Dances with DS

I’m still at it - posturing on ladders, twisting my neck at awful angles to spot the unpainted nicks of area beneath the banister, twisting my ankle so badly that I thought I would not be attending the meeting I am due for in the Midlands this weekend. Happily the pain only lasted a day and it’s okay now.

I have had a few decorating disasters. One was my bright idea to use bamboo as panels in my radiator cover. Very smart… not. Hours in the DIY pushing unweildy trolley through people that looked as p***ssed off as myself. A nice hard shin jab on unweildy trolley and some public cussing. Trying to move throuhgh the weekend crowd without decapitating someone with said bamboo. Lugging home in the rain in my open car, enough bamboo for a panda to live on for several months. Then the cutting (which Pete did) and the bril idea to glue it all into the frame with ‘no more nails’. Then the painting of it all. And the dreadful realisation that it just looks poo. Painted or not it looks awful. Despondant is not the word. No more nails could work regarding the finger variety too - they are not lying, the suff is tough as erm, nails. Slowly, painfully, I knock out the huge job. It will have to be mesh but that’s another story to source. My mood is a bit foul. I am realising bamboo and me are not best buddies.

I want to stop. I want to call it all a bad dream but I know I am only at the bottom of the mountain & having got so far I must go on but I am having severe ADD moments & my ability to concentrate fails me.

I don’t mind painting a full wall but the finniky bits, the DIY excursions, the 8 to 10 pm are pretty exhausting. It’s Jane vs 4 Hopfield and so far Hopfield is winning.

Still - sometimes I feel vindicated. My grotty old dining table now is a breathtaker. It looks stunning and after the 3 days sanding, staining and waxing it bloodywell should. I am a bit grumpy are’nt I.

When it gets too tough I go back to my visit in Paris & think on how inspirational and wonderful my break with Pete was. How we sat in the Cafes watching life on the street, the fabulous architecture, the Mona Lisa even more succint in real life with her smile about to break into laughter.

The wonderful sparrows that are so tame the eat from one’s hands at the Notre Dame. How I climbed the hill to the Sacre Coure and lit a candle for all us WLS patients there.

The little shops full of wonderful objects and the bloke in one making eyes at Pete which nearly freaked him entirely! I still laugh…Pete sidling up to me and saying he thought we should go …NOW! Out the corner of my eye I watch the bloke turn on his charms while Pete inches casually for the door.

I think on the wonderful streets of foodie shops and the cobbles and fountains and I feel better with my neck contorted under the stairway.

One fine day this will all be done & I will be pleased I did it. I keep thinking on my friend Ken’s adage - the pay is shite but the rewards worth it! Still makes me smile.

Meanwhile the staircase is still beckoning me - there are lampshades to be made up, and the kitchen needs attention bigtime. There are floors to be prepped and painted. I can’t go further than that in my head. But there is loads more.

My DS is behaving well. But I still struggle to eat more & find it ironic that I must!. A weeny price to pay for this though. I know without it where I would be. Bound to my sofa suffocating in my own sea of fat. Emotionally at the end of my tether. Perhaps contemplating suicide again? Probably.

Give me this any day. Some days I feel life so intensely I could weep for the joy of it. (except when the bamboo looks poo).

I’m off to make a mid morning snack. Nuts and a latte will do me well. Then upwards and onwards with the decorating saga.

The redecoration goes on…and on. I do one job and then next to it everything else looks shoddy. So it is that I can’t just be happy with a cream wall - nope - the skirting - the beams - cieling - furniture must all get treatment. I am perfectionistic I know. (hangs head.) It does me no service. The result of this fixated perfectionism is that I am working at least 8 hours a day physically. I try to not do anything heavy duty but just the painting is knackering. I have decided being a decorator is not my vocation.

