After The Break

Now all the chocolates have been eaten, the Christmas puddings too. The crackers pulled, and the decorations back in their boxes, and back in the loft. With the parties over for another year, my mind begins turning towards the new year ahead, and what I hope to achieve.

As I sit at my keyboard for the first time in days, my mind is still unable to generate the thought-process needed to start work. Out of the window, the sky is ice-blue, the sun has no warmth and the ground wet from last night’s rain. I’m in need of exercise.

Over the last three months in England, we’ve had nothing, but wet weather followed by snow, and freezing conditions then more rain. Not ideal weather for walking across muddy fields. I went out on a couple of occasions for short walks, but with so much to finish off ready for the Christmas break, and my unexpected stay in hospital, I’ve had no time for exercising my body.

I never realised how tiring sleeping while popping pills and being pumped full of antibiotics can be, it’s mind-numbing. Followed by too much sugar too, doesn’t help. Tomorrow, my husband returns to work, and I’m up-to-date with the housework. It’s something I always do. If I can’t think what to write next, I do housework, or dig the garden, cut the lawn, do some washing, anything but force my mind into a panic if writing doesn’t come easily.

At my writing group’s Christmas Party, I was asked where do I find the time to do the housework. They thought my husband must do it. No, he doesn’t. My husband goes to work, watches TV, and potters around in his garage, stripping and rebuilding preloved bicycles. The house and garden is my domain. Over Christmas, Russell did cook the main dinner and the washing up, too, while my wrist was recovering. It’s still swollen and tender around where the doctor cut it, but I haven’t lost the use of my forefinger and thumb on my right hand. It scared the pants off me, when the doctor told me was possible that I could lose the use of my thumb. I’m a lot happier now, my wrist is on the mend.

Keeping the house and garden tidy is a passion of mine. I can’t bear mess. I love order and a tidy mind is what makes me, me. Like the colours of a rainbow, or the days of the week, months of the year, things have to happen in a certain order. Without order, we have chaos.

I’m not a person who gets hung up on being overly tidy, but things have to be clean and tidy for me to work. Everything has its place in my home, dirty cups and plates once finished with must be returned to the kitchen. Washing up must be done, and put away, not left overnight. No dirty washing left on floors etc. No beds left unmade in the morning.

It’s the same in the garden. Things to a degree, must be tidy, if it is manmade. Nature can be as untidy as it likes in my world though Mother Nature is a very orderly even though humanity is throwing more than a few spanners into her work. I can’t stand seeing accumulating household rubbish, so it is sorted straightaway and anything our council binmen don’t collect, we take to the local dump and dispose of it correctly.

Now I must get my ordered mind back into gear, and start work on finishing the Granny Wenlock novel, and a short story for a submission.

Do you have to have things tidy around you, before you can focus on your writing/painting/ craft etc?

Thank you for dropping by for a chat.