Extreme Self Care.

How the heck are you all? Goodness knows where I’ve been all week, it’s not as though I haven’t got an abundance of free mornings and nights in front of the TV on my hands now is it…?
It’s just been one of those weeks where extreme self care takes priority and nothing much else matters other than shaving my legs and stockpiling DVD’s for Winter hibernation… and I think that’s ok isn’t it? To close down a little bit, to take stock and eat things that quite frankly shouldn’t be allowed, like the egg and sausage MacMuffin I devoured sitting in the car all by myself on Thursday morning, safe in the knowledge that there is no pleasure that quite compares  to a guilty one at nine o’clock on a weekday morning, while the rest of the world works and I sit twiddling my thumbs and wondering what is going to become of me…
(What in the name of all that is scrumptious is going to become of me??)
Anyway back to the issue in hand. Extreme self care. A few weeks ago a BrocanteHome reader asked me whether this line from The House Keepers Creed was a typo…
*Give into exhaustion and put yourself before everything and everybody else*

Did I mean, she seemed to be saying, put yourself after everything and everybody else?  Well, no my Darlings, I didn’t: I meant make you your priority.  I meant look after yourself stupidly well so you are willing and able to cope with the demands the rest of the world will always lay on your shoulders.  I meant some days it is more than acceptable to say b****r the lot of them and take yourself out on a creative excursion in search of ribbon trimmed knickers and some matching boobie covers (as Finley likes to call them), a jar of German hot dogs and some pickled onions if that’s what is tickling your fancy…
What exactly am I advocating here? Time out occasionally, that’s all. Nothing scandalous. Nothing that will make you the talk of the neighbourhood or have you hauled off to the divorce courts, just a little time out from work and kids and tattered wonderful relationships and making enough casseroles to last you into the next millennium just in case there’s an award for a well stocked freezer in heaven. I ‘m advocating saying no to coffee with the yummy mummy at the school gates and taking a bath in a blissfully empty house instead. I’m saying no-one will know if you switch your phone off for half an hour and take a nap, or if, like me you buy a MacMuffin and eat it sitting in a supermarket car park as though you haven’t got a care in the world. I’m saying don’t fill your head with conversations you don’t want to be having, or arguments you want no part of. I’m saying if you are exhausted you need to stop, rest, if only to prevent the kind of behaviour usually associated with a raving banshee..
.
That’s all. I’m saying look after you, cos goddamn it no-one  else will, so step outside of yourself occasionally.  Be kinder to you than you have ever ever been to anyone else. Stop ignoring tiredness, do away with the waste of time that is guilt and  do what you have to do to feel like you matter if only to yourself. Shout you are tired or lonely or frustrated right from the rooftops if thats what it takes to be heard…
It is Saturday night again. Little Children is waiting next to the DVD. A new novel, and the remnants of lasts night shared supper, Blacksticks blue cheese, onion and carrot chutney, salt beef and champagne, good champagne waiting for me. Champagne. All by myself. Because I can and I must. I really must.
Extreme self-care. Lets make it our mantra…

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