Making a big deal of it

I’ve just had a little chunk taken out of my foot - a mole to be precise. It was only a little thing but all the medical professionals I saw - the GP, the dermatologist and the surgeon, felt that it was significant enough to remove it and send it away for analysis. Just a little thing to remove but I had to wear a hospital gown and get wheeled into theatre on a bed. It all seemed like a big deal for such a little thing.

I kept telling people, if I had to mention it at all, that it was just a small operation, and honestly, I felt guilty for wasting their time at the hospital.

It’s weird but, for someone who has been in therapy for such a long time, I often feel a bit divorced from my feelings. My way of coping with difficult things is usually to ignore them and pretend they are not happening until the day that the situation is staring me in the face, and then I go into full on meltdown.

I don’t think I would have even gone to the doctor about the mole on my toe (such a small, insignificant part of the body) if it hadn’t been for the mole on my husband’s head.
It all started when we were sitting in the coveted window seat of the coffee shop, with the sun shining through the window. As my husband bent forward to do something - stir his coffee, look at his phone, I could see (through his hair) a black thing on his scalp - it looked like a circle of black felt.
“What’s that on your head?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something on your head - is it a bit of fluff or is it attached?”
We established that the black thing was attached to his head and he surprised me* by going to the doctor about it. The doctor contacted the hospital and it all happened really quickly after that. He saw the dermatologist the following week, had a photo taken and they said that the mole needed to be removed. A couple of weeks later they cut it out of his scalp (ouch!) and sent it away for analysis. It transpired that the mole was cancerous but not the type that spreads to other organs, so no more treatment needed for now. He was told to look out for future moles. It was all rapid, somewhat shocking and quite troublesome (for him - he had to have an antibiotic drip after the wound became infected.)

So perhaps you can see why we are extra vigilant about moles in our house. My husband urged me to go to the doctor about mine, and to take our younger daughter, who has one on her back. When I first saw the doctor she didn’t think mine or my daughter’s moles were anything to worry about but she called her colleague in for a second opinion, as he was a dermatologist and had the special, skin checking light thingy. He instantly deemed daughter’s mole as harmless but said mine needed to be looked at because it ‘had ridges’. It was a bit of a shock. I’d been vaguely concerned about the mole as it seemed to spring up from nowhere, about a year ago, and I'd determined to keep an eye on it but probably would have done nothing about it if it hadn’t been for what had happened to my husband. I felt a bit silly at the doctor’s surgery as I explained to my G.P that we were a bit paranoid about skin things. I felt silly when I climbed aboard the dermatologist’s couch at the hospital and he took a picture of my foot with his phone. He magnified the image on his computer and explained to me why it needed to be removed. He compared the picture of my lil old mole to a picture of a healthy, benign one.
Then, I felt silly as they wheeled me into the theatre, when I would have been perfectly capable of walking there myself.

I didn’t feel silly the day after the operation (although I feel a bit silly describing it as an operation) I felt weepy and a bit stunned. They told me, after the procedure, that if it was anything to worry about I’d get a phone call, if not I’d get a letter. I haven't had the results yet.

I want to pick up on a few things here:

1. *Men are notorious for ignoring symptoms and not going to the doctors about things. The reason my husband went so promptly probably had a lot to do with the fact that his beloved father passed away last year, after a long battle with cancer. We are all still struggling to come to terms with this.
2. But so are women! Women don’t go to the doctors soon enough either.
3. You might have been reading this and thinking about your own moles and wondering/or worrying. This is a natural reaction, I’d be the same. If you are worried - about that or anything else, then do go to the doctor about it. I felt silly, a lot of the time! But everyone one I saw - doctors, the surgeon, the nurses, took me seriously and treated me with care and consideration. Thank you, thank you NHS!
4. People spout on about ‘self-care’ a lot and it makes me think of bubble bath and manicures but it should actually mean what it says - taking care of yourself.
5. And look, I know it was a little thing and other people have major operations with long, arduous recoveries and this was really nothing, in the great scheme of things but I’ll tell you what the dermatologist said to me about that tiny little mole - ‘I’d rather remove it before it gets too big’. 

That’s it from me. Take care!

A snapshot from June

If I was to summarise June, so far, I’d say:

1) I’ve eaten a lot of lentils 

 as well as pulses, nuts and dried fruit. See previous post https://msmuddles.blogspot.com/2019/06/good-intentions.html

I’ve farted a lot - sorry if that’s an obvious joke but it’s true. Sorry also to my readers who don’t like ‘toilet talk’ but I think it’s important for women to talk about bodily functions, rather than pretend to be these odourless, plastic dolls.
Moving on

2) I’ve drank less alcohol.

