Polly Has A Visit From The Fairies...

*written but not published sometime back in September*
Autumn is such a strange time of the year weather wise. One moment it's lovely out, if a little colder than it was a month ago and the next minute it's freezing (I kid you not!) and the rain is coming down heavy. I'm not spending anywhere near as much time in the garden as I have done over the past few months, but the fruits of my labours are definitely showing to the degree that my neighbour remarked on how well the garden's looking!

A chance remark made by a young friend of the family led me to rethink the garden a couple of years ago. It was his first visit in all the years we've known him & he was disappointed. We live some distance from town & transport here isn't what it could be but he came out for one of the summer parties & was disappointed with what he found! Given that we've so many common interests he'd imagined for years that I'd have a neat & tidy garden, with herbs, flower beds and rows of vegetables and yet what he found was little more than a neglected jungle...

For such a long time I just wasn't able to keep on top of the housework or the garden because my health isn't what it used to be. I've been plagued with pain, lack of strength, stamina & energy for years due to fibromyalgia & ME. It was worrying at first but less so now as I know what the cause is & it's lifestyle rather than life threatening. Thank goodness for that, but it has affected my life and the lives of those I live with significantly as I have to spend time resting and at the very least pacing myself...

I also suffer with another condition called scouting. I'm doing my best to get that under control as little by little it had started to take over my life but now I realise that it can't. Balance is important but I suppose I found myself volunteering to take on responsibilities and duties when I was having to take rest days in an effort to feel useful and to relieve the pressure on other people. Unfortunately it had started to dominate which left little time to attend to my main responsibilities in life so I've learnt how to stand on one leg without falling over... (metaphorically speaking)

Without a doubt I will always prefer being outdoors, weather permitting than being indoors attending to such mundane tasks as vaccuming & dusting, or even doing the laundry but sadly these things have to be done, as does the laundry, general cleaning, running my son into his course & collecting him each day & then feeding the family. Some things truly are a labour of love & for me this has to be housework, I hate it.

Cleaning is just laborious and tedious. Anything which is cleaned is generally dirtied again fairly quickly which just makes me feel that I've been taken very much for granted as clearly my hard won efforts aren't appreciated especially not by a worn out partner who's getting home at ridiculous-o'clock every night for weeks on end. How could he appreciate what goes unseen by his eyes? He falls in the door late at night, eats his food and falls asleep within minutes on the sofa, I think his refusal to go to bed is his attempt at living a normal existence. Thankfully once the various harvest work is done his hours will seem a little more regular and he might have some life to call his own then!

To be honest I've also come to feel the same about cooking in recent years. I enjoy experimental cooking or something which will be enjoyed by everyone, but utilitarian cooking is just too much. It's very easy to fall into bad habits because it's easy. If the food were to just magically appear in the cupboards, fridge and freezer perhaps it wouldn't be quite so bad, but it doesn't and afterwards everything has to be washed up and put away. So, you see eating isn't just as simple as cooking is it?

A great example was yesterday morning when I got up early to attend a scouting meeting in another county some hour or so's drive away I was greeted by a dozen ginormous pink iced, silver sprayed, sugar coated cupcakes sitting on the kitchen table.  Made with free range eggs and BUTTER they tasted pretty good, especially as for some unknown reason my son doesn't like to use paper cases which meant there was a proliferation of the slightly crispy caramel coloured outter surface to be enjoyed...

So that's all well and good but having been made by the fairies they were then left there for the cats and the flies to find which meant that I had to put them away whilst enjoying one for breakfast! One glance around the kitchen revealed sugar, butter, food colouring, sprinkles, beaters, mixers, dirty bowls and icing nozzles and bags just dumped in the sink as he wasn't about to clean & put them away! I was awake at seven am and got back shortly before 7pm and was not in the mood for cooking, or tidying up someone elses mess especially not the bloody cupcake fairie's mess because they ought to know better...