I see a shark fin on the horizon. September 20, 2011
Posted by phoenixaeon in Uncategorized.add a comment
And it is almost upon us. Tomorrow is the Party Day of Doom! But not only is it that, it is also the Fated Day of the TMA Questions of Perpetual Terror. Aaaarrrrggghhhh! It’s like one evil heaped upon another! Yet I must like sin, as I am quite looking forward to both occasions actually.
I am possibly more excited about the party than Princi is, simply because she’s never had her own birthday party, so I finally get to see her getting excited about her birthday. And she finally gets to experience a party all about her. But then, how is that different to any other day? Every day is about her! Or so she thinks, anyhow. I am just hoping that the ordered-last-minute games/activities will be delivered first thing tomorrow. Yikes, I do like to cut things fine! But I am really looking forward to seeing the specially made cake. I am sure Princi is going to love it! Ooh, the anticipation of watching a shocked and happy Princi is so exciting!
And the TMA questions. Well, study mode finally kicked in this morning. I am chomping at the bit to get moving with the course and to saturate myself in myth. Having the questions will only motivate me more. Yay! So glad for the lessening feeling of dread. So glad to have some semblance of sparking brain activity. So glad to to be feeling more like myself and not some shade of my former self. About bloody time, too!
I think, then, it must be time for an early night. I still have lots of preparation left to do tomorrow, and the added anticipation of future learning will be playing on my mind too. So, off to Noddlington for me…
Argh! It’s a mini beast! May 23, 2010
Posted by phoenixaeon in Principessa art, The Principessa Files, Uncategorized.add a comment
So, during a glorious day of sunshine when even Princi found it too warm to play out, we’ve been drawing and watching DVDs. Well, when I say DVDs, I mean one DVD. Robots. It’s her favourite at the moment, despite having free reign over the other DVDs.
Anyways, Princi was happily lying on the floor drawing when all of a sudden she jumped up.
‘Argh! It’s a mini beast!’
She ran over to me, demanding hugs and comforting, before going back to look again.
‘Argh! It’s a horrible mini beast!” she screeched, before picking up a piece of paper. Scooting around to me again, she placed the paper on my knee.
‘This is what it looks like, Mummy,’ she said, and proceeded to draw the culprit. I was stunned that I could identify what it was she was drawing!
‘Oh,’ I said, once she had finished drawing. ‘That’s just an earwig.’
‘Yes, an earwig. But it’s still a horrible mini beast!’
‘It’s OK, it can’t hurt you,’ I said. Then an idea popped into my head. ‘Can you write the word “earwig”?’
(She’s been having trouble writing her letters recently. It was an opportunity to get some practice in.)
‘Oh, yes, I can,’ Princi said. ‘Earwig… That starts with a difficult spelling. E…’
So Princi began to write. Squeee! She’d written the lower case ‘e’ correctly, the first time I’d ever seen her do that without guidance. Then she shocked me again. She knew how to spell ear! I thought she might have been tricked by the ‘e’ sound and miss the ‘a’, but no. I really shouldn’t doubt my daughter! I didn’t know how she’d handle the ‘w’, but no problems. Then the ‘g’ came. She’s never been confident with ‘g’s. But not this time. First time. Pride burst in a big hug and lots of squeeee-ing. A drawing and some writing and spelling, all unassisted. So chuffed!
And here it is.
Princi's earwig.
Of bogs and truths and gardens. May 9, 2010
Posted by phoenixaeon in Bog Child, EA300, ECA, End of EA300, OU, TMA06, Uncategorized, What goes on in Princi's head?.5 comments
Eeks! Eighteen days left. 3,000 words written. Coherent argument fumbled. Too much to do, too little time?
On the plus point – got TMA06 back today. Yay! Another good mark above 90%, so chuffed to little mintballs. That means if I can get 85% on the ECA I have managed a first. That would be amazing! I would be chuffing like a chuffing train stuffed with chuffed little mintballs! And yes, that an awful lot of chuffedness! But before then, I have to battle with the rest of the ECA essay. That is really dragging me down. Sigh.