3) I’ve eaten very little chocolate.

4) I bought this case for my phone

- because it reminded me of Lara Jean’s wallpaper in To All the Boys I’ve loved Before. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3846674/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

If you haven’t seen this film yet then you’re in for a treat - it’s wonderful. I don’t care who you are or how cynical you think you are, this film will cheer you up. God I love it, not just the romance but the relationship between the main character and her sisters and with her Dad. And also, very much the decor in her room - she’s described as being very messy but you don’t notice - the wallpaper is so lovely!

The sisters in To All the Boys I've Loved Before

5) 
I watched a lot of RomComs:

Isn’t it Romantic ⭐⭐⭐
I feel Pretty ⭐⭐⭐
Always be my Maybe ⭐⭐⭐
To All the Boys I’ve loved before (for the third time). ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Perfect Date ⭐⭐

6)
I tried to stay away from Social Media for a week and lasted about a day and a half! 

Maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance but avoiding it didn’t make me any happier or more productive so I logged back on.

7) 
I got excited about a new eyeliner

Guyliner

Yes - you did read that correctly. When I was a kid/teenager I loved makeup. I loved its power to alter and enhance your appearance. I didn’t see it as hiding behind a mask, more as a medium with which to express yourself. Like getting a tattoo but not permanent, so any regret would be fleeting. In my experience, all little kids (male and female) love nail varnish and makeup - they’re encouraged to be creative with colour when it comes to painting pictures, so why shouldn’t this extend to their faces? Aged fourteen, I used to wear metallic, silver eyeshadow, electric blue eyeliner and mascara and frosted pink lipstick (it was the ‘80s) and I loved it!

Not me

 Nowadays it feels like a rare treat - donning a bit of maquillage, indicating that I have the time to spend on myself and add this bit of decoration. I rarely wear it to work, but when I do it feels a bit special, like gold leaf in a cappuccino! My husband might have murmured something about it being anti-feminist, but it’s my choice, plus (am stealing this from Caitlin Moran) if men can wear makeup then so can I!
So anyway, I bought this eyeliner pen and I had very high hopes of it - it would enable me to draw some lovely, pointy lines - drawn out at the sides, winged eyeliner, I think they call it. And it did, initially, I some great wings, but two hours in and it was smudged all over the freaking place! It reminded me of my constant search, as a teen, for the perfect smudge-proof eyeliner, which lasted until I found liquid eyeliner and it changed my life, well, I say it changed my life, it changed my makeup routine…

8)
I saw the magnificent Booksmart! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1489887/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

The brilliant girls from Booksmart

Oh, friends, it was wonderful and it made feel that I hadn't misspent my youth enough!
"Where's the party?" I asked my friend, as we left the cinema, only half joking. We ended up in Wagamamma drinking hot sake, which is almost the same as going to three parties and ingesting some dubious substances…

So there you are, that's June so far.

Good Intentions

Right then, we've just come back from a mini break with the kids and I've made a resolution to only eat unprocessed foods from now on.

I was sitting in the car, on the way home, feeling really unhealthy - like my taste buds and blood cells were crying out to me - for fuck's sake give us some fruit and vegetables. Do you know what I mean? That holiday mode where you subsist (quite happily) on fried foods and ultra refined carbs and you have a gin cocktail for lunch because you're still so stuffed from breakfast but you feel in need of a fortifying drink after an extremely bracing walk along the Devil's Dyke.

Can anyone relate to that? You might get peckish later on in the day but all you have in your bag are some Twirl bites so that's basically your dinner. Feeling somewhat bloated and icky I decided to try and overhaul my diet. My diet isn't wildly unhealthy, I'd say that most days I get my five a day (I'm going to ignore the fact they they're ow advocating ten a day - Stop moving the goalposts!). I'm vegetarian so that's a whole section of unhealthy food off the table (bacon, burgers that kind of caper). And I do know my way around the kitchen. However, I do have a fondness for all things sweet and also all things highly seasoned and palatable - like crisps.

I can't pretend that this new resolution has nothing to do with a desperate wish to shed some weight. I've broken up with diets now and for good (I think) I've finally seen them for what they are  - a dissolute, unreliable boyfriend who pays you a lot of attention at first, promises the stars, then you see them at a party, when they said they were too ill to come out with you, with their hand down someone else's pants! They - the diets, promise the world and at first they seem to deliver, then two years down the line you are FATTER than ever and your face is so round that you look like a four-year old child's drawing of a person, not to mention the fact the you look five, fucking months pregnant.

