Week in pictures - an extremely busy sort of week

1: Emergency rainbow silks to the rescue
2: Jenna and Rowan pausing to enjoy the canal boats on our way back to the train
3: More work. Lots of work. Busy busy busy.
4: So, they asked for hair dye again. Morgan has a blue streak, Rowan has magenta dip dye, and Tali has pale pink all over which keeps causing me to do a double take because she doesn't look like herself somehow!
5: Highly Sprung, performing Urban Astronaut at Derby Feste. Fantastic!
6: Twelve year old on a bridge, climbing things, being ridiculous, and wearing her new jumper which I had to smuggle through the wash last night.
7: Woodland Festival and Talia begged to go in the sling again (I think because she didn't want me to carry the borrowed toddler)!

The Day We Got Run Over by a Dragon

That thing where my story sounds so made up I'm not sure where to begin? So, that. We're all uninjured, by the way. I might write about it all some time, but I don't desperately want to cause trouble for the festival organisers.

Goddamn dragons. What a day!

Fourteen years in love

It is absolutely ridiculous that we have been together that long, and married for all but six months of that, it really is. As time goes on I have less and less wisdom to share about building a healthy happy marriage, but not because we're not healthy and happy.

All of the wise counsel, all of the philosophising about the nature of love, none of it helped in the really tough almost-impossible times of hopeless crying, and in all of these peaceful growing comfortable times I don't often think to affirm that I'm happy and things are good.

The biggest conclusion I have come to in fourteen years is that happiness depends primarily on putting in the deep hard work to not behave badly towards people ourselves, and on being lucky. That's it. We can't change other people or force them to accept the ways in which we change.

We're still doing this thing together, growing up a bit along the way, and trying to always be a bit kinder and a bit more generous with each other. It's still just as wonderful as that teenage love-at-first-sight.

Nottingham Contemporary, rambling, art day, shattered

We took the train to Nottingham today. Connor wanted to show his dad the exhibits here and I'd promised the children we'd see these ones again before they finished if we could. Five kids, and two mutually supportive adults with anxiety disorders, what could possibly go wrong?

Even an anxious extra adult is a huge help and motivation for me to get up and out and refuse to let the anxiety beat me. Plus a whole day of art? I was enthusiastically on board, even if now at the end of a long busy day I can poke wry fun at myself for thinking it would all totally go to plan.

Pump House, by Michael Beutler, is an interactive series of rooms made from basically junk. It's beautiful, and chaotic, and the children are absolutely in love with the giant weaving they are allowed to walk and play on barefoot. I knew Connor's dad would love this exhibit too, because some of his own artwork is based around similar themes and using the same techniques. It was fun to watch the children in such a huge strange colourful labyrinthine environment again.

The other exhibition showing at the Contemporary right now is Yelena Popova's After Image. Huge abstract canvases with barely discernable shapes in subdued colours. Rowan loved getting close, stepping back, getting close again. Seeing faint shadows make an image and disappear again as perspective changed the contrast. I love the wooden pieces in this gallery. Strange bone-like shapes leaning against the scattered pictures.

There's a room of sound, too. Walking between four speakers to enjoy the shifting tones and voices.

I still had castle tickets from the last Nottingham trip so we thought we'd chance the tired kids on a visit there too. As soon as we got into the building I remembered the Da Vinci exhibition I hadn't been able to see due to melty tired kids! Excitement! First, extended role play in the Robin Hood gallery and some drawing in the big hall.

Rowan and Talia were no longer exactly at their most helpful/happy, and I was starting to think perhaps I'd bitten off more than I could chew. I half-whispered a lecture to one of them about being respectful of other people's work and the folks we were sharing the space with. Sat for a while and gazed up at a beautiful seascape and tried to remember how to breathe deeply and steadily. That's when the children all suddebly went absolutely quiet and focussed, and I exhaled stress and worry and saw the miracle of all five children engaged and peaceably *discussing art with each other*. I almost did a happy dance on my bench, honestly, after an hour of gradually rising blood pressure!

And in the end I did manage another fifteen minutes of peace and cooperation, on top of that magical gallery interlude, to indulge my fangirl fascination. Whining caused an early retreat, and a short but exhausting walk straight back to the train homewards, but oh it was totally worth it.

Totally, totally worth it.