I have just under 1,000 words left to find for it. That shouldn’t be too hard. No, it’s more the constructing it into a decent argument. I am having the crisis of confidence thing with this once again. I’m worried I’m not using enough references. Worried I’m writing too much about the plot of the story. Worried I’m not getting enough depth into the points I’m making. Generally, I’m just worried. It’s making me feel ill. Gah! You know, I hate exams, absolutely despise them, but right now I’d gladly throw my hand for it to all be over in three hours. That way I wouldn’t have the time to question my knowledge, to second guess myself. It’d just have to be done and that’d be it. But no, I have eighteen more days to sit and stew. Bugger and butt nuggets! So tomorrow it’s on with Bog Child. On with The Other Side of Truth. On with Tom’s Midnight Garden. And it’s on with working out the history and traditions that tie them all together, hopefully with some pertinent quotes and decent themes. I know I will have something to submit in seventeen days time (don’t want to push it to the limit in case of server overload on the electronic submission site), but if it’ll be any good is anyone’s guess. I’ll have to wait until August to find out. Argh!
And besides, according to Princi:
Botheration! There is difficulty in the crossing between Cape Horn and the Antarctic.
So there.
(That about sums up my state of mind!)
The pain of separation. May 3, 2010
Posted by phoenixaeon in Downstairs, The Principessa Files, Uncategorized.2 comments
This morning, the first lot of stuff went from my bedroom now to the new room downstairs. While this is positive movement, it’s fixed in my head the anxiety that Princi is feeling about the move.
“Mummy, where’s that thing gone?” (meaning the CD rack)
“Uncle Gareth has taken it downstairs.”
“Why?”
“To put in my new bedroom.”
“But I don’t want it to go down there, I don’t want to be lonely.”
Eeks! She really doesn’t want this move to happen. Let me explain why. The whole of her life she has shared my room with me. Her bed is opposite mine, so that whenever she has needed extra comfort she only has to stomp (because she doesn’t know how to tippy-toe) across the room to me. When I finally move, there will be the physical barrier or the stairs. Now, the stairs are not the problem for Princi – she has been able to thump up and down the stairs since she was two and a half – rather, she has suddenly become very afraid of going downstairs at nighttime. She’s also afraid of doing most things at nighttime, including sleep. It’s finally dawning on me why this might be. Talk about me being dense!
When Gaz started taking the books downstairs, Princi ran into the room and nearly knocked him over. Of course, he told her to stay out of the way and this upset her.
“I have no friends anymore. Everyone is leaving me on my own.”
Yep. There it was. It’s change. She doesn’t want it. How could I have been so blind? That is why she has needed so much reassurance lately about where people are in relation to her geographical location. I have to tell her where I am (even though she can see and hear me!), where Nanny and Grandand are, where Uncle Gareth is (in the house next door), and where Aunty Lindsay, Aunty Kirsty and Uncle Jamie are (about a mile down the road). Despite being excited that she’s going to have her own room soon, she doesn’t want me not to be in it! My poor little babs. We’ve been talking about it for so long – well, it must seem like that for Princi – that she probably thought it wasn’t going to happen. Ever.
Oh – here she is. Hang on a tick…
Aha! I have just found something that makes her feel a bit more comfortable with it all. She would feel happier in her own room if she could have a picture of Doctor Who on her wall.
“But it has to be the new Doctor Who. The Matt Smith Doctor Who!”
Fine. Matt Smith Doctor Who it is then. But until then, there’ll be lots of hugs and reassurance and fluffy, light-up teddy bears.
Well, I would write 4,000 words… April 29, 2010
Posted by phoenixaeon in Doctor Who, EA300, ECA, OU, The Principessa Files, Uncategorized.add a comment
OK. Not quite 4,000 words yet. But halfway there. The plan is to have a workable full draft by a week tomorrow. That way, I’ll have a full plan to submit to the tutor and only the rewrite to do over the three weeks before the submission date. And then that’s that. Course is over. Noooooooooooooo! Despite my feelings that this last piece of work isn’t going to be as good as anything else I’ve done (and particularly not TMA05. The result for that still makes me smile with pride), I have absolutely loved EA300. It’s been so hard to get my head around at times, but the sense of satisfaction coming to the end of it is fabulous. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt like I’ve come away from a course knowing that I have learned something as strongly as I have with this. All I know is that I really want to continue on with it. But… I need to complete three more courses with the OU before I can even think about that!
