Hello, lovelies. How are you?

The husband and I got back from our month-long European vacation last week, and it was amazing. Four weeks to soak up the summer sun, get some colour on these pale shoulders, and get some much needed Vitamin D. So many beautiful sites, plus a long weekend with our dear friends in Germany (not nearly long enough, but wonderful all the same), delicious food and sleepy afternoons. I can’t wait to tell you all about it.

For now? Reality. It’s a busy week this week at work and I’ve got lots of appointments to book……..

The past week has been full of challenges, mostly emotional ones.

Sometimes, I get so frustrated. Before this week, I was feeling fantastic, eating well, running on the treadmill, and having fun at work.

Sunday afternoon, all my good feelings dissolved and I crumpled into a fragile heap.

Part of growing up is realising that not every day is going to be a great one, and surrendering to the fact that sometimes there are things beyond our control.

The older I get, the more I try to control the things happening in my life. I have been obsessive about cleaning around the house lately, and I know it is because I want to control things. I write to-do lists that are three pages long, lists that never get completed, lists that make me feel worse when I look at them and think

look at how little you’ve accomplished today.

Why do we beat ourselves up like this? Who cares if the dishwasher is unpacked today or tomorrow? It doesn’t matter.

This week, I was lucky enough to experience something that changed my way of thinking. This week, I cried. And instead of feeling bad about it, instead of trying to stop myself, I just let it happen.

When we can get to a point when we stop trying to avoid unpleasant things, they often aren’t as bad as we had imagined.

This week, I cried. And afterwards, when my tears had dried and I could catch my breath, I felt a little bit like myself again.

I bought these two prints this week, when I was feeling better.

Just to remind myself about what is important.

]]> http://curiousliving.com/2011/05/18/i-long-for-salt-air-in-my-hair/feed/ 1 http://curiousliving.com/2011/05/04/to-do-be-busy/ http://curiousliving.com/2011/05/04/to-do-be-busy/#comments Wed, 04 May 2011 09:08:22 +0000 jessica http://curiousliving.com/?p=509

You know those annoying people who, whenever you ask then how they are, always manage to use the same response: “Busy!”

I’ve become one of them.

I remember how busy life felt when I was at uni, and working part-time. Oh my god, I would think to myself. How could life possibly get any more busy or stressful than this?

Yeah, I want to punch twenty-year old me in the face as well. Life back then was anything BUT busy. A few papers to write (which they gave you, like 13 weeks to do), a few mindless shifts pouring drinks and taking orders at the local Italian restaurant or serving up coffee after coffee at a cafe close by. Fast-forward to twenty-six year old me, and my to-do list feels like a noose around my neck.

Get up, choose something snappy to wear, eat the right thing for breakfast, work at  stomach ulcer-inducing pace all day at work(fuelled by coffee), finish work, throw my high heels in the corner, clean up, cook dinner, keep up with the washing and the cleaning, make sure I don’t ignore my husband, load and unload the dishwasher, think about my nanna and how long its been since we last spoke, make sure I spend time with family, make sure I still see my friends, make sure I play with the dogs so they don’t mope around, make sure I cuddle the cat, try to plan my trip to Europe that its in, oh, SIX WEEKS, think about going to the gym, pack a gym bag but never get to the gym, try to get to bed at a reasonable hour, and try not to go mad from all the stress that is churning in my stomach.

Oh yeah, and write a fucking novel because life is obviously far too easy without throwing THAT in.

It’s true, I’m officially starting to feel like An Adult.

I’m not complaining (well, I am a little bit) but I just wish I could figure out How To Do It All. It’s inevitable that when I focus on one thing, something else suffers. I work late a couple nights one week to try and get ahead, and my home life suffers without me keeping things clean, cooking meals, shopping for groceries and spending time with Jed. I spend time writing my novel and try to shut out all the distractions, and end up in tears because I haven’t spoken to my nanna in 2 weeks and I’m worried about her. I try to push through my exhaustion from the days events to stay up late writing, when all I want to do is eat potato chips and drink wine and sit in front of the TV watching something I can escape into.

I’m frustrated. I feel so guilty every time I turn someone down for dinner, for a visit, every time I don’t answer a phone call because I don’t have two hours to sit on the phone with that person right now.

I write perpetual to-do lists that never get done. I used to be OK with this. But not any more. For some reason, I suddenly feel this sense of urgency, like time is running out.

And this daily gauntlet that I run makes me wonder, how the hell could I *possibly* add anything else to this already overflowing plate? Like a baby? Or a second novel (assuming the first ever gets finished)? Or another hobby? Or exercise? Or early nights?

