Henry the creative researcher

My Henry is eleven years old and this post is going to be about him.

Henry has wanted to become a chef since he was eight years old, before that he wanted to be a doctor, he still wants to be a chef, but he also wants to be an artist and writer and understands that life as a creative can be hard so he will need to find a more stable job until his creative career takes off.

Henry has a love for learning, particularly culture and history.  Henry knows that his family history is rich and he loves to learn about it all, from the deepest darkest depths that we can find through the assistance of places such as GenesReunited etc.

Learning about family history has prompted Henry to want to write his own novel.  Henry wants to write a novel about the late Edwardian into early Windsor times (if that’s a time period?).  The only thing I am allowed to say about the novel is that it is about two friends who live in the countryside and have a love for trains and is surviving through the throes of the dreaded Spanish flu.

I have no idea what made Henry interested in writing such a book, but I am proud that he is doing it, complete with his own illustrations and is determined to get it published once finished.

He is obsessively learning about life from 1900 to 1925 as this is the era he is writing about.  This is an obsession I can live with, because before that, his obsession was what he calls “The golden era of professional wrestling”.  Now I love wrestling personally, but when my Henry gets an obsession, believe me, it is a total war type obsession!

Henry, working on his novel.

Henry has been telling me how the poorest of poor in those days ate mostly rabbit, he told me this whilst giving awkward glances to our house rabbit Ray, who was quick in thumping his foot at hearing this, which was both spooky, funny and very apt!

Henry’s art is really good and at school most of his house points come from the art class and design technology.  Henry’s school is attached to the performing arts college, so he has been doing a lot of art, dance and drama in this school.

Henry has been noted for having a natural talent for entertainment, but has recently refused an audition for Matilda, down to the fact that since he has been bullied, he is losing his confidence slightly.  He also feels that the jealousy could increase his risk of being bullied, if he were to be successfully accepted in a role.

I have noticed that Henry tends to write and do art more when he has visibly seen me do this in front of him myself – so it is my duty, as his role model, to work when he is around instead of avoiding him like I have done in the past.  Because I personally work better alone, but Henry is influenced by what I do, so as I said in previous posts, I have to get out of my comfort zone and do work, regardless of who is present with me at the time.  I have to work it out for Henry’s sake!

Happy reading everyone!

A scary thing happened today…

I have had ever decreasing health since 2013, little by little my body has taken more and more of life out of me; each day there is something new I can no longer do, or I have to get used to.

Today I woke up fighting, literally, fighting for breath as I coughed up copious amounts of thick white mucus, something I have unbelievably gotten used to in the last five years and though my throat was raw, I avoided my first beverage of the day for nearly ninety minutes, because I knew it wouldn’t stay down.

I got angry with myself for being like that and knowing that this mucus will take a couple of hours to clear and it was getting in the way of what I really wanted to do, I started to move around the house, clasping onto furniture as I struggled for breath, to try and get washed and dressed in spite of it.

I noticed something I never noticed before; my mucus was clearing faster but in bigger globules and although for tens of seconds I couldn’t breathe at all, it was coming at a faster rate.

I woke up around 10am, I didn’t sleep until 5am; I managed to get downstairs by 11:25am, something which in recent months is very unusual!  I wouldn’t be downstairs until 1:30pm on average, simply because my lungs would dictate the course of the day. 

This could be a one off (I have plenty days like those), but it could also be something that could make me function sooner rather than later in the day if it is not a one off. 

I was happy that by 12:30pm I could contemplate breakfast, or rather lunch as it really would be to normal everyday healthy folks.  I felt my chest had cleared enough to keep something down – another thing which is getting more and more debatable as years go on.  I am losing a tremendous amount of weight, size and muscle mass because of the sickness.

So, I made tomatoes on toast with some black pepper corns.  I wasn’t sure I’d eat two slices of toast, but strangely I did today and I kept it down.  What is more, was the fact that I ACTUALLY MADE IT!  I washed, cut, sliced and fried those tomatoes myself with no help at all, I insisted.  Things went well but then I got a little cocky after lunch had settled down and I attempted to do more.

I decided, you can’t get decent sauerkraut from the supermarket, it has to be homemade!  I wanted sauerkraut with my chicken in a wrap and salad tonight for dinner – I had that too.  But I didn’t complete making the kraut myself.  I cut the vegetables and surprised at how weak and out of practise I was doing it and it hurt, it hurt a lot, especially the kneading of the salt into the cabbage and carrots for enough time to make enough brine for it to be storable. 

