Yes, my knickers are supposed to be inside out

Ever wonder how you get to the end of the week in one piece?

Feeling things weren't quite right at work yesterday I toddled off to the loo to find my knickers were inside out (in fact they still are as I type this, fancy!). Not quite as bad as the day I realised I didn't actually have a limp but that I'd got odd shoes on. 

Reminds me of all those occasions I've got my son home from school to find he'd had no underwear on all day. Luckily he's been dressing himself for some time now and does a much better job of it than me.

Some days its just harder to get your shit together than others. So for those days I keep a drawer full of stuff at work:
Hairbrush
Deodorant
Dry shampoo
Painkillers
Spare meds
Cash
Porridge
Phone charger
Nuts
Tissues
Tea bags
Vaseline
Hand cream
The list goes on... my work colleagues think I'm crazy.

I only use the stuff occasionally* (mainly because I've got a butt load of stuff in my handbag and coat pockets too!) but it's helps calm me down on those days I just haven't got it together on time.

The one thing I'm really bad at remembering is my meds, so I've got some of everything I need in all the important places- work, home, the car, my handbag.  That way I've nearly always got some to hand. I find this a real good way to compensate for poor memory.

How do you cope on a day to day basis with being so forgetful?

*who am I kidding, I'm rooting through that drawer on a daily basis!

You've gotta outrun the slowest one, unless you're really tasty

Anyone else get the urge to run like hell when they see someone else running? No? Just me? Surely not!

Ha yesterday I was walking into town with my son from school when this guy came running up the hill from behind us. "Ruuuunnnnn" I yelled as I started charging up the hill after this guy. So there we were, me and my son legging it up the hill past all the shops after this guy, my son looking at me in horror. I figured I better put this all into context for him, wanting him to know the seriousness of the situation.

"We just gotta outrun the slowest guy"

With that my son turned around and seeing no one behind us stopped dead in his tracks, and the guy in front ran into the estate agents. My son just stood there with that look on his face. You know, that same look the cat gives you when you crawl around the floor after him meowing. A mix of disappointment and pity.

Jeeze what is with kids these days. If some guy comes running past me I'm not about to wait around to find out what the crap he is running from. You've gotta outrun the slowest person, unless of course they're super skinny or you are super tasty looking.

For the record, it may have been a tiger. We live near a zoo. I'm not taking any chances.

I couldn't find any pictures of our tigers so you'll have to make do with this little fella I snapped the other day. Just pretend he has stripes. And a big tail. And says grrrrr a lot.

Grrr I'm a tiger. Promise. 

More like a strong cheddar that's been left out of the fridge

Aggr the last few days have been hard. Like hard cheese hard. Today has been especially tough.

What do you guys do on the bad days?

I'm thankful right now for the curry I just found at the back of my freezer  (I could kiss you, past me), my pyjamas, and my furballs for just being their daft crazy selves. Tuesday is one of my favourite nights on TV at the mo too (Goldbergs and tattoo fixers!!) I'm proper going to indulge,  may even invite some chocolate to the party and go crazy!

So yeah, just a short one off me today reminding you all that some days you just have to slow your shit down and take care of yourself.

Have a good night, from me and mooncat x

Your balls are too heavy, once is enough thank you

I voted for one game. We got two.

Ten pin bowling people, it's a love hate relationship for me. I love playing but my bendy limbs and poor co-ordination don't fare for a good score. The first game is always better that the second (100 - 84 and that was with bumpers). By the time I've rolled 20 balls down that slippery ally my body has had enough and it just goes downhill from there. Towards the end I was just flailing and dropping the balls. Like a drunk person. Except I was drinking tap water.

One good thing happened though - they let you wear your own shoes now!! Score!! No more wearing shoes that a bazillion other stinky feet have sweated into. No more burning my socks as soon as I get home.

Bowling is just one of the many things I love to do but suck at/find painful/ simply can't do well.

What do you love but struggle at?

