Yet another blogging mummy

First off - I've been sober for ... 100 days! Because this is my blog, and because in my blogs I am always (mostly) honest, I have to say that there were 2 days that I had a glass or two of wine.  Both times I regretted it sorely, both immediately after I'd had the drink and most importantly, in the morning and all the way through the next day. I see this as only a good thing. I feel great. I am exercising again, yoga and running, I am eating less, I have lost weight. There is no way I want to go back to the way I wuz.  I have decided this blog is going to take a new direction, one with a combined focus. My hope is that it will fuse my thoughts on raising a spirited child, and the complexities and challenges of motherhood, with  my work. I find working with children solely through music to be fascinating, and my learning curve is sometimes very steep. My work is inextricably connected with my own life, not only because I teach children who are of a very similar age to my ...

As I write this, I have not had a drink in 67 days. That's not true. I had two glasses of red wine two weeks ago one night, to see if I liked it. I did not. So we won't count those two glasses of wine. It was an experiment and it failed. So, apart from those wines, I have not drunk a drop of alcohol in over two months. This is monumental for me. The only time I've managed that in the past 25 years is when I was pregnant. And even then I probably had a few glasses of wine in my third trimester. Two or more months ago, I would never have thought this was a possibility for me. I was drinking myself deeper and deeper into a hole of misery. It sounds dramatic but it really was like that. When I drank, I would get depressed and sluggish and irritable, and the light would go out in my heart. Imagine having to live with someone like that.  I would drink about 2-3 glasses every single night, and on the weekends I would drink way way more, even to the point where I would lose count o...

  A week ago was Hallowe'en. Pickle got dressed as a witch and my husband had drawn some spiderwebs and bats drawn on my face. That was as far as I went with a costume this year. I have seen entire families of six or eight dressing up as the entire cast of Frozen, or all the characters from Super Mario, but me, I could barely get out the door, on a Thursday evening, after work, in the freezing dark. So, spiderwebs and bats was a big achievement babes.  Our neighbours and Pickle's friends came to our door first, and then we trooped off together to the house next door, owned by Leslie and Bruce. They have been here for years, as have our other neighbours. Possibly decades. Their house is big, beautiful, and they keep it immaculate. They have two teenage daughters, a big garden, a trampoline, a volleyball court, and lots of trees. Their flowers always look tended to and the house always looks cared for and symmetrical, somehow. Tonight, there were glowing  Jack O Lanterns pl...

Just keep swimming...... I am sitting at a coffee shop doing some work, and a young mum walks in with a baby in a front swaddle. She looks so peaceful, so delighted, so utterly content with life. Two or three short months ago, she has undergone the most excruciatingly painful ordeal the body can undergo, possibly starting months before she gave birth, culminating in her body being stretched and ripped and pounded, for hours and hours, maybe days, and then left in a heap of exhaustion after which she had to stay up all night, tending to the this precious little creature that simultaneously completes her and makes her want to punch somebody while screaming at the top of her lungs. She has not slept in months, and her body is depleted, withered, a husk, in order that this little bundle of scrumptious insanity lives, thrives, is loved beyond any love imaginable. And yet, she has all but forgotten all that. In this moment, all that matters is the glow of ecstasy she feels at having her perf...

First day of Kindergarten.  My little girl is absolutely loving it. It's as if all the problems, all the fights, all the horrible bits of her, have somewhat dissolved. The many, many, MANY things that I had feared, that have run us ragged, that have turned me (back) into an alcoholic, that threatened to destroy my soul and my relationship with my husband, these all seem just to have drifted away somehow. Maybe on the morning mists, maybe on the evening sunset. I am dealing with a very different person. It's not linear, it's not black and white. But, something has changed. Something has shifted. And I feel like I am starting to be able to become my own person again. A person who has healthy amounts of time to do things like this. To exercise. To work. To prepare my work. To think. To sleep.  My nervous system is starting to begin to return to normal again. I feel more whole. More reasonable. More like a grown up. More like the person I was born to be. A mother, and a teacher...

This is wonderful.  I am sitting at my table, with my coffee, (kept company by many tiny fruit flies) doing some work, while my wonderful husband keeps my little Pickle busy at the playground, and I have, for the first time in many, many, MANY months, been able to have some time to just breathe, in my own space, in my own house, by myself. Just to breathe. I went on a run this morning (I have been running every day this and last week, feels great) and then I got back, expecting to be met by the usual chaos and noise, and there was nothing. Just....peace. Ahhhhhhh. I feel very, very lucky. Last night, we had a dance party. Friday nights are now going to be our dance parties, I have decided. Even if it's just two or three songs. Pickle loves it SO much and it's a great way to connect. Then my husband and I collapsed on the couch after dinner, and Pickle just played. By herself. For ages. Up to half an hour she played. It was so unusual, so unexpected, and so desperately needed fo...

 This summer has been a torrent of opposites. Colour and monotone, peace and insanity, harmony and dissonance, hope and despair, sickness and wellness, relief and panic, simplicity and complexity beyond what my brain can fathom.  I would like to paint a picture of what happened in the last 12 hours.  At 8:30, it was time for bed for little pickles. I cannot accurately explain to you the effort that this pickle threw into trying to trying to avoid going to sleep. She did handstands on her bed. Then she flopped around while lying there. Then, she needed milk, then water, then a wee wee. Then she threw her arms around me, then threw them off and threw her legs around me, then threw them off. Then went into her room, then got "scared" within 7 seconds of being in there (really doesn't bode well for trying to get her into her own bed...for literally the millionth time in the past year and a half) then did a bunch of other yoga moves, then started hitting me, almost by accident...