Tides of Change

Tides of change.

So much has happened in my life lately it is hard to know where to start. I have been doing very little… all the events of resent times have happened to me as apposed to requiring my direct involvement.

If you’re a Karma kinda person then I must have squashed some ant destined to be the next Buddha, because someone somewhere hates me. Allow me to remind you that I am expecting my baby on the 10^th July, now imagine how it must feel to be told that you have to leave your house by the 30^th June…. All of 10 days before a tiny baby (who I still have no idea how to look after) arrives. That’s right kids – my landlord is a FUCKING ASSHOLE!! We are basically subletting our apartment – sounds like a recipe for disaster I know but in a country where the average rent for a one bed apartment is in the region of £700.00 and the average salary is about £15,000 it’s not exactly a matter of choice. So rich Swede rents flat – said Swede gets tax benefits for being a Gib resident. Humble but decent young couple sublet from rich man for half the rent. We have somewhere to live, he has an address. This arrangement has worked harmoniously for ages…. Unfortunately it would seam that Rich Swedish business men have pretty much no morals!! And so on the 1^st June we were informed that he was letting the place go for business reasons – sure he threw in a plea off supposed ill health for good measure but frankly hugerberderererer. Result….. need new place to live!! Panic, dispare, anger, futility the list of emotions were endless.... (to be continued).

The World in Sepia?

So, is sepia a romantic haze, or just the world seen through shit smeared, tea stained binoes? I have always had a love of photography, but what was I to think when my actual world turned the colour of terracotta water?

Here I was innocently sitting at my desk (trying my hardest to look busy) when I peered out of my office window to find that everything was brown/orange!! The sea, the buildings, the sky. I looked out of the opposing window – MORE brown houses!! I waddled over to the “safety” window and very awkwardly craned my neck until it was contorted enough to squeeze through the bottom… nope, it’s not the glass, it’s the world. THE WORLD HAS GONE BROWN.

I mean we have all herd of vanilla skies, but Kenyan river skies? Last night the river burst it’s banks and the thunder roared. I half expected to wake to find the ground, buildings and trees stained orange, but it would seam that the norm of grey has been returned.

So:

Red sky at night – shepherds delight

Red sky in the morning – shepherds warning

Browny/orange sky in the afternoon - shepherds run for the hills – there’s a storm brewing

Bizarre skies apart all is well. The baby doth grow (see huge bump) like there is no tomorrow……. Of which there are few baby free ones remaining, 71 to be exact. Had a trip to the hospital on Wednesday which was not all that fun… was having really bad stomach cramps at work and ended up leaving. Like a crazed mad woman I got the buss to the hospital – I dunno what I was thinking – I was also crying inconsolably behind my €4.00 sunglasses, so I imagine I looked like a bit of a nutter. As it turns out everything is fine, and the crippling pain I was in is nothing to do with the wee one.

Aside from the drama and scaryness of the situation, something good came of it, in fact a few good and one bad thing came of it to be precise:

In typical Dr fashion, people were bustling around me spouting very scary sounding things in a very off the cuff way. Terms like, preterm labour, false labour, contraction monitor. There was talk of going to Malaga……… for the birth. You can’t use words like labour, birth or contractions around a not so ready/organised mother to be and then just WALK OFF!! Andy and I exchanged panicked glances a fair few times before it was clarified that we were in fact not about to become parents (well not yet anyway)!!

For me it ousted a feeling I had been harbouring. I have been really worried that I don’t really want the baby at all, that I will hate being tied down and having to look after it, resent him or her even. But all these worries have been well and truly quashed…. For that brief period of time where I thought the baby was maybe only a matter of hours away (all be them pain filled) all I could think about was how happy I felt that I was finally going to get to meet him/her. The fact that we have no crib and I currently have no idea how and when to breath paled into insignificance when compared to the awesomeness of having our little baby in my arms. I now it’s a bit OTT and soppy, but it was an amazing & relieving instinctive reaction.