I didn't take any pictures at bowling, I was too busy showing everyone that I could fit a ridiculous amount of stuff into my dungaree pockets. So here is a picture of an extremely germy gecko in the food place we went to after bowling. As if I'm going to touch your gecko and die from all the human germs living on there. NICE TRY PERSON!

I will not touch your germy gecko. Nice try! 

I'm just left with dead bits

Aw man, I'm no good at plants!

Why what have you done?

Snapped the only bit that was alive off. Now it's just dead bits. Aggr I can't do plants. I'm bad at plants.

You're missing something

What? That I'm really shit at plants

No, that sentence is missing something 

That I didn't get taught plants because my mum is shit and kills plants too?

No, like a doing word

OK, I'm shit at doing plants

No, like a noun or a verb, which one means a doing word?

I don't know, I think I missed that day at school. Like I either wasn't there, or probably was just thinking about something else

Me too

You'll have to ask our son. He knows everything.

Yeah, he does school

Maybe if I just put this bit in there it will grow back

Yeah, maybe 

I'm a vending machine for poor cats

Humans very often think they’re the more intelligent species. But come on, are we really?

Take my cats for example.

I go out to work each day, come home, and they’re like purrrr purrrr look at me, aren’t I cute..blah blah blah…and cuddly…and sweet. Yeah, now feed me. I want food. Then BAM, I just give it to them, they don’t have to earn it. I’m like a vending machine for cats. Not even a good one at that as I run on a loss. I’m like a vending machine for poor cats.

Let all the stray cats in your neighbourhood know. I give out food for free. Please form an orderly queue.

Whilst I’m on the subject, anyone else’s cats get a bit bitey if they don’t get fed when they want it? Quite specifically around the ankles. No? Just me? Great. Piranha cat. I have a piranha cat. 

Cosmo the piranha cat

Maybe I should just stop talking

Do you ever go to speak, or you're mid sentence and you just have a brain fart and a load of non coherent garbage spews out of your speakhole?

You're one of the lucky ones if you even realise what you just said made no sense whatsoever. Or if the person you're with is drunk enough not to realise what you just said.

The trick is just to hold your head up high and carry on like it didn't happen. No sir I did not just ask you to file the cupboard from the collects. That would make no sense at all. And I definitely did not just ask my son to hands his soap because the oven is in the dinner.

Those puzzled looks you get? That's just wonder in amazement at your brilliance. You've created a language of your own and it's so awesome you're just replacing the English language with it.

Processing disorder for me comes and goes. On a daily basis I don't tend to notice too much, and I can even laugh at some of the stupid things that come out of my mouth when I do. It can be crippling at times though. Especially when you have something important to do like an interview or a presentation.
I find practice (and copious amounts of alcohol) can help a lot. Learning what you want to say off by heart helps to reduce nerves which is when my mouth can really have a mind of it's own. Stress really sets it off and can even prevent me from speaking full stop. It's like someone has borrowed my voice* but forgot to send me a memo, or I ran out of voice battery.

I know a lot of you will get what I'm saying. It can be pretty lonely, frustrating, and soul destroying (especially when you're in the middle of an interview for a job that you really really want - yup been there done that). It has certainly taken it's toll on my confidence.

A few things have helped me lately when I've had what I like to call a brain fart.
Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Press that reset button**. And start again.

You got this.

*how awesome would it be to be able to borrow someone else's voice for a few hours. Dibs on Morgan Freeman!

**location varies between models

My memory is like a sausage. The worst.

Having a bad memory totally sucks ass. I think of really cool ideas all of the time but before I can do anything with them, poof*, they're gone.

