Bookshelves

Switched on the computer this morning and found that I’d never actually posted yesterday’s efforts. So I just did it now – which could be an excuse for not writing today. But I won’t chicken out like that, even though I haven’t got a clue what I’m going to write.

Sometimes, really big things happen, and there’s no real choice but to get on and do something about them. Most days, things happen which are annoying, depressing, frustrating at the time, but you either find a way of dealing with them or you have to let them go – and then, maybe, you find there is a way of dealing with them – or at least getting round them – after all. All this a pretty trite, I suppose, the sort of thing that only sounds profound when it’s staring you in the face.

Lots of frustrating things happened yesterday, but I don’t want to go into details. And I’ve finally put up my bookshelves. It took me three days – not three whole days, of course, but a period of time each day up until the point when I decided I’d have enough and would leave the rest till tomorrow. By that time yesterday, the shelves were all in except for the last one, because I didn’t have enough shelf supports. Then in the evening I noticed there was an extra shelf support sticking out one of the holes at the side. On the first shelf I did, I’d put this support in the wrong place, not lined up with the other side, but instead of taking it out, I’d left it there and put another one in the right hole, then went on to do the rest until I got to the last one and only had three supports left. I cursed Argos, and went on the website, but there was no way of ordering extra parts, like there is with IKEA, and because I’d had it for two months, there was no point in complaining. Maybe I could improvise with a nail or something where the support should be, or just make do with four shelves. It wasn’t such a big deal. But now, of course, I can put the other shelf in anyway.

There’s one fixed shelf in the middle, and I’d put some stuff on it on Sunday evening – not things that I intended to stay there, just for convenience. There used to be a small table in the corner, next to the sofa, which had accumulated a lot of junk, which is now scattered around the room. The table and the standard lamp are now in the other alcove on the other side of the fireplace, behind the telly.

Now I need to fill the shelves. The bottom one is quite tricky to get at, because there isn’t much room between it and the sofa. But it’s big enough for knitting patterns. And the next one can be for the random stuff that used to be on the table.

Every Day is Yours to Win, REM

Every Day is New Again

Today is different. Every day is. Feeling quite good, which is noteworthy because so unusual. Wish I could tell you why, what makes today different from the norm, but I have no idea. I didn’t get any more sleep than usual – fell asleep around 12.20 (according to the app) and awake 4.30, so if anything slightly less. Don’t have to go anywhere today (except possibly yoga this evening if the ground isn’t too wet), so nothing to feel apprehensive about. I had a go at making a birthday card for my granddaughter yesterday, which has been lurking at the back of my mind for a while as something that needed doing – that probably helps.

Remembering the REM song, ‘Every Day is Yours to Win’:

‘Every day is new again
every day is yours to win,
that’s how heroes are made…’

I don’t anticipate being a hero today, or any time soon, but inclined to look for the good bits this morning – maybe I can have breakfast in the garden?

Still no idea what I’m going to write about. Yesterday I wrote about dyspraxia, which I’ve tentatively started on a couple of times before. Yesterday I went into more detail. It’s hard to explain because I’m still trying to get my head around it myself – and quite honestly, it doesn’t seem very well understood scientifically as yet, compared to dyslexia and dyscalculia, which have been studied for much longer. And (naturally), I’m not very good at explaining it to other people. When I try to talk about it, mostly they seem to think it’s snowflakey, self-justificatory nonsense and just an excuse for continuing to be lazy, scatty, disorganised and inconsiderate of others – or alternatively, that I’m being unnecessarily ‘hard’ on myself, and I’m really not any of those things, and I should stop ‘worrying’ about it. This is where writing comes in, because it’s so much easier to explain things when I have time to think and compose what I want to say without being face to face with somebody interrupting and asking questions and throwing me off-track (which usually results in me feeling tongue-tied, stupid and frustrated).

Now I’m staring at the screen wondering if I want to go on, and if so how, and looking again at that Paul Nash postcard, the one of the bird looking into a mirror on a cliff top. What you can’t see from my photo (because of the poor light in here) is that in the mirror there is the reflection of another bird, this one flying away in the distance.

I like art which shows the impossible, or what appears to be impossible, or at least unexpected. I’m not a fan of Dali (possibly coloured by what I know of his politics), but I quite like surrealism in general. I like pictures that get you thinking and seeing things in other ways. The literary equivalent is magical realism – I like that too, set in the ‘real world’ but with impossible bits.