Meh

For the last week or so I've been feeling a bit meh.

I think this is partly triggered by breast cancer awareness month.

It makes me want to yell, like a crazy person, "I am already effing AWARE. It's exactly a year since I got it, I've got a cancer check up in the diary that I can't stop fretting about and I do not need your silly PINK RIBBONS in order to remember breast cancer. In fact, I could do with forgetting all about it, so eff off with your fundraising t-shirts and bake sales."

But that wouldn't be very nice.

The quicksand of meh has not been helped by Mr SM and the children pointing out, somewhat gleefully, that the lady who threaded my eyebrows last weekend must have been drinking (oh, the irony), because one eyebrow is higher than the other - permanently cocked in surprise.

This means that whatever anyone says to me, my face replies with a rudely sardonic "oh, really?"

I have a sarcastic resting face.

I am trying to even out my errant brows with tweezers, but am mindful of the occasion when I was at boarding school and offered to trim a friend's waist length hair. I tried to take an inch off, but it ended up shorter on one side than the other. So I cut more off. This time it veered in the opposite direction.

Needless to say, she ended up with a bob. A wonky bob. I tried to convince her it was very Depeche Mode. She cried.

Perhaps this is karma?

In the old days I would have drunk my way through the meh. But this time I am being helped by something a reader sent me a few weeks ago. She said that whenever she felt bleurgh she'd remember this quote by George Denslow (who was bipolar):

Honour your rhythm.

We all have natural rhythms, but heavy drinking masks them, and after decades of drinking we become totally oblivious to them, stuck in a permanent fug.

Our moods are affected by many things, often beyond our control - hormones, the weather, our sleep patterns and so on.

We are so used to self medicating that we forget that it is okay to feel sad sometimes. It passes. Recognise it, honour it, then sit with it until it moves on.

I've found that two things help:

Exercise - especially out doors, ideally surrounded by nature, even better with a dog, best of all with a dog and a friend, and a doggy friend for your dog.

Then, the opposite: hibernating. Wrapping up warm, clutching a hot chocolate and going to bed super early with a good book.

And, after a few days of doing just that, my meh is clearing.

This is helped by the fact that I've got the painters in.

(That's not a euphemism - I really do have the painters in).

For the last few years the front of my house has looked like a sad, neglected, middle aged lady, covered in cracks and blemishes.

Now she looks years younger. All bright eyed, clear skinned and optimistic.

If only they could do the same for me....

Happy Friday everyone!

SM x