I got asked the other day to set up a security question on one of those forms you fill in when you're creating an online account. You know the ones where you choose a question and tell it the answer in case you forget your real password (which is like every single time). The ones where you don't give the real answer because you're sure that if you ever have to answer the question on the phone that the person on the other end is going to think you're a complete crackpot. So you put a more 'normal' answer but the problem then is when you get asked the question you can't remember what your 'normal' answer was.
Anyway the question was, what superpower do you wish you had? There were the usual options, flying, invisibility, immortality...but you know what I wish I had? A good freaking memory! That would be a great thing to have. Make my life so much easier. Like the ability to think of something and then recall it 5 or 10 minutes later. The ability to walk in a room and know why the hell you're actually there. The ability to make a phone call without having to write everything down that you want to say beforehand so that you don't forget what you called up for the minute you start talking.

But now I'm thinking my memory maybe isn't the issue. Maybe my memory is a perfectly acceptable memory, it just can't keep up with how fast my brain goes. So if I'm wishing maybe I should go for a slower mind. Nah, that sounds dull. How about the ability to play my mind back, like I can with the TV?!?!? Holy crap, that's it. Playback mind!!!! That should have been my answer!!!!***

Now would someone like to show me how to replay my mind so that I can actually remember what the crap this post was supposed to be about. Because I know I had a plan but I can't for the life of me remember what I set out to write!

Anyone have any good tips for remembering really cool ideas?


*that's the sound of something really cool disappearing. He're a cracking example...I knew exactly what I wanted to say next up there after this sentence but I've spent so long spelling disappearing right that it's gone. The idea has gone. And I know it was a really good one. (and you can't disprove that because neither of us knows what it was, so I win. I'm the cleverest and the bestest. Except that I'm not because my memory would be great if I was and it's not, so I'm not.)

**(right now anyway, the thought has only just come to me if I'm totally honest - I wasn't going to be, I was going to claim that this is something I've been thinking about for a while to make it seem like I have more normal thought processes, what the actual fuck??? Jeeze it's hard work in my head)

***I put flying. Not only was it top of the list, but I do actually quite like the idea of flying. Like a bird. Like a big giant bird.

Overthonking, like overthinking but being in the know

Am I the only one that thinks my cats can understand what I'm saying and can read my thoughts?
I'll call one over to the sofa and then feel bad that the other one will think I love this one more. So I make a big deal of telling the other cat that they are welcome too but that they're probably better off where they are next to the radiator because it's warmer. But now the other cat is going to be thinking that I'm just saying that so that she won't come over as I don't really want her to sit with me, and the cat on my knee is thinking h's not good enough because I'm trying to get the other cat to come sit with me instead. I seriously overthonk* things.

I often think my husband can hear what my head voices are saying too. I've tried to test that theory on a few occasions by saying something really gross or awful. He never even flinches but I thinks that's all part of his game.

*that was a typo but I left it because why not? Overthonk is a way cooler word than overthink. It's like overthinking, but for crazy people who know they're overthinking but still can't stop. World, you're welcome.

Have my lips, I put them somewhere safe

I’ve spent some time lately wondering what I’d look like without lips. I’d like to think that if I was to lose* them I’d be ok. I look like a cross between my son trying to look ugly and a startled version of me. My husband isn’t so convinced. Its ok, he’ll come round with time. I think I’d look better with a fringe if I had no lips though, would help to make my eyes pop. They need some help if they’re going to compete with the in your face sight of my wonky gnashers.

*I’m not sure how I’d lose my lips, I’m not suggesting they’d just fall off, but perhaps I’d take them off at night like some people take their teeth out and put them in a jar. The mistake would then be to put them ‘some place safe’ because we all know that’s code for ‘never to be seen again’. For the record, I think some place safe is the same place that socks and tupperwear hide. Not the lids though, I have a bizzilion of those bastard lids. 

A vagina can't kill a spider

Things I've learnt today:

No matter how hard you try, some people can’t be helped. And some people are just complete and utter dick heads. Yes the latter. Definitely the latter.

You can’t wear dungarees to work without being paranoid every time you go to the loo that people are going to think you are doing a number 2. Those things take time to get on and off people. It involves layers, and tucking, and buckles. Too much clothing related stress. Better to keep it in and limit toilet breaks. At least wait until you need a number 2 and make it worth your effort.

