What do you do when you've nothing to do?

Even the busiest of us have times when we do nothing. Those times when we're at home, no-one else is around, or if they are, they're occupied. I'm feeling the need to have something that's my "go-to" thing. Some kind of default activity that's just there, waiting for me.

If I had a sewing room, maybe I could have a lovely patchwork quilt project (this is a secret aim of mine... not so secret, really). But I can't default to it for the odd hour here and there, if it's always going to involve clearing the dining room table and setting it all out.

I have a tapestry on the go. My children laugh at me, because I tell them how Husband gave it to me the first Christmas we were married. That's 17 years ago. It's not my speediest project.

I've long given up having houseworky projects as defaults. It's just too depressing. You never finish them all. You never have a perfect house. Better by far to accept your imperfect house and find other things to do.

I'm not going to join Facebook or Twitter, because I want a default activity, not an addiction.

There's always blogging, but... sniff... blogging is so lonely these days, now that all my comments go into people's spam filters. It's a sad, one-way conversation. It makes me feel voiceless and frustrated (please, rush off and rescue me from your spam filter, and click on the "this is not spam" option, before I give up blogging altogether).

My children spend hours petting the dog, and rubbing his tummy as he lies goofily on his back. But he is too smelly for me to want to engage in that. I do quite often walk him in an idle half hour. He's so pathetically eager and grateful, that it's easy-pickings in the "emotionally rewarding activity" stakes. But I'm looking for an indoor activity.

Half an hour is usually enough to catch up with The Archers on iPlayer, or a quick burst of something recorded on TV (an episode of Scrubs is my current fix of choice, or Downton Abbey if I have a little longer).

If I was a generation older, I would read the paper, but these days, if I buy a paper, I find I recycle it unread, while browsing the news online.

I sometimes browse recipes, and think about delicious dishes I could cook, or sweet treats I could bake. Then next time I have a window of empty time, I do cook them. Sometimes. You have to be quite organised to cook in that way.

I often write emails to friends. "Haven't been in touch for ages. How are you?" I like doing that. Or I phone my mum for a chat. I like doing that too.

I have a book on the go, but I find it hard to settle down for a read, unless it's bedtime. Why is that?

I wish I could be that person who will do just a few yoga poses, or abdominal exercises. Then I would be more toned, and less wibbly-wobbly in the midriff area. But the journey from knowing that would be a good way of spending 20 minutes, even 10 minutes, to the actual doing of it is such a very, very long road. I did buy a yoga mat. I do have yoga dvds. They are in what is called "as new" condition.

I do enjoy a quick canter round hilarious videos on Youtube, but don't tell my children. Obviously, Youtube videos are a waste of time. You don't want to grow up to be the kind of person who fritters away their time watching cats slipping on wooden floors, or dogs looking very guilty, do you? And that's what happens if you don't develop other interests. We all know that.

Writing. Whatever happened to writing? I used to do more of that.

So what about you? You're at home. You don't have anything that HAS to be done. You can do what you please. What is it you turn to?

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I've been snooping

You can learn a lot from reading your daughter's RME exercise book (Religious and Moral Education, in case you're about to ask).

It seems they've been learning about Special Occasions recently. There's a sheet about family special occasions, and I've found out some interesting facts. Here are a couple of the questions and answers:

Does your family ever eat special food, wear special clothes, make a special journey?

We sometimes have golden syrup sandwitches (sic), J20, and brunch on Sundays.

How do you decide what you should all do on special occasions?

We try to do the same every year but sometimes we decide to change it a bit.

Lovely insight into our family's special moments.


On another subject:

Name two people you admire and say why.

1. I admire God because he created the whole world and he keeps us safe etc
2. I also admire 16-yo and 13-yo my big brothers because they teach me things and are kind to me when I am sad.

Ah, very touching.

Further back in the book, I can see the class has been doing some thinking about beliefs.

