Pony’s and Paper (by sarah)

Today was quiet, everyone but me went away, I sent my eldest off into the icy morn without her tie because though we thought we had sorted everything days ago the tie had slipped our notice, the same as we forgot to go shoe shopping in the sales. She got to borrow one from student services and is not yet in trouble - we still can't find the tie!

Youngest had her first day at after school club and came back more hyper than ever, she arrived home after her sister which was weird!

She was a little tearful mainly I think because she will not sleep and of course school during the day means no naps, she was still a pickle when it came to bed time tonight. She is being good to the cats as her new years resolution - she got licked and not scratched today - this has cheered her up.

After chickens had been fed and watered Jean did homework and Mary played with her set up of play mat, palaces and my little pony, moshi monsters and disney princesses.

Dinner was still Christmas food - we are still in Christmas here and will be until the 6th. Jean announced that when ever she starts looking at religions and studying them all she can see is plot holes.

They then played minecraft together, Mary went to bed and we watched Steins:gate just the first episode with Alaric so he can start sorting his cosplay for the Comic Book Festival. Now I am awaiting the chest nuts he is toasting and yes I did not make it to the first Drink and Draw of the year - I'm not really sure the evening ones are going to be that doable for me anymore :( but fortunately they do now have weekend ones as well :D

So what did I do all day whilst my family where away?

Well I actually got to do all the rests that I am supposed to do, and inbetween them I managed to have an amazing almost the old me day... I wrote 1000 words of fiction, I sorted out cross posting and other blogging issues. I processed a few photos. I can get max 2 hrs of high concentration done and that is split up and broken.

With great effort I have stuck to calories (1600 until the end of the week and yes that includes the chestnuts), my arthritis is being a little act uppy at the moment which sucks but I'm good.

This means I have not done much physical exercise today but have done some.

I had the most lovely amazon delivery lady :) Really churpy and happy, she delivered sparkly my little pony stuff for Mary's birthday which I will probably actually do the party for in February as I need more space to plan and do things than I used to - it the shift from being physically unable but mentally capable to the other way around - physically I am the best I've been as an adult but brain is a big fat raspberry (ie I just wrote the same paragraph in slightly differing forms three times because I had already forgotten I'd written it!).

Also there was origami paper - lovely lovely multiple sizes paper - but sadly the books I've ordered at various points with money and vouchers have still not arrived so I am stuck with the 70's falling to pieces project and what ever vids I can find!

Still I have started improvising and making up my own projects and to my utter amazement - today I came up with new ideas for workshops - I've been working on ideas I had already planned before the head injury and fortunately there had been alot of them - but this... this was brand new ideas with brand new skills and there was not one but two of them!!! With variants :D

Yeah so origami featured in my day whilst "watching" the Hogfather - I was lonely so put it on in the back ground - again this is something I have not been able to really do since the head injury - I managed to focus on a project with background noise. I wanted the sounds because I was lonely - so happy about managing this :)

Failing (by sarah)

I've failed at morning - there is pink tooth paste on our bed and Mary only half dressed in the car for school :( Still I think that is the first proper melt down we have had so far this term with getting ready in the mornings so... getting there - of course Jean has taken the bright turquoise coat to school so I am sure we will be getting a letter or she'll be getting a detention or something about that as she's only allowed black ones :/ To be fair her black one is at the school drying out from yesterday still but she was supposed to take my coat!

My chest is still bad and I've failed to finish decorating the girls rooms. I've now been ill since the 2nd of November and am BORED. Hoping it will sort itself asap.

Yesterday was a System of A Down and Cradle of Filth et al kind of day, Jean came home sans coat and bag as they were too wet and she'd been lent other things in their sted. Which was a relief as I thought she'd gone out in the torrential rain without anything!

Today I wonder if she's remembered her jujitsu bag as she's going straight from school with her friend and I forgot to remind her - I can see the bag from here but that does not mean she hasn't got the trousers and t-shirt with her - the jacket is just too bulky for her to carry in with all her school things.

Maybe I'm letting her down by not sorting it all out, by not driving etc - I hope she is just becoming independent. She's actually pretty epic at organising herself considering she is organising herself and she is mine and Al's daughter and she is only 11.

Rain like this always makes me worry - in 2007 before Gloucester but in Gloucestershire we were flooded and ended up being out of our home for about a year. Rains since have caused issues with the new houses roof etc... and though I know that means it's now a good roof... the fear is there tangled in my brain, if it rains heavy I feel I should go and just check that things aren't flooding - because you know I'd be able to do something about it if it where :/

I'm all mouth ulcery - and run down... thinking it's the aneamia, thinking it's still on running issues of having gotten low levels of gluten etc... over the summer etc... but I don't know.