Princi has also discovered something she likes to learn. She had her first session with Spanish Club in school today. She stayed back for an extra 45 minutes (I wasn’t sure she would like staying back at school, but she did. Yay!) and when she got home she told me about all the words she learned in Spanish. And she’d learned quite a bit. I was pleasantly surprised. The surprise stayed when she became really excited knowing that she could do it again next week. ‘But only on Thursday,’ she said, with a little look of disappointment on her face. Since then, she’s been playing on Spanish games on her Nanny’s computer!
Anyway. It’s time for Doctor Who before bed. Oh, and tonight it has to be old Doctor Who. She kicked off last night when old Doctor Who was all she could watch because the Broadband had gone down. Grr. But she happily watched ‘School and Chips,’ or School Reunion to the rest of us, and has decided that the old Doctor is better than the new Doctor for now. I’m sure we’ll get back to the repetitive viewing of The Eleventh Hour soon. She loves the food scene too much not to watch it again!
And speaking of the Doctor, here’s something that’s had me giggling today…
Ten rules for writing fiction. February 21, 2010
Posted by phoenixaeon in Uncategorized.Tags: Writing advice
5 comments
For anyone who reads my blog and who doesn’t read Neil Gaiman’s blog (must be a veeerrrrry small number! Probably just one!), here’s the Guardian’s article for the ten rules for writing fiction:
Thought it might be of use to some folks. 
Tagged – The Honest Scrap Award. September 22, 2009
Posted by phoenixaeon in Uncategorized.5 comments
I’ve been meme tagged by Dadwhowrites. Eeks! I feel all a bit Field of Dreams now – tag them and they will come and the like! So, here goes. The rules (nicked from Dadwhowrites blog):
OK, the rules of this award are that I now have to say 10 honest things about myself, and then tag 7 bloggy friends who I think are honest and true with what they have to say. Sigh. The hard part. OK, first things first. 10 honest things. This might be difficult, because I think you all know everything already. I mean, isn’t that what the award is about, being honest and spilling my guts?
Now, what haven’t I said before? There may be some repetition here, I mean, you know it all already, right?
- I am very self-depracating. I try to keep it out of the blog, but I’m sure it sometimes escapes its bindings.
- This is the first time I’ve admitted this anywhere, but I suffered with post-partum depression for the first three years of Princi’s life. OK, I know it’s only post-partum for some of that time and then it’s just plain old depression, but there really was no distinction between the two phases. I have never told anyone about this and spent many a night crippled with doubt and self-loathing for feeling useless, and crying myself to sleep.
- A reason I never spoke about it was due to the gut-wrenching fear of being told I was too unstable to take care of my Princi. (EDIT! I think I should clarify here, I should have said the gut-wrenching fear that I MIGHT be told that I was too unstable. )
- I have an all-encompassing fear of failure.
- I can’t drive because a) I have an irrational fear of roundabouts, b) there are too many idiots on the roads, and c) I never want to be judged as a stupid, incompetent, woman driver. (If I did learn to drive I would not be one of these, but big-headed men who think they know how to drive would still call me this because I am female.)
- Evil toys and dead horses. Sometimes I wonder if I scare Princi with some of the things I tell her (even though sometimes they are true things.) Case in point 1 – Evil toys. She kicked off at lunch on Sunday when she didn’t win a toy at one of those stupid grabby machines. I told her she didn’t want to take one of those toys home because they are evil and would wake up in the night and take the stuffing out of her other toys. She stopped crying and was quite happy not to win an evil toy! Case in point 2 – Dead horses. One day, when she was creating art, she started putting the PVA glue in her mouth. I told her to stop because she was eating dead horses. She stopped and hasn’t tried to eat glue since. (I think listening to Neil Gaiman stories has prepared her for things like this, and she has given some of her teddies cannabalistic tendencies!)
- I wish I could play the guitar competently, but I just don’t have the patience for practice.
- I wonder if I am doing the right thing taking this Children’s Literature course. It seems a little out of my comfort and knowledge zone and I am petrified of making a mess of it and buggering up my degree.
- I am afraid of wind – if I get blown over I am crushed by embarrassment because I can’t stand up without help.
