Tuesday 28 September 2010

in the sunshine and in the shade

I was told recently that my blog has a somber tone to it, that it makes me seem like I am unhappy. I responded that it is not the case, that I am perfectly happy, and that it's just that it's hard not to sound cheesy. However, if that is the perception people have of my blog, I would like to remedy it, because sometimes people can be very happy, and because sometimes things work out.

I have an address book, and the image on the cover is of a 1950s housing estate, likely American, where the houses are all similar (though not identical), the gardens are all well kept and there are a few figures at the front chatting. It reminds me of a small part of a housing estate in Biggar where you go in and can go left or right and both ways are basically the same and mirror each other. On the back of the address book the image is exactly the same only mirrored, yet somehow it looks completely different. It's the same as looking in the mirror at your surroundings. When I was young my room had these big sliding door mirrors that concealed a wardrobe. I would sometimes sit and look in the mirrors and my room through those mirrors looked so different. And even though I knew that it was exactly the same with the same objects and the same colours, I wished I could step through the mirror into this idealised room where things were familiar yet somehow more desirable. It would seem the grass was always greener.

The point is that I've not done that for a long time. When I was ill I used to go and stay with my Mum at home and I would envy her and her house. I would envy it not in a jealous hateful way, just with such longing for home and to feel safe and as though everything was just so. It's a funny concept, that of 'home', where there is no greatly determined route to get there, it just happens and you don't even realise it has sometimes. You can work it out if you go on holiday and feel home when you get back, those rare times when you actually get to smell the aroma of your own house as normally you cant see the wood for the trees.

But now I have found home. I have found home and everything else is perfect. I have Stuart, husband, and I don't know if I have ever described that in my blog before for fear of being to soppy or making him feel odd. To be honest I can't describe Stuart and all he means to me without describing myself as we are the same. Stuart is the only person in the world who isn't at least part stranger to me. I refer to him as the other half of a two piece jigsaw puzzle, literally the friendship necklace you would get when you were young with two necklaces each containing pieces that fit together. I remember having one when I was young, I had "friends", she had "best". I haven't spoken to her in probably ten years and I don't think I ever really knew her. I gave Stuart half of a 2 pieces jigsaw necklace set on the morning of our wedding. I don't know how I ever got so lucky to find myself fall into a person like this.

I feel like I have a real family. Not just inasmuch as there are people who I am related to and they live close. A lot of people have family, a lot of people see their family everyday, but that does not make them close. Some people spend time with their family because they feel they have to, I don't feel this with mine. Now we are married Stuart and I have our family, the two of us, and two little beasts who are more human and more loyal than anyone out there cares to be. Recently I have been awoken to the true nature of friends and friendship and I have accepted it for what it is, which I am not going into just now. The key thing is that it has shown me for sure that blood is rope and water is the deadly fall onto rocks over the cliff.

What is more in terms of happiness I am succeeding where others are not. I don't like to brag. Stuart tells me off for not outwardly expressing pride in my achievements. I will succumb to cheese and do it. I got a first class honours at university. I won all the history prizes. I am getting given money to stay at university, they want me that much. I've been conscripted. I sit with the phd students. I am doing an Mres in history - in four years I should be Dr Findlay. I get called Janet. I'm earning. I pick up a cheque on Friday. All the students Allan has supervised for phd now have university teaching jobs. So will I.

Basically I am very happy. I have been unhappy in the past. I will be unhappy in the future. But for right now everything is perfect. Do you believe in Karma? It's dumb, right? I think so, but somehow it seems to be applicable. I was thinking of it yesterday as I trudged like 8 books up a hill with a pulled back muscle on the first day of semester 1. Eric and Robbie sang it to me:

Further on up the road someone's gonna hurt you like you hurt me. Further on up the road, baby, just you wait and see. You gotta reap just what you sow; that old saying is true. Just like you mistreat someone, someone's gonna mistreat you. You been laughing, pretty baby, someday you're gonna be crying. Further on up the road you'll find out I wasn't lying.

Sometimes it feels as though you catch a break. It's not the universe, it's not your friends or your family. It is you, being a good person, being a hard worker, putting in what you want out of it. Getting it. I really believe that. I know people who put in nothing but bad feelings and ill-intentions, and they get that back out. I'm not saying this is the case totally. I mean, there are things such as diseases, poor luck and bad timing which can hurt the good people and I'm not trying to diminish the unfairness of that. But, on the whole, you do reap what you sow, and some people sow shit.

Sometimes things are bad. Sometimes you hate the world and it seems to hate you back. Sometimes it's time to moan or whine or cry. Sometimes it seems as though the sun will never return. Then spring comes, and sometimes things work out.

Sunday 12 September 2010

post-wedding intertia

I couldn't even think of a title for this blog. I don't feel eloquent in the slightest today.

I feel so disjointed just now. But I am also so very happy. Maybe I am just having bother processing such joys that I feel as if its a free lunch and I don't trust it. I said previously I would spend my days doing little, lounging around reading, drinking tea and having baths. I have done this a little bit but to be honest it hasn't been the relaxing time I hoped for. When I have time with nothing I need to do I feel so restless. I feel bored, and tired and like I should have something to do, something I don't want to do. Maybe I'm just easing into it, I've not been used to having nothing to do for a while. When something I do have to do emerges I get myself all wound up about it, and it feels like an enormous burden. I am forgetting to do things when I only have one thing to do. I feel as though I can't bring myself to do things I normally enjoy. Nothing seems fun. I am not unhappy though, just tired I think, in a multitude of ways. When Stuart isn't here I feel like I am incomplete and like I am waiting on him to return. Cling film.