I'm trying to embrace intuitive eating - which is like some Jedi mind trick that you play on yourself, whereby no food is forbidden and you can eat however much you like of it, thus you won't gorge on it because it's not forbidden! But, the thing is, you must eat too much of it (I say 'you', I mean 'I') because you are expanding rapidly like bread rising in the oven. It doesn't seem to work for me - the whole - I won't overeat because I've given myself unconditional permission to eat - thing. What about emotional eating? (A whole other blog post).

I've tried to embrace body positivity and what this mainly consists of, for me, is buying lots and lots of new clothes and not mourning my thin(er) self or now too small thin(er) clothes and it's quite fun. I even posted a couple of pictures of myself on Facebook in a kind of exposure therapy kind of way - like, I didn't actually like the pictures but I decided I just needed to rip off the plaster, embrace who I am and not try and erase myself from history. I feel that I need to move quickly on from this otherwise I will fall in a well, so, back to the food thing. I'm going to stay away from processed foods for a while which will mean no chocolate, crisps, roasted peanuts, biscuits or cakes (unless I've made them myself). I'll take homemade lentil salads to work to have for my lunch and munch on fruit or raw nuts if I get hungry. So far I've lasted no days! I forgot all about this resolution at the theatre last night when my friend produced a packet of Minstrels and I nearly absorbed them through my pores, so great was my desire for them. But, but, I did make lentil soup when we got back from holiday and I am eating more fruit so....it's all going in the right direction. In two months time I'll be clear eyed and glossy haired and reeking of garlic and my face will be less full moon and more..er.... something oval.

Being Found

I'm only presenting my point of view

Nothing in here details what I did to you

The times I spoke harshly

Or was guilty of inconsistency

I’m aware of that

I’m not totally lacking in self awareness

I was trying to read Playing and Reality by Donald Winnicott [ paediatrician and psychoanalyst ], when the rejection letter came through.

Just as it is perfectly possible for lightning to strike the same place more than once, it is also possible for the same literary agent to reject you twice, for different books (after she’d requested to read the full manuscript for both). 

I keep bumping into Winnicott.  I’ve just read a book by Philippa Perry, entitled The Book you Wish your Parents had Read: and your children will be glad you did. A somewhat grandiose claim which is partly justified, I feel. Anyway, she highlighted one of Winnicott’s quotes, he had said, while observing children playing 'Hide and Seek': 

"It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found"

Perry’s book is all about the importance of seeing or ‘finding’ the child - of listening to them, acknowledging their feelings and being aware of the baggage that you, the parent, bring to every interaction you have with them. Basically, the book expounds, much of how you respond to your children is about how your parents responded to you as a child. So, if you had an emotionally distant parent, you might find yourself resenting the demands your own kids make on you. 

For a long time I’ve been somewhat obsessed with attachment theory https://www.psychologistworld.com/developmental/attachment-theory, to the point where I immediately try and work out whether the adults I come across had a good or insecure attachment with their mothers. (I'm also somewhat preoccupied with how strong an attachment I've formed with my own children, particularly given the fact that I experienced some postnatal depression with the first child.)

Did Perry’s book help me, as a mother? To a point it did - I now try to stop and think about my responses to my children. I do try to respond rather than react (although I can’t remember whether that bit of advice came from her book or from the ‘Dealing with Stress’ workshop I attended at work!) and I do question my responses (even more than before - it’s such fun being in my head!)
I never understood the glib, confident attitude of some of the other mothers I came across when my kids were babies. The - ‘you should be doing this’ brigade. How could they be so sure and certain that theirs was the best way? Why weren’t they questioning everything? Of course, you can’t just stop for a hour’s internal wrangle when there’s liquid poo running down your infant’s leg, but in rare times of tranquillity, why were they not wracked with indecision? Were they those enviable creatures to whom it was all simply ‘instinctive’? ‘Instinct will kick in, you’ll know know what to do.’ They used to say. Erm….

Anyway, I seem to have veered away from the point somewhat, if I ever had one. Winnicott - he comes up again in the rather brilliant graphic novel, Are You my Mother?, by Alison Bechdel.

Alison, she of the ‘Bechdel Test’ https://bechdeltest.com/ Bechdel! She seems to be writing about an insecure attachment with her mother which spills over into every area of her adult life - relationships, commitment, artistic endeavours. Winnicott comes to life in her drawings - he’s there, on his hands and knees, playing with a baby and expounding his ideas. Bechdel weaves Winnicott's theories into how they play into her own life and it’s fascinating.