- I think Princi has made me a better person. I used to get extremely angry with myself when I fell over, punching my legs for failing me. Now I have to ‘grin and bear it’ (as Princi quite happily told me, out of the blue, the other day) so that I don’t upset Princi. And at least being on the floor means that Princi and I can play games we don’t usually get to play!
So that is that. Hmph. Should I really be saying some of these things? Who knows. And now to the tagging… Oh, and the reasons? Just because.
And I know its a cop-out and you’ve already done this, Dadwhowrites.
Hangin’ tough. August 11, 2009
Posted by phoenixaeon in Uncategorized.Tags: writing
4 comments
Last week I brushed off my disappointment of missing the distinction on the creative writing course and the receiving of my first rejection letter. I immediately sent the rejected poems to another magazine (well, I sent the sequence, anyway) and wrote off the pass grade 2 as the result of taking a risk. I felt better about it for a little while, but today I realised just how wounded I felt by both results. I am only now trying to get my head around it.
Now, while this revelation hasn’t exactly depressed me, it has made me realise that I’m going to have to toughen up and not be so harsh on myself. There are others out there who can do that for me and if I don’t want to learn from it then that is my problem. If I want to make something of my writing - I think I do, but the backlash is making me question that – I need to get ready for some knocks and bumps along the way. I know this all sounds obvious. I thought I was ready, but I may have been expecting too much.
I am sure my writing isn’t as bad as all that. I also know that it can be improved, refined, and polished up. It’s all going to take time and practice, and the input of trusted peeps to keep me moving in the right direction. And I will move forward.
But for now… I think I will allow myself the time to lick my wounds. I am hoping the first rejection is the hardest and that I can take the next one that falls through my door/pops up in my inbox with a pinch of salt. For one thing is set in stone. I will get more rejections – in the smattering of acceptance letters I wholey intend to receive!
I have a cunning plan. June 24, 2009
Posted by phoenixaeon in Uncategorized.Tags: Poetry
2 comments
It’s been three weeks since I sent off my poetry submission and I’m already thinking of other poems I can send out. So I am planning what to do tomorrow while Princi is at nursery. The plan is this:
- Revise Abyss, gazing. Intending to send it to Starshipsofa.
- Revise Defensive Crouch. I’ll probably send this as a competition piece to Writers’ Forum or somewhere like it.
- Work on completing the first draft of Gambling on inheritance. Still struggling with it, but it is occupying far too much space at the front of my brain right now.
I’ve also decided I will collect all the poems I’ve written with Princi in mind and transcribe them into a little leather journal my sister bought for me a few Christmases ago. I’ll keep adding to it, and one day I’ll give it to Princi as a present.
Unexpected. May 31, 2009
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So. French Open. It’s always on in the background around this time of year, just so I can have a peek at what’s going on. Of course, more attention is paid to the TV when Murray, or any British player, is playing. Like today, for example. Murray played Marin Cilic, so it was a must-see match. And yay! He won 7-5, 7-6 (7-4), 6-1. But that news was slightly less shiny than the news that Robin Soderling had taken a set from Rafa Nadal. ‘Yeah,’ I thought, ‘but that doesn’t mean he’s going to win.’ How wrong could I be? Soderling was relentless, and it was one of the most aggressive tennis matches I have ever watched! I’d usually expect Rafa to pile on the pressure, but he looked normal in comparison to Soderling’s destructive game play, with Soderling winning 6-2, 6-7 (2-7), 6-4, 7-6 (7-2). It has opened up the tournament in a big way. Federer must be wetting himself in anticipation! I am so looking forward to next week.
One thing I am not so happy about is the delay in receiving my TMA mark. This is the second time it’s happened and predictably I am one of the final few left waiting. I suppose that’s what happens when you submit work early. First in, last to be marked. This is me, seriously irked. Grrrr!
At least the course is done with. I have a fun day to look forward to tomorrow. Grandand is taking Princi and I to Knowsley Safari Park. Yay! I can see the argument of whether or not to drive through the monkey enclosure happening. I love going through there, but those little buggers can be so destructive! Still, I’ll enjoy the trip anyway.
Well, late dinner today. And I am starving!
