Age 39...

...and I've just decided to embrace the power of makeup.

At some point during my stroppy teenage years I looked at my beautiful mummy who still, to this day, has her routine of putting on makeup as part of her every day, and for some reason decided that that wasn't for me.

I remember thinking that I don't want to get used to wearing makeup every day, so that I don't ever have to hate my face on a day when I don't put it on.  Also I was and am a bit anti-routine and lazy and hate feeling like I have to do something every day without fail or else. 

So for years I've had some makeup, managed to put it on when going out for the night, or for weddings or parties or whatever.  And done that managing not to be too embarrassed at any nice comments that might have ensued.  I also have tried very hard over the years not to bristle at the comments I've received when my curly hair has been straight on that day after it's been cut.  Which are right up there with the 'oh you look so different, so lovely without your glasses'.

That's really nice and all, along with the straight hair comments, alongside the makeup comments, but actually I have curly hair and glasses and generally can't be arsed with makeup.  Which is also ok....isn't it?

And I realise that yes, that is ok, but so is wanting to look nice every day, wanting to go beyond the clean face and moisturiser rule that became my bare minimum.  Wanting to allow myself to dress nicely, to feel good and to use the tools that can help me with that.  Tools that also include a good night's sleep, plenty of water, remembering to smile and not just frown, and continue to breathe in all the lovely things around me.

As an official bona fide nearly grown up, I now embrace wanting to have nicely highlighted hair and trust my fantastic hairdresser and his advice as to when he will let me realise my ambition to let my grey hair 'run free'.

I look at my mother, my sister in law, my mum, I think of an old friend and her presumably still active lipstick obsession, and think how lovely they look.  I must make sure I tell them more often how their effort is appreciated from where I'm sitting.  I also think of my own late blooming as one more thing that me and my super sis have in common.  

On my recent annual girls weekend, I found myself looking closely at my gorgeous blonde friend's makeup, using it, seeing how nice it looked and grinning at how different I felt.  So for my 39th birthday a month ago I asked my mum to buy me the magic Touche Eclat, I bought myself a pressed powder, dug out the bronzer and nice lipstick and liquid eyeliner that has slowly snuck into my top drawer this last year, and started to gently form my little routine. 

Nothing or a tiny bit for the glowing good days.  A little more help when feeling grey and tired.  And the maximum, well my minimum maximum anyway, should there be a camera or a need to feel pretty and instead of standing out as tired and old, allow myself to blend in as having cared enough to try a little.

Yes, that's the difference now.  

Now that I'm significantly older, tireder and able to look at the whole Sara in the mirror again, I realise that the makeup I once thought wearing would mean I'd stand out, actually allows me to blend in.   But blend in feeling happy, healthy, attractive and comfortable with myself.

So yes, this is a post about shallow things but a realisation that those surface changes are part and parcel of helping me to feel good deep down.

Now, where is that lovely lip gloss?

Camping

I have an ode to camping, having come back a week ago from my third ever camping trip.
Maybe it was the sun and the rain, maybe it was the same four weather-hardy families second year running saying devil may care.

Maybe it was the newly mentally healthy frame of mind that has been sneaking up on me since the fundraiser...

but I had an amazing time.

I didn't feel overwhelmed by the organisation or the situation or the weather or the eating or the keeping warm
I didn't feel underwhelmed by the outdoors experience that I thought should be so much more

What I felt was calm, happy, in control but not controlling.

Eat when hungry, drink when the kids are in bed, go inside when it rains, come out when the sun shines.   Wear wellies, tshirts or raincoats, woolly hats and cardigans and shorts and vest tops.  Go swimming, make coffee to warm up, eat a little bit too much meat in our excitement of having food cooked on an ever ready BBQ.  Paint facepaint tattoos in the sun, swim in the sea, play football, have sneaky smokes behind the bikesheds.
Drink huge rum and cokes and eat snacks and play games and blow up balloons and laugh and chill and have a ball.
Listen to the rain, overwhelmingly loud, slightly worrying about whether we're all being flooded and rolling down the hill, but put all that aside and love the noise and power of nature.
Be clean and a bit dirty and a perfect balance of everything.
Embrace life
Camping rocks
Even in rainy sunny windy Norfolk
Bring on next year
x

Did It, Loved It

It's four nights on from my fundraising party and I'm finally in front of the computer able to update you all.

Reading back on my last post, I'm so happy to be able to report that I was so happy on the night, all night, even when I was a little bit stressed and frantic.

The venue was gorgeous, the people there were so helpful and professional, there was enough food, the band were awesome and they made our party feel cool and fun and loud.