On the not so shiny side of the coin, it would seam that the experience has sort of had the
opposite effect on Andy. Obviously I can’t speak for him, but I think that all these months of being my rock and feeling so under control were shaken ever so slightly by the prospect of a real baby. It would seam that my 7.5 months of panic and fearing I will be desperately inadequate have come to an end just as Andy’s have begun. it must be something that happens to every expectant parent… fatherhood is a daunting thing, but I genuinely can’t imagine anyone better for the job. Andy is: kind, gentle, honest, generous, loving, stubborn, hardworking, ambitious, proud, fun and a million other things… what more could any child ask for? Personally I’m banking on playing the she’s a bit odd but we love her card for my parenting responsibilities.

Rightly well back to counting the minutes until my maternity leave starts and staring vacantly at the ever filling inbox I am supposed to be monitoring. For now I leave you with this actual quote from a WallMart staff appraisal:

“the wheel is turning but the hamster is dead”

and:

what the fuck are these????

Vanity Fair

I have been pondering something…. Someone I know has abandoned the world of Bloggery having quite accurately pointed out that airing your personal feelings, happenings and aspirations in a public domain is not necessarily a good thing.

I think I would go further and say that it is a dangerous, self indulgent form of denial. Yet here I am airing away. There was a time (for me at least) when I would work through thoughts in the real world via discussion and action…. now it is often the case that I spill here and then consider the subject filed.

For me, one of the purposes of this place was to help organise my thoughts. There has been so much change for me over the last two years that I was at the point where I could not have a defined thought. Imagine if you will a fast flowing stream of objects as if in a jet stream, hurtling by, leaving just blurs of colour. I would either be unable to grasp from the stream a single subject or emotion to reflect on or having determined it impossible, just sit vacant, staring at yellow animated morons. Filling hours of potential energy with nothing.

This Blog gave me an opportunity to pick any one of these beginnings of a thought and explore it in a place where interruptions, counter opinions and judgement were non existent. This allowed me to whittle my torrent of feelings into intelligible ideas, thus giving me that little more time to actually live.

Why it had to be here in a place accessible to the public I’m not sure. Being a creative person I value the ability to use images as a part of my expression, something that can not easily be done in the pages of a private diary. To record all that is here locally as a document seems pointless, it is as if the possibility of serving a purpose is sufficient justification for placing these words on the publicly available internet. After all… if I were to be writing all this and not sharing it, It would be a self-indulgent waist of time.Publishing it… well that makes it topical and valid right? Otherwise I would be vain, and I couldn't possibly be vain could I?

Bahhhhh, buy my wool for $1,000,000

Pregnant women can not operate Washing machines.....

Things that are bad:

I turned my beautiful Pashmina to felt, then the cat was sick on it. Several days later I turned my almost (Hinty hint) Mother-In-Law's angora jumper to felt.

These things are bad.

Stairs, Biscuits and Sludge

It has been too long!! Aside form my hideous segway creation I have been completely useless in the update ways.

There has been so much going on. A trip to the Ooo K see my mum and brother… to show off my ever growing bump, scans of said bump and other general baby related activities.

I am also innately lazy so there is always that to throw into the mix. The general lackadaisical attitude remains, but there is something else about me these days. A new found determination, focus or something. Perhaps it is the impending arrival… There is no harm in being a skint, hobo, dreamer when it is you alone who may have to sacrifice those beautiful shoes or forgo the fifth muffin on your lunch break. I had always envisaged my family in a nice house (with stairs), a scruffy garden filled with flowers and plenty of places to dig and build dens, money enough to go on holiday puddle jumping. I’m not talking plasma TV, ice making fridge money, just enough to provide the basics with some biscuits on the side.

The urgency was not there for me to attain these things for myself, but now I have someone else to look out for, you can consider this little lady’s arse seriously kicked.

The prospect of dragging my self into this kind of office, doing a job that is entirely inconsequential is no longer terrifying, instead it is a funny. There is no way on earth I will let that happen to me. I would be robbing myself, my child(ren) and Andy of a happy determined woman. I would become sludge.

So in an attempt to avoid become sludge I have finally begun to put my jewellery making back into action. Even more remarkable though is the new “nice Shiv” I have launched. I am trying to exude nice, approachable and interested… sarcastic Shivvers is having a rest. Fear yee not, there will be no PGA meetings for me, but my tongue has been softened ever so slightly. I am
hoping that this can be a temporary adjustment……… I have always liked being cutting and
ruthless but I will have to befriend a new ilk of person….*gasp*…. The ones with children who arrange flowers and crochet. My master plan is to take wine to all such social events, remove all Barry Manilow related paraphernalia and burn tweed. Therein ridding the entire world of all annoying middle-aged petition toting women. Which is the lesser evil I wonder? The former or Drunk, naked, manilow haters? Well either way …Humph*

Because we all need a Segway

Life and Death and Life Again....