Week in pictures without many pictures

1: Knitting project
2: Tidying, or trying anyway
3: Morgan's first batch of sourdough from the starter she "caught" and raised herself
4: Painting at grandma's
5: Wildling almost-siblings in town

I didn't take a lot of pictures this week. I worte a lot and deleted at least half as much. I read a bit. Drew a bit. Facilitated wild projects a lot. Put Rowan's hair into pigtails about twenty times. Asked for Spongebob to be turned down about thirty. Worried about not being able to replace Jenna's broken shoes immediately (again). Stood under the willow tree and looked up at the full moon and felt for a moment that I could maybe fly.

Not much has gone to plan. The house is a mess. My head is similarly chaotic. We're all safe and loved and warm and fed. That's as much as can be expected from this week I think.

Adulting

Self care right now looks like remembering to take my vitamins and writing lots and lots of rainbow coloured lists in the hopes of not forgetting a bill or an order or a household task. My phone pings to remind me to carve out time with each child. There isn't a lot more I can let go of, so these are my priority spinning plates right now. So far, apart from the council tax bouncing and subsequent week of being extra careful and working out how to make meals from the cupboards for seven days, I'm doing okay and my general anxiety is back under control.

That makes it sound like a wayward pet.

I'm not sure I'm with the depersonalisation trend in mental health. This is my mind. It frames everything that happens to me, consolidates it, sorts and categorises it. I don't like being depressed and anxious, I'm not clinging to this identity, I would rather be well. But it is an identity in a sense. It's me; I'm working with (and sometimes against) myself.

It's not a very popular view, that one. I've been told that I'm not depressed and just need to pull myself together, or that I should talk about my conditions in a certain way if I'm serious about getting well. Fuck that noise.

I want to be well. More than that, I am planning to be well. I know how to get myself there. I don't know how to keep it gone for good, but let's get back there first. Safe, stable. I'm not stupid, I know I need to be healthy again and my family need me. (End or mental health rant/Public Service Announcement, I really did intend not to do that again but oh well!)

I have jumped on the Habitica bandwagon, which has miraculously kept me actually remembering to eat and drink water regularly. I really love a good checklist!

That's where my head is at right now. Not the most coherent words ever, but authentic and written on a day where I feel both full of cold and yet oddly peaceful with the ups and downs. I hope it reassures those of you who've asked what my plan is and whether I'm coping with the random upsurge in down days.

I'm still here, still doing, still being.

Seven days of assorted busy

1. Parcelling up mini skeins
2. Singing to the fan to make a robot voice
3. Upside down Roo
4. A bunny sculpture made from tinfoil and bandages
5. A very high up small person at our Not Back to School picnic
6. Paint colour mixing with the two youngest
7. My favourite tree by the swimming pool

Not Starting School

The day that Talia didn't start school, the light slanted golden and Autumnal. She wore pyjamas for most of the day, and a ridiculous fox romper that is far too small for her the rest. It was just a day like any other, to her.

The night before the day with the golden light, I threatened to put them all in school and cried myself to sleep feeling spectacularly Not Enough. The start of September has felt big this year. Weighty.

There are times when I feel like I'm trying to do three full time jobs and not ever really succeeding at any of them. This is something it's hard to write; home educators who experience wobbles and times when everything is hard work are supposed to suck it up and not talk about it. After all, it's our fault, it's our choice, we chose this. We could just put them in school and that would fix everything, right?

In some ways I could make my life easier. I would lose, though, too. I'm not here with these kids because I'm a martyr sacrificing my life for theirs. Just, like when I was breastfeeding a baby all night long, sometimes it's hard to remember the cuddly softness when it feels like work and I'm so very tired.

September feels like a new start. Since that initial flailing panic, I have seen my life with fresh eyes. Maybe I needed to let the spinning plates come crashing down so I could decide which plates are actually important. Maybe I just needed to allow myself that moment of protest to see the golden; it's okay for it not to be perfect and there are always more moments. Some of them glorious. I'll never get this time over again.

Weekish? Who am I even kidding, though. Some pictures.

1. Somebody who woke very early then fell back to sleep, I probably blogged this already (I'm sure I did!) but the days are really blurring together at this point okay?
2. Birthdaying with Connor
3. Some puddle jumping in pyjamas
4. Lego and a house full of people (three guests all week and three extras that day)
5. Birthday party dino tattoo for me, courtesy of Morgan
6. A full washing line of colours
7. Cracker
8. Talia and Rowan had a glitter fight in the garden two weeks ago and there is still evidence everywhere
9. So much adulting (I am trying really hard to be more organised)
10. Okay, so, more yarn, because I worked really hard this week *and* had guests staying *and* slept on an airbed *and* Martin has been doing 4am starts for two weeks

I'm happy and exhausted and peopled out and my brain is melted. But today I have home made cake from my mum, and happy children, and orders, and all is well. :)