest Latte, due to her disability, often crawls at home rather than looking around for her elusive crutches, so holey knees are an occupational hazard. Recently I trotted down to the market haberdashery to buy an iron-on patch for her jeans that said Girl Thing!. Oh, I thought I was so clever as I ironed it on! I was appalled to see it peeling itself obnoxiously off the first time I washed it.
Anyway, anything she passes down is similarly challenged in the knee area, which makes the Littlest Latte look like an urchin as she climbs the stairs to bed.
The thing is, I know that some of you sit around your house of an evening handsewing beautiful things. (Ali, I'm looking at you.) And I'm not going to post a picture of these pyjamas after their knee surgery with a worn-out pink top but let me tell you, even the four-year-old looked scared. I am out of my depth and this is one thing that I know I can't ask my mother about.
So please, if anyone knows how to mend my children's clothes without them looking even worse than I did in my orange trousers, let me know.
Showing posts with label it's just life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label it's just life. Show all posts
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Thursday, 20 December 2007
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?
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?
Thursday, 11 October 2007
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