It makes me wonder. But not for long.

I don’t have time to think about it for too long before something else pops up that requires my attention. And maybe thats not a bad thing – this girl, the constant over-analyzer of every single little thing in her life, is finally too busy to over think much at all. Except how annoying I sound when people ask me how I am, and I reply “Busy!”

It’s been months since I checked in here.

It wasn’t intentional. A few months ago, my poppy (my grandfather) passed away, and my priorities got all shifted around. I’ve never lost anyone close to me before, and two months on I’m still incredibly sad that I’ll never see him again. My grandparents have always been a huge part of my life and a natural extension of the relationships I share with my parents – and to see your grandfather laid out in his coffin before they take him away for the funeral ceremony is just devastating. The funeral was so sad.

I worry a lot about my nanna. She doesn’t drive, and I sometimes lay awake at night wondering what her world is like now, alone after 53 years with her husband.

When I saw his ashes, the heavy blue box that sits on the dresser in the bedroom they used to share, that’s the moment it hit me. The realisation that death comes for all of us. The impossible fact that a person – who was born, who lived, and loved and laughed and cried and everything else in between – could end up a box full of ash on a dresser in the bedroom.

My poppy taught me so many amazing things while he was here. The most important thing I think that he taught me was the value of kindness. He never had a bad word to say about anybody, and would always go out of his way to do anything for anyone. He just wanted to help.

He was on a downward spiral for 15 months before he died, and yet I never really grasped the possibility that he could die. He was over having dinner one night and it was just the two of us. He told me he thought that he was getting to the end, and I refused to listen. I told him he wasn’t allowed to die anytime soon, that he had to stick around and meet my kids. I think it broke his heart that he couldn’t. I know it has broken mine.

The very last time I spoke to him was the day before he died. He wasn’t well, but he wasn’t dying, either – he could walk and talk and laugh and breathe. It was a quick visit, because we were taking nanna out for dinner. If we had known what precious little time we had left with him, we would have stayed. I mean, the doctors were talking about sending him home the next day, and instead, he died.

As we were leaving that night, I got a tighter hug than normal and an “I love you.” When I looked at my poppy’s face before I turned to leave, he squeezed my hand, and his eyes were all shiny. Somehow, I think we both knew that this was our final goodbye. I turned to look at him as we made our way down the corridor. He was looking out of the window as the sun was setting, and something in my head said, this is it.

The next day, things had gotten much worse, and my poppy had to be put on major doses of painkillers to ease the pain of his kidneys failing. By the time I got to the hospital that afternoon, he had been given a prognosis of 2 weeks. In the end, it took more like 5 hours before he took his last breath.

It was so weird, but it felt like he was already starting to leave us. There he was, chock full of morphine, unconscious and barely alive struggling for each ragged breath. It is the strangest feeling, watching someone you love and basically waiting for them to pass away. Nobody wanted to leave in case they missed him, but it got pretty late and we all thought my nanna would probably like to spend some time by herself with her love of more than fifty years. We all took turns saying goodbye, promising to return the next day.

He died before we even reached the parking lot.

I’ve heard that when a person is at death’s door, they often wait until they are alone to pass. I don’t know if it’s because they stop breathing when they have no more external stimulus, or whether it really is their way of sparing their loved ones that final, awful moment.

I still haven’t managed to get past this, and I don’t know if I ever will. Mostly, because poppy was one of those people who, since the day I was born, has loved me unconditionally, done anything I ever needed, given the best hugs in the world, and entertained me for hours with stories of his early life.

And it still devastates me that everything we are and everything we will ever be will one day be reduced to a little heavy box that gets collected from the cemetary to sit on a dresser. I know thats not right, because it’s the memories that are left, the legacy of a family and the special bonds that were shared… but it still makes me want to sob every time I think about it.

I’ll be back, dear friends, once I wrap my head around this terrible loss.

My sunday was humid, overcast and rather wonderful.

We went to a friends birthday breakfast on the beach in Fremantle, came home and hibernated for the rest of the day.

I burned my Island Mango Yankee candle while reading the new PC Cast book, Awakened, and laying in bed while my beloved cleaned out his spare room (yes, we have a spare room each. Hilarious, eh?)

We had delicious chicken and salad wraps for lunch.

I drank lots of tea which soothed my soul.

I complained a lot about how sore my entire body was from running twice last week… but really it was just covert bragging

I love sundays… feeling no need to do anything important… spending time on important things (like reading and eating and drinking tea)… just hanging around in our little house.

*Image from weheartit