LucyFurLeaps Has Moved

Here is my new permanent address: www.lucyfurleaps.com

Do join me!

Love xxx

Leaping...

Summer Solstice, the end of the beginning....and the last post here...I am leaping across to www.lucyfurleaps.com full time...I do hope you will join me. It's been a hard decision to call time on my blogspot, where I have been so comfortable and met so many great people who have been kind enough to read my posts.

Big Wheel Keeps on Turning
Love, love, love
xxx

Calling Time

Things are moving very fast at the moment, so I have little time to blog.
I am not sure how much longer I will be 'here' at my old faithful blogspot.
Maybe I will stay here but it is more likely this chapter is coming to an end and I will be moving all of LucyFurLeaps writing ops elsewhere...

Love, Love, Love

broken blogging

so i will be starting a new year and a new decade with a broken wrist. there is no interesting story to tell about the breakage. sam and i had gone to see my best friend and her boyfriend and were walking in richmond park, when i slipped on leaves as we walked down a hill.

i followed my friend's r.i.c.e advice -ice, compress, elevate (can't remember what the 'r' is for) and they drove us home and helped me put sam to bed. the next day it was swollen and painful and 'not right', the ensuing trip to casualty and x-rays confirmed a fractured distal radius, needing a plaster cast for at least 4 weeks. and of course, no driving and me to ask "how do i lift sam, put sam's night-time nappy on and give baths etc...?"
luckily my friend can come and help me tonight so that dad's new year plans aren't scuppered, and very luckily he is prepared to change some of his plans so i have help with sam.
i have had some lovely offers of remote help from friends via facebook and lots of good wishes which are truly appreciated. but the fact is i am totally reliant on my wonderful best friend and my dad. i am blessed to have them indeed.
my modest plans for new year's eve looked to be over...how do i make a champagne cocktail when i am not sure i can open the bottle? how do i blog with a broken wrist?
so, broken blogging is possible, if you will pardon the lapse in correct capitalisation and punctuation. and if blogging is possible, then so are cocktails!

I wil be on my own , writing, reflecting and letting go of the last decade this evening.
Love, Love, Love xxx

Writing about M.E

The terrible puns continue- please indulge me for now...

In my four-ish years of blogging I have written about shoes, poetry, planting a vegetable garden, eczema, bees, sleep, being a single parent and all manner of other subjects, and why not? My life has always been reflected in my writing so my interests and experiences collide to a greater of lesser extent.

Writing has been my major focus, apart from Sam, since starting at university. I have always written and used this as a way of sorting through feelings, thoughts and dilemmas. So I shall carry this on and write about what is happening in my life now and what will happen following my diagnosis.

I managed to get in the car with Sam on Friday and drive down to Bristol to stay with friends, as had been planned for ages. It was either that and stay at home on my own with Sam again for another weekend, and we both needed a break, some fun, and I need some support at the moment.

And we have got what we needed this weekend. My old friends from Bristol, where I lived years ago, have been wonderful. Taking Sam out to see the SS Great Britain yesterday which he LOVED, and today to help friends pick out a dog and then to a pub for a lunch.

This has given me a chance to rest, think and just 'be' and have some space.

I am up and down, one minute emotional and full of fear and blaming myself. The next minute thinking positively and pragmatically.

I expect this seesaw-ing of feelings and moods to continue for a little while and, as I am only human, I am going to let those feelings out as they come, and then let them go and get back to looking forward.

There are lifestyle changes to be made and priorities to be considered.

This is an opportunity to make positive changes. As my good friend Kat says," You are the captain of your ship" and I think I know whiich way I am going to steer it.

But for now I am in dry dock, getting repairs, and looking at maps.

Love, Love, Love
xxx

Sowing and Growing

I've now completed two years of my degree. The last assignment of this semester was handed in last week. I am hoping I have done enough to get the marks I need to continue on my quest for a 2:1. I will find out my grades in due course, and this week will be able to send off the last application form for funding.

I spent a whole afternoon trying to work out what I was supposed to do with one funding form. In the end I put it down and went out and forgot about it for a while. I felt like my brain was about to explode. This applying for funding each year amounts to approximately two of the worst days of my year...intensely frustrating, ridiculous and scream-inducing. I write this, however, with the caveat that I am truly grateful that this funding has existed. I think that, following the recent election, this will all change out of recognition pretty damn quick. Fingers crossed the funding all goes through and I can complete this year.

In the meantime I now have a boisterous three-year-old, who is every inch the little boy, and such good fun. Hilarious, loving, wild and bright. Also a little monkey who has tested my patience to its limit recently. Having a break from uni will help restore the peace - I have been sleep-deprived for the last six weeks, since Sam decided it was time to leap (funny that) kamikaze style out of his cot. So the transition to a 'big-boy-bed' has been made but there have been lots of very early mornings. Trying to study and complete assignments after battling to get Sam to bed, and then never getting more than 5 hours sleep has been tough. But I've done it!
Hooray!
I just looked at my blog this time last year, here.

And that is still representative of how I feel.

I have been dying to get all of the uni work out of the way, even though I have enjoyed doing most of it, so that I can get on and just write. And read the piles of books sitting in my bedroom in very cliched leaning-tower-of-Pisa-like ways.
I have started with Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running", which I've had for about a year. It is so good I keep thinking to myself throughout the day "just five minutes of reading..." but of course it's impossible to do that with Sam, although I manage a flick through the paper for half an hour every morning.
I read The Road for one of my creative writing modules this semester and am still haunted by it, I won't and don't want to see the film. I am rubbish with horror, and it is horrific. I have read that it is very respectful to the book, and I love Viggo Mortensen, but I don't see how it could possibly do it justice. I recommend it to anyone but it is not an easy read.
I am still mainly concerned with writing poetry. If this is the vein I continue to plough and be excited by then I may end up doing an MA in Poetry...but let's see. I have to get through the degree first.

Since finishing uni I have been hard at work in the vegetable patch, as I have been in every spare minute I have had in the last few months. Yes, I have a veg patch! I started work on it last year and the blog I began to record its progress will soon be blooming again: http://www.roarearth.blogspot.com It seems to be the perfect antidote to and also fuel for writing-and so I can relate to Murakami's thoughts on the way his running has affected his writing.
I have also sent off a poem to a competition- I am intending to do this as much as possible over the summer. I've also entered a piece of visual art into a competition. More about this in another post. I had something that fitted the brief. I have written elsewhere about how I always thought I was a visual artist- well, I am- but I am more wordsmith than that. The piece I have submitted is a mixture, maybe, of the two.

I can't stop and I don't want to. I am busier and more creative than I have ever been.

I am also trying to dig myself out of a hole. I need to get qualified so I can earn decent money so that I can give Sam the things he needs. So I can take care of us.

I have taught Sam to say "We don't like David Cameron". I shall say no more for now but this may change as the travesty unfolds...

Love, Love, Love xxx

LucyFurLeaps Gets Peripatetic

I said last week that this blog might metamorphasise but instead it seems to have gone through some sort of asexual reproduction and has reproduced a version of itself on Wordpress.

This is not a mirror image but a blog devoted to my exploration and connection with the world of poetry. I will be posting there regularly and hoping to gain some sort of idea of the shape of things in Poetry-land.
I will still continue to post here with poems and other writing as usual.

I would be grateful if you could take a peek at the new blog. Let me know what you think!



From Glastonbury to Richmond...there are more developments a-foot...

Love xxx