Glimpsesofcolour

It has come to my notice that I haven’t written on this blog for some considerable time. I haven’t even reported on our Great American Trip. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. My only excuse is that the exhausting nature of that trip, especially the two day journey home, means that I have really only just recovered over a month later.

I have so many things to say that I don’t know where to start. So let’s start with my two most memorable US moments, which are both connected with dogs.

First, while in Goshen, Indiana, I visited the largest charity shop I have ever seen, inside a Mennonite enclave. They even had a pets’ corner. While looking at this I noticed a pack with the words ‘Sanitary Pads’ on it. ‘Well’, I thought, ‘it’s an unusual product to find in a charity shop, but at least they’re not used’. Only then did I realize these were actually sanitary supplies for female dogs in heat! Apparently these are available in the UK now as well – but probably not in charity shops.

Secondly, in Elkhart (which is next door to Goshen) we went to the renowned Prairie Street Mennonite Church, until recently pastored by the son of friends of ours, and now pastored by his cousin’s husband (who used to be the director of the London Mennonite Centre – are you still with me here? it’s like this with Mennos). During the ‘sharing time’, a Mennonite speciality, a woman got up and announced that her dog had been diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder, but that since going on Prozac he was much better. Only in America…

What to say about the rest of our trip? Well, destination by destination:

Chicago: very hot, very many skyscrapers, nice parks, lovely to see my former mentee and her hubby.

Goshen: very Mennonite, lovely house, lovely hosts, great dinner party at which we also saw Canadian friends who happened to be in Goshen/Elkhart at the same time as us – how’s that for synchronicity?

Elkhart: even lovelier house, more lovely hosts, great church, delightful trip to New Buffalo to walk by the lakeside (Lake Michigan, just like the sea but with no salt or tides).

Other highlights of mid-West: Das Dutchman Essenhaus where one of our friends works – biggest restaurant I’ve ever seen (and only Amish restaurant I have ever visited) ; MennoHof in Shipshewana, very interesting museum of Anabaptist history.

Akron, PA: pleasant accommodation in an Mennonite Central Committee guesthouse (where missionaries on leave live), great to catch up with v. old friends, lots of Amish experiences including dinner with an Amish family (very hot as no electricity means no aircon). Shame kid got ill so he missed Hershey Park theme park – well I got there without him and spent most of time minding a cute four year old who was a runner. It was also extremely hot, with very little shade, and hour-long queues at all the good rides, so maybe son wouldn’t have enjoyed it anyway.

Biggest mistake of trip: planning sleeper train back from Pennsylvania the night before we did overnight plane from Chicago. Got very little sleep on train and none at all on flight. Hence long recovery time. In taxi from Heathrow I was so tired I couldn’t sit still but fidgeted the whole way, and went straight to bed on arriving home, which is not what you are supposed to do when flying back from the US. Will plan better next time…

Overall, a very skewed view of the US as mostly geared to places where Mennonites live. But very interesting and I loved everything except the difficulty of getting any healthy food except when eating at friends’s houses. It’s true, everything is bigger in the US… other than the house prices which are incredibly cheap. Maybe we should buy a holiday home there?

I just can’t believe how utterly my mood is dependent on the weather. This morning it was sunny – and I felt good and got some things done. This afternoon it was grey again (like most days for the last – oh, about a year) and I messed about playing Solitaire (which I still call Patience – surely Solitaire is a peg game not a card one?) on the computer and listening to my iTunes collection. Even if I remember to put my lightbox on, it doesn’t make as much difference as proper sunshine, and since my lightbox is on my desk and you have to sit in front of it for at least 90 mins, it is yet another temptation to mess about on the computer all day.

Yesterday was a good day though, with lots of things at church seeming to be addressed directly to me (which has happened a lot lately), This was followed by two hours watching a series of ‘Dad rock’ programmes for Fathers’ Day on BBC4 – first archive material of Eric Clapton from the Yardbirds days on, and then a great programme on 40 years of Glastonbury (though I started to flag two thirds of the way through that and had to go to bed). The Dad in our family was bemused by all this since his interest in and knowledge of music is almost zero – it’s entirely ‘Mum rock’ in our house. Did I mention I have a fantasy of being in a band called ‘Mumrock’ and bringing out an album called ‘Girls Play Air Guitar’. I probably did.

So I start a blog which is, at least partly, focused on depression. Trouble is, when I’m depressed I can’t face posting on it and can’t think of anything to say, and when I’m not (roughly one week in four, it seems at the moment) I’m too busy trying to make the most of the brief good time. Which usually means I tire myself out and bring the depression back quicker.

I’m coming out of a big low at the moment, which started a couple of weeks ago, so my perspective is probably distorted, but the cycle does seem to be swinging to higher highs (though not clinically manic) and what feel like lower lows, but probably aren’t, they just look lower in contrast with the greater height of the highs. Hope that makes sense. However high the highs are, I’m not yet ready for the four years’ worth of filing and ten years’ worth of decorating that are awaiting me.