My beliefs

Three belifs (sic) for a happy school

1. be kind to everyone
2. try your best at every thing 
3. give everything a go

Three belifs for a happy family

1. don't annoy your brother/sister
2. tell your mum she is good at cooking
3. help at home

Well now, how about that? Number 2 shows pretty shrewd insight, wouldn't you say?

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Close to home

I don't know how to write this post. I don't know what to say.

I live a mile and a half away from that boy's home. His front door is a mile and a half from mine. I searched my garden and garage. I joined the hundreds of volunteers, silently, slowly walking in a straggling line, eyes on the grass. I'd walked my dog exactly there on Wednesday afternoon, just hours before the story broke on Thursday.

People talk about community spirit, and I went along, thinking I could do my bit. What I hadn't realised, was how completely emotionally involved I would get. I haven't been able to stop thinking about that little boy. His face haunts me. I want to cry all the time. I've been horrible to my own children, and then wanted to cry again, for having been so horrible. I might have said "What do you mean, you won't eat a banana, when there's a little boy who's out there somewhere, lost and alone, and maybe dead? How can you make a fuss about a banana?" I might have said that. It didn't help. Him, or us.

I don't know why geography matters. These days, shouldn't we all feel connected to each other? What's the difference between a child missing here, and child missing anywhere else? I'm not part of the immediate community. In a city, a mile and a half takes you across maybe a couple of localities. When the media says he was from a "close-knit community", I wouldn't consider myself part of that one. All I know is that geography matters. Even today. I've been swept up in this in a way I couldn't have foreseen.

He lived a mile and a half away. His front door was a mile and a half from mine.

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Grrrr

I'm finding that I often comment on a blog, or think I've done so, but the comment isn't there. I notice when I go back to the blog next time, and look to see if my comment had a response, but there's no Iota comment to be seen. It's really annoying. I've asked a couple of bloggers, and they've said my comments have gone into their spam folders. Does anyone else have this problem? Is there some setting on my Google account that I can change to make my comments less likely to be treated as spam?

Commenting through Bloglovin' is really glitchy, so I'm already in the habit of clicking onto each blog before I comment, rather than doing it from the Bloglovin' site. That's fairly annoying too. Come back Google Reader, all is forgiven.

The other thing is, how do you find the spam filter on your blog? Is this a Wordpress thing? As far as I'm aware on my own blog, comments always get through, and if they didn't, I wouldn't have a clue as to where to go hunting for them.

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Words we're losing

Here are some more words that are falling out of fashion, to add to the collection I started in this post.

Oblong - I certainly remember in primary school maths learning about a shape that you could call either an oblong, or a rectangle. That shape seems to have settled down as a rectangle. It's a shame. Oblong is such a fabulous word. Chunky.

Oval - While we're on the subject of shapes in primary school maths, I was thrown when one of my children (can't remember which one) needed help with homework, and I discovered that the good old-fashioned oval has become an ellipsis. But I think oval is still a word in current usage, so that's ok. It's going to be a long time before we have to talk about the US President in The Ellipsis Office.

Parcel -  These are all packages now.

Coax - When was the last time you used the word coax? (No... not as in "Would you all rather have Sprites or Cokes?") With this one, I rather feel that the disappearance of the word is a reflection of the culture we live in. No-one has time for coaxing. If your elderly relative has lost her appetite, who cooks up tasty morsels to tempt her to eat, sitting by her side and telling stories together to distract her? If your reluctant child won't write his Christmas thank-you letters, you make a sticker chart and dangle a reward, or you sit him on the naughty step. Ah, poor coax. You have no place in our busy lives. According to this source, you've been around since the 1580's. That's a good innings. Now, as I type you into an online dictionary, it's assumed I want to look up coaxial. Ah, poor coax!

Happy New Year - and may it be a slow, long one

I've had a lovely Christmas, with a long break off work, and time spent with family and friends. Drank mulled wine. Ate mince pies and cream. Salvaged a turkey that was in the oven for 3.5 hours before I noticed that the oven was on a grill setting (and a low grill setting at that).