Halfway through making the brine, I broke out into a cold sweat, really bad cramping pains overtook both my shoulder blades and my heart started thumping hard and I felt dizzy.  I had to go sit down and Paul had to finish the kraut for me after he took my temperature, which was 35.3, unusually low as my temperature usually sticks to around 36.8.

The pain was quite bad but it subsided after fifteen minutes rest, I nearly felt the need to go to the hospital!

I am angry and depressed I didn’t get to do what I wanted to do today, even if I have done more today than I normally would do in a day since 2019.  My life has been completely sedentary since autumn 2019, purely because I am getting sicker and sicker.  Paul is scared, but he doesn’t take me seriously when I honestly tell him, that I personally think I am dying!

I have no proof that I am, but with how I struggle to do the little things now, it makes me wonder?

I am writing this in bed at 00:33am, the day is now over and a new day has already begun.

I have been dreaming recently of large pumpkins with white bottoms and dreaming that I am dying and being made comfortable by a strange bald headed man.  Whether or not I am scaring myself about my health that it’s making me dream such things or whether or not the dreams really do have alternate meanings – who knows?  I read up online that kabbalists take dream interpretation very seriously and it is a fine art – my two types of dreams mentioned above, both mean similar things.  It means that I am metamorphosing, changing, it’s a positive change, a renewal, recognition perhaps or success?  Medical help could be on the way and my life could change through that, or I will develop a new coping mechanism for what is going on with me?

Who knows, but if the kabbalists say it’s positive, I hope they’re right!

Happy reading!

Simplifying my art makes me happier

Yesterday I discussed how I am struggling with what comes to me naturally and what I really wanted to do in my writing; How I wanted to be a serious writer of adult fantasy and horror, but instead I am naturally drawn to corny humour, vampires and comedy fantasy as a natural lean to in my actual first draft writings.

Today I am focusing on the fact that I wanted to be a realist artist, who paints mostly portraits of my characters and some impressionistic landscapes and watercolours, but instead, I am naturally drawn to creating cartoonish characters suitable for children illustration or satire comics.

Increasingly a few of my writing and art ideas are becoming more and more comic ideas, not just funny, but comic as a whole, including the art I do.

My colour palletes are specific and consistent, my doodles are too and I am finding that comedy is punching its way through my art too!

I am creating funny creatures and doodling faces into random splatters and blobs and creating unique characters; with Henry’s help, we have been deciding names and personalities for the beings and progressively Henry is encouraging me to make stories of them.

This is something I have fought against in a professional way and kept to only doing this as a hobby with Henry – but more and more, I am starting to become more inclined in doing art consistently, when I do this, than when I do what I feel I am supposed to be doing!

I have noticed also that I am simplifying my art increasingly instead of refining it to become more detailed and realistic, to such an extent that it is very suitable for many children’s novels.  My style is looking similar to artists such as Quentin Blake, Katie Risor, Dr Suess and the likes.

Yet my aim was to be more detailed and to eventually brave steampunk and to perhaps be of a similar style to, Brian Froud, H.R Giger and Colleen Doran eventually, though my colour palette is very different.  I tend to like pastel primaries or as I call them, candy colours, or my darker palette which concentrates mostly on black, purples, orange and gold.

As I am fighting against my natural inclinations to develop a wanted style, I am finding that I am burning myself out in both art and writing and therefore becoming grossly unproductive.

When I ignore what I really want to become and focus on who I really am, I tend to do more and feel happier in myself doing those things.

But I do worry a lot about how simplistic my art is – I mean, other than children who would really be interested in this kind of art?

Something I did for inktober a couple of years back! See the injected humour… couldn’t help myself!

Pictures originally made to cheer Henry up after a bad day, being bullied at school. But instead, Henry is trying to collaborate a series of stories with me, regarding them.

created via blobbing random water colour paint on paper and drawing details of what my mind saw in those blobs.

Maybe I am a snob – no definitely I know I am a snob, it must be true.  Why else do I fight against the grain?  I must be… up until now a snob in denial?

Happy reading!

Funny VS Serious

Something has changed in me regarding my creative pursuits. 