Meanwhile, my husband is up a ladder at the back of the house replacing the down pipe, and having stuff transported from below in a bucket on a rope held by his assistant. I went down there to make some tea a little while ago and I heard the assistant saying ‘Would you prefer a longer screw?’. I had to laugh. Yes please…. (but not from his assistant).

PS I have just mistaken the noises my son is making at the computer, for our very vociferous cat. Perhaps my son is turning into a cat.

PPS I’ve just, via a stats search, looked at a blog post of mine from two years ago and found it refers to ‘four years’ worth of filing. That’ll be six years now, then.

Of all the shops which might close down in a recession (and I knew that gourmet nuts and dried fruit shop wouldn’t last), the one I least expected to see a Vacant sign outside, was the memorials (ie gravestones) shop. Have people stopped dying because they can no longer afford to?

Major low over the last week, ending up with my crying buckets all over a couple of people at church on Sunday. If only I could learn to let the frustration out in little bits instead of storing it all up for one big outburst. Have made a doctors’ appointment for a couple of days’ time but I don’t see what the doc can do other than increasing my meds even more, which I really don’t want because the side effects are worse on higher doses.

In the middle of all this I think I did get a tiny glimpse of God’s love for me, but it is so hard to go on believing. On top of the general stress of deadlines to meet and son doing his GCSEs (with almost zero revision) we are facing the possible, indeed probable, loss of the Mennonite Centre in Highgate which has been a major second home for us and our church. The likelihood is that it will reopen somewhere else, but maybe not near us. I don’t know which is worse: being bereaved unexpectedly, or knowing a bereavement is about to happen but not knowing when. Actually, that describes my whole life at the moment: all I can see ahead is loss.

Today I freed a bee from a spider’s web. It wasn’t difficult, I just had to break the web. It felt good.

Lord knows how it came up, but I found myself yesterday informing my teenage son that ‘feet’ in the Bible is often used as a euphemism for ‘genitals’ (as in the cherubim: ‘with twain they covered their feet’ – and it gives a whole new slant to Ruth uncovering Boaz’s ‘feet’!) He thought for a moment and then said ‘Jesus washed his disciples’ feet’. Hm – a little Bible knowledge can be a dangerous thing…

I have nothing to say about the election, except that because of boundary changes I have been moved into a safe Tory seat and thus my vote was not worth the paper it was written on. Still, at least I got a vote, which hundreds didn’t.

I hate to admit anything good about the recession, but I can’t help taking a little Schadenfreude pleasure in the fact that our local gambling arcade has closed down. It’s an ill wind…

I’ve been and gone and done it! (actually i haven’t been and gone yet, but as a result of doing it I will be and go this summer). Yes folks, I have booked three flights with a well known carrier to the good old U S of A, and am in process of working out a complicated itinerary which enables me and my hardworking family to stay in four different places and visit (or, in USspeak, ‘visit with’) seven different pairs of friends who have in the past been on the staff of the London Mennonite Centre and part of our congregation. Indeed, we will be ‘Mennoniting our way’.

Not only that, but I have done the whole process (well, most of it, of which more later) online, grappling yesterday and today with multiple websites and dates and prices which sent my head into a total spin. I am still not out of the woods, since I need to book two ‘roomettes’ on an overnight train from Chicago to Pennsylvania, but can’t do that until I hear from the Pennsylvania friends as to whether the dates we have chosen suit them. By which time, the ‘roomettes’ may very probably be booked up. Incidentally, the Amtrak website assured me that the standard bedroom could accommodate three people at a push, but when I tried to book one, it kept telling me the room was too small for the number of travellers. Make your minds up, Amtrak!

Somehow, (she says, crossing everything crossable and uttering a silent prayer), in a couple of months’ time we will be literally winging (and I mean literally literally) our way across the Pond that divides us by a common language. Whoopee! Well actually I am too exhausted to shout Whoopee, having been awake half the night worrying about the trip, but I promise I’ll shout Whoopee when I’ve had some sleep.

Last night I took minutes at one of the most chaotic meetings I have ever been to, in which people were frequently having two conversations at once, and the chair was clearly feeling too knackered herself to call order. Meanwhile I was very close to the edge and greatly doubted my ability to write anything coherent.

So I sat down this morning to type them up before I forget everything (having first had a little prayer time and entrusted my day to God) and amazingly, I managed to put together something that does actually vaguely resemble accurate minutes.

Then on my way to the gym for a swim (walking there like a good girl) I remembered to pray that Genius Brat would remember to go to his German oral revision session after school (the oral is in two days and he has already missed one revision session at the weekend). Lo and behold, I sit at my desk at 3.15 pm and he has not yet arrived home, and by 3.55 he still hasn’t, and as I had hoped, he turns up at 4.00 pm having been to the revision session. Seems at least one prayer was answered – but then what did I expect?

Just for Kerensa’s delectation, on Saturday I did a short German oral practice with him. The instruction from the ‘examiner’ (ie me) was ‘Beschreibe eine Person in deiner Familie’ (describe a person in your family, for non-German speakers). He began with ‘Meine Mutter ist…’ – and then a short pause, and then ‘..alt’. That’s telling me.