So many people came to support us and left having enjoyed themselves.  My gorgeous niece bought a gaggle of her friends and they helped to boost the atmosphere with their whooping and gay abandon and bring the average age down considerably.

I felt so much kindness and love for us and our boy and our boys.  I looked around the room and realised that there was a representative there from pretty much the whole of my life and certainly a cross section of friends from the last 30 years.  Many not knowing anyone but me and whoever they came with, but all smiling, most drinking, some singing and all putting up with the hugs and snatched thanks as all they really got from me.

We have raised to date just over £11,000 and I'm utterly overwhelmed and thankful for that.  My target was five and I thought that in these times of need that that was a bit pie in the sky.  So how glorious it is that everyone has been so generous and how right it was, though hard, to email everyone who I still have email addresses for years on from when we met.

Many people have texted and emailed since to thank and congratulate me on putting the event on and the word inspirational has popped up a few times.

It's funny that word.
Even though I don't think about it often, and can't recall on demand a list of who I find inspirational, I know there are many who would make it on there.  Famous and not, alive and not, old, young, sick, healthy, rich, poor.  Inspiration comes in many guises, enduring and ephemeral and I think, all terribly important for our aspirational and happy mindsets.

I got through the whole night not crying at all, not during my speech (about which I can tell you nothing), not during my song (about which I can tell you all you need to know...bit low and Barry White but I got away with it, thankfully Beat It snuck up on me later and was such fun) and not even when Alistair, Bonnie, friends and others thanked me and said they were proud.

But typing here with my hair on end, late at night, shaggy old shorts donned, slightly embarrassing dinner digesting as D is away again on business, I feel quite teary about people finding me inspirational.  People being so generous as to tell me that and share that loveliness with me.  People that I think are quite wonderful themselves.

Because I think deep down under the long encouraged humility and bloody minded playing down that I employ as walls around me, I think that it's massively important to me to think that I can inspire anyone.  To do anything. And to be moved by me, us, this.

The tears are coming at last.
What a lucky girl I am

A head full

Contrary to my earlier promises, I've been missing in action on this blog for sometime.
I have plenty of good excuses for this silence, all of them part of normal life and a bit more, that for some reason recently has become rather overwhelming.
So while I haven't been here, I've been quietly getting on with work, home, family and life and the very big thing that is my fundraiser.  The first time I've ever taken it upon myself to do a fundraiser for something so personal, rather than mucked in and done them for nursery and/or school with a bit of us thrown in.
And it's very different, very different indeed, involving the unearthing of emotions that for many years have been squashed right down and continue to be on a tight rein.
I spend my time being tearfully grateful for every penny spent on the site and every lovely message of support, and every person who says they're going to come to the party we're throwing.  Of being utterly overwhelmed by having reached my target and with so much more to come.

But then the gremlin comes in who takes every innocent lapse from friends or family very personally.  Even though I KNOW how busy everyone is and that none of it is meant personally.
I struggle with the friends who took so long to tell me they're coming on the night,  I struggle when I've sent gently nagging emails asking people to pay on the site so I can claim giftaid and have less to do on the night, and get no response and no action.  And man is it tough to send those emails.  Almost as tough as it is for this stubborn girl to ask for help, I mean any help at all.

Yep, irrational irritation and oversensitivity has been taking up too much time in my head and clouding all the good stuff.  So last week I took myself in hand.  I now avoid the FB event page, am done with those nagging/begging emails and lists upon lists of those who said they'd come but as yet haven't made an appearance.

Instead I'm concentrating on all the AMAZING people who are coming, and trusting that the others will as well, and at all the things that are lined up that I've managed to pull together from friends and family and friends of friends and pure dumb cheek and ballsiness.  Raffle prizes and auction prizes from generous wonderful people, a huge guest list of friends and colleagues old and new and family and my closest supporters.  A band who are generously giving us their time, a venue also, and the slightly growing calm and excitement that it's nearly here.

I'm a bit dizzy with the to-do lists but I allow myself as I type this to think that I am actually very very proud.  Of me and of D for putting up with me and the family too.

On my recent annual girl's weekend, I found myself voluntarily 50ft up some very high trees attached to harnesses and zip wires for three torturous hours.  With each new section I chose to carry on, unable to really enjoy it but absolutely frigging determined to do it and survive and hopefully deep down kind of enjoy it in retrospect.  My friends who have known me for many many years and through many many times all seemed to be rather shocked.  At precisely how pig headed and stubborn I was and could be, facing my apparently enormous fear of heights.

