Sunday 6th December - Advent 6

It's been a fairly gruelling week since my mother moved into a Nursing Home. Only a week?

I have managed to keep going with the help of BB, friends, family, and Advent Calendar TEA!

 

Oh wait, where is today's teabag? Somewhere, in the midst of the chaos of the dining room table. The table is a metaphor for my life: when things are running out of control, so does the table.

 

But the tea bag was there, in the middle of all the stuff piled around. I made myself tidy the table before making the tea this evening when we got back from visiting my mother.

Not perfect, but much better. There's a risk that as events pile helter-skelter upon each other over the next few weeks they will overwhelm us and everything around us - housework, shopping, meal planning, Christmas planning, unless we keep chipping away at everything.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, step by step....

And for sheer escapism, I have borrowed this book from one of the schools I work in:

Great stuff; dragons, statues come to like (good ones and gargoyles), all rampaging through the London Streets. BB was trying to explain some technical thing about computer back-ups to me, but too much of my mind was skulking under the arches of Westminster Bridge, wading through the shallows of the River Thames in an attempt to get past the dragons without waking them, to manage a full re-entry into reality. Dragons, fantasy, posh tea and good chocolate. Perfect recipe for survival. And a blissful 450 pages long.

I've started lighting the candle-lantern outside the house after dark. It's a symbolic thing for me - a welcome to a place of safety, and a gesture of defiance against the dark.

(It's also a way of using up some scented tea-lights that someone gave me without ponging out the house)