Category: writing

Recovering from Grief

Thinking about grief, and what helped me recover, I was surprised to discover I’ve used the strategy-following four times in the last 25 years.

When I was 50, after two years of floundering with ME/CFS and grieving over the loss of my previous life, I still needed a lot of down-time. I decided I needed an activity I’d never done before to get into a place where I didn’t have to worry about the disease and everything that went with it. Where I could spend a bit of time creating, relaxing, being a normal person. I gave myself an hour, whether I produced anything or not. A lot of time was thinking about it.

Obviously, an activity I’d never done before needed time learning how to do it and lots of it. That was part of the charm. I had a lot of time. I decided I would learn how to write flash fiction, little stories of about 500 words. I’d read plenty but never written other than letters at that point. Learning is by doing. So every morning I would spend an hour writing or thinking up what I would write. On the backs of envelopes and other scrap paper at first. Eventually I got my son a word-processor and used that too. Writing gave me a reason for not feeling bad about having to spend so much time alone. It helped pass the time. As I grew stronger I began to spend more time on it and one thing led to another.

Then my mother died. I recall coming home after the funeral, aware of a huge empty space in my mind where she’d been. I had been thinking I wanted to learn how to paint with watercolors, but no time, sick mother. The next day I bought a cheap set of little tubes, five colors, with two brushes and a plastic daisy-shaped paint mixing thing that I still use six years later.

I painted on all kinds of paper at first, the back of weetbix cartons and the backs of calendars. A few free online youtube lessons and away we go. I posted many of my efforts here and on my FB page. Had a great time in between all the sad thoughts and might’ve beens.

Fast forward to 2020. I was diagnosed with lymphoma, had 5 months of chemo, moved to Brisbane, weak as a kitten, and fumble-fingered in the extreme due to neuropathy, a side effect of my chemo. After a couple of months of recovery I cast around for a way to retrain my fine-motor coordination. I tried knitting but could only hold the knitting pins for a few rows. Flat puzzles didn’t do it for me. Pieces hard to pick up. I got my son’s 30 year old Lego out. Made all his models, learning to follow the instruction booklets. Started to make my own ideas. Decided I needed more Lego … started to feel better. I’m building a tabletop town.

January 2023, with three huge stresses all coming together, I fell apart. I didn’t at first know what was happening. Lots of fatigue. More allergies reared their heads. Fluttering heart. Hot feet. Eventually recalled my ME/CFS symptoms. Learned all the modern names for them. POTS. PEM. To name but two. I was obviously in a flare-up.

At that time I had already been posting little slideshows of my Lego stories to my FB page, for my friends. So when I felt slightly better, I decided to start a blog with Lego stories. That needed a lot of thinking through first. Now already it’s hard to limit myself to one hour a day. There’s the building. Ordering spare parts which means poring over various online secondhand Lego catalogues. Writing stories for the characters to act out. Taking photos of the scenes. Editing photos. Blog posts etc etc.

This is it in case you’re interested. https://reetsbricktown.wordpress.com

Some days I hardly think about my crappy indoor life. Before I know it, it is time to go for a little walk. Then make my dinner. Watch TV one hour. Paint dreams for one hour …this last is my third thing that is helping me recover. Another time for that one. Bed.

Brick Stories

Working on publishing what previously were slide shows …

Part 1, The Hardware Store Rebuild

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It all started one day when the gods exchanged presents. The one in charge of the city’s derelict peninsula received a building kit for a large hardware store compatible with the city’s residents.

The peninsula happened to be quite a long way off the beaten track. Building anything there would be a precarious business proposition one would say.

The god in charge of the peninsula pressed ahead. She put out a tender and contracted a hapless construction group, Bosley and Co, to build the hardware store.

Bosley, who preferred to be known as Boss, had just moved his building yard to the peninsula when the river overflowed its banks. When the flood retreated it took most of the tools and supplies with it.

The building kit arrived soon after and Bosley extracted the plans. He studied them closely. His heart stumbled. He crossed to the site, built three courses and knew he had a problem.

“I can’t fit through the door. I knew there was something wrong with plans,” he said and digging deep for optimism, he said, “Gotta laugh!”

More of this should be available on the new Page up in the menu called BRICK STORIES. It’s still in trial mode …

About Blogging …

Canteen scene with Drew barely visible on the left, washing dishes; Tim and Trish in the right foreground, sharing their stories; and Wendy, in the right-side rear having a break from the cooking.

