what if...

Have a look at your diary.  Are there many (any!) days in December that aren't filled already?

School events, work and club Christmas parties,  shopping, family functions, a bit more Christmas shopping, possibly a trip to the hairdresser, the car needs a service, need to sort the mortgage, get a school pool key, start stocking the pantry for christmas day, organise the summer holiday....I'm getting tired just thinking about it all!

My editorial from the latest issue of the Village Voice....

It's a been a busy year - busier that most I am sure - with irregular school terms, national tragedies and celebrations punctuating our seasons, and a higher than normal incidence of bugs and germs ''doing the rounds''.

So as you read through this Village Voice - and marvel at just how busy our town is - I would like you to consider a challenge.  what if, just for a a few hours (or longer if you dare), you cancelled all those urgent, and important, and also the urgent and important  engagements, and just stopped.   Stayed home.  Kept the television, computer and telephone turned off.  Or went for a walk, leaving the mobile phone at home.  Or chose to turn down yet another party invitation? Or made just one less trip to the shop for an émergency'' ?  It's possible no-one else would even notice, or if they did, they could well be wistfully imagining it was them who had not raced to get to the party on time.

Imagine what you could do with the three extra hours that a Christmas party comes in.  Or the hour circling the car park at the shopping mall.  Or the 45 minutes in the queue at the supermarket checkout.

Consider what you might do to make life just a little simpler, a little easier this christmas.  It might be as simple as saying ''no''.

time for reflection

I am a bit of a laundry queen.  Self confessed and proud of it.  My washing machine is on most days.  I iron at least once a week - just about everything.

There's an argument that says life is too short to iron.  A similar argument says that it's just fine to wear something  for more than a day as long as it doesn't look dirty.

Well in this house, the clothes go in the laundry every day at bath time. (And yes, the children get compulsory baths every day).  Whenever I can, I peg the washing on the line to dry rather than using the dryer.  And pretty much everything except socks, towels and sheets gets ironed.

When the children were very young, hanging out washing was a bit of a nightmare.  They always NEEDED me right as I was heading for the line.  Ironing was a pain too - I couldn't do it when they were haring around the lounge for fear of the board being knocked over.

But now they're a bit older I have discovered something rather wonderful.  The time I spend hanging out washing has become my reflection time.   The children rarely come out (boring!) and so I can usually guarantee fifteen uninterrupted minutes  Many an epiphany has been received while I've been standing at the line!  It's a time to think about the stuff that matters!

Similarly, ironing night is my time too.  .  I usually take around an hour to do the ironing once a week.  I might watch a DVD or have the radio on (no TV in the lounge).  But like hanging out washing, it doesn't really take  any brain space to do, it's not noisy or physically draining - like mowing lawns say , and it's something that really needs to be done in one burst.  So it's the perfect time to think, to reflect, and to be a bit introspective. Which is something I think we should all do, and don't indulge in often enough.

So when someone says to me ''ironing!?! - I don't know where you find the time!'', or even ''ironing!?! - waste of time" - my response is, no way, that's one of the best hours I spend each week.

a barrel of monkeys

The children have been away since Saturday morning.  The house was quiet, calm, ordered for a whole 48 hours.
I ate what I felt like, slept in, listened to my own music.

Today I worked. Well, a little!  And then at 3 o-clock I walked down to school to pick them up.
We wandered home slowly and discussed the merits of eating ice cream for afternoon tea (several) and doing homework (few).

Within five minutes the order was shattered.  Bags, coats, drink bottles, homework books, lunch boxes - how can two kids create so much chaos in such a short time!?

We trundled through homework, afternoon tea and so on, and I surveying the mess.

My first thought was to banish them outside and get straight on with recreating order.  Until the little engineer walked up beside me and said 'will you play a game with me'?  Ordinarily I would respond, yes of course, as soon as I have tidied up.   But, something today made me stop.  I looked at him and said, sure! And sat right down before I had a chance to so much as empty a lunchbox.

Now this is no mean feat for me and I had to make a real effort not to look at the bench!

We played Barrel of Monkeys for about 10 minutes - undistracted and just enjoying each other's company.  by 15 minutes he had had enough, and as usual the phone rang and it was work and I was taken away by it.  But he was absolutely delighted with that window of undivided Mum time, and quite content by then to continue playing the game alone.

It was a good lesson for me.  I've heard it said that life is not a Barrel of Monkey's.  But sometimes I think maybe we need to make it so.