But there just comes a day when one takes stock of ones environment & I want mine all fresh & new. I stupidly wrote a HUGE list of ‘things Jane must do’…what possessed me?! I spent an hour nursing depression. I am looking at a full time job here. Ontop of it - there are children- a hubby and a poodly thing to care for. Still - in the grandscheme it’s not sooooo bad! I am here - good grief - I am even working physically, though I confess to getting dead tired.  This is a little miracle in itself.
Sooo..right now I am dead boring. There’s nothing much to write about. My youngest passed well this year and has been accepted into Brighton Uni. We both had a pre nerves night over this. Oh god, I am so proud of this kid. He had major probs at school with an inability to write…and yet here he is off to Uni. It’s a big thing that he has worked very hard for.

I have moments when I get all melodramatic about my baby leaving home. Okay I do get teary. But I also know that I must not show this too much right now - that I must uphold his leaving as positively as is humanely possible. It sort of reminds me of the times I first dropped my kids off at ‘big school’. Each time I drove to remote parking lots and bawled my eyes out silly git that I am.

Other than that endless expensive trips to the hardware store & my aching arms and tired feet hit the late night hour. And maybe why it is so impossible to find a nice wool black carpet. Again by mass choice & this time popular demand I find myself being driven to the neutral side of the fence. I think I should source a Welsh farmer who only has black sheep in his flock. Highlights are ZaZen my doggie boy attacking my vacumn cleaner - such a teensy poodly thing but he gets the roar of a lion. Well for a moment. Then he just gets hysterical.
And how my boy complained today that there was nothing much NICE to eat in the house. I restrained myself - like when have I had time to plan nice food? Then I promptly felt guilty. I’m living off burgens cheese & ham sarmies and if not for my daughter cooking me up a lunch of late, I would be in the poo proteinwise.

Tomorrow will buy some biltong to get levels way up there. I have suddenly lost yet more weight - down to 55kilo’s - it’s just too much right now. I think this is because of the constant exercise and the fact that I am not allowing for it either calorie or proteinwise.  This is the sort of stuff I mean when I mither on about constantly needing to be aware of our bodies needs with these WLS…and that it’s not a smooth ride…all the time there are adjustments that need to be made.

I have paint under my nails & I look like a bag lady. I am still on a roll with the decorating & I do wonder what possessed me!   One job leads to another in a sinister twist of fate it seems. I have never subscribed to the cream family. Magnolia used to strike terror into my arty heart. It harks back to a lecture I had at art school yonks ago - a discussion on the being ’safe’.  While other kids spoke of funky rooms I sat aware - too aware of my cream bedroom walls. I went home & painted them a deep apricot pink in a moment of teenage need to not be ’safe’.   Since then my houses have always been well endowed with color and I have looked apon magnolia and cream as peoples ways of treading the safe world…not wishing to be out there. ‘Nice’ is my worst word. And cream is just that - erm well, NICE. I am ashamed to admit I too am now ’safe’.  But there are advantages - light loves the colour cream.  Space loves it too.  Slowly I am becoming a convert.

Still I could not resist pushing the boundary so I have opted for black as an accent colour. Claire my friend & cleaning lady is appalled. ‘Black cupboards??? …never heard of it in my life and when are you going to put a carpet on the stairs???’   ‘Never Claire not ever!’.  Claire is fascinated but does not much like my oriental art. She calls it my ‘weird bits.’ She’s a Lladro girl herself.  But we love each other anyways.

Our trip to Paris has been covered by a generous friend who has insisted he pay for it. I am so touched. It seems as though the Gods are truly watching out for us.  It was an expense we had measured up because Pete has for so long not had a break away, but it would have meant watching the budget tightly.
There are so many expenses right now.  I desperately have wanted some nice leather dining chairs for an age…and this gift has meant I could buy a set I have been hankering for. Collecting them on Tuesday. Soon we shall sit at the table in luxurious comfort.
Today it is beautiful here in the South. Warm, sunny and I feel good. :-)  My legs are recovering and I plan to do my entire diningroom this weekend….so off to the hardware store I go for more cream paint.  Did I hear you say ’safe’….nooooooo, it’s a wonderful non-colour …think I might just buy a tub of magnolia for my bathroom too. 