There are happy things to write about just feeling a little deflated so thought I'd share what was going on. Alaric's new job is great - he's loving it but due to traffic in Cheltenham he is not getting home until gone 7 at night and because he does school run in the mornings he's gone for like 12 hours to do do his 9 hr job. This is the first time I've been on my own on my own in the house everyday since having kids... there has always been a kid about and/or a husband. It's weird because instead of the relief of them having their 2 days in nursery it's like... the house is EMPTY.

I think I'm getting less done but I also think I'm getting more done as I am doing the new rest regime from the doctor to try and get the head bang healing properly.

Tomorrow there is coffee with a friend and at some point I need to go and pick up some bits from another... I have stalls to organise for Salaric Craft and The WigglyPet Press for December and I need to decide weather to shut down my Patreon account due to the fact I think I'm going to end up triple taxed on income that otherwise would be taxed once max.

It's a shame I like the platform... :/

Anyway I will now go and up load pics so I can get back to cutsie blogging and political rants.

A Thing My Mind Dreamscaped (by sarah)

I dreamt there was a group of refugee children and that the local library were trying to do a community bonding thing and so the kids did an appeal for people to come and tell them stories in the library. So I went and they were excited and they were all muslims and a Christian woman had organised it and the Synagogue provided food and I had a book my friends Tanu and Seth had given the girls about Hindu gods as children and so on. I put the book in a box of wonders the children had collected. But I told a verbal story and we ended up being transported by the story to a mountain by a fishing lake, it was a large inland sea with waves, my tale was of a boat filled with mean men who had kid napped a woman because she was supposed to be the most lovely but a storm blew up and the men were scared but the woman took the last fish that they had been saving for their their supper and offered it back to the elements and the storm calmed and they all knew they had done wrong and the woman led them to peace. We then all sang a song about her in a weird mix of fusion music and belly/bolly dance to gypsy fiddle and synth echo electronica under the stars now reflected in a still lake. We were all now standing in the lake - three of the children grew beautiful wings with feathers of different colours. One of the children was somehow my own little girl Mary who had followed me as she loves stories so much. The wings allowed them to breath under water and deflect bullets, each was a different hue and mix of colour, with shimmer, sparkle and glitter - they would help them protect their families and others if they chose. I asked who we were being protected from as we were safe - they told me a war was coming but it was ok because I knew the hand in the tear and I put the fish back and had seen the star light on the cross and the silver circlet and I knew that it was all metaphor and the doing needed doing and love needed to be shown. Then we were in the library and they were all sleepy tired and someone had made me a cup of tea. Probably should add I have a mild fever at the moment but it was too vivid, poinant, scary and lovely not to share.

Before the lens… (by sarah)

There was the brush...

I took a little set of travel water colour paints and a sketch book with me to South Africa, and I painted, generally from memory. I also sketched in pen bits I saw around me especially when the camera kept running out of battary!

Lynn an Lionel's garden or a montage of bits of it anyway :)

I know you are all eager to see the photos of penguins and lions but I thought I would share the paintings and the non-annotated pen sketches. Turns out I can't help but keep a field book and I will confess I had to keep reminding myself that correct angle and scales were not needed for photographs either!

Here at least are some paintings of Mary's animal friends ;)

Now I wasn't taking particular care with the paintings, or sketches part of it is trying to over come my fear of being watched when creating art. I loose my ability when I feel I am being scrutanised.

On the plane I looked out of the window and imagined what it was going to be like - I looked at the layered sky and tried to hold the image until we got to the hotel. I also tried to think of what symbolised the journey.

Also I am still learning how to paint water colours - still learning how to paint and draw one handed (though I am determined to get left hand back properly at some point!).

There were lots of plants and flowers and landscapes to paint. Alot just at the house itself.

I found myself thinking of the exquisite pictures that Darwin and other naturalists produce and whilst at Lynn and Lionel's I read a book about whales by artist Noel Ashton. I know I can not produce those sorts of images at least not without taking a long long time on each and then colouring pencils would be my choice. But I wont to learn water colours and I want to get better at live drawing and quick drawing - to get my freedom of the mad dash image back.

I like doing precise things but also to just take the impression and the feel of the thing. I love mucking around with styles and mainly I was aiming to just capture the essence of the day.

The Aquarium offered me birds as well as fish and a rookie mistake with a flat battery and no camera.

I loved the variety of shapes and colours everywhere - I was worried I'd have a large seizure and forget it all, all this wonder so I set about capturing as much of it as I could - I took nearly 2000 photos!!!