Life is amazing. I know what you’re thinking… She’s on a high again, full of life, energy, enthusiasm and hope….. It’s only a matter of time before she spirals, like leaves falling from the autumn tree, into a dark place that will almost, but not quite consume her.

Well I know myself well enough to know that I can offer you, nor I, no guarantee that that won’t happen…. But there is something different in me now. The time for self-indulgent, introspective, musing is over. I can’t say that I’m happy about it, I have genuinely enjoyed the past 24 years of complaining and feeling hard done by….. but alas the inevitable – time to grow up.

My Granny died on the 29^th October 2005. It is something that almost everyone experiences… their Grand Parent’s funeral. This was the first I have been to and it got me. Apart form the obvious upset there was something very humbling about it. The passing of a woman who was frail and riddled with pain evoked a strange collection of emotions. Injustice – that my Granny had been ripped from my family and me. Of course there is no injustice in it at all. We are dying from the moment we are born, as I sit here typing I am decaying, my eyesight worsening.

And whilst I am dieing, I am growing a baby…. Giving life to another human being!! That's right I, Miss Siobhan Myles and Mr Andrew Blackburn are going to have a baby!!

At the time the first couple of paragraphs were written I had just come back from Ireland and was unaware of my impending child!! Just two days after I got back Andy and I took a test. And there it was, like a soldering iron to the eye, grenadine in ice (reference from my bar days) or a dead shark in your drive way….. unmistakable, hard hitting and unavoidable!! A huge VERY dark pink dot…. In the positive window…. It turns out that the "stick o’news" is impervious to staring, shaking, turning over and ignoring…. It just stays the same – positive!!

It is indescribable this whole thing. There was a flurry of emotions from both of us initially…. We had said a few days previously that if I were to be pregnant it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But how different things are when … well they are different.

The fact that we had said that made me feel pressured into feeling elated and calm, truth be told I was terrified and really very detached. Then I felt guilty for not feeling the way I thought I should. We’re talking in a day here – all these emotions flying thorough my head, none staying long enough to be considered but like a flash from a camera, lasting just long enough to leave an impression.

There was talking and some crying and some laughing and here I am 2 months later…. 13.5 weeks pregnant. Elated doesn’t even come close to how I feel now. This isn’t all about me and bump though, Andy is over the moon too. I can only really speak for my self here, on my blog, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t realise the hugeness of this for other people, particularly you Andy. If I could climb inside your mind and know how you feel I would. But I can’t. So I’ll sit and talk about me some more as usual.

Allow me to introduce to you the most wonderful person in the world.... Baby Blackburn/Myles...... I will save the details as they can all be found here:

www.wealllovericehere.blogspot.com

This is a separate Blog dedicated solely to the development of our little baby…. Something which might not be of any interest to some of you. It also serves a couple of other important purposes.

During pregnancy I have found that sometimes I don’t really feel like I exist as an individual. I have never liked being anything other than me. Even in relationships... I hate this idea of being half of someone else. I want to be me – as a whole, who is ALSO in a relationship with someone. Every part of my body belongs to me, every opinion I have is mine and I am entitled to it, the prospect of relationship censorship is horrible to me!!

So anyway yes, I sometimes feel a bit like I have to share everything. My body, my energy and I think that keeping this space for me and what I think is paramount if I want to maintain some kind of individuality.

It is also important for the baby. I don’t want to ebb into his/her right to be documented and have time and words dedicated exclusively to him/her. I think that it would be unfair to dilute the importance of this persons little life record with anecdotes of my working day.

So waffle aside, the above link is to our baby's Blog.

Wow that was exhausting!!

Other events have been in abundance. I haven’t really felt like writing while I have been harbouring a secret as life changing as I have, and as a consequence there is lots to up date you on.

But for now i shall leave you with this little beauty... he's a golden tail eel!!