The Penny

There is a penny on the ground. Just a single penny.

The penny goes unnoticed, its surface battered by years of wind and rain. It lies there, now tarnished and rough around the edges.

No one bends to pick up the penny. No one even sees the penny. It lies lonely and forgotten.

But the penny has two sides and while one side has taken everything the world has thrown at it and had its shine removed forever for its efforts, it has survived and in doing so it has saved the other side.

The side that whilst a little damp from the ground beneath still remains shiny and new. This side has been protected all these years and it lies there, sheltered, ready and waiting.

I've been thinking a lot about that side of the penny these last few days. The almost forgotten side of the penny.

All I have to do is stop in the street, bend and turn that little penny over. I can start fresh and new. I don't have to look upon the damage that difficult years have caused the penny because she has a new and shiny side, a fresh side.

I can remember the hard times whenever I wish. A coin has two sides after all and with the good there will be bad, with the right there will be wrong and with the dark there will be light.

I'm going to concentrate on the new side of the penny. The side that I've protected all these years.

I really hope everyone else that feels they're going through a rough patch and a low patch at the moment knows that they too will have better days. They too have a shiny side of their very own penny.

Clumsy is what clumsy does

Do you have any idea what I'm risking just by being here.

I might delete my blog entirely by accident.

I might accidentally type the secret combination of words programmed at the very beginning of time as we know it designed to wipe the entire internet clean and start again. You know, in case it actually did end up filled with nothing but smut.

The world itself may come to an abrupt end.

Well ok perhaps not, but I have been incredibly clumsy this week.

So much so that I question whether or not its safe to leave the house.

So far, this week alone (my clumsiness extends as far back as I can remember) I have;

Cut myself 3 times making meals, one of those times was with a butter knife. I ask you!

Managed to sew my finger to fabric when I'd have been happy to just include the button with no added extras.

Fallen down my garden steps.

Stubbed my toe.

Fell out of bed. I may or may not have had a glass or two of wine.

Stabbed myself in the finger countless times making mini notebooks (those things are dangerous).

Tripped over my own feet.

And to top of my resoundingly pratastic week I tried to take Toots to buy her some sandals today and maybe some new clothes. The first shop we went to is quite expensive but they did have a fantastic sale on. Toots was playing with the foot measuring thingy while I looked at a few different pairs of shoes when all I heard in the crowded, but really rather quiet, shop was an almighty parp followed by Toots loudly and proudly exclaiming "I FARTED".

Needless to say we didn't get shoes.

Then onto the second shop I asked her nicely at the front door to behave for a few minutes and explained that I just wanted to pick her up a couple of skirts and then we could go for ice cream. We entered the shop and Toots immediately spied a pair of pink and purple and glittery (no less) sunglasses and while trying to pick them up to have a closer look she knocked over the single largest pile of swimming costumes I've ever seen on display.

Of course, I'm left scrabbling on the floor trying to gather them all up again, trying to lay them back on the shelf just as they were which turned out to be completely impossible because the women who work in the shop are geniuses and they have a knack of this kind of thing which clearly I do not and I kept getting the strappy bits tangled round my fingers and knocking even more of them to the ground again.

I finally managed to get them back on the shelf and not looking too badly either if I do say so myself when I stood up straight and whacked my forehead against another shelf which caused me to jump roughly 29 feet into the air because it frightened the life out of me and by that stage everyone in the shop had stopped what they were doing to watch the mad, dancing chimp playing with the swimming costumes.

Finally I thought "stuff it" this just wasn't going to be the day for shopping. I gave up and we settled ourselves on the grass in the square with a couple of blue slush puppies.

Hmmm lovely.

And I was just thinking that maybe the day wasn't that bad after all, when I chucked half of the bright toxic looking blue slush puppie down the front of myself.

The four year old was immaculate.

I think I may go hide under the covers.

A bad week

I've been a bit depressed this last week. Well maybe depressed isn't the right word, I've been a bit down in the dumps and completely unmotivated.

I was grateful for the menu plan last week, because in all honesty if I didn't have it I would have fed everyone cereal and toast for each meal.

I can't seem to get in the mind frame to do anything properly.

I haven't made anything in almost a week now. I've started things and spent some time doodling ideas but at the end of the day I decide that either everything is crap or just not worth the effort.

I've painted my nails and bought a few colour samples to start redecorating the house (which is very daunting at the minute), but still I just can't seem to shake off whatever feeling it is that has taken hold of me. Its kind of a "why bother" sort of feeling.

I even tried to make Toots a cutesy little snack lunch today simply for the sake of doing something creative;

Let me tell you, having a four year old look at you like you've grown horns and are more than a little pathetic really feels like rock bottom. She didn't open her mouth, she just looked at the plate and then looked at me as though saying "Who are you trying to kid. You don't even do cutesy food when you're in a paint flicking mood".

In all fairness to her she's completely right. I've never been a big fan of the whole Annabel Karmel thing. If that woman's perfectly contend to prepare one meal for herself and then an entirely separate for her kids then more power to her, but I've an inkling that when those kids step out into the real world and sit down to a school lunch, they're in for one hell of a surprise. And not the good kind of surprise either. Besides, I think Toots might have read Kitchen Confidential on the sly because if I go to the bother of trying to make food all pretty and cutesy she's convinced that I'm trying to trick her into eating something that actually tastes disgusting.

I'm more of the "social eating" school of thinking, i.e. the family sitting down together to eat exactly the same thing as each other, and enjoy the meal and have a chat. Thankfully, it seems Toots agrees.

I haven't really slept properly in what seems like months, although changing our diet in the last week does seem to have helped somewhat. I thought that I had been doing a fairly good job of hiding my utter exhaustion, but it seems not when you consider the fact that on both Saturday morning and this morning, Toots woke at 7am and then went downstairs and made breakfast by herself. Her excuse was that "you needed a lie in, mummy".

I love that kid, and she's about the only reason I have for wanting to pull myself out of this mood.

Perhaps its been the weather here, lately its been so changeable and makes it virtually impossible to plan anything and I'm nothing without a plan. It could also be the thought of redecorating. I have too many ideas in my head all at once and the task seems to me to be so daunting that I just switch off from the idea.

There is a small ray of sunlight on the horizon though. Last week I posted a request for a sewing machine on my local Freecycle and within hours had received the offer of two, a Brother Zig Zag and a Crown Point.

I collected the Crown Point on Thursday evening and it is working beautifully. I contacted the owner of the Brother machine (which you'll recall needs some repairs) and told her that it seemed a little greedy of me to take two machines and that I had a good feeling that the Brother simply needed a fuse or two and a good service and would she not be happier to do this herself and keep it as a spare machine, but she told me that she was still more than happy for me to take it and it wouldn't do me any harm having a second machine and that even if it couldn't' be repaired, perhaps the feet and needles could be used with the Crown Point.

I collected the Brother on Friday evening and I'm very happy I did. I haven't had a chance to look at it properly yet, but after a good clean it really is a beautiful old machine just to look at. I think ever if I'm unsuccessful in making it work it is still a thing of real beauty and interest to have on display in a room.

Except now I'm in a complete tizz about what to make with them first.

Veering wildly to a different (but not completely unrelated) topic, I've also been offered the use of a beautiful cottage on the north coast of Ireland. The husband knows were it is and says that it will be perfect for a few days away. Now we just have to wait for Toots' holiday list to arrive from the school and we'll which days we're good to go.