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[28] Waiting

Ocean Bream NanoPoblano2024 Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

When something is uncategorised, it is forgotten. She was uncategorised. She was the shelf upon which people put their unwanted things. At home it would be a glove that was missing its partner. A keyring one had collected from a fair. Some vague uncle’s snuffbox. A pair of spectacles left by someone, and nobody knew who they belonged to, so they stayed there, years on end, in the hopes that someone would recognise them and pick them up. She was that. Not the spectacles, the shelf. Well, perhaps the glasses too.

She was the bowl in which people placed their lost buttons, beads, clips, hatpins. Missing things. Miscellaneous things.

She collected stories and feelings, however. Memories of dark puddles of days, illuminated only by that one romantic lamppost. The one that you turn your head to stare at, as the carriage trundles by. The lone station with the arching cherry blossom tree, and she comes to life every spring, a princess, a pink queen draped in velvet finery. Forgotten all year round. Forgotten until one person comes to sit at the bench, and lays out their life story. They leave their sadness at her doorstep, and move on to brighter futures, greener fields, warmer houses. Yet there she stayed.

Waiting.

Waiting for trains, carriages, letters, hope, news, ships docking at the port, stories in the papers, visitors knocking at her door.

[21] A bit dark.

Ocean Bream NanoPoblano2024 Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I think we are all ‘f****d up’ because the world is so fragile, and the human mind cannot deal with fragility. It fragments our existence and sends everything we ever knew tumbling away from us.

We lose control and are haunted by existentialism, and then check ourselves into therapy because we can’t make sense of it and somehow that is so deeply depressing.

We distract ourselves with loud music and funky interests, with books and words and lives that don’t exist. With colour and people and loud, buzzing laughter.

But when the lights go off we lie awake, fearful and fearing, because the darkness brings those thoughts to life again and there is noting we can do to stop them.

Where did we come from? We think. Where are we going? Everybody is going to die, so what is the meaning of life then? How is it that we are so intricate and full of depth and feeling and then suddenly one day we are stone cold and dead? WHAT WAS IT ALL FOR?

Sometimes the thoughts that spring upon us on those rude midnight awakenings have to do with our families. Or our other loved ones. Or our failed attempts.

I think the world is one big fat distraction. I deal with these thoughts with some kind of iron strength inside of me. When I lie awake, fearful, I think, Well, we are all born to die anyway. And dying doesn’t mean the end of everything. Dying is a part of living. 

Also I believe there are reasons we live on earth, and it truly is not all for nothing.

[5] Infinite Birds

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There are infinite points on a circle, you know, and we recently learned this fact, me and my five year old boy. He spends all his time with his sister, 3, and they like to talk about millions, billions and infinity.

Infinity and sextillion. Did you know sextilion was a number? I spent days telling my son that sextillion didn’t exist every time he would ask how many days was sextillion years. He would get so offended with me. Yes it does exist!

Who told you? I asked.

Your brother!

My brother? Okay hmm maybe there is some truth to this madness then.

So I did what any sane person would do in this day and age and I asked Google. And Google told me that sextillion was actually 1021.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

He asked me how long it would take to count to sextillion so again, I resorted to Google.

243,000,000,000,000 years folks.

I said you’d be long dead before you got there.

Now it’s infinity. Because infinity is definitely more interesting than sextillion. I told him infinity is not a number, it’s a concept. His little sister told me it wasn’t a COLCEPT, because we can have ilfillity things. Like illfillity clouds! And illfillity shoes! And there are illfillity stars in space, didn’t you know?! So it is a number.

And infinity birds, her brother added. But then the whole world would be covered in birds. And they would fly the earth away. We could put them on our house and tie them with string and then we could fly away into space.

Now I am confused.

That bloody phone.

Ocean Bream family Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
How do you use social media?
View all responses

Too bloody much, if I am honest.

And too bloody much around my kids, to be honest. I am on my bloody phone in the car, while they’re falling asleep chatting to me… it’s in my damn pocket while I read them bedtime stories.

And what do I bloody even do on it?

Scroll social media, that’s what.

Even though I am supposed to be doing a million other productive things.

Either way, whether it’s scrolling social online dopamine prison or replying to emails or organising one’s life or scheduling the next homeschooling day or arranging an educational trip to the local quarry or searching for local bluebell woods on google maps…. it’s still my damn face stuck in front of a damn phone and it’s what my son is looking at as slumber sweetly rocks him into dreamland.

Kids watch everything you do and their neurones use what they’re exposed to, to make pathways. What sorts of pathways am I enabling in my sweet, sweet innocent children when they see me on my STUPID phone!?