About Starting a Second Blog

Inevitably, when an activity starts to take more of the hours in my week, more of the effort I have available, more space on my dining table, it starts to look like an obsession. I’ve been there before. Twelve years ago I lost a beautiful tung nut tree in my backyard to an excess of rain. As the rotting trunk was chopped down, I comforted myself with the idea that I’d be able to see a parade of fungi taking hold of the wood one after another.

The rain continued. Dozens of fungi species helped rot that stump down. I learned about fungi wherever I could find the information. Over the wet months of the El Nino weather pattern, more than a hundred species helped me become obsessed. I took my camera out for walks and recorded the ‘chitinous critters’ wherever I walked.

Chitinous critters?

Fungi cell walls are made of the same stuff as insect exoskeletons. Fungi have more in common with animals than with plants, despite having been umbrella’ed by ‘Flora’ since Linnaeus. Fungi have no chlorophyll, they need plant food to survive. They don’t move around in the same way that sponges don’t. I could go on and on. Have, in fact, given talks about them; walks and talks; I’ve done guest speaking at high school science classes; written articles; IDed fungi on FB, entered fungi sightings on ALA and iNaturalist. Citizen science stuff.

But I’ve probably only seen about four fungi species in the last two years. I have much less energy. More sedentary time. I’ve become rusty on names. Chemo fog didn’t help. It was the right time for a new obsession.

So. Lego seems to be it. With so many platforms where I could post up my finds, I never hankered to set up a separate blog for my fungi finds. Although there are quite a lot of platforms for Lego too, they don’t tend to encourage what I’m interested in. Stories. I like to write about my discoveries while building, and I like to write stories from within the building process.

Though I could write on this blog about my discoveries, I haven’t found a good way to format the stories in this blog’s existing structure. Hence. Designing and planning a second blog.

But keeping this one going is a thing. Usual stuff. Life and about life. Fiction and about fiction. Earth versus World. About media and about reading. Blogging and about blogging.

‘Life Admin’

Decisions, decisions. Shall I let go my woodworking tools, or will still have use for them?

This is what my son calls it. When my well-structured time (writing and blog-posting) grinds to a halt, and I need to take care of big stuff that has somehow all conspired to happen in the same couple of weeks. That’s when I’m doing ‘life admin’.

So in the past week and the 2-3 weeks to come … I need to go for a Covid booster, and expect a couple of days of side effects. Have been for an eye examination, the optometrist said might as well wait with the cataract operations as you’re going to the cataract capital of Australia. Fine, I said, I’ll wait. And maybe go to the dentist.

Still on my health-jag, I recently began a comprehensive exercise program. This one has to stick. It means time-tabling … something I’m not good at … at least half an hour a day. Being the eternal night owl, for me that is in the late afternoon. Easy to run out of time. It’s taken me two weeks to complete the Week 3 activities. And not only because I run out of time.

Fatigue after chemo is big, and definitely a thing. So, some days I’m really better off communing with my lap-top rather than my milk-bottle weights doing a Strength Workout. Yesterday, I did the Warm-up and could not go on to do the Cardio Circuit. I’ll have to do that today and the Strength Workout tomorrow. That gives me a free day for my Covid shot.

I’m doing more down-sizing to prepare for moving to Cairns in a few weeks, some 2000 km up the coast, into the tropics. Down-sizing means getting rid of stuff. Making decisions about what to keep, what to let go. Books mainly. But also the tools …

The most stressful thing is organizing a place to live in up there, and wondering when to start with that? Do I really want to pay a bond (four weeks rent) and four weeks to hold it for me? I’ll be traveling with the family. They’re going beginning December. Three more weeks to get it all together.

And then there’s my house down south being sold. Rising interest rates and continual rain with its danger of flooding in that town has made this a nerve-racking time. Although the house itself hasn’t flooded, the yard shed and garage have all recently had a 30 centimeter inundation.

And finally, Lodestar has a chapter missing. Chapter 31, as a matter of fact. Kes doing the river miles. Getting infill on his tattoo, and discovering Show Town’s perfidy. I’m writing it from the notes that I have found amongst all the digital files and paperwork, in between all the other stuff going on.

‘Life Admin’ …