My bum itches sometimes. And it doesn’t have to mean you have worms. Just to clarify I don’t. Do I?

Not everyone is ok with you saying the word vagina to them. There certainly is a limit to the number of times you can say the word vagina to your 11 year old son in a row before other people in the coffee shop look at you funny. For the record that number is 16, but by that point the words were merging into one long noise so I really don’t know what their problem was. You also need to choose carefully who you say vagina to at work. They don’t so much like it either. They look at you with that disappointing frown like you just spat at them or killed their favourite spider. 

VAGINA!

Hating suprises

A few Christmases ago I had a bit of a meltdown over a gift from my parents. To anyone on the outside I guess I would have been comparable to a spoilt toddler having a tantrum because she didn't get the toy she wanted. My mum didn't take it personally though.

To set the scene for you, I'd just made Christmas dinner for the whole family for the second time not having learnt my lesson the first time round that the stress of cooking a 3 course meal for 8 people, and the burns and mess were simply something I shouldn't volunteer to put myself through again. But hey if you listen to anyone round here I'm stubborn.  

My mum handed me the gift - I hate gifts. Or at least, I hate things I haven't specifically asked for. So I open this gift, it's a pair of socks. They're soft, cosy, fluffy. I love soft, cosy, fluffy socks. But Oh My God. I put them on. Aggrh the discomfort. The seams. The unusually long length. They feel just soo wrong. I try to keep them on and show thanks but the stress and discomfort is unbearable. I'm walking around in these socks, crying and laughing at the same time. It's ridiculous that socks can make me cry. 

Luckily my mum was laughing with me. She knows what I'm like. She still tries to buy me surprises occasionally, knowing full well I'll probably freak out. I know she means well but Oh My God I hate surprises. 

Claire x

Tackling clutter when you're unorganised

We're on a roll......

These past few weeks has seen us sorting out our finance, but we've also started to get rid of all the clutter in the house. I love, love, love this. I am super untidy and Mr H is a massive hoarder so I'll leave the state of our house to your imagination! Having less stuff in the house though certainly helps me - apart from the obvious that there's less to keep tidy, it's also that sense of calm that comes from having less stuff around. We've done this in a number of ways and we're still going!

After watching this TED talk  I was inspired to get up the next day and spend half an hour clearing out 3 huge bags of stuff from the bedroom that I hadn't touched since we moved into our place a year ago. Without a word of encouragement* Mr H joined in and filled a few more bags and loaded the car up and off we went to the charity shop and the recycling center. It felt great. We'd actually achieved something. I hate they way us humans feel the need to have so much stuff. I think we could easily get rid of half the stuff in our house and still be just as happy, if not happier.

The other thing that has helped massively is Mr H decided to sell some of his 'might be worth a bit in the future' toys that were filling the loft and that made a few pennies on ebay. If you struggle with this type of thing try and get a family member or friend to help you. Maybe you can offer to help with something that they're not so good at in exchange for them selling some of your things that you no longer want.



Its all a process

Whilst this is just the beginning of the process I feel really positive about what we've been doing. Some of you guys are probably doing bigger and better things but I'm happy with where we're at. I've tried to tackle our clutter before but always felt so overwhelmed that I've let it slip very quickly, or in some cases not even known where to start. Little and often is the key. Don't see these things as huge jobs that need doing right away, see them as a process of changing the way you do things. Break each task down into small manageable tasks and only when you've achieved one do you go on to the next.


I'd love to hear if any of you are de-cluttering? How do you tackle big overwhelming tasks?

Claire x

(*come on guys we all know I mean nagging)

Keeping tidy with dyspraxia

So I'm pretty sure that many of you out there have trouble staying organised and tidy for whatever reason. My biggest battle is dyspraxia. For those of you that haven't heard of it or are unsure of what it is then I'd recommend taking a squiz at the Dyspraxia Foundation website. They've got tons of info and advice. Basically for me though it means amongst many other things I'm messy as hell!!

