The wave of the future?

Well, august may well be a wicked month, but november, for me, is a deadly one. For a start I have six close family birthdays between 16th november and 5th december (so don't even mention christmas to me yet!) including my mum, my brother, my husband, our daughter and my grandma. I spent a lot of time planning and carrying out a lovely party for our daughter's eighth birthday which took up a lot of my mental energy. Add to that the shortening days and the unending stress that this year has thrown up and you'll see why some days I feel barely able to function. There have been some positives. I managed to get to see my gp about my low mood and general overloaded feeling, and my husband noticed how rotten I've been feeling and suggested that he looks after the kids for a few days in the new year so that I can get away somewhere quiet and read a lot, and go on a few energising walks. Our Big Girl stepped in and offered to do a house swap, we go to her house in scotland while she and her partner come here and look after the kids for a week.That's really helping to keep my spirits up. Christmas always tends to be more stressful than it needs to be, but I suppose you could say that I'm getting used to that.

Two members of my extended family are causing me problems at the moment with their attitude to life and to other family members. It's funny that I can often see where they're going 'wrong' and think clearly about how they should be looking at things but forget to apply the same lessons to my own life. My biggest criticism of one of them is that he seems unable to see life as it is, and thinks it's ok to want to change it (including changing other people) so that it is how he thinks he wants it to be. I don't agree with him, especially as I'm one of the people who he thinks should change. That may sound a bit unbending of me, but to be honest I've already bent over backwards to be patient, compassionate and understanding towards him and his needs in the past. Now it's time to look after my needs and those if my immediate family. That is the message I'm giving out (and loudly saying inwardly to myself). When it comes to stressmas this year I am going to be brutal in my decision to make sure that my children have the best christmas I can give them, to the exclusion, if necessary, of others. If anyone feels left out then maybe it's time for them to look at their behaviour and understand that it's THEM not me who are the architects of their own misery. The trouble is that I greatly fear they won't and will carry on painting themselves as the victims.

I haven't had much time for blogging, and have been giving only a cursory glance at the groups as it has all been a bit energy-sapping. I've 'found' facebook again (I've always had a bit of an ambivalent atitude to it in the past) and it has been very useful in giving me something else to do online. A friend of mine suggested it as an antidote to all the stress and it has really worked. So now I go online and do silly things with Pets and Farms. It has lifted my spirits no end.