Stress

I am so stressed... and it's only midday.

Any freelancer in the world will know what I mean: There is no such thing as the right amount of work, when you do freelance. You are either swamped and drowning in work, praying and wishing the day had more than 24 hours or there is nada, no work at all.

At the moment I am in the position of having too much work. The day is simply not long enough...

So bear with me in this time as it will probably be very quiet on the blog front!

Filing and archiving

It always amazes me that I was a super organised business woman until a few years ago. I always knew where all my files where, how to organise them and how to find things.

Filing at home always has been an issue for me and I have a tendency to let it mount up, to not throw stuff out which is decades old and to re-invent the filing-wheel every time I do it... the sort of super secure system which ensure that I have to search to find something. It annoys me, no end and every time I vouch to get better and every time I seem to get worse.

I know that I am not the only one, that most people are a bit like me, but hey, I don't want to be like most people... I want to be organised... I want to be perfect... but we cannot always be what we want and have to contend with the fact that we just are, who we are...

A tough lesson for me to learn. And please I don't want to have any filing tips... I have literally books about it, I know how to do it... it's the doing that's the issue!

My daughter playing with an important letter, well I guess it no longer requires filing since it found the end of its days as a paper air plane:

Breakfast time

As I mentioned before, mornings and hence breakfast can be very early here. I am not a morning person, never have been. It takes me ages to properly wake up, to get my behind in gear but when you have a child (and three cats) you sort of have to jump into action if you like it or not.

Organising breakfast is a challenge: I stumble downstairs, usually carrying my daughter since she refuses to walk down the stairs first thing. All the way she will call "Hoops, I want hoops", which means that round cereal which pretends to be healthy while in actual fact it isn't. But it is quick, she loves it and she eats plenty of healthy stuff in the day. That's my excuse anyway.

I usually stumble back into the kitchen, the meows from the three impatient feline creatures get louder and louder and stagger to my tassimo to make the first of many cups of coffee a day. I tend to feed the cats first, as I always have this slight worry that otherwise they might just gang up on me and god knows what they would be capable off.

I know this sounds stressful and believe me it can be - especially if a dead mouse/bird is thrown into the mix. Still, there is something lovely about my daughter first thing in the morning, she usually wakes up in a good mood, gives me a cuddle and we giggle and say silly things.

One of my favourite moments of being a Mama.

In possession of the car

We only have one car. I have to say though that I miss having a car at my disposal. I don't tend to mind to much to walk to places around here but often feel that if I had the car I had more flexibility in what to do with the little one. Another weird thing is that on days I have the car, the days seem to go quicker. I don't know if it is the early morning routine of driving the husband to the train station and by the time we come back it's gone 8 am and it feels like the morning is progressing. Maybe it's the fact that I usually have the car in order to see a friend who lives out of my walking distance reach.

I don't think we will get a second car any time soon, though... as much as I would love one...

Age...

... is just a number, that's what a dear friend of mine keeps telling me. At 36 I often have moments, where I feel old and since being a mother brings its fair share of tiredness too, the feeling of being old increases the less hours of sleep you had.

Then, however, there are those moments, when I see someone on TV, my age, and think: "Gosh, I don't look that old..." or "I hope I never will 'be' as old as that person is...".

I often look at age like something, that will limit me in doing the stuff I want to do. Like for e.g. going on about, that it is too late to do another degree (history) or that certain experiences are unobtainable due to my age. Sometimes it's tinged with a hint of regret, but I am a pragmatist at heart and tend to move on fairly swift.

And then you come across a blog that is truly fascinating... An 89-year-old woman, soon to be 90, blogs about her life, past and present and it is truly wonderful... so much joy, so much to tell - might not agree with all her views, but then I often don't but still find the person interesting...

Check it out, Svensto's blog.

This is me

This blog has no specific subject, I am not planning to change the world (although I do find that some things could do with changing), nor am I on any other mission. This blog is just about me, myself, my family, what I do (however boring that is) and some other things.

At 36 years of age, I can afford to have some outrageously bad tastes in things, am no longer bothered what people make of my taste in books, music, art etc. I love to cook, but won't touch meat, fish and don't care if Gordon Ramsey hence thinks of me as an idiot.

Life is good, here in the Midlands, UK. Very good...

See you later.

Melsa