I have for many years wanted to write horror as my main genre, focusing primarily on supernatural beings such as vampires with a very serious stance on the subject.  I then wanted to write fantasy as well but for the adult market; However, I have been battling with these ideas for the past five years as I have become more humorous in my writings and more emotional and I have found myself writing much less serious horror and more family oriented fantasy.  The horror I do write is becoming increasingly comedic and I don’t really know why, but I enjoy it.

I have fought against putting in comedy in my books, but I can’t help it, I wanted to write in a manner that depicts the darkness of human nature in a very serious way.

I have learned as I am getting older, I am finding humour in the most unusual of things and I am writing in a light hearted way increasingly.  My books were originally going to be of the seriousness of Anne Rice, Stephen King or Dean Koontz, but as I am developing as a writer I am becoming much more like Christopher Moore, Ransom Riggs and the writers of the league of gentlemen television series.

I have a couple of writer friends who saw this happening to me long before I did!  They often said to me “Tina, you really are a funny woman, you should write comedy it will really take off” but I shunned it moodily and said that I am not really that type of author and I was worried to take such a stance creatively because once you are renown for being funny, isn’t there always a pressure to maintain this personality to everyone?

Well I sought to push out the comedy that was in me, every time I wrote a funny scene I edited it out, until the scenes started getting funnier and the stories were becoming more and more demanding that they should be humorous in form. 

I have to admit I have avoided comedy entirely in my blog because I am scared of it to be honest!  My sense of humour is rather unique I feel and somewhat dark.  I am scared that people will start to think that my humour reflects me as a person, to me; humour and people’s acceptance of different types of humour can be a very touchy subject and should always be stepped into with caution.

Along with all of this, there is also the problem that I am one of these people who are constantly afraid of offending people, I always like to remain as polite as possible and sometimes people can consider humour as impolite or downright rude!

I am terrified of doing this, but I am going to try and get out of my safe comfort zone and attempt to write the humour on my blog occasionally – now please remember, the idea of showing people the funny side of me scares me!  I usually keep my sense of humour to very close friends and family and in general I am looked upon by those who are not close to me as a deadpan sort of woman!

My sense of humour I would describe as sarcastic, ironic, dark, tongue in cheek, warped and very corny.  Sensitive people would call some of my sense of humour as just simply sick and over the top!

Most of the fiction I gravitate towards reading are very dark horror or humour.

Most of the television shows I watch are comedies, costume dramas, horror or fantasy; but looking at my DVD collection it is mostly two thirds comedy!  People who know me, but are not close to me are often puzzled when they look upon my DVD collection; they look back and forth from me to the collection in sheer wonder.  I am not very public about my humour and I am not entirely sure why!

Part of the redefining myself is to bring out the real me in all its raw details to everybody, so this means I have to start getting comfortable being me in public as well as private.  This means people will start to see a new me, those who are not close that is and it may confound them.

My vampires had a lot of corny jokes in their books, but I deleted some of them in the past thinking that humour had no right in being in a serious vampire novel.  

I felt that people would not appreciate a corny joke in a book about vampires unless it was consistent throughout the book and was specifically marketed as a comedy – I felt that my stance in writing a humorous sentence only once every twenty pages or so wasn’t enough and would perhaps irritate hard-core readers of the genre.  Then I found Christopher Moore’s “Bite Me”, though I admit his comedy is very consistent throughout the book, unlike mine.

I will talk also about how my art is affected too in another post as I am also fighting with what I want to do VS what I seem to do most and enjoy!

As stupid as it sounds, this post was meant to be a post about how people need to focus on their natural talent rather than fight against it – instead it is just basically me telling you all how I am struggling to come across as a serious person, but I fail miserably and try to hide my sense of humour from the world!

Hopefully some of you will have read it how it really is – that I am not confident to be myself wholly and that I am trying my best to be so.

Thing is, I don’t want to be funny in everything – some of my work in this blog has proven that I do think very deeply about a lot of things and I can come across as deadly serious in many subjects!  Can an author be appreciated for the two very different takes in their works?  I hope so, but doubt it somewhat.

Happy reading!

Researching religion to its core

In my previous post I mentioned a book that I am reading called “A History of Judaism” and some of you may be curious as to why I am reading such a book?  There are in fact two major reasons for me reading this book and both are to do with simple research.

Firstly I wanted to get to grips in understanding Judaism from its core because of a couple of specific themes I want to write and I don’t like to be ignorant when I am writing about culture.

