Happy Hippy Madhouse.....

i read a beautiful post by Wendy over at Hedge and Hearth about our Crone years. It really made me stop and think about where i'm at in my life. In some ways i'm not going to be there for a while, my youngest babe will be 8 next week so i've a good few 'Mother' years ahead of me yet in that respect, however at the other end of the scale my oldest babe will be 23 in march so i've been doing this job for a while now! I used to think that these terms were literal, you're a mother until your babes are grown, whilst you can still bear children you couldn't become crone. So how does that work now? I 've not reached menopause yet but i can no longer bear children, so does that make me Crone? Confusing eh? When i first started along this path i thought everything was clear cut in definable chunks (how little did i know then?) Now i can see that there as many pathways as people to walk them and nothing is written in stone. I don't believe in a dividing li

I'm not american, but i do feel american politics affect my life over here in the U.K. I, as a general rule, don't watch tv, only listen to the news on the radio and have a general allergy to politics and all the lies that spew from that area of our lives, whether we support the policies/politicians/party or nay. Yesterday, however, i decided to turn on the tv to witness this historic moment in world history. As I listened to this man, saw the incredible crowd, the hope shining on everyones faces i have to admit, i felt optimistic too. a little glimmer of hope slowly began to flicker inside me. I know that politicians are well versed in the art of speaking for a long time without having much to say, it comes with the territory. Despite this, however, this man had a lot to say. He didn't put a whitewash over it, he said that times were going to be tough before they got better. There were very little rose covered titbits given out to sugarcoat the truth, it's going to be

I visited the lovely Aimees' blog (CageFree Family) today and was once again struck by the generosity and just general kindness of ordinary people. They've had a run of poor luck over the last couple of weeks and found themselves stuck in a hotel for a few days as the heater on their Rv has gone on strike. She was feeling a bit sorry for herself with all the holdups and everything, not to mention the pain she was in caused by trying to be supermam. So out they trudged, also feeling a little concern with regards to their bank balance. So, they decided to do a bit of shopping at whole foods as for xmas they recieved a $400 voucher for that shop. However, on entering the shop they didn't grab a trolley and do a supermarket sweep in 5 mins flat, instead they decided to donate their gift to the charity. All of it. Despite their concern regarding their own finances, the fact that they could've easily found useful purchases for this amount and they don't have a re

I don't usually 'do' new year resolutions - it's like (potentially) setting yourself up to fail before the months out, which doesn't bode well for the year, in my case anyway - so i've made a few promises or list of aims of things that i want to achieve - or stop! - this year. Since i've been disabled i 've found myself on a number of occasions making plans to do something or go somewhere only for this to be prevented by my back being bad on that day. It's so infuriating! The thing is that often there's no warning, one day i'm up and pottering about, albeit slowly, then the next Bam! back to bed for you madam. I've lost count of the number of plans that have gone out of the window due to me being unable to get out of bed, Grr. The kids're so good about it, they understand about mammys back, it's been nearly 5 years now so it's all the two youngest have ever known really, but of course sometimes we do get tears of disappointmen