Lily’s blog

 



December 26, 2008

St Stephens Day

Second post. (No I promise I wont put a number on each blog post) 


I love Christmas time because it is the only time of the year that I find I am really lazy at home. I normally have a 'to do' list for each day. Today was the first day in a long while without one. My other switch off times are on holiday. But on holiday I am away from home. Christmas is the one time I laze at home and love it. 

This morning I got up at 7 and had breakfast in front of the range. I then stretched out on the couch to read (again in front of the range) and got the book I had started yesterday finished - 'The Year of magical Thinking'. I had heard Joan Didion being interviewed earlier in the year when a one-woman play with Vanessa Redgrave based on this book, came to Dublin. The book describes her trying to make sense of the death of her husband in the year after the event. Her only daughter was very sick just prior to his death and for many months after. The book was really beautifully written. By 10 I had finished the book (still undisturbed by other breakfasters). Later I went off for a long walk. 

I thought about the book as I walked. As I remembered the interview, her husband and daughter had both died, yet in the book her daughter made a very slow recovery. Then I got an idea - thanks P for wikipedia on an iphone. Looked up Joan Didion. It said

'Didion's book, The Year of Magical Thinking, was published October 4, 2005. The book-length essay chronicles the year following her husband's death, during which their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, was also gravely ill. The book is both a vivid personal account of losing a partner after 40 years of professional collaboration and marriage, and a broader attempt to describe the mechanism that governs grief and mourning. Although Quintana seemed to be getting better during the period the book covers, she died of complications from acute pancreatitis on August 26, 2005, in New York City at age 39 after an extended period of illness. The New York Times reported that Didion would not change the book to reflect her daughter's death. "It's finished," she said

Didion later adapted the memoir into a one-woman play, which premiered on Broadway in 2007 to mixed reviews and starred her friend Vanessa Redgrave. The play includes the event of Quintana's death, technically spanning its timeline to over a year and a half.'

I now understood. The book is well worth reading. 

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December 25, 2008

Pressure pressure

Today is Christmas day and a lot of people throughout the country felt under pressure. I too felt under pressure but it wasn't to produce 'the Christmas dinner'. Yes that had to be done. No it was to write a blog post. So immediately after eating our Christmas dinner and before coffee here I am writing my first blog post.
 
As I say pressure pressure
 
I'm afraid to start blogging. I'm afraid of myself. Because once I get into anything I really get into it. I can foresee that work (outside the home) will still get done. I can foresee however that the biggest risk will be to the people who wanted me to get started in the first place. There is quite a risk that they will have to start fending for themselves more - meals wont be cooked cos there will be a blog post to be written! I can see it coming. I'm afraid to enter 'blogophere' cos I'm afraid 'familyosphere' might get (more) neglected
 
A certain gentleman in our house who is a keen golfer has wanted me for years to take up golf. For the same reasons described above I have said 'I will in the future'. I am afraid that if I started golf, then my addictive personality would drive me to play daily to improve and little else might get done!
 
Anyway the damage is now done. I have given into the 'encouragement' to start so I'm on the slippery slope.
 
I am no techie. My standard way of dealing with a technical problem is to call out the nearest son's, husband's (only one), work colleague's name. Its a joke that here I am blogging. Me blogging makes me sound a bit techie and that's the big lie. In fact if 'Trust Tommy' is a good name for a certain blog then 'Lying Lilinator' would be apt for mine.
 
So as long as it's clear - I am an ordinary non-techie sounding something I am not, by blogging
 
I loved twitter when the tweets used to come in on my phone. I loved the daily minutiae of lives coming in. Just when/because I was enjoying that, they go and take it off mobiles in Europe or some such thing a few months ago. Over Christmas I will get started using twitter on my laptop. (Again I will ask youngest offspring to show me how/where)
 
So thats two changes to my life and thats before I begin to start thinking about New Years Resolutions
 
Now about that coffee ...

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December 24, 2008

In the beginning ...

I have become converted - I am going to become a blogger. Children inherit from their parents. I am inheriting from my children. They have coaxed, cajoled, coerced and all other c words and I have conceded. I have started. Happy Christmas to the first readers

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