Today

 
Today. A good nights sleep. Two cups of tea. A single magpie the size of a chihuahua hopping over the grass in the back garden. Good Morning Mr Magpie, how is your wife today?
Ivy creeping through the cracks in the wall of the little laundry room. A front door filthy from the relentless traffic outside. Ste shell-shocked by the kind of truth even Jeremy Kyle would frown upon. Finley in odd socks. Again. A boy-man lurking outside school I have no choice but to report to the police because I nearly ran him over. So sorry boy. But you cannot get away with what you are clearly doing.
Hebes to be planted. A border to be dug around the lawn. A blue watering can with teeny flowers starting to tumble out. Wet sheets to be bleached by sunshine we cannot guarantee. Plans for a dinner party tomorrow evening. Which starter to cook? This or this or this?  A trip to the farm to buy the kind of steak that melts in your mouth. A horoscope that says evil is lurking all around me. Oh joy.
Teenage acne on my middle-aged face. An office to be created in the Far-Away room at the end of the kitchen. A stack of books that must be moved. A wander through the Faerie Glen with a little picnic of cream cheese bagels. Bird-spotting. A little slice of heaven just a few minutes down the road. We love living here.
A weekend without the children. Just us. Flipping the mattress again because we are both hunched with back-ache. Time for a new one. Time for bigger dreams. Time to accept that there is nothing to be scared of now and I can breathe again. So odd that the absense of fear creates a very particular kind of anxiety it is too difficult to describe to those who have led peaceful lives. Time to stop playing small.
Spritzing the kitchen with the fragrance of a Hummingbird Garden. A lovely, nonsensical description of a scent that smells so very pretty.  Feet grubby with the garden. Must wear garden clogs. What is wrong with me that I don’t?Clumps of shorn grass. Endless raking. My first proper garden. A darling little stone shed with a teeny window that would make the most perfect BrocanteHome office. A hidey hole for tiny baby frogs. An outdoor loo that appalls me. Drains full of leaves. Singing as I wander about with the brush. Lovely neighbours on one side. The outwardly pleasant but passive-aggressive sort on the other.
A funeral soon. For Marks, lovely, mad Dad. Finley’s Pops. The death of another Grandparent too hot on the heels of Mum’s. Mark, broken but always so very steadfast, yet in his own confusion telling my child that Pops had stopped breathing. To which Finn responded, what, for always? And I had to step in and say Yes Baby, for always.
Now, a pink face-mask. A prescription to be collected when I am presentable again. Another hole in another pair of trousers because there is a nail in the corner of the bath we can neither pull out nor bang in. Kim Wilde singing about the Kids in America on the TV. All this life.
Life and work. Life and family. Life and vintage housekeeping. Life and love. So much life. Happy Weekend Housekeepers.x