Fat Bunny

  • Sunshine on my Pillow…

    And other things that make me happy.

    A goodnight of sleep has helped my mood considerably, also I suspect deciding to take the weekend off from any farm/work activities is also a part of that. I’m doing wonderfully mundane housework stuff, a few loads of washing, sorting the pantry etc. but mainly what I’m doing is giving myself permission to nothing if I want. So far I’ve played some video games, read a comic, eaten too much cheesecake, and pottered about in bare feet… and not wearing boots and work socks definitely makes me happy.

    I’m also still in the honeymoon phase with my new sofa that arrived yesterday.

    It’s gloriously impractical and strikes fear into the hearts of those that want “a nice practical seat to get in and out of”. It’s plump and white, and has more in common with a bed than sofa and it makes me happy.

    And the bouclé upholstery fabric is a great match for these original 70s floor cushions I purchased at an estate sale years ago. I’m less concerned with colour than I am with texture these days, and these irregular woven loops are definitely making me happy.

    Everyone needs a soft place to land or to quote the Cornershop classic: Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow…

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  • It Sneaks Up…

    I’ve been feeling increasingly out of sorts all day. The objectionable sharp tongued me that I don’t like and rarely surfaces these days has been let out today, and I didn’t know why. I’m tired and stressed and that’s pretty much homeostasis for me at the moment. And then it hit me… my social media feeds have had dozens of posts wishing Billy Connelly a happy 80th birthday.

    My father and I had a shared appreciation for Billy as long as I can remember. As I child I remember his records being played and being allowed to stay up late and watch TV when he was appearing on Parkinson or some British talk show. It was also a running joke that my bearded, ponytail wearing father bore more than a passing resemblance to the Big Yin, to the point where I used a picture of Billy from the Boon Dock Saints as the incoming call picture on my phone for when he called.

    So seeing a face constantly today that reminds me so much of not just my father, but also of times spent together has really made today a surprisingly hard one. I know there will be a lot of triggers over the first year, birthdays, Christmas etc. but it’s the ones I don’t expect that really make me aware of how much I’m avoiding dealing with his death.

    So I’ll be sad tonight, and then I’ll be deliberately busy tomorrow to distract myself, and fingers crossed nothing sneaks up on me for a little while.

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  • It’s got to be real nostalgia…

    I used to thrift, opshop, garage sale etc a lot, and I miss it. To be clear I don’t miss have piles of stuff everywhere, but I do miss the little adrenaline and endorphin rush from finding a particularly nice piece item out in the wild.

    How could you not be excited seeing a box marked FULL OF LEGO? Especially if the box looks old.

    Then when you open it you find the quantity of Classic Space Lego you dreamed of as a child. And amazingly its all been well cared for and sorted.

    And it contains a full complement of lego astronauts ready to explore the galaxy.

    But best of all it contains Set 928 was the big version of the one I had as a child, I had the 918 because we were poor. The 928 is so fondly remembered that they released a LEGO 90th anniversary version, because nostalgia.

    I may have ordered one. Okay I definitely did… but something is missing compared to building an original. Seems you can’t remanufacture real nostalgia, the best you can get is a kind of “I can’t Believe it’s not nostalgia”.

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  • Running on Fumes…

    So three months (give or take), is how long it’s taken for the manic denial stage of grief to pretty much burn itself out. Also I’ve run of Valium which isn’t going to help. Luckily I have a doctors appointment next week and he trusts me not to pop them like candy. Anyway that wasn’t the point I wanted to make, I seem to have burned out the manic phase that has let me get more done in 3 months than I have in the past 3 years. I have reduced the amount of stuff I own by at least 50%, which still makes me a very maximalist minimalist. I’ve gotten rid of countless amounts of stuff from inside my fathers house, probably 95%, and have started on countless tip visits to clear the property… and I’m tired. The adrenaline has long gone, the endorphins from making big noticeable changes is waning. The manic punk music energy that kept my denial up a running is not working anymore.

    It’s now just a slog, and most people around me have gone back to their lives, so it’s an increasingly lonely slog. Hopefully I’m now at the move things along with paid help stage. It feels like that’s the next step, a rapid push for a month might make enough visible progress to motivate me to get in a finish things up, or at least offset the demotivation that is coming from probate and the amount of time it’s taking. I’m starting to think that I’m going to be stuck with the farm till next spring, which means a whole year of taking care of land instead of living.

