Houston We Have A Problem (by sarah)

Jean has worked out stairs!!!!!

Arrrrrggggggggggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And we are still waiting for those nice shiny baby gates we were promised by a friend - I think in desperation we may have to by some ourselves 🙁 Oh well - I'm proud of her as well - its a big step! Hahahaha - sorry insomnia babble yet again 🙂

Bubble Goes Backwards! (by sarah)

Al invented a new game to play with our energetic exploro-bubble, otherwise known as Jean. Sitting on the bed with her she crawls to the edge but before she gets there you grab her legs and pull her backwards(gently of course) you have to say in an annoyingly gooey voice 'bubble goes backwards!' and she shreiks with joy untold - she really really loves this game!

Her communication skills are interesting, signwise she does Milk, Yummy (or if she thinks your taking to long this turns into double milk), and No! (which food wise results is food being chucked if you dont notice in time).

Words - Mamamama, Dadadadada, Nananana (or these could all be the same thing and everone is having wishful thinking but strangers have now said thats what shes saying so I think we are home and dry with those). Num num (this is my fualt as I say nummy nanana and is equivalent to yummy or food in JEan speak), Eggo (we think this is hello as we say it too her a lot and she waves whilst saying it). Then there are sudo grgr (maybe granddad?) and brbr (Barabara?).

Crying - She has some distinctive crying patterns - there is what I think of as genuin crying which just makes you want to hug her lots - this normally occures when she crawls into the cross beam of chair or underside of bed. Then there is mizogging, this is I'm tired or have a dirty nappy etc... it is repeatative and highly annoying - I think this must be a survivial techniquic bred into us so that we try and find what the baby needs to shut them up! Then there is the hysterical I want to be played with and entertained where do you think you are going? And why have you taken my bottle away?!!!!! - this is the most destressing as you cant carry them everywhere and when dealing with kettles and the like they cant really be near them and they really dont understand that the bottle is empty even when its being replaced with a full one! This type of crying makes you want to cry and makes you feel your really letting them down in some way.

Body langauge - Jean smiles lots 🙂 She also scowls in a dark and brooding manner - something she has inherited from Al's side I feel, then there is the old rubbing eyes when tired, waving arms and wiggling when excited. But the bit we are gushy proud perants of at the moment is that she spent Monday at nursery waving hello and goodbye to people as they came and went - this is somethng we had been working on 🙂 but she was just waving all the time going eggo now she's sort of cottoned on 🙂

The Nature of Suffering (by sarah)

Ok for a start I am running on less than 2 hrs sleep here so this is unlickely to make much scense to be honest!

Now pain and suffering have been pondered since the times of ancients just look at concpets like reincarnation and karma. Now I dont know whats what with all the spiritual stuff to be honest but what I do know is my life is both really really good and really really bad - I assume that in some cosmic balancing effort I need to have the bad to have the good - fair enough. I would hate never to have the good things - but if I had never had them would I know that?

Would average intellagence be a boon? Would no drawing talent be a boon? Or am I being egotistical here? - probably.

I am not a polymath - Al probably is but I'm not - I am not a genius at lots of things - oh no - I am mearly good enough I am the jake of all trades master of none - this means I have to work hard to gain my skill but have a little natural talent. This means that focusing on one aspect of life - ie say being career driven is unlikely to happen to me!

At the moment I feel that none of this matters as most of my skills are laying in shreds, I am trying to piece things together again. I have started writting and painting in earnest - the art work was back shelved after GCSE's much to the Art teachers destress (though I have just been going though the GCSE portfolios and it is all quiet frankly poo - I was horrified at the state of most of the work!). The writting - well as most of you have probably gathered I am dyslexic and have a spelling age of an eight year old. However, this is mearly I feel, food for the muse but more on that point later! I did a creative writting course during my A'levels and even before that found English teachers entering my stories and peoms into compatitions like the Royal Mail one where at 13 or how ever old I was I was a runner up - this was way more than I expected! Many peoms have found their ways into anthologies and collections - but this again all wnet on the back burner to do science! To become a geologist!

Now I find myself stuck, even at the early stages of being ill I begain to write once more - of course I have kept a diary most of this time anyway but I mean what I term actual writing!

Of course I am now in the adult areana with no confidence in my own work, not too mention chronic spelling and gramma destroyed by taking note at 90 miles an hr in lectures!

However you are all probably thinking what has this got to do with suffering?

Well the key to poets and creative writers as far as I'm concerned is an ability to put themselves in the place of writting - weather as a characterisation or as an actual place or indeed as a concept! Now this is going to need a certain amount of empathy. Empathy as those that have studied the human condition have sumised is born out of adversity - some truma, some horrendous scarey nasty thing you have gone through and survived. When we were in little clans and villages pre towns and citys there were always coming of age rituals - this is echoed still in our culture today but mostly within religous contexts - countrys with national survice also find that their crime rates are lower as the young men have more empathy with potential victims.

This means that to a certain extent we need suffering, we need something to strive against - however the old clans and tribes had it right - it was scary but generally (not always mind!) not really dangerous ie staying out in the dark on your own all night as epitamised in that childrens story of American Indians (Erm I cant cope with political correctness apologies if I offend). So this means that within our modern society lots of people have low levels of empathy with a few who have really been put through the wringer of life - being over empathic, over sensitive to peoples emotions etc...

