The Prompt

Thankful

What am I thankful for?

Those who love me - you know who you are.
Kitty snuggles - few and far between.
Home - many aren't so lucky.
Health - despite a nagging cold.
Strength - some days I'm feeling stronger.
Cheese - NOM,NOM, NOM!
Strictly on a Saturday night and sharing it on Twitter!
It's nearly Christmas  so looking forward to time with family and treats (chocolate and scent please!)
My lovely Postcircle friends - I love getting Happy Post and sharing a little of your lives.
Books - thankful that I was taught how to read and enjoy reading, I can't imagine life without being able to escape into other lives and worlds.

I'm sure there are many other things I should be thankful for but that's today's snapshot.

Word of the Week

Just a quick one this week. None of my usual waffle, straight to the word, which is ...

Flat!

I've been feeling very flat lately, lacking oomph and vim and pep and all that lark.  To add to the malaise I've got a cold starting so boo, hiss to germs.

Am planning a better week next week - bring on the supplements and the antibodies!

Word of the Week

Well blow me down with a feather!  This week I had no problem deciding on my word! Let the bells ring out, maybe I've got the hang of this #WotW after all this time ...

So this week's word is ...

I've recently discovered podcasting.  I was aware of podcasts before and had a vague idea of what they were but hadn't downloaded or listened to one.  Then I heard about Serial which sounded right up my street - a real life murder story with an element of mystery.  One Sunday when OH was watching a Grand Prix I found the podcast and listened in.  It was really interesting and I immediately downloaded the second episode.  I'm late to the party but I'm catching up. 

It has recently been suggested that I might write and record a podcast and I have to admit that I'm intrigued by the idea.  I'm a tech idiot so I'll need to find the easiest way to do it but I've been having ideas and feeling positive, creative about the idea. 

Now do I grasp the podcasting nettle?  Or do I back away from it paralysed by the fear of failure?

Maybe next week's WotW will let you know!  Ooo, cliffhanger ...

#ThePrompt - Age

AGE

When did you first notice you were getting older?

For me it was that fateful moment when I looked into the mirror and saw my mother staring back at me. 

I guess it shouldn't come as any great surprise that I'm getting more like my mother as I grow older; that's what happens when you get older, right?  Girls start to look like their mothers and boys like their fathers, it's just genetics after all. 

But it still came as a shock.  I was used to seeing myself in the mirror, had been for many years.  I didn't always like what I saw but I was accustomed to my face (Yay! My Fair Lady!)  I never thought of myself as vain but I do spend an awful lot of time seeing myself in mirrors or windows.  So it was a bit of a shock when the woman who looked back at me, although familiar, seemed to have morphed into my mother!

I think it was the lack of fringe that did it.  I was trying to grow out an annoying long fringe rather than go to the salon and have the 'what do you want to do with it?' chat with my hairdresser.  I can never make my mind up what will suit me and end up going for one of my two default hairstyles - mid length with a fringe or short with a fringe.  So I decided to let my fringe grow out and sweep my hair to one side.  And that's what did it.

Mum always had her hair swept up and over.  So it shouldn't come as a surprise that adopting a similar hairstyle would highlight the similarities between us.  And as my mother didn't resemble the Elephant Man there were worse things I could have looked like. 

I suppose that Mum had a similar Damescene moment as she looked a lot like her mother.  There must have been a moment when she saw her own mother in the mirror.  I wonder how she felt about it.  Did it make her sad, thinking about the passing years and lost youth?  Or did she accept this as a normal part of aging and rejoice that she didn't look more like plain Aunt X?  And, more to the point, why didn't she warn me that this was going to happen?!? 

But the real problem was that it wasn't my mother when she was young that I resembled, it was my mother in my wedding pictures, the middle aged mother.  And at that moment I knew that I was getting older, was no longer in the first flush of youth and other clichés. 

So now I have to accept that I'm a middle aged woman with my mother's face.  And I think I'm ok with that.  After all that means I have some of my grandmother's face too and her face was smiley and crinkly in a warm, happy way.         

#ThePrompt

Smoke

 

I used to smoke and I was good at it.  I started when I was 17 because it seemed cool at the time.  One of my friends had a boyfriend who smoked and though he wasn't the coolest guy at school he hung out with some cool guys who did smoke.  It seemed like an easy way to get close to the cool crowd so I  gave it a go.

 

I vividly remember the first time I inhaled after many months of just rolling the smoke around my mouth.  It was awful; I coughed until my eyes watered and stubbed the cigarette out straight away.  But for some reason I went back to smoking soon after and coughed again but less harshly this time.  After a few more attempts I could inhale without coughing and I liked the way I felt when I pulled the smoke deep into my lungs.  So now I was a proper smoker.

 

There followed many happy years of smoking.  I learned to roll my own using liquorice papers and spent many a happy hour picking stray bits of tobacco off my tongue. Rolling a cigarette felt like proper smoking, smoking in the raw.  I loved being able to control the size of the cigarette - a generous one when the tobacco pouch was full, skinny, mean cigarettes when funds were low.  I also liked the companionable nature of rolling a cigarette for a friend, so much more personal than just handing over a packet.

 

I stopped rolling my own after I left college and moved on to low tar cigarettes - the healthy option! short cigarettes with perforations on the filter to dilute the smoke.  They were less satisfying than the proper fags or rollies but I was happy with my smoking experience none the less.

 

I dabbled with cigars but they were a bit much for me - strong and made my head spin.  I used them for the shock value - a reasonably respectable woman with a cigar in her hand had a certain shock value.

 

I did have a moment with the dodgier side of smoking but one joint was enough to tell me that if I were to have a drug of choice it would be alcohol - I didn't get a buzz from smoking cannabis and was happy to stick with my legal fags and booze.    

 

The smell of cigarette smoke still evokes happy memories, taking me back to those younger days when I shared companionable cigarettes with people who lit up and enriched my life in those far away days.  But the second whiff of cigarette smoke usually makes me cough now and I have to move upwind of the smoker!

 

I gave up smoking when I found out I was expecting my son.  I thought it would be a temporary thing and I'd go back to smoking when he was born.  But when he was a few months old and I tried smoking again it was dreadful.  It tasted horrible and made me feel sick.  There was no pleasure in it nad it was not for me anymore.  I remember my Dad saying, after many years as an ex-smoker that there were still moments when he wanted a cigarettes, usually after a meal or when having a drink.  I can relate to that - even after 27 years as a non smoker there is sometimes a moment after a meal or a drink when I think 'I'd love a fag now'.  Maybe this will always be with me - the final legacy that smoking has left me, a memory of a time when everything ended with a smoke, my little naughty pleasure, something I was good at a time in my life when I didn't often feel I was good at much.    

Word of the Week

Oh #WotW how you haunt me!  I never know which word to choose and feel so bad for all the words I've rejected!  A Twitter conversation with Jocelyn means I'm even more dithery this week but, hey ho, let's go ...

This week's word is




Procrastination 


I've been putting things off again.  Last week I submitted my writing and am waiting to hear how it was received so I haven't had the focus of that to keep me on track. 

I've bought and washed the fabric for a skirt which is sitting unloved in a corner of the room waiting to be cut out and sewn.

Last week NaNoWriMo started and so far  I've managed a grand total of 1818 words - this means my 50,000 word novel will take until March next year to complete rather than getting done in November!

All this putting stuff off is so typical of me - so next week I need to pull my finger out, put my shoulder to the wheel and make those cliches work for me.