Secondly, I want to find out why my ancestors left Judaism at the turn of the twentieth century just a decade before the Second World War.  Why some of the very oldest members of my family admit they were originally Jewish, but get rather aggressive about it and somewhat evasive.  I am also interested in finding any new books regarding this subject but set in Italy and Italian Jewish history in particular.

My son Henry absolutely loves learning anything at all about his family history and he has become less afraid of R.E at school since we have been learning the differences between what we know to be Evangelism, J-Witness and Judaism.  My family became Catholic and Evangelists when they left Judaism and part of that branch that left Judaism, also became J-Witnesses.

Part of my problems growing up was the cultural confusion my extended family had on supposed opposing ideas and therefore my understanding of religion was warped over the years; as literally my family would rage war on each other over their beliefs.  According to my grandmother, my great grandmother’s sister reacted so violently against her leaving Judaism for a Catholic man that she threw her into the fireplace and she escaped barely scarred.  Another incidence was that I was reminding an anti-Semitic evangelical relative of mine about how Jesus was a Jew and their response was to slap me across the face!

It astounds me how so many religions are at odds with each other when they all share the same core, corrupt the word of the core and kill each other in the name of the God that is the mainstay of the core.

However, as I am teaching my son, I am reminding him that you cannot hate anyone regarding this, because you cannot blame them for their ignorance.  Most people simply do not have the time on their hands to research as much as we do and therefore, you must always react to their violence with kindness if at all those people could make it possible for us to remain passive and kind that is.  Self-preservation kicks in for us all eventually.

The crucial thing to understand about all religions and cultures is that most people do not have time, they are too busy, they have other priorities and over the years many people have surrendered their personal research to trusted authoritive individuals who may or may not be corrupt within themselves, with the aims of controlling their particular congregations etc.  To be fair, everybody wants to try and honour their ancestors by keeping to what their parents believe and it wasn’t until the last century or so, that humanity in general were largely uneducated due to class differentiation and lack of opportunities.

There will be many updates in the future of my reading lists and there will be many different types of cultures and religions I will be study over the course of my life, because I have an insatiable yearning to understand humanity.  In fact in 2009 I signed up to the OU to do a Social Science degree, but I couldn’t cope with the demands of a new-born baby and running a house so went on extended leave, which is still ongoing!  The OU is lovely in that they have still left it opened for me to return whenever I want to, and I may eventually, as I miss it.

I feel I must apologise to some readers who may have found the tone of this post offensive, because no doubt, there are some who do.  But it is by no means an attack on religion, simply a passive eye opening, hoping that, with the tools of the modern age, that you will find time to research the roots of your beliefs to the very core and not just what your local parish tells you.

Thank you for reading.

Not hiding, just not focused

I have the annoying habit of not connecting.  Unlike most modern people, I am not someone who carries a phone with me all of the time nor am I someone who remembers to check emails more than once a month either!

It is not a matter of choice though, it really isn’t!  It is the matter of both memory and lack of social contact.

I have forty friends on Facebook which only message me when they want something, or want to update me on events – all of these friends except for four individuals are actually relatives.  I only remember to check Facebook approximately once or twice a week, just to see if anyone has bothered with me or have something interesting to say on their thing (post thing).

My personal emails are checked at best, once a month, I have four email accounts for different reasons and I am often late in responding to opportunities that arise.  It really annoys Paul, in fact, sometimes makes him downright angry!  But he forgets to tell me to check my emails daily as much as I forget to remember myself!

I go through bouts of activity on DeviantArt and Twitter but again, those bouts are sparse! In fact I haven’t been on Deviant art in months and as for Twitter I haven’t been there since June… I think!

Therefore this post is an apology to the people who try to befriend me but feel often ignored… I don’t mean it; I am just used to people not wanting to talk to me, lol.

This is something I am trying to work on, “TRY” being the key word here!

I am not only just a tardy creative, I am just generally tardy as it is – though funnily enough for appointments, schedules and events I am never late, I am in fact, usually quite early… weird really.

I’ve said it before and I shall probably say it again, several times that I thrive with schedules and doting motivational communities.  Without these things I never do anything!

If you want to talk to me, do so, but do so with massive patience and help motivate me!  I invite you!  Just remind me to be present and expect me at a time and well… just nag and probe me and I will be around more.

Sorry, but it’s just me, I can’t help it and my illness doesn’t help much in allowing me to concentrate on just normal everyday stuff.  So, yes, I am literally begging for your help to get me focused!

Perhaps you are just like me too; perhaps we can make a pact to help each other?

