A Week in Cornwall

A week in Cornwall can work miracles, at least that is how it appears to me.

As many of you will know, I have been suffering from the debilitating effects of depression and anxiety for several years now.  I have been hospitalised on 3 different occasions.  I take no less than 13 pills every single day to keep the chemicals in my brain finely balanced.

The good news is, they appear to be working finally.

I remember when this all started asking my psychiatrist how long it would be until I was better.  He said "A long time."  I thought he meant 6 months, maybe a year on the outside.  I had no idea that it would take several years and several tweaks of the medication, several more years of psychotherapy, and even more time just trying to overcome the demons that ranted inside my head.

For now, the demons are quiet.  They aren't completely silent.  I can tell when I've missed taking my medication.  So can my friends and family.  I leave the house regularly now without the pit of dread tightening in my stomach.  I still find social situations uncomfortable which is annoying because that isn't how I see myself or how I used to be.  

But the demons have reduced their screeching to a mere whisper.  And some days, I don't hear them at all.

In mid-February, a very generous friend offered us the use of their seaside cottage down in St Ives in that gorgeous southwest corner of England known as Cornwall.  The cottage is absolutely delightful and exceeded every one of our expectations.  We took my daughter's best friend and her mother with us.  It was an eventful few days to say the least.

On the first day we were there, our one-year-old black Labrador puppy, Guinness, decided to take a flying leap (literally) off a sea wall.  I have that moment of her suspended in midair between her jumping and her falling etched into my mind's eye.  She looks like a cartoon.  She fell 30 feet to the rocks and grass below.  I ran to see her landing on her rear haunches, yelp, and try to stand.  She struggled and whimpered.

My husband managed to get down to her.  He tried to get her to walk but it was clear she was hurting and had a minor cut on her knee.  She was shaking and her heart was racing.  She was going into shock.  My husband carried her down the hill and went to get the car.  We raced to the vet.

Fortunately, after several hours at the vets on a fluid drip, antibiotics, opiates, and tranquilisers, she made a full recovery and was just sore for a couple days.  Talk about stressful!

The next night we were informed that a combination of spring tides (when the tides are at their highest) and rough seas caused by the gale winds and torrential overnight rains would mean that the sea was likely to breach the seawall at the harbour in St Ives.  Our cottage was perfectly placed just a few doors up from the seawall at the harbour which was a great location until that warning was issued.  

Every few hours we made our way the few steps down the street to evaluate the threat.  It was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure as the waves crashed over the wall and into the buildings on the seafront.   In the end, this also passed without any real danger posed to man or beast.

We spent the days walking on the beaches (there are no fewer than 5 beaches around St Ives) and walking around the town exploring galleries and art museums and used book stores and odd little shops.  We ate out.  We cooked in.  I even got breakfast in bed one morning delivered by my daughter and her friend.  What a treat!

I was surrounded by positivity and tranquillity on the trip. When I returned home I felt as if a fog had lifted.  I started writing.  At first it was just in my head.  A story had taken hold of me and was busy organising itself.  Then 2 weeks ago it felt like the harbour wall had collapsed and the sea of words was rushing to get out.

I sat at my computer every day, some days for more than 14 hours.  I managed to write over 110,000 in 10 days.  It was emotional.  One day I started crying about 5 pm and kept crying through the night until about noon the next day.  The tears lasted on and off until I was finally able to finish that chapter.

The book, All My Loves, is about a woman dying of a brain tumour.  She is in the hospital and in the final stages of dying.  She is revisited by the memories of the men she loved and those who loved her.  Some are good memories.  Some are excruciatingly painful memories.  Same are hilarious.  Woven into the story is also the love of her parents as they divorce and remarry, and the love of her grandmother towards her alcoholic husband who died with their youngest son in a drunken car crash.  It is about how love changes us, not always for the better.  It's a little bit saucy.  What book about love could possibly avoid sex?  It's sad but it is also hopeful, I think.

I am now in the editing phase.  I have edited the first three chapters with the help of a very dear friend of mine who is labouring away on the next 8 chapters.  The editing was more difficult than the writing.  Who would have guessed?

I am now looking for a literary agent.  I have someone who has expressed a possible interest which is very exciting but I'm not counting my chickens until a contract is on the table.

The road to publication is long and winding.  But the words are still flowing out of me.  So, I am back to blogging.  I also have an illustrated children's book that I completed a few years back with a very dear friend who did wonderful illustrations for me.  I've got to get that all gathered up and repeat the agent process for it.  I have several more ideas for novels inside my head.  I need to let those organise themselves but one is already starting to take form.  I might be back burning the midnight oil when that comes out of me.  Finally, I've got the novel I started before my depression took over my life.  I want to go back to it and see if I can do anything with it.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my musings.