I’ve been tackling some much needed jobs around the house. My bowel obstruction has meant everything entered a kind of hades state - things crumbling around me as I struggled to recover. I decided to redecorate and if you know me you’ll know I am never a half measure kind of person! I pulled out the old ladder and went for it yesterday - painting the hall walls and laquering an old Thai Cabinet . I also unearthed a pile of junk from under the staircase and the downstairs loo which had become the storage area in a bung it in kin of fashion. There’s something therapuetic about clearing space - I subscribe to the philosophy of good chi - well intellectually. So it’s good to put it into practice.

I enjoy painting. I dream away - rethink things while I am at it. I was mulling how my food patterns have changed . Before my DS I hated food. But I craved it and all the wrong stuff too in my final year particularly. I ate & I cried and I knew there would be a pay back in weight gain. It was an awful time. Year one with my DS I ate quite little at least for the first 6 months. Then I had a stretch of the tum & viola - I began to eat with great relief and also enjoyment. For 2 years I had a ‘let-go’ in the eating department. Food was again something I could love. Year 3 saw me losing interest in things like chocolate - I never thought about it much - just felt I did not need it. I think I was becoming more rational about it. I also started to have appetiteless times . Year four - I began to eat to live. Food had not lost it’s pleasure for me but it has very much become a thing of pleasure only socially now. I love to eat a well cooked meal made by friends and a leisurely evening at some cafe somewhere on planet earth still expands my restriction suddenly! But at home I just eat what is tastily healthful and it’s not a big deal. I am struggling a bit with quantity but I also feel this much smaller body naturally demands less on some levels. I keep telling it it is DSed so it needs more but it does not want to hear me! So right now I am finding a compromise between eating for the positive effects volume has on my system but still maintaining a comfort level.
Anyhoo - I diverse - I expected with the flurry of painting that I would be sore abdominally today…but not. However my upper leg muscles are killing me! I have become flaccid and weak from too long on the sofa. But does my hallway look wonderful! I am getting rid of my old ochre/green/orange/red walls and going cream. As my collection of african & oriental art increases I find it needs less to support it in terms of colour as many of the pieces are in themselves richly decorated. I put 2 red bowls with water bamboo on the newly laquered black cabinet and my favourite old laquered japaned Buddha stand (replete with the dearest Buddha on lotus blossom) stands proudly on top. The new cream walls make it airy and bright.

I wanted to continue today but alas - the legs would not let me. Instead I mustered up some shopping for food. I want to make carrot raita and a spicy chicken dish tomorrow. I have plans to redo my dining room so will paint more tomorrow and just keep going at it - perhaps it will strengthen my body to do some physical work ongoingly.

I have to stop buying clothes too - this is a new resolution - I think I am a tad addicted to e-bay on the clothes front! Enough is enough - so to seal my clothes buying I did my very last (for a while) buy of a pair of the most stunning linen Armani trousers to die for. Floaty - flowing but fitted at the waist I feel like magic in them. They are size 12 ( I still can’t get myself to believe I am most often a 10!)  so I have taken them in to a size 10 and they feel terrific.  Who’d have thought I would ever be size 10 in designer cuts! Not I. It is quite a thrill.

We are off to Paris next week on Eurostar - I feel like a child rife with excitement. I LOVE Paris. And best of all Pete has not been before so I can’t wait to show him the sites. He’ll love it too I know he will. I want to go to the Louvre and to the Musee d’ Picasso. Most of all I want to hang out on the street cafes latte in hand and enjoy the buzz that is Paris. I am under strict instruction from my cousin who owns an extraodinary and wonderful shop in South Africa to at the least window shop in the Marais district. Happily my hotel is right there so that should not be hard!

I am happy right now. Happy to be here. Happy to be doing what I am. I think happiness begins truly with not what we want, but with what we are already blessed with.