Happy reading and don’t forget to leave a comment if you feel this way and perhaps we can work as a team to help each other?

Schedules & personal butt kickers

Reading as much as I used to have taken a back bencher in the past couple of years, my Goodreads.com account is evidence of this; but I have a plan which seems to be keeping me on track with my library rentals.

Before this downturn in how much I read, I used to borrow ten books a week from the library and read them all, then it lessened to just three per week, now it is around four to six per month and I haven’t been able to read them all by the end of the three week period either.

At the moment I have six books out from the library and some of those I have re-borrowed the maximum amount of times, one such book has only nineteen days left for me to read it and it is only halfway and I have already re-borrowed this book three times in the past and I can have it no more after that!  So, noticing that I have just nineteen days left to read this book, I panicked, because there are approximately two hundred pages to read of this enormous essay about “The History of Judaism”.  Why am I reading such a book?  I will explain later in another post…

So how do I solve the problem of reading things in time?  I have only just started this idea from yesterday, so who knows how well it will work for more long term!  The plan is this… I calculate with a calculator as I have dyscalculia, the number of pages per book I have and divide that by twenty one, which represents twenty one days, the average length of time to keep a book without re-borrowing.  So, I did this will all the books I am currently reading on Goodreads that are borrowed from the library currently.  This breaks down each book into littler bites and gets every book picked up daily! 

To a lot of people who love reading this sounds like a nightmare plan, because I know a lot of readers can’t put a book down until it’s completely read for another book.  But for me this works a treat because I lack focus and have a very shoddy attention span.  Paul believes I may have undiagnosed attention deficit disorder, because I can’t stick to one thing solidly and concentrate on it for more than fifteen minutes at a time.

So for me, the idea of skipping through books one after the other in the same day works well. 

So my current list is broken down like this;

History of Judaism by Martin Goodman 11 pages per day for the next 19 days

Fermentation on wheels by Tara Whitsitt 9 pages per day

Preservation book 17 pages per day

Abundance by Aly Fowler 10 pages per day

Burning the books by Richard Ovenden 11 pages per day

The last book from the library is actually currently completed, so I shan’t add that here.

To me, each from the above would take around twenty minutes to accomplish when not having a bad sinus day, which in comparison to how fast I used to read, is very, very, slow.

But it is doable if I break it down throughout the day, rather than sit back with sixty two pages a night in bed in around ninety minutes.

It is not a maximum requirement, it is a minimum requirement, if my attention span is enjoying the book naturally I will read more if I feel I can and have the time.

Yesterday, so far, I have read more in a day, than I would have otherwise, if I had not had given myself a schedule and deadline.  I think I have mentioned before I am a person who thrives on deadlines? 

Yes I am one of these weirdos who literally rot away in a corner without some kind of schedule or motivational person hounding me to do things all the while.  Unfortunately Paul is rather passive on this matter and so, Henry, my doting eleven year old son, has taken it upon himself to be my butt kicker and I thank him tremendously for it!

So, any future postings, writings and art and even YouTube videos and podcasts, will really be, to the thanks of my son who is prodding me to accomplish things.  He too, has made a sort of pact with me that I should do the same for him and we will together, become a successful family.  Totally Henry’s idea and isn’t it brilliant?   I am so proud of him!

Happy reading!

Shingle me this…

My new writing and art area has been put on hold for a couple of weeks due to illness, this time it is not me;

On Wednesday, Paul woke up with a rash on his chest, it was quite small at the time and he thought it had something to do with the new deodorant he started to use the day before, but it wasn’t.  On Friday that same rash spread all around to his spine and even more on his chest but had turned into hundreds of red raw looking blisters!  Turned out he has shingles and now (because I have a suppressed immune system) we have resorted to sleeping in separate rooms for the time being. 

I have heard that people who have had their second covid vaccine may get shingles approximately 16 to 20 weeks later, as a high number has, but the doctor insists this isn’t the case for Paul and that it must be stress because of the worry about my pending neurological diagnosis.  I have to admit, I don’t believe that.

Paul is not taking this well, it is mostly the medicine that is making him exhausted, but I am still worried because of his age, despite how healthy he is for his age I am worried.  Paul is twenty seven years my senior!

