Sunday Thoughts

Finally, it’s February. The past week has been one of the longest weeks that I’ve ever experienced, and I know that we weren’t as bad as so many others. In fact, some people are now on Day 10 without electricity. We had six days without power, and things would have been far worse without the good people who lent us a generator midway through, so at least we could have some heating.

I’ve seen people cope with things in different ways, I’ve seen depression setting in, and nasty comments, and it’s been sad to see. It hasn’t been all about the power either, other things happened, and it’s been quite difficult to keep a lid on my emotions.

I had a few things lined up during the week, there was a networking event, a meeting, and a creative workshop, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to go to any of them, so I cancelled them all. I was thinking about how empowering that was for me, I’d stopped to think about how I was feeling. The old me would have made myself go along, I’d have felt like I was letting people down, and then I would have felt very anxious and ill because I did go. The power of saying no is quite a big thing.

I’ve spent the past few days clearing out the fridge and freezers, we lost so much food. When the butcher closed, I bought quite a bit to support him, and I had it in the freezer, so all of that is gone. There was no way to cook it either, because we only have an electric cooker, I’d now love to get a gas cooker. At least if the power goes again, we’ll be able to cook something. I was never as pleased to eat a vegetable! We were living on takeaways and pot noodles, until the community café opened, and then we had soup and a hot dinner – it was heaven! The freezer of happiness is now the freezer of unhappiness; all the little treats that I bought and squirreled away are all gone.

It was blissful to have a shower and wash our clothes, and get back to some kind of normality, and as for having a light on, and not having to carry a torch around – wonderful! My sleep patterns have been all over the place too. It takes me a while to process things, and I hadn’t even got over my Manchester trip, having returned home the day of the storm. I will write about that in the coming days.

It was St. Brigid’s Day yesterday, and there is a bank holiday on Monday. There were lots of events happening for the occasion, and I was delighted to be asked to speak at an event in Boyle. I’ve written about that here. This time last year I’d never spoken in front of people, it’s wonderful for me to see how far I’ve come, and how well I coped. No panic attacks on the horizon! What a massive achievement for me, I’m doing things that I never thought I would do. I won’t mention the amount of faces I pull when I talking!

I went out for a walk today, and saw the sun over the fields, the snowdrops appearing, sheep wool hanging on barbed wire, and fields full of rushes – lots of material for St. Bridgid’s crosses there! It’s a beautiful sunny day, and it’s lovely to see it – as long as I don’t look at the back garden – which is in a state of destruction due to the storm.

I hope you are all doing well, and for my followers in Ireland, I hope that you have your power back soon. Thanks as always for reading, and happy Sunday.

I wrote my blog post, but I forgot to mention me dousing myself in petrol this week! I was putting petrol in my car, and the line was tangled, it flipped back and drenched me! The people in the petrol station were having a good laugh when I went to pay, I had to go to Duffys SuperValu – but they had no water, so I bought wet wipes and wiped myself down as much as I could. I had to drive home sitting on a dustbin bag. Luckily I like the smell of petrol……