BEAM ME UP SCOTTY! Another teleporting accident waiting to happen

For the last few weeks I've felt a bit like I'm being beamed up by Scotty but still haven't rematerialised anywhere, let alone the Starship Enterprise. So my material self is currently a sparkly set of atoms bouncing off each other in limbo waiting for Scotty to somehow re-organise them back in to something half way resembling the original version of me. 

Once I explain my current exploded self, it will make complete sense, of course (I am being sarcastic but sort of not at the same time) Firstly the loveliest of friends found out she had Breast Cancer, and is now suffering through Chemotherapy, I can't even start to explain what this has done to my heart let alone hers and her beautiful family's. Secondly I ended up in the paper smiling broadly in stark contrast to my what my insides look like and then writing for The Punch last week, so feeling a little out there and suddenly awkward/embarrassed which is a bit unexpected. And lastly I am preparing to return to work in January after what will be fifteen months of maternity leave. 

All these things in differing degrees are disturbing the rhythm of my life, which pretty much resembles that of a toddler's, seeing I'm hanging out with two of them most of the time. And if you haven't heard, toddlers LOVE a consistent schedule, marked by simple, repetitive things like eating and playing and sleeping. Either new Mums and toddlers have a lot in common or I am severely stunted because with all this ambiguity and sadness and exposure, the schedule is well and truly out the window. And there's a lot of screaming going on in my head that is tending to resemble my 14 month old's reaction to an overstay at the supermarket.

Fact: It is difficult to write when you're screaming, even if only on the inside. 

So I suppose this is a lame attempt to explain what I perceive as a negative change in the content of my blog and tweet stream of late. (BTW Hubby has banned the iPhone from our bedroom which doesn't really matter as my atomised brain is finding it tough to come up with any twitty banter that would see followers lunging for the retweet button. Because, of course, before I got involuntarily stuck in a Star Trek transporter that was happening all the time. These thoughts remind me of why my husband married me, that is for my calm and logical mind.) 

To steer this away from a list of excuses, let's just leave it as this is me trying to paint a little picture of where I'm at. It is not a particularly nice place, my stomach always seems to be churning just a tad and my usual equilibrium that enables me to share all manner of nonsense seems a little damaged. We have the best engineers from Star Trek working on re-assembling me in the correct way, that is my usual incorrect self, and hopefully some time soon you may see some stream of consciousness stuff spewing forth here - defining at last, my ideal life. 

P.S. Some trivia only the amazing Jenny "The Bloggess" Lawson may appreciate: William Shatner is the only person to have actually said the exact phrase "Beam me up Scotty" in the audio adaptation of his novel Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden. Now there's a great dinner party opener!

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9/11: In their shoes

© DailyMail.co.uk

I saw this picture and thought it was 9/11, it is not, but as I looked at the shoes I immediately felt sad for the thousands that had lost their lives on that fateful day ten years ago. The 2977 people who died had picked out shoes too, maybe with the help of their partner or maybe to spite them. They may have had their children with them, and asked them to stop jumping off the couch in the store. They had thought about the colour, the stitching, the material and the price, what they didn’t know was they were buying the shoes they would die in. 

And that decision to buy those shoes that day, like so many other every day rationalisations, was nowhere in their mind as many came to grips with the inescapable situation they were in. Instead we read of text messages of love and gratitude to partners, parents and children. We hear of stories of life-threatening heroism. We see pictures of sadness, trauma, destruction. Those every day dramas that happily rocked their worlds the day before, the weeks before were dwarfed into insignificance when faced with the end. 

As we look back on days like today I can’t help but feel foolish and a little ashamed, as they probably would too if they were lucky enough to be onlookers rather than victims. I literally spent 20 minutes deciding where to park today. I spent at least 2 hours this week feeling sorry for myself, and I told my husband off for picking up our two-year-old during a night terror instead of comforting him in his cot. I’m not saying that my feelings and decisions are stupid and wrong, I just wish when the small stuff happens that annoys us, the stuff we heap importance on, or that doesn’t make sense to our way of thinking,that we would see it for what it is: insignificant in the long term. 

Instead I wish I knew that if I was about to die I wouldn’t remember that my husband consistently put the whites in with the darks or that he doesn't always put the seat up. What probably would cross my mind would be "I wish I’d said ‘I love you’ more, I wish I’d been kinder and more understanding, I wish I'd spent more time with my kids, and I wish I’d been truer to myself". 

Days like today are precious because they remind us of the reality of our mortality, they give us perspective and inspire us to make more of the life we still have as we remember those that weren’t given that chance. We should stare at this disaster, we should soak in the pictures of grief and loss, we should try to fathom the feelings that would compel people to leap to their sure death and we should cry for them and for ourselves, especially if we are not truly living the life we have. In the end, when all is said and done, no one will remember our shoes, including us. 

As you watch the horror again, don't look away, stare at their faces and pay them tribute by celebrating the life you've been given today and hopefully tomorrow too.

©MyIdeaLife, 2011. All rights reserved. Images remain the copyright of their original source.

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