The thing is, I've had so much fucking therapy over the years teaching me how to nip undue emotion in the bud but at no point did we cover how to let due emotion run its course. I mean, I can guess that there's a lack of either repressing it (it'll only come back and bite you later) or being overwhelmed by it (falling right into the Pit of Doom) and I can just about manage that, but only by playing a million games of spider solitaire and walking my six thousand steps and barely managing anything else.

When I did that two year recovery programme at the psych hospital ED was my adult daughter who had MS and was resisting using a stick to walk with. She worked, drove, lived her life and in no way presented as a source of future anguish, unless we were very unlucky and to go there would have been catastrophising, so we didn't. And not only that, but through those times me and her [fuck off with 'she and I'] spoke on the phone in her lunch hour almost every day and since she'd become a mother herself our relationship had shifted into a beautiful place of understanding and forgiveness for my flaws as a mother and acceptance that I did my best. I miss that more than I can bear. But that's by the way.

And YD is so wise I could weep. For today's walk I went to the library where I returned the brain recovery books (no use whatsoever) and to the shop where I bought Son that beautiful ceramic dachshund for his birthday and bought YD one of these:



a printer's drawer, which she's always wanted. They're good for keeping tiny things in, that you can't quite bear to throw away - ha! I was going to say "Like my Stiff records badge 'If it ain't stiff it ain't worth a fuck'" but I now spot that it's missing in action:



replaced by a 'Support the police' badge. This will be Son. He likes a long game. (Sorry the picture's so wonky - it's in a narrow bit of the kitchen and I had to hold the camera flat against the wall to get it all in - this was my least wonky effort.) I made that carrot, during my felting phase. And I dug this up clearing the garden when I lived in that house on the beach:



I'm fairly certain it's a prehistoric axe head - it's flint and you can see where it's been shaped and sharpened round the top. The local museums have loads of them, but Bloke always used to take the piss and say I was imagining it - I kept it anyway. Can't remember where the Spitting Image Thatcher came from - vile old bat.

I've just finished reading an Australian novel (really good) set over the Easter weekend and it made me think the big Christian festivals are really predicated on being in the Northern hemisphere, don't you think? I mean Easter is all about rebirth so it works for spring even for non-believers like me, and you need the lure of Christmas to stop you going into despair about the days getting so short, but that doesn't fit with autumn and summer. And ramadam is surely an equatorial kind of thing, where the days are about twelve hours whatever time of year - far more punishing during summer in non-tropical places.

I'm hoping for a phone call from ED tomorrow - I sent her a card with a long message over both pages (I wrote on the envelope asking someone to read it to her), including a reminder that she can ask someone to dial my number on her mobile phone if she wants to speak to me. I shall call them tomorrow and ask how she likes receiving cards like that from me - I could send her one every day. My baby.

I have noticed this blog seems to be getting an unfeasible amount of traffic - fucking hell, amazeballs etc. Do drop into the comments box and say hello - I am incredibly nosey curious as to who and why.

Today I have been grateful for: coming home to find Bloke
in the kitchen, doing the washing up; a fabulous conversation with YD; my big cardie that I bought in a charity shop a month or so ago and have worn every day since - my new comfort cardie; not having OCD; having next year's Glasto to look forward to

Sweet dreams xxx