But it's also been the Christmas when I've struggled with one of the after effects of having had cancer, one which seems to be getting worse as time goes by. I find it very hard to put into words, and the best I can do is to say that it's the opposite of what I wrote about in this post. But it's vaguer. I can't put my finger on it. If I was making a film, I'd have myself looking in a mirror, stretching out a finger to trace my features, and then the image in the mirror dissipating into vapour, with a mocking laugh as she disappeared.

It boils down to a re-figuring of the shape of life, in terms of time. That happens as we get older, and we all struggle with it. You can tell that by the ridiculous way we are constantly surprised by the normal steady beat of time. We express amazement when another year passes by. When we have a birthday or anniversary that ends in a 0, we say "how can that be?" In our hearts, we're all 23 year olds. We bore the children of our friends by talking about how they've grown. Of course they've grown! Duuh! It would be odd if they hadn't. Somehow we all feel we're fighting against the passage of time. Perhaps when you've had cancer, that rational knowledge - the clock is ticking and life is finite - passes into lived experience. I don't like it.

What's changed for me is that a little note of urgency has been added. It's only little. It's imperceptible most of the time. But it's there. And it's got a grim irony, because the more you feel you need to be making the most of time and holding onto it, the more time slips away from you.

I find it hard to relax. I plan things, and they're nice, and I do them, and then I want to move on to the next thing. Perhaps I want to create that memory, tick that box, and then make sure I get on with the next one. You never know how many boxes will fit into the timeline, and you want to get as many of them ticked off as possible.

I find it hard to be in the moment. This is a modern day complaint, isn't it? I'm sure many of you will identify with this. I read articles on Mindfulness, and I totally believe in the value of it. But I can't do it. (So please don't leave me any handy hints in the comments.) I'm always thinking about what needs to get done. I have a false sense that when I've done everything, then I'll be able to relax and smell the roses. But I know that I'm never going to get to the bottom of the list. It's not even a real list, where I can tick things off. It's just a ghostly feeling of a list, that's always there. I've had periods of my life, long ones, where I've understood that you don't wait to smell the roses, that the roses are all there along the way releasing their sweet perfume if you'll only understand that the point is to smell them as you go. But at the moment, I can't seem to do that.

I build time into my life in positive ways. I go to yoga once a week, I walk the dog, I have hot baths, I spend regular time with people who energise me. But I still feel the tightness of the Time Thief on my back. He feels like he's got a large clothes peg, which he puts over the vertebra at the bottom of my neck. It hoicks my shoulder blades up and in. That peg seems to be there, and tighter, more and more.

I once picked up a leaflet which talked about the after-effects of cancer. On the list of after-effects it mentioned "a fore-shortened sense of life". It was such a relief to read that. Yes. Those words summed it up perfectly. It's always such a moment of comfort and sustenance to feel "I'm not the only one - this is a 'thing' - this is normal". I'm grateful for that leaflet, but it didn't tell me what I could do about it. So I've made myself a little word-joke, and I think of myself as living "life on the foreshore", but I'm a bit stuck as to what I can do to get myself a little further back onto dry land. (Please don't recommend a book on Mindfulness at this point.)

Postscript: In the writing of this post (how awesome is the process of blogging?), I realised that, since this is a 'thing' and since I'm not the only one, there must be wisdom out there about it. So I've googled my local Maggie's, and I'm sure that is going to be a good place to start. It's so odd that I haven't thought of that before. My local Maggie's is a 5-minute walk away, and of course it's the obvious resource. That's the thing about the Time Thief, though. He robs you, with his evil clothes peg, of the time and space you need to think about how to help yourself. He's a very clever devil. He must be clever because even Google can't pin him down (and Google can do pretty much everything). I googled "grinning devil with clothes peg" to see if I could find an image to end this post with, and it didn't throw up anything appropriate.