Flats, cats and bats. (There aren't really any bats. Which is a shame.)

I am boring myself with this whole flat business. Boring myself, and also sort of gnawing away at myself, like a child on an ice lolly.

Where I am both the ice lolly and the child. Just to keep my metaphors, like the flat hunting, complicated.

Bottoms!

The thing is that every flat is just not quite as perfect as this flat. And I am trying to do all that beginner's mind shenanigans, but my mind is now so completely befuddled that it doesn't even know what's going on anymore, and is just stuck on the "worry" setting.

Is it better to have lots more space inside, but a garden that the cat can't get into (a lovely garden, but one which entails leaving by the front door to go round the side, a journey that maybe the cat would learn to enjoy being carried on?) or a smaller flat with direct access to a not-so-lovely garden, but one that is on the same road where we already live?

There are many and varied ramifications of one kind and another. Including, for example, the purchasing of freezers or the lack of requirement that a van be hired.

And always, always, there is another couple viewing the flat just after you looking perky and flush with holding deposits ready to be laid down the moment you are out of sight.

Big bottoms.

And poor Miss Tickle's brain.

It is important to understand your wee.

Hub is a diabetic.

I think I have mentioned this before.

He is Type 1, which is Very Different to Type 2. Type 1 is the one you get from being jolly unlucky. And it means you must inject yourself with insulin because your body no longer produces it. And we need it for important stuff. Important body stuff.

(I am very scientific.)

"I think I understand the double-wees," he announced. This morning. (I was still a bit snoozy.)

Sometimes, in the night, he gets up to go to the toilet, comes back to bed, and two minutes later gets up and goes to the toilet again.

A double-wee.

It is a phenomenon, and only makes me love him more. It is possibly his superpower. (I do not know to what use it can be put. Yet.)

Some years ago, hub did the Tour de Mont Blanc, which is a difficult and long and arduous walky-climby adventure. And when he did it, he had to monitor everything that he ate and drank, and everything that came out too. Apparently there was some surprise among the group that nobody ever weeed more than a pint (I do not find this so surprising, but I am quite small.)

Anyway.

He postulated this morning a theory that our muscles only allow us to wee a pint, and after that they say, "That's your lot thank you."

But with his high blood sugar, he has more than a pint to wee.

But his muscles do not understand this.

So in between the double-wee he goes into the kitchen and picks things up and puts them down again.

To waste time.

To fool the muscles.

He informed me.

This morning.

Mere minutes after I woke up.

I am still a little confused.

If I am honest.

Endings.

It was bright and gusty and full of sunshine.

With walks and sea and dogs.

And cake.

And I am a little sad to be back. If I am honest.

As we flew in the tiny-slightly-like-it-might-fall-apart plane back towards the mainland, away from the islands that somehow seem to be safekeeping a big bit of my happy, my shiny memories, a large slice of all the good that has happened to me, I did snuffle a little bit, my eyes did leak slightly.

And sitting by my hometown sea today with the rain falling softly on my head, my eyes again went a little wibbly, a little wobbly and I let them. No one looked. It might have just been the rain.

Over the past three months I have been doing an introduction to counselling course. The last session was before we went on our glorious weather-beaten holiday. And it was about endings.

And what they mean to us.

They mean quite a lot to me at the moment. They seem to worm their way in to a little place somewhere inside my little being. And once they are there, they turn on a little tap.

Which is connected to a small hose.

Which is connected to my eyes.

I didn't want my pregnancy to end. I didn't want our holiday to end. I don't want our time in this flat, my home, to end.

But it all blooming ends.

Doesn't it.

Grr.

Oh GOSH it was lovely.

Ritual

I wonder if crying an hour a week will help.

If setting a timer, an alarm, packaging a snippet of time to mourn purposefully.

Will help.

Because I have been trapped by patterns, by conditioning and echoes of generations that taught: Do Not Feel.

For God's sake, whatever you do, don't do that.

And no matter how much I thought I was conscious of the forces that shaped me, that I was my own person, that I had broken those shackles, still, at unbidden moments, the loss of a thing that never was threatens to flatten me with its force.

The moments are unbidden.

I have tried to flatten them.

I have worked and I have planned and I have travelled and I have emailed and I have created and I have edited and I have engaged and I have researched and I have written and I have done and done and done.

I have kept busy.

Just like the good girl was taught.

I am a good girl.

But.

Maybe I should set aside an hour a week to cry.

Tiddly-pom

It snowed.

By the sea.

Which to be honest was a little weird.

And made me feel glum. I really wanted to feel excited, and I was excited for about ten minutes.

Until I got glum.

(Because mostly I was wondering where Spring is.)

If you are prone to the wintry blues then snow in April is not strictly A Good.

Also, I am drowning in work.

DROWNING I say!

Also, I went to a conference!

This is only exciting because I haven't been to one before. And because it was in Exeter. Where it is sunny.

And I talked to academics from everywhere in the world about how theatre is, like, totally a force for good man.

Then we went to the pub.

Conferences are quite good. Innit.

PS. I know I am not being a very sociable blogger at the moment. I am sorry for my lack of presence on your lovely pages. It is simply the drowning you see. The drowning.

Drama queen

If work were a body of water, my feet would not be able to touch the bottom.

And also it would be a glacial lake of some kind.

And also it would be raining.

Blood. Raining blood.

With the occasional toad.