Oh I grate on my own bloody nerves is what I do.

Cannot stand my bloody self!

Have made a decision to NOT use my phone around my kids at all. Leave it upstairs, on loud, so if anybody important rings I’ll be able to hear it. And that’s that.

Stupid bloody phone.

Am I doing bloganuary? I just logged in to check my blog before kids’ bedtime..

Ocean Bream Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?
View all responses

Oh dear. Ugh. I hate this one. But I’ll answer it anyway. The past, probably. Cringefest in my brain, all the embarrassing things I said and did. And the dumb things I chose to do. And the downright idiotic psychopathic people my lonely lost self chose to associate with. Starved of affection? Validation? God knows. Couldn’t smell the real deal when it was shoved in my face, so chased after something bogus, and harmful. Eurgh. It reeks.

I don’t think about that a lot anymore though. It rears its ugly head every so often but I soon snuff it out.

I am scared of the future. Always have been. I feel somehow I don’t deserve it. Like it’s too good for me. Or the good in it is too high for me to reach. Like I am not worthy. But when I question it I don’t understand what I have ever done to be unworthy?

Hmm, maybe making a stupid choice at 16? I was told often enough it ruined my life and made me the most evil villain to ever exist.

But the rational almost 30-year old me knows this cannot be true.

Then I try to psychoanalyse it and it presents itself clear as day but I am terrified to take it and let it speak to me.

It says ‘you never felt you deserved good things as a child.’

Now, THERE is some unpacking for me to do. Do it I must, before my kids get older, and think they too don’t deserve good things in life, so don’t go chasing better.

Extra Post – Anniversary

Ocean Bream The Story of Lenny Tags: , , , , , , , 12 Comments

WordPress informs me this morning that it is my TEN YEAR bloggiversary. Bloggaversary. Ten years since I made a wordpress blog. TEN YEARS. Since I had that dark bedroom with bare floorboards that somebody had painted a leaf pattern on. Ten years since that old black fireplace in front of which I piled towers of all my books for lack of a proper bookshelf. Ten years since I was nineteen years old, naive, tentative, hopeful. TEN YEARS.

It’s so scary to think about the ten years because if I dare to think about what I have achieved in that time it sears my heart and breaks my mind. I feel inadequate – I certainly have not achieved all I desired to. I imagined that I would be much more accomplished by now than I actually am.

So let’s not dwell on THAT. Ten years, 719 posts – some I have taken down, of course, but that does leave about 700 or so posts. That is not even a hundred a year. Some years have been very busy, some have been more quiet. But I like to think that this little old blog will be quietly churning out small mundane posts ten years from now too.

How long have you been blogging?

A riot of roses by Nicky Hunter.

[25]

Ocean Bream NanoPoblano 2022, writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Note: I write these daily Novembers to the background noise of my kids screaming. These days like to run around chasing each other and scream. It’s some kind of game. Their cries pierce right through my ears. They interrupt my thoughts and halt my words and make my brain feel like mush . I stop them sometimes, and other times I let them do it, because it seems like they enjoy it and they need to get it out of their system.

I am actually behind.

I am behind and I could panic about it but I won’t.

I won’t let the overwhelm overwhelm me.

Let this be my 25th post.

It has no substance.

My brain is mush.

But brains are mush. And it is within that mush that ideas grow.

Bloggiversary

Ocean Bream musings, The Story of Lenny Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 17 Comments

I am writing an extra blog post today because it is my Bloggiversary. Nine years ago today I sat down, and decided I did not want my old blog on Blogspot, and wanted to write out the things that rattled around in my brain like dainty fairies wearing saucepans in a new, cleaner space.

So I opened up a new blog. And I called it ‘Ocean Bream’.

Not after the fish. But after a lovely, whimsical book I read called The Spellbook of Listen Taylor where a woman really, just really wanted to be asked how her ocean bream was, my love?

At the time I wasn’t married, but I was a few months into ‘seeing’ my husband, who I had known my entire life. We ‘courted’ for a while and then decided to get married in January 2014. So my bloggiversary is very close to my anniversary, and for me, somehow, that feels a little special.

Image Credit: Shawna Erback

You’re Horrible

Ocean Bream motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

‘You’re horrible,’ he said to me, leaning back on the sofa. I sat hunched on the table, angrily tapping on my laptop keys, fury racing towards him like daggers from my side eyeing.

‘No, you are.’

‘I haven’t seen you all day and all you do is be mean to me.’