I'm telling this because I did this Go Ape challenge partly so I could use it for a life metaphor wherever I found it.  For work, it allowed me to have a serious chat and say out loud that I was struggling to cope with the full time thing. A chat finally out of my head and house and in the right direction.  For home it allowed me to see that while the fundraiser has been tough to do essentially on my own, I'm not steaming through it head down angry and determined to finish.  I'm enjoying the sensation of achieving, enjoying the pride in my friends and everyone else.

And I will find the time to work out what to wear, how to look in the mirror and do my hair and makeup and look and feel nice, and most of all, how to host a party and enjoy every minute.  Even the stressful busy and inevitably emotional bits.

Bring it on.  My page is on this link below.  Come see what I'm talking about and thanks all who do.

What It's All About

xxx

Monday on a Train

Today I left for work with a wonderful send off from my big boy.

He stood at the door and the final image I have after his "bye, love you" was him motioning for me to put on my hood as it was drizzling, before he shut the door with a smile.
Just thinking about this wonderfully small moment makes me grin.
How lovely it feels to write about this and not the more mundane, stressy, annoying, uninspiring, confusing other things that swirl around in and among the sparkles of happiness in my day to day.
So the post ends here, on a smile and  a lovely wise silly caring and special little 6 year old boy
Xxx

Here's One I Made Earlier

Thought I'd show you all a little progression in my handling the new diagnoses.  Best way to do so is through a little blog post I did for the wonderful Different Iz Good.

Momentary Perspective Post for DIG

xx

18-22+2-6-7-15-19-x-x-

Yep, the title of this post is a jumble of numbers and symbols and I'm here writing to try to clear the mangled contents of my brain as a result of the above information.  So please excuse me if today's post is blurry and a bit erratic.
A few months ago we embarked on a new microarray test for my little man because of something the clever guys at Chromosome 18 had found on analysing our blood samples for the study.  At the time I allowed myself to be a bit fuzzy and confused and latently concerned until I could react for real at whatever we the test confirmed.  This is how I felt then Even More Special Post  and this is how I feel now.

First the Facts 
The microarray technology is now widely available and extremely detailed, and it has therefore shown that what L in fact has is 18p- and 22q duplication.  So a bit missing from Chromosome 18's short arm and a bit extra on Chromosome 22's long arm. Both of these are registered genetic disorders.  On top of that it seems that 7 other chromosomes have copy number changes going on too, although very small so not recognised as syndromes.  That means that throughout my miracle boy's body he's got too few copies of genes in some places and too many in others, and this doesn't necessarily balance out into a neat mathmetical equation.  If only that were so.

Then the Bad Feelings (imagine me stamping my foot red faced and tear-stained)
I mean, really??????? 
Wasn't one extremely rare-hard to understand-worrying genetic disorder enough????
Does he really have to have two phenotypes that I have to pay attention to and invisibly sew their archive of into my brain?????
Does he really have to be this frigging rare and unique and special?????
Have I really worked this hard and replaced so much of my brain storage on this one condition to now have to find room for another and try not to worry about what the other 7 little things might mean I have to know about???
Do I really have to go and search out another virtual family of lovely kind parents and say "Hi, New to the Group?"????
I don't want this.  I don't even wish I'd known it 4 years ago when we got the diagnosis.  I just, for the first time ever don't want any any part of it.

Now to force seeing the Good
If I'd known this 4 years ago with my head how it was then it's doubtful I'd have found my Chromosome 18 family.
Not one number or letter revelation makes an ounce of difference day to day for my amazingly fortunate and typically developing boy
I always kind of knew that he wasn't quite the same as the other 18p- kids and so I'm glad my instincts still work and there's a reason for those feelings of unquiet
Knowledge I guess is power and it's not like I was ever going to be able to relax and say "ok, mothering is all done now"
I'm not being kicked out of the organisation I have grown into.  I will still do my fundraiser, I will still sit on that management committee, I will still wear my badge with pride.
This propels me back to the world of the wonderful charity Unique and makes me more determined to do anything I can for Jeans For Genes in addition to sitting on their Parent Advisory Group.

But it does feel quite shit.  I do feel a bit wrung out when I allow myself to sit and write and think about it.

I'm going to refer to the lovely Wisteria one more time to try to end on something less black.
She's almost done revealing her amazing blooms.  The leaves will remain for longer but essentially she's about to recede into anonymity and tangled confusion once more. 
As such I hope that this riot of taste and smell and colour and confusion of these results will burn bright and then die down. 
However long it takes I know I'll soon be back watching my boy, mothering my boys and trying to balance the elements in my life and appreciate all the amazing things we have.

Thanks for listening.  Hope to be done with blooming soon.