Cowfish are yellow by the way but I only had a green pen on me for the sketching. I had a limited pallet with the water colours too but that was fine really.

And of course there are a couple of kids stories I have written which I feel can only be illustrated by a certain style of water colour painting and so I need to learn how to paint that style.

I also wrote a few more whilst out there and had ideas for even more!

Rocks of course feature heavily in the painting, drawings and photography - well I am a geologist by training... love.

This ammonite mug was my favourite coffee mug and was there most of the time I was painting.

This is a cycad or "dinosaur tree" it is not the best but I can tell what it is and I put dots underneath it as we saw many cycads on the day we had our faces painted.

If we ever manage to get back to South Africa - something we would all dearly love then I would also take my sketching pencils and my mapping pens/fine liners (as well as a spare battery for the camera and a back up camera!).

Catching the mood also meant being inspired by the place and one such place was the Redemption Cafe in the Biscuit Mill. I loved the skull prints they had on the walls and it got mixed up with the surfing Jean had done as we talked over lunch.

The image was a montage of thoughts that wanted to be together.

There were things we did not manage to do and see including getting to the Cradle of Mankind and a few more sanctuaries and we hardly touched the museums, galleries or theatre stuff.

Textures can be hard to achieve in water colours I find so I did quiet a bit of experimenting - mainly at the side of the pages but I did do a few pictures that were all about texture.

Some paintings had multiple layers of wet and dry paint which reduced how quickly I could produce the image I wanted.

I painted the mood of sunset below the mountain in front of a wonderful pizza place. But most of the paintings where merges and mixes of what I had seen, I have taken many photos which I plan to paint more detailed and accurate images from now that I am back in the UK.

But I still have a head full of images so am still painting straight from the brain!

I would have liked a chance to find more local literature to read or listen too :) I read most of a collection of Speculative Fiction which contained local authors and will be ordering a copy if I can to finish it.

Even without getting to galleries etc... we saw some amazing artworks but more on them later :)

Apocalyptic Politics (by sarah)

Politics and world news is not brilliant at the moment - on seeing that a climate change denier has been appointed to a roll that is ludicrous and in the wake of the Nice attack, the American elections mirroring Stephen Kings The Dead Zone, and how you cook frogs so they are tender - this poem happened in my head. So I am sharing it.

The apocalypse began so slowly
we did not notice it
it was a slow slide
and we thought we were on the upside
Instead we plunged down
And found ourselves at the bottom
of a well of pain.

Dystopia had arrived whilst we slept
Eyes closed to the reality at hand
Televisions glaring
Music blearing
Internets swearing
Masking the sounds of warning
And as we became aware
One at a time
No one would believe our cries
The please
Each of us was afraid and on our own

Tides kept turning
So you were sometimes the good
Sometimes the bad
No one was safe
All and everything the enemy
And the time ticked slowly
Pulling each and every one of us
Down further
Into the mire
Where our feet stuck
Our hearts sunk

Emotions denied
Ripped at the bodies of us
Shredding self and foe alike
The Earth baked and froze
Flooded and crumbled
Useless dust and dank mud
Rotting roots
Blighting leaves
GM could not save us now
masks of annihilation in the crowd

It tore us down
This end of the world
Seeping undetected
Unbidden
but not unwanted
No never that
People crowed for it
in the streets
Washing with blood
Stones that should have been foundations
Sooth sayers entralls
garrotted them all
As they swung from town halls
And winnowing trees

Nothing but skeletal hands
Reached to the sky
Waiting in the half light
Of half lives
Toxic and consumed
Twisted in decadence
Hiding the hunger
Of nutrition and health

Everything decayed
Sprouting moments of agony
The seas over turned
Ice caps melted
Crop fields were salted
By the tears
Everyone was to blame
No one shouldered it
And the world fell
City after town after village
Death consumed them
Ripping flesh from bone
Stringing out the flesh
In sinu-y ribbons
To snag those
Who had managed to hover above

The devastation rose up
Gnawing at the sky
Until it turned black
Burn all the oil
No vaccinations here
Their suffering is not real
Not as real as me and mine
nuke 'em
nuke them all!

And the horizons drew
A line
At the sound of a whip
Super sonic
Boom

It started with small things
The end of the world
Little insignificances
They grew
Each was stoppable
Reversible
Until the tipping point
Cascaded
Medicines stopped working
Or pulled behind the pay walls
Hidden remedies
It began yesterday
It began decades ago
It began with the first thought
It begins tomorrow
It begins right now
It is always happening
Armageddon

That doesn't mean
We should not fight
The hopeless fight
Fight it
In peace and love
For they are our graces
And our only saviours now