So, back to the rejection letter, are my aspirations as a writer all to do with being found?? Possibly. But did I feel like I had a cracking story to tell? Yes, yes and thrice yes! Stories are how we make sense of the world and I felt/feel that I had one that was just as entertaining as Bran Stark’s!
I got back on the horse that day and entered a couple of competitions.
When I was a child, I dealt with being ignored by retreating further into my shell and creating a vivid, fantasy world. Now, as an adult, I’m jumping up and down, waving a flag and shouting ‘hello, HELLO, I’m still here! Come and look at my fantasy world!'

You might think that makes me a flagrant narcissist, but then, maybe you didn’t have a secure attachment, as a baby, either.

Social Life - The continuing adventures of Space Dorg

Yes, I realise that (the appeal for) this medium is probably very niche, particularly now the novelty has worn off, but I can't stop drawing it.

Dear Reader, the feeling of release is immense, you should try it yourself - depicting your daily life in cartoon form, it's far more therapeutic than simply writing it down. You could start your own comic strip and then, because your artistic skills are so much more advanced than my own, yours will really take off. I'll have to try to pretend not to mind when you achieve massive success for your own comic adventures! Then you can thank me when you win a prize, and everyone will say - who is that?

Ahem, anyhoo:

Our conversation (mostly) passes the Bechdel test

That's not the case with my old pals, though

David Bow-Wow-Wowie

What other art form has the power to lift, penetrate, sear through and pierce you?

Comfort Reads

I read this delightful little article from BookTrust the other day:
https://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/features/2019/april/the-soothing-power-of-uncomplicated-pleasures-why-we-should-treasure-comfort-reading
All about how we should encourage children to read whatever they like, without passing judgement and it's a good thing for them to take comfort from books, in an uncertain world.  It talks about how books can be an anchor of reassurance when we are children and that kids are far more likely to re-read their favourite books than adults are. I have to take issue with this point, about it being only in childhood that we return to our favourite reads, as I often re-read books, particularly in times of stress. Sometimes, when I'm reading a particularly good book for the first time and it sends thrills of appreciation through me, I know I'm going to read it again. The last book I read that had this effect on me was Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans.

Evans used to be a comedy TV producer and I think it shows in her writing. Crooked Heart is funny, seemingly, effortlessly so, but also devastatingly moving. It is set during the Second World War and tells the story of ten year old NOEL, a precocious child who has just lost his only family - in the figure of his godmother, MATTIE, and is evacuated to the countryside. He lands up with a woman called VERA, who never has enough money and is constantly scheming to try and scratch a living. When I say that this book is moving I mean that there are moments in it that hook you right in the guts, but it never tips over into sentimentality. The characters seem so real, right from the beginning, that you feel that you are walking right alongside them, smelling the dust as it's stirred up from the roads. Someone once took issue with the fact that my copy of  I Capture the Castle (one of my very favourite books) had a quote from J.K. Rowling on the cover that said that the protagonist of the book was one of the 'most charismatic narrators she'd ever met'. This person sneered at Rowling's use of the word 'met' but surely that is what a really great book should do - bring the characters totally to life for you and make you feel as if you know them. Rowling is right, by the way, Cassandra from I Capture the Castle is immensely charismatic (IMO).

Going back to the childhood reads. I loved reading, as a child, as much as I hated P.E. My obliging mother used to write notes for me, excusing me from P.E or Games, as her own mother had done for her when she was a child (I come from a long line of duffers). Once a sceptical P.E teacher had looked at my note, saying that I couldn't do P.E as I was currently suffering from scurvy, and said;
"Well, you needn't think you can sit there doing nothing [during the P.E lesson] - you'll have to read a book!" She had no idea how happy this made me! Not only had I got out of performing some kind of humiliating assortment of physical contortions, I didn't have to watch anyone else doing it either! And I got to read Prince Caspian. At the time I was making my way through the Chronicles of Narnia, probably for about the fourth time.

So yes - I definitely turned to books in times of crisis, stress, boredom and panic. Books blocked out the rest of the world on public transport, they provided comfort in unfamiliar places, they accompanied me on hospital visits. When I got so stressed about taking my A levels that I thought the chest pains I was having meant I was having a heart attack, I turned to the Paddington books by Michael Bond and they worked - they helped me to relax. The worst thing about being depressed, as a teenager, was that I lost my love of books, they stopped 'working' for me. I never lost my appetite for food, as other people did, I lost my appetite for reading, which was a far greater loss as far as I was concerned.  Thankfully it came back to me.

What books did you love as a child?

Which ones, if any, do you re-read now?

Doggie Tales

Greetings! If you are still coming back after being presented with a series of my poorly drawn cartoons, I salute you! Below are more of the same.

I think the less I 'say' the better, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. I've added captions to the ones where the writing is particularly scrawly.

A Harry Potter moment

Meanwhile, life goes on

I