Friday Antics

My life is never complete without random trips to hospital A&Es (ERs) randomly sprinkled throughout the year.

On Friday I had worked from home and managed to get the pumpkin pies for our Thanksgiving feast baked. They were cooling on the kitchen counters when I left to get Abigail from school. I picked her up at her normal time from school and we headed home. Sebastian has judo on Friday's so I expected we wouldn't need to return to school until 5 pm. I had left my work mobile in the house not expecting to use it whilst I did the school run. I did at the last minute grab my personal mobile.

When we arrived back home we went next door to visit the neighbours as we often do when we get home on Fridays. Little Helena (the 2 year old next door) loves Abigail and we are so busy we don't often get to visit. My plan was to stay for a cuppa tea and then get dinner started. I had just sat down with my cuppa when my mobile rang. It was Marc telling me to go to the school and get Sebastian. He had injured his chin during the afternoon's football game.

I left Abigail with the neighbours and raced to the school. When I got there I removed the band aid that the matron (school nurse) had put on his chin after cleaning up the blood and knew a trip to the hospital was required.

I phoned Marc and made arrangements for him to pick up Sebastian's classmates (Izzy & Hetta) at 5 as we normally drop them off on Friday's after school since they live in the same village as us. I rang the neighbour and asked her to keep Abigail and we set off for the hospital.

After an hour wait we were seen by a nurse practitioner who cleaned up the gash some more (it was still bleeding - ick!) She stripped it and glued it and put a plaster bandage across it and we headed home.

It seems that during the football match Sebastian's chin met Hugo's head as they were both heading for the football, neither of who were paying much attention to each other's fast approach. Seb stays he had the wind knocked out of him and Hugo has a nasty bump on his head. Thank goodness no teeth were lost.

When we got home, Marc's car was here but he wasn't. I noted that the pumpkin pies had cooled nicely and looked beautiful. I was hoping to resist the temptation for a slice until our feast on Saturday.

I went next door to find that Marc didn't need to pickup Izzy and Hetta (they had left for a family trip to Ireland at midday) and he had just gotten home after having waited at the school for 30 minutes. I'm sure their mother had told me but clearly in the madness I had forgotten.

The other neighbours had locked themselves out of the house and Emma had spare keys so they were round as well. It was chaos with 4 girls in the house all under 4 years old.

When we all got back into our home, I was horrified to find that Bailey (the dog) could not resist the temptation of the pumpkin pies and had jumped up on the counter and demolished 1/2 of one pie and 1/4 of the other pie.

Oh, I needed a drink!

Ode to Tucker

My sister, Stephanie, had to put her dog, Tucker, down a couple days ago.

Tucker and I had a rocky relationship. It all started when he ate one of my favourite pairs of shoes whilst I was staying at my sister's house in Dallas, TX USA.

The next time I visited was with my new husband. We had gone out to dinner and left the top layer of our wedding cake on the dining room table. When we got home we discovered that Tucker had eaten the whole thing. My husband and I didn't eat cake on our first anniversary. But the dog sure looked like he enjoyed it

But my sister and her family loved this dog. I know how sad it is to lose a dog. Especially for the children.

When my parent's separated my mother had taken all of us kids to stay at one of her friend's house. When we came home our dog, Dolly, was gone. My father had taken Dolly to the vets and sent her to doggie heaven. We children were devastated. I don't remember a time when Dolly wasn't there.

Dolly was old. Her hearing was gone. My brothers and I had fed her crayons to see if she pooped in technicolour. The crayons came out in chunks. A successful scientific experiment, I reckon. We used to ride her around the back yard. She never once snipped at any of us. Even when we pulled her tail. I watched her puppies being born. I cried the day I took the last one to school for show and tell before she was given to a new family. That's me surrounded by her one and only litter of pups in the pic.

Tucker had lost control of his bladder and was in a great deal of pain. Stephanie did what she could to ensure Tucker was well cared for. He was a great family dog. He will be missed.

Ruffles

My mom's dog, Ruffles, had to put down today. She was 17 years old. She had a long pampered life. She was my mother's baby after all of her children had left home. My mom will miss Ruffles tremendously!

A Girl and Her Dog

Firefox Magic

Live and learn.....and seek the advice of colleagues. If you've been reading this you will know that I've been struggling with the whole Mac experience. First, the dog ate through the cable which allowed me to switch between the 2 machines. Then Safari (the Mac web browser) wasn't supported by blogger (the service I use to publish my blog). Needless to say this left me all a bit disillusioned, disappointed and well, just dissed. Ah, but I know have this seriously cool switch which at the cool touch of my finger tip (not even a switch really) I can painlessly switch between the two.