I'm so overwhelmed of late that now the excitement of things has been diminished. Like spending our wedding gift vouchers and unpacking the stuff at home is a chore compared to weddings and honeymoon and time constraints and stressful travel arrangements. I am a little worried that I'm not going to be able to cope with university again. I think I will be okay though and I will probably get back into the way of it soon.

It feels like university is so close now and I have to have all the other things in my life in complete order come October because by then I wont be able to schedule anything except work. But actually doing these things is wearing me out so much. I am listless.

It's a quandry, whether to fight through and get things done before university or to try and recouperate before the enslaught.

Also I am so fed up of all the wedding paraphenalia that edorns our abode currently. Tartan ribbons everywhere. Things I don't need, all in piles of 60s. I had everything in order before, with no space to spare. And the gift list presents arrive on Wednesday. I had a big pile of bags for the wedding on the sofa in the study for weeks. Then for one day it was empty (27th). Then it got covered in presents and wedding stuff brought home. I went through presents today but still stuff and boxes linger. I have loads of things I meant to ebay ages ago clogging up space too.

I think I am going to go and read, drink tea and listen to some music with the cats; possibly stuart, possibly not.

What about a title though?

Monday 6 September 2010

yes, it sure has been a long, hard drive


I am Helen and I am a post-graduate student.

Ah, and what's your last name Helen?

Maddock. NO! wait! It's Findlay.


And there you have it. Married off. Someone's wife. That's me. Married with kittens at the age of almost 23.

A lot has been happening in the last few weeks and I wish I had been able to blog it properly, to take the time to note these remarkable occurences, as they truely are that. I have loved the last few weeks more than anything, and I have learnt the true meaning of adoration, celebrity and indeed exhaustion.

I have a few things to note today, so I can have them safe in words and not swimming in my head. I don't trust myself to remember all of this well. I do not intent to go into minute detail of the wedding, not just yet. I'm still drinking it all up and I really need to devote some time to lay it down properly when I am not feeling quite so bothersome (I have the cold).

The wedding was the most odd thing. I had imagined it for so long and when it came nothing was as I had imagined. I don't mean this like things went wrong or different to as planned. To explain, it is like when you are going to meet someone and you are told about them, for example, they are very outgoing and fun. And you make a wee image in your head of what they look like and imagine the scenario when you meet them, where you will be standing. And even if you know the location or even a photo of the individual, when you finally meet them they look different to your mind, you will be facing a different way, sitting on a different seat, not sitting at all. They will still be the same person, they will still be has described, you will still be in the same venue but it will be different. Obviously, nothing is ever exactly as imagined. This struck me on the day of the wedding. And it was in no way bad, not at all.

Another thing that happened when I got married which I did not anticipate was the nerves. Stuart got them too. Of all the people in the world, all the couples, we are the least likely to be in any way worried about getting married. And it was not worries of getting married but that it would all go right. I think it was just the scale of the event. I was fine all morning, setting up, getting hair and makeup done. My mum was jittery to the max, you could see it all over her the poor dear. I think we were playing off of eachother because once she has laced up my dress, which she was worried about, and had started taking some pictures, she started to calm down and I started to feel a little scared. It hit once we got out the hotel room and took the lift down but I didn't really notice it. When it stopped feeling like butterflies and started feeling like my insides were imploding was when the car door was shut on me and my dad. Suddenly it was over, the planning, the waiting, the anticipation. It was pure adrenaline. I have had problems dealing with this adrenaline stuff (cue eye rolling) vis-a-vis panic attacks in the past. The so called "fight or flight" mechanism being something I do not particularly relish. But this was in a league of its own. When the car pulled up at the wedding ceremony venue the photographer (a lovely man named Stan) wanted photos of me in the car. He asked me to smile and my whole lip was quivering, it felt like I couldn't smile. In the waiting room one guest decided not to show up so we were held up. I don't remember it all too well. Then we went up the aisle and we had to stop for pictures; as my dad commented - this was as popular as I was ever going to be. Thank goodness. I know when I stopped being nervous though. It was exactly the point when Stuart looked at me (he didn't as I came up the aisle). Everything was then calm.

After the wedding we went on honeymoon, which is a whole other story that can mostly be explained by the pictures (which were recovered, thanks husband-o-mine!). Then we returned to Glasgow only to have to do a 10k run. This was completed yesterday with expressway crossings, nose bleeds and bloody colds inlcuded for free. 1 hour 8 mins 34 secs.

Now I lie here on the couch with my legs up, lap top on my... lap, indeed and I'm just gathering up all the string. Presents, thankyous, aching legs, Bath waters, stationery, dry cleaning and the inability to breathe are keeping me occupied as I do the famous Mrbob move of saving up my illness until all the work is over.

I am soon to return to university as a postgraduate. I note the difference now. Before you were induced to university by being thrown in the union (a not so tasty spot) for a week before term, now it is an induction with "wine and nibbles" included. Before you had to borrow to support the £3000 odd a year fees for the opportunity to work your arse off all year round, now they are paying this for me, plus a tidy sum to live off of. Not bad at all. I guess hard work does pay off after all. I will also be returning to my job at the disability service. Last year I was working as a scribe. This year they asked my to be a mentor and a tutor. Thoroughly impressed it seems. I choose to call this a promotion, why not?

For the next three weeks (the last three weeks before I have no more holidays ever, apparently according to my supervisor) I plan to do nothing. If you know me you know nothing is never nothing so I mean I'm not doing anything I don't want to do. High priorites are reading (fiction, for book club), sleeping during the day with my cats, some household stuff, and lots of baths. I'm going to be a homemaker for three weeks, I feel my new title deserves that.

Yours,

Mrs Findlay.