I feel this is a bad dipole to have occured but again I dugress from the reason I am actually writting!

Mainly I have been to hell and back and even before that was always on an uphill struggle but this has provided me with a rich colourful world, a wealth of experiences good and bad which I can draw on in a creative way. Add to this the forced slow ness of my life at the moment and it is a creative spawning ground.

I feel the nature of my suffering is to be a spring board for ideas and creativeness.

I am still a scientist mind which is good as I feel it means I analise and prevent myself from being all consumed by the paint or story!

I am also looking for honest peeps to help me with my stories and poems - I want them ripped to shreds, I want them harshly ananlysed. If they suffer this treatment then they might just be a much better peice of work at the end of it.

I tend to write softish scifi (not startrek esk I hope). Warning there does tend to often be an erotic element/at least reference to a sexual relationship in some stories. I occasional write sort of love story things - not really sure genre wise, and sort of I suppose drama? I am clueless and its just so much dross at the moment.

As some of you know I also started on some stuff for kiddies - I've run the one complete story past the intended age range and they liked it but I am still working on the illistrations. Who knows maybe this career disastor may result in getting this aspect of me up and running. I hope I can run things parralelle with each other in the long run.

I cant really post storys on the blog as for some magazines/publishers it counts as electronic publishing and may void the piece from compertitions and or publishing!

Geologist Running Scared (by sarah)

Ok so I'm still awake - brain active, thinking too much again - this is not good for the worlds general population especially if I start looking at the news and see just how we are screwing things up even more - sigh.

Why do I have insomnia?

Is it becuase I've had issues being cleared health wise to go back to college and have told them so and am waiting for the response - waiting to find out if I can do any geology this yr or wheather I will be sitting out on the bench in the cold yet again 🙁

Is it becuase I feel I've let people down - I have samples sitting there waiting for me, people have gone out of their way to help me, I want to be an astrobiologist dam it! I have impact lithologies waiting I have theories to investigate - I feel that I have also let mankind down in some odd way - maybe some discovery is hunged on my work - maybe one of the samples I have is important? I'm not saying I would make the discovery mearly that me having my mitts on the samples means that they are not currently being investigated when they may hold valuable info. But then again I know that there was a shortage of people to do the dog work 🙁

So whats the plan now - I really dont know - that probably explain why yet again I am buring the candle dead into the night :'(

I think I have geology withdrawal! Today I saw some mica glinting at me and lots of feldspar - I had to fight the instinct to drop to the gound to investigate the kurb of someones garden - I suspect the rocks/blocks came from scotland - sigh.

Maths keeps calling me too... I find my self wondering about how things work ie pooters then I start asking Al questions then I start getting itchy to do some maths - unfortunatly I'm still looking for my maths stuff - it must be still lurking in a box somewhere. In desperation I started working out sequence stuff - but couldnt remember so had to make up my own notation - I dont think stars and moons and hearts really cut the mustard 🙁

I can feel my brain shriverlling up from the lack of science - how do 'normal' people cope without it?

On the plus side Jean has the making of a 'proper' geologist! The first thing she did when placed on the grass near the gravel road - was to pick up a stone, examin it, turning it this way and that, waking it on the other stones to check for hardness and trying to determine its streak by 'drawing' with it - then the altermate sign of a 'proper' geologist - she tasted the sample!

(unfortunatly at this juncter I had to take the sample away from her which resulted in tears - no geologist likes having their samples confiscated!)

Of Green Fingers and Stinging Nettles (by sarah)

Today I finally got time to tie those blasted tomatoe plants up - maybe now the tomatos will rippen and we will have yummy! To my suprise there were quiet alot of tomatoes - they are supposed to be cherry tomatos so I'm not expecting anything huge! They are growing in grow bags just outside our house in the sort of gully thing before the flower bed. They took quiet a lot of tying back with a few causulties along the way 🙁 Including my hand! There was a damn great big stinger lurking in amoungst them so there I was grabbing great big hundfulls of tomato plant when wam bam thankyou mam! White blotches and red skin all over my fingers 🙁 They are still tingling now! I've ended up using most of our ball of string to tie them up with and it was no mean feat I can tell you! I did actually end up with green fingers from this escapade too! Hence the title of the post.

Also my tip for today would be - do not grow things on the compost heap no matter what a good idea it is or how good the flipping crop of squashes is! Al's aunt is growing all manner of squashes from yellow couregettes to pumpkins on the compost heap - and the crop yeild is fantastic - BUT

a) the friuts are going rotten quicker as they are touching the compost/trying to grow into the compost!

b) getting to the stream to fill up the water can is a night mare - I ended up sliding down the muddy bank into the water today 🙁

c) compost heaps that get wet ooz a noxious brown liquid that sqielches out under foot - this is not good when wearing sandles!

d) being short I have to climb onto the heap to water the plants - I dont like doing this for two reasons - climbing still hurts slightly and the compost heap is smelly unstable!

Veggy plot is a bit over grown but not too bad considering the amount of time I'm finding to actually tend it! And the kittens keep eating all the herbs!