As far as the dog damage goes, we have now procured a crate.....a very very very large crate to put the dog in when he is unsupervised so the damage he can do to my computer (and the kitchen) should now be minimised/eliminated. Of course, the crate is sooooo large (because I didn't want to be mean) we can't actually cook in the kitchen. Minor detail which I have delegated to my husband to sort out. He gets all the really hard problems.

On the advice of a colleague I have downloaded Firefox which is another browser for Macs. This browser is compatible with blogger and is what I am using now to publish this post. Hurrah!

Next hurdle is uploading photos......any of you enjoying this half as much as I am? Geek alert!

This is my third post in 1 day: not good.....not good at all.....

Dog Destroyer

He looks sweet and innocent. He is not. He destroyed the doggie bed we bought him and is now sleeping on the remnant of fabric with very little stuffing and a very hard tiled floor (as seen in photo). He has chewed all corners of the skirting board in the kitchen. Yesterday he decided my kitchen towels were fair game and flung them to all corner of the kitchen, ripping and tearing as he went. Today the crate arrives and he will be duly "locked up" during periods of unsupervision. He is growing so quickly I can hardly remember what a small little puppy he was. the fear is he is going to grow into an enormous dog bigger than everyone in the house except Marc. The good news is he has developed quite a gentle nature around Abigail and Seb and he are best mates.

Sebastian is finding the return to school exhausting. He is struggling to do his homework in under a couple of hours which eats into my time for other household duties/chores. Hopefully, next week will get easier as his brain is retrained. I can't even imagine the battle his teachers are having at school but as always they never complain. I have never met such a group of dedicated educators.

Abigial has loved her first week at pre-school although just like Sebastian, I can't out of her what she actually got up to. If she is to be believed they all just stood around and looked at each other. Strange how children can remember nothing (or refuse to tell you) what they did all day. Of course, she must have been run off her feet because like Sebastian she has been requesting to go to bed at 7 pm (instead of the normal 8). Good for mummy and daddy though!

Abigail is home with me today as her child minder had an operation yesterday. We send Jacqui
get well wishes and hope she is back on her feet and fit as a fiddle in no time.

The Rest of the Family

This is Murphy, our cat. He is a rescue cat we got from the RSPCA almost 2 years ago. He was about 8 months old when we got him so we reckon he's not quite 3. His previous owners had decided to move house without taking him and two other cats. They had left them behind in an empty flat with no food or water. No one knows how long they were left alone but Murphy had a rather scrapped up nose when we got him probably from trying to lick the condensation off the window. Murphy was a replacement cat for Kylie who went missing the week between Christmas and New Year. We're not quite sure what happened to him but I have some suspicions that these boys who often lurk in the fields around our house using their dogs to chase and kill rabbits might have harmed him. Although Kylie was a bit of an evil cat (eg he used to grab Seb's head claws out when he was a baby crawling around) I was devastated. When I saw Murphy in the the cage at the RSPCA, I fell in love instantly. Murphy is the sweetest of all cats. He's cuddly and talks to us and is ever so good with the children. He's never not once hissed, scratched, or clawed any children or furniture. He is even getting on really well with Bailey. Although, there is a bit of "what were you thinking" looks being shot our way.

Finally, this is Frank. We used to have Frank and Toby. In fact, we used to have quite a few goldfish. Seb was given a tank and a pair of goldfish for his 3rd birthday after being captivated by the tank at his Popa's house. What were we thinking? The first thing Seb did was pour his milk into the tank thinking if it was good for him it would be good for the fish. Sound reasoning. Bad result. We went through 5 sets of goldfish before Frank and Toby arrived and lived to tell the tale. They had lasted for over 2 years. But Toby bit the dust, or went swimming belly up, a few months back when we changed the water. Funny thing though when we went back to the tank to remove Toby, he was gone. Frank ate him. Strange explanation but the only one we can think of. Murphy has no access to the tank. And Toby was certainly in no shape to jump out of the tank. So in a way, Toby lives on.....in Frank.....literally!

Last night Marc took Murphy to a Puppy Party. OK, so now our pets have social schedules. The hope is that a properly socialised pet will be a calmer, less agressive dog. We have quite a few friends who have jumped off the cliff and acquired puppies over the last few months. I am thinking I should maybe host a puppy party in the local park. Have I lost my mind? There are children dying all over the world of disease, genocide, famine and I'm hosting a puppy party. I feel frivolous......and fortunate.