I still hope however selfishly this may sound, that we will be able to set up the new desk and art area before the 1^st October in time for my daily posts for inktober; but if this doesn’t happen by then, the art will still be done, but may be added to the blog a week or two later.  At least my art table is set up, just not in the new area, that’s all.  My inks and sharpies may be a little dry now as I haven’t done much art with inks or sharpies since Easter, but I hope they’ll be Okay, Paul says that they are water based inks so should be fine with a touch of water.

Having Paul ill like this has made me realise just how much I simply can’t manage without him, I have to admit it is an eye opening time for us all right now!

I am somewhat getting used to typing via laptop however much it does lag and some of the keys do not work on first punch (is that the right word?).  So I am starting to do a little bit of typing on my adjustable table on the sofa downstairs or rather, right now, in bed, because everybody had decided to live upstairs since Paul has become sick. 

I feel sorry for Paul because we do not have a TV aerial for the spare bedroom, even though we have a spare old TV for him, he is missing a lot of his favourite science documentaries and the meds are making him feel too sick to eat, he has lost weight even in this short time.

I am also annoyed at him for not wanting help, he still thinks he can do everything even when he is swooning around on the verge of passing out!

Anyway, we will hope he slows down soon and gives himself a break!  He needs it!

Happy reading, everyone!

new working areas

Writing has been difficult in the past few weeks, due to the annoying fact that my arms are losing strength when typing and the computer desk has been too high for me to type for longer than 10 minutes at a time, without going numb.

I have become almost unbearable to live with because of my temper in regards to not being able to type or even play many online games as my arms won’t let me. 

Paul has helped massively, he has an adjustable table for me now for my laptop and that has meant I can do more things again.  But, typing on my laptop is laggy and frustrating and I make many mistakes, not to mention the lighting on the screen is very sharp.  So, once again Paul decided to take measurements for me and has moved furniture around the living room and bedroom for me.

The new areas for writing are a corner in the bedroom and living room.  Bedroom because I have insomnia and often want to write at night, but also because I get very tired during the day sometimes and often find myself upstairs.  We are planning to maybe make a change again next year; to make the spare bedroom into an upstairs living room for winter, because downstairs is far too cold! 

The corner of the living room will have an L shaped desk at the end of my art table by the end of the week, because I have become a grumpy living nightmare since I can’t work as much as I want to creatively.

Paul is doing all of this for me, unfortunately it has meant that my rabbit has been moved to live in the hallway now, because we don’t have the room anymore in the lounge. 

I will be learning on skill share soon to set up a YouTube channel and editing videos, so I will become a vlogger as well as a blogger in the near future.  I cannot commit to more than once a fortnight for a video just yet though.

I do intend, once the desk I set up properly, to do NaNoWriMo this year, because there are four books nagging me like mad lately in my head.  I am also doing inktober and I will be posting my art daily all of the month of October, with any luck!

Doctors are taking all of my symptoms as a matter of urgency and I have to admit, I am scared.  Normally, I am told that there is a two year waiting list for neurology in this area, but the doctors are pushing for me to be seen within 16 weeks.

I am told what they suspect might not be good.  So there is a lot of stress in my life right now and a lot of limitations as I am literally struggling to do everything! 

Because I am a determined and stubborn person, this lack of being able to do anything, has made me very snappy and I have been losing my will to think positively or even plan for a future to be honest.  Despite what I have said about my creative plans, I somehow feel I am just setting myself up for failure, simply because I don’t have the energy to be as consistent as I would like.  I am also scared that if I become successful in my ventures in the future, that I won’t be able to keep up with the demands of the work or the demands of my agents.  Because I am rarely able to keep up with the demands of going to the doctor surgery because I can’t wake up, or my mucus production is so strenuous on a day, that no taxi will take me to the surgery on the account of me choking and coughing so much as they think I have covid – when I don’t!

So, this is the update of what’s going on here with me and what I hope to plan to do in the future.  Let’s just hope I can actually get to do these things and let’s hope that the doctor hasn’t any real reason to worry, shall we?

 Also, my mental health has had a huge bashing over this; I am literally bawling my eyes out at the slightest thing and becoming a complete emotional train wreck!

Anyway – happy reading and I hope to write again next week at some point.

Update on whereabouts

Where have I been again?  You may well ask, originally I couldn’t type for around 3 to 4 weeks because I somehow injured my hand, I still don’t know what happened to it.  Woke up one morning and couldn’t use it, it was so painful and I had to even change my diet to accommodate a spoon fed way of eating. 