Now put someone with messy issues in charge of a house that also contains a little person with the same issues and you've got yourself one big messy nightmare! I wanted to share with you today a few of the things that work for me. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not suddenly not messy, my house in no way resembles a show home, it's just a bit less messy and my husband has a little less to complain about.

So here you go:

1. Ten minute tidy

This is what is really working for us in our house. Instead of writing down all the jobs that need doing and then getting nothing done I just tidy for a set time. That way I always achieve something and don't feel bad for not getting things done. You'll be amazed how much you can get done in ten minutes and this is seriously how I do everything around our house. I'm forever getting distracted from whatever I'm doing and feeling crap afterwards for not getting anything done. This way I have no set expectations other than things will be tidier than when I started!

The ten minute tidy also works great for kids. Sending my son to tidy his room never works, but if I tell him to go tidy it for just ten minutes once a week then he gets most of it done and it is relatively tidy most of the time.

Set a timer on your phone or oven for ten minutes. Keep tidying until the beeper goes off and then step back and see what you've achieved. Do this everyday for a week and by the end of the week you'll be amazed at how much easier it is to keep a tidier house.


2. Regular routine

Like the ten minute tidy this is something I do everyday. Once you get into a routine of doing something it makes it so much easier to do and harder to forget! Every morning I do the same thing - empty the dishwasher, load it back up, put a load of washing on, and do a ten minute tidy of the house. And I do all this before I do anything else, no arguments, no excuses. I know if it doesn't get done then, then it won't get done at all.

Ask yourself what needs doing on a daily basis as a bare minimum and make yourself do those tasks at the same time each day until they become habit. It's really important not to overwhelm yourself though so start off with just maybe 2 or 3 small tasks, you can always add more once these become habit.


3. Everything in it's place

Having a set place for everything is a must if you're going to have a tidy house.
When we moved into our new house earlier this year we put our coat rack out of the way in a hallway behind a door because who wants to look at that ugly thing. In reality we use the back door the most and all our coats ended up being piled onto the furniture next to it. We just put a second rack up right next to the back door so all the coats get hung up there now and we can see the furniture again. Simple things like that just make life so much easier.

Think practical. It's no good trying to create a pretty home like you see on pinterest. I can guarantee that most of those houses don't look like that day-to-day.


4. Let go of the guilt

Go easy on yourself. These things are hard for a lot of people and I for one will wave my hand in the air and admit that I'm messy as hell. I've spent years beating myself up over being untidy and disorganised but it's just not worth it. I am who I am and if someone doesn't like that then screw them! It doesn't mean I'm not going to try real hard to be tidier (I won't say 'tidy' because who am I kidding?!) It just means I'm not going to beat myself up over the fact that my house looks, erm, we'll just say 'well lived in'.

Stop stressing over what you haven't done and focus on what you have achieved each day.


5. Less is more

Now I've put this one last because it's one I'm not afraid to admit I'm stuck on. The theory being that the less stuff there is in the house, the less there is to keep tidy right? I'm certainly a lot more ruthless than I used to be when it comes to getting rid of stuff. My Dad took great pleasure in announcing to a room full of people during his speech at our wedding about the time we found a dead slug in my wardrobe that I'd collected as a pet and forgotten about.

If anyone has any tips for us hoarder types on having less 'stuff' please please do share!



I hope those tips will work for you guys and help with the mess that living with something like dyspraxia can bring. If you're going to try any of the tips here I'd totally recommend doing a ten minute tidy today and do let me know in the comments section how you get.

Oh, and if you're reading this because you have dyspraxia remember how awesome you are!

x

Edited to say that the Dyspraxia Foundation are currently running a campaign to raise awareness. To take part just take a selfie wearing a hat with what dyspraxia means to you and post it on their facebook page. To donate text 'HATS02 £2' to 70070.