    As the film characters two days from retirement say, I’m getting to old for this. I’m definitely not up to farm life, I’m barely up to 6 months of fix farm up and sell it life. That’s one of those things that became crystal clear very quickly. I could spend 10 years turning the farm into a magical place with tiny eco cabins and artist retreats, and maybe 10 years ago I may have tried, but I have no heart to do it anymore. There are no ghosts that need exorcising, no farm dreams of my own that would be fulfilled. I will not be coaxed out of retirement for one last mission.

    So it looks like my days for the foreseeable future will consist of clearing and repairing the farm, then coming home and decluttering my own stuff, because having to clear out my fathers house has made me committed to clearing my own stuff too.

    It might be time to read break out the Swedish Death Cleaning book again…

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  • It’s a day out…

    Why on earth would you agree to participate in a slightly time intensive medical study when you are busier than you’ve ever been? Ummm… that’s probably a fair question, and it’s complicated, I think, but let’s explain the situation.

    I have a chronic illness called Crohns, I was diagnosed in my early twenties and it’s caused a few issues over the years, a bit of hospitalization, some surgery. It has flare ups and remissions, and it sometimes requires drugs and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the drugs are mild with few side effects, and sometimes they seem worse than the disease… it’s all a bit of an inconvenience, but as the name says it’s chronic and not terminal. So it won’t kill me, it will just make life harder. So first reasons for participating in a study is maybe it will help me, or maybe it will help someone else down the track.

    The first part of this particular study is related to the effects of exercise on Crohns/IBD, which means high intensity exercising me, and then taking blood at intervals over the next 24hrs, and requires food journals, and fasting before each session. So basically some of my least favourite things exercise, paperwork, needles, and not eating, but I suffer through for the greater good.

    The second part of the study involves me having supervised exercise sessions three times a week in a private facility with basically a free personal trainer. So a big reason for signing up is wanting to get fit and improve my health while outsourcing the willpower to a third party. I’m acknowledging that without someones foot kicking me in the arse that it won’t happen. I tend not to run unless I’m being chased.

    So that’s mostly why I’m doing it, but also my human interactions took a serious nosedive at the start of covid. As you can imagine having an immune disorder makes you a little nervous about catching things that mess up a working immune system. And then losing the parent that used to drop in for coffee and a three hour chat at least once a week a few months ago reduced my human interactions to basically sod all. Having a reason to leave the house is probably good for me, talking to people certainly is… and it’s a day out.

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  • Now with Realistic Battle Damage™️

    To quote Frank Turner “It’s been a difficult winter, it’s been a rough few months”, that’s probably an understatement, and it might have been a bit longer than a few months. To be honest at the moment I’m just trying to make it to the end of year without a major breakdown. I’m pretty confident I can do that… knock on wood.

    I’ve had a theory that change comes from without and not within thrown into rigorous beta testing over the last few years. From pandemics, mental health issue, relationships, and most recently bereavement, I’ve had changes thrust upon me with very little choice in the matter. So in other words… life.

    I’m thinking this might be a good time to take up blogging/journaling again, because I’m not up to going back into therapy again. I’m not ready to talk out loud in the real world, and writing it down doesn’t seem as stressful, maybe it’s because I’m letting out the words at my own pace and not with the urgency that comes when it’s costing me two hundred dollars an hour? One session with a psychologist pays for a lot of web hosting and domain names.

    So once a day I’ll sit down to either pour out my heart, or complain about the weather, or show you a picture of something interesting I did. I’m not promising consistency, or wisdom… I’m just promising a glimpse of my Realistic Battle Damage™️

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  • I used to do this…

    In fact I used to do this regularly, and by this I mean blog, or journal, or vent great big dollops of words everywhere. I’m not sure why I stopped but I suspect it was a whole pile of things stapled together. Life got complicated, children got complicated, my physical health got very complicated, my mental got equally complicated. So lets just say it was a rough few years where it was easier to post pretty pictures on Instagram, or quip on Twitter than it has been to risk the introspection that can come from any kind of journaling.

    So why am I starting again? Well it’s certainly not because my physical or mental health is all sorted. There have been some recent challenges to both… but I’m not quite ready to lay that out here just yet. There are a few scabs that are not ready to be picked at yet, or not picked and allowed to fall off naturally, or whatever the recommended scab protocol is. Maybe the state of flux on social media at the moment has given me the push I needed to form thoughts that require more than 280 characters to express.

    What will I be blogging about? Well to be honest I’m not sure, in the past it was always a mix of what I was up to day to day, with a mix of occasional breakthroughs and breakdowns thrown in… and I see very little reason to break with that largely ignored formula. So if you want to see someone occasionally restore a piece of furniture, or reviewing a book, or having a sudden attack of guilt about failed relationships or joy at the rare occurrence of something wonderful happening, then maybe check in occasionally.