‘Well I have been taking care of two babies all day and was so looking forward to going to the gym for an hour, MY TIME, but you choose to come home half an hour before it closes!’

‘So?’

‘SO, I am left rushing there, banging out a poor workout, and rushing back.’

‘Ok, at least you worked out?’

‘NO.’

‘Mean.’

‘Not mean. I wanted to take my time, walk there all psyched to go. I wanted to lift my weights slowly and with focus. I wanted to do some stair stepping and sweat to some tunes. But all I got to do was race there, dash in, quickly rush through my weight lifting routine, and rush out.’

‘Hmmph.’

‘And the music had stopped, the gym guy was waiting by the door, tapping on his phone, keys jangling.’

‘…’

‘And I rushed out, raced across the car park in the pitch black, jumped in, locked the doors sharpish and looked into my backseat.’

‘Why the backseat?’

‘Well you know in one of the X-Files episodes where that creepy guy with honey eyes – the one who eats people’s livers every thirty years – anyway, that guy was in the backseat when Mulder gets in his car.’

‘O…. kay?’

‘And I watched that as a child and it so terrified me that every time I get into a car, I have to look into the backseat to make sure nobody is waiting there to pounce on me.’

‘Alright, weirdo.’

‘Anyway and then I rush home. And there is mess everywhere. I was with the kids all day, bathed them alone, put them to bed alone, and I was hoping you would at least clear up the dinner things and tidy up, but it’s a pigsty. Literally. There’s dried baby food on the table.’

‘I’ve been at work all day.’

‘So have I?’

‘What, you were at home!’

And folks, I took my laptop upstairs, and here I sit, steam shooting out my ears.

Is this for real?

To Document

Ocean Bream motherhood Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

I am just writing this here because I have had a Very Bad Day.

A

not

very

present

day.

A

Lost.In.My.Head.

DAY.

With lots of fog and tiredness and mounting worry and frustration.

Probably boils down to the fact that I am Very Exhausted and Really Struggling.

I spent the day alone with my son today as my husband had to work outside the home – usually he can work from home. See I think I take this man for granted, because today was horrific. I had no energy at all. I was trying so hard to get work done, and I did all the things I usually do to exhaust my boy, like going for a walk, painting, building things, making muffins, having a long bath with lots of pouring and splashing. Video calling Nana. In bed by 8pm.

He did not sleep until 11pm, folks.

He rolled around, pinched my arms, gave me cuddles and kisses, cried a little when I got frustrated and told him to GO TO SLEEP PLEASE. Eventually he fell asleep in my arms and I slowly heaved myself up and out into the light of the hallway and my goodness did I cry.

I felt really out of my depth and out of control. And I did not get any work done at all. With a deadline tomorrow this means no sleep for me tonight.

I also have other issues – health issues – that do NOT help the situation. For example I am

seven months pregnant.

So my fuse is short.

And my patience is thin.

My hips are locked, my pelvis is turned the wrong way and it’s bloody uncomfortable to sleep so sleep is not sufficient for rest. It’s actually funny if you really think about it. I have for sure laughed about it when I have had better days.

I am so done, folks.

And I frankly just want my mother around but she is a Very Busy Woman. You see she still has my other siblings at home and while two of them are adults and have jobs/lives of their own, the other two are still boys. Teenage boys. She also works full time and is currently undergoing lots of household changes.

It’s very difficult to acquire help in these times. And I know I am probably being pig headed about this but I refuse to travel two hours to stay with my in laws just so I can get ‘help’. To me it’s not help. To me it’s having my son babysat while I struggle with heart palpitations and walking on eggshells and crippling anxiety. I lived with them before and being pregnant, working full time and having a toddler will make it worse than it was. I would probably end up in deep depression like I did last time. They can stay over all they like although when they do it’s actually more work for me, but nobody sees it that way.

See if my mum stayed over I wouldn’t feel the need to get out of bed early and make her breakfast or cook full meals for everybody or appear in control. I would let her see me in my glorious half naked frizzed out state. I would feel comfortable. Not so with anybody else, and I suppose that’s mostly natural, people’s personalities differ. Their expectations differ.

Anyway.

I do not write to complain.

I write to release and document.

It’s a hard phase of life and one day I will look back and say, ‘Man, that was rather a hard time wasn’t it.’

Or maybe I will say, ‘Man, I wish I had it as easy as I did then!’

Lol. Who knows, eh?! And if you can’t laugh about it then you’ll jolly well cry and I am going to laugh about it.

Tomorrow. With my husband. Who I DO take for granted. And I will tell him so. He makes my life easier. So much easier. When he is gone it’s totally miserable.