I couldn’t use my other hand as a substitute and go down the route of cutting things with forks, because that hand is permanently disabled and doesn’t work well due to being deformed. 

I then caught a very bad head cold that made doing most things difficult and then a chest infection.  During the chest infection something then happened where my shoulder and arm lost its entire strength and I was lopsided for about 2 weeks, as there was a noticeable slack to my shoulder muscle. 

I gave up trying to do anything to the blog after all of this for the last 3 weeks because of the summer holidays and everybody who is a long term reader here knows how difficult I find working with Henry home as there is little support in keeping him out of my hair.  Not to mention, that Paul is also badly injured, so couldn’t take Henry out for walks and hiking like he’d usually would.  He has an Achilles problem we think, it’s hard to tell as he won’t see a doctor about it.

Henry starts High school for the first time on Friday and he is dreading it.

Henry has been having a lot of emotional problems in the past couple of years, quite serious anger and depression issues, but school so far has poo-pooed this as being something caused primarily by Covid isolation, but it was something that was building up around a year or two beforehand.  Since Henry was eight years of age, he has been having suicidal thoughts and that unnerves me because I have never ever known anyone as young as that to be that depressed and is not trustworthy enough when he is angry to be around sharp objects!  There is surprising little support about this primarily because of waiting lists and Covid didn’t help with that.

Until Henry actually attempts to physically harm himself in a manner of which can be officially proven, Henry is not considered an emergency case, even if he does punch himself in the face and chest really hard, because the bruising is not sufficient (whatever that means) he can wait.

Henry’s life, I admit has not been an easy one, it is no wonder he is growing up to become an angry and bitter soul.  He is a member of Warwickshire Young Carers because he has me (a sick mum) and a sort of elderly father.  Though I impose no care routine on Henry, school felt that the young carers could give him emotional support because his mother’s health and future is uncertain.

Along with this, Henry has experienced a lot of death in his father’s family and the majority of family communication from Paul’s side has stopped because certain people have passed away or they have their own illnesses or problems and cannot commit to visiting more than once a year on average.  In Henry’s small life, he has heard of nine family deaths, and four serious family illnesses.  Four of the deaths affected Henry directly because three were his main child carers when I went in and out of hospital.  There is no one we can rely on for that anymore, so basically I have to skip hospital appointments if they coincide with Henry’s holiday times.  A family friend also died of Covid recently.

Along with this we also have a problematic neighbour which makes Henry nervous to go out into the garden anymore, in fact, so do I.

I’d like to move but Henry doesn’t and Paul respects Henry’s wishes on that.

Because I don’t feel safe with this excessively nosy, rude and obnoxious neighbour, Paul and I have planned to get a dog.  We did organise a border collie with a farmer, but the breeding went wrong and they only had 2 pups which survived the birth and we have to wait another two years.  But luck has it that we may end up by Christmas with a bloodhound, because a local man wants to give away a couple of his pups to a good home for free and he said he won’t want them to go before they are 6 months of age.  It is likely to be a female bloodhound and a solid colour, very light brown or as the man calls it, yellow.

In the past I was very skilled at training dogs and was once offered a position as a police dog trainer but my mother made me turn it down, because I have to bring my work home with me and she didn’t want extra dogs in the house.

A bloodhound will be a new experience and I have done a lot of research on the breed to see if I can cope.  Physically maybe not, but if all else fails you can walk a dog with a disability scooter, lol.

But I think… though Paul disagrees and thinks I am way too optimistic…. That I am only as sick as I am because I am not motivated for doing things for myself.   I live for others; I have never lived for myself.  Paul has always endeavoured to take a lot of my responsibilities away from me because he wants to indulge in caring for me and also Henry.  So Paul doesn’t need me and neither does Henry, every time I try to do something for either of them, someone else takes over.  I guess that’s why I am so sick, it’s a form of depression – I don’t feel needed.  I don’t feel I would be missed.  I have absolutely forbidden both Paul and Henry to do anything with the dog if we get one.  Because I think, I need that needed feeling back again and I think a dog is the answer!

I am trying to find new ways to feel needed.

I know I sound like a sad bugger saying all this.

But I need to try to find something that makes me feel that I have some value.

So, I have a webcam and mic now – I am researching skill share and other things about how to set up a YouTube channel and how to create an art and writing business.

I am hoping to start the YouTube channel by January 1^st, perhaps sooner; I don’t know how long it will take me to learn all this technological stuff to do it.

I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading!