JuniperBlue

The more I read, the more I want to learn.

Picking up on a relatively new interest of mine, Mr Fox took me out yesterday to a big out-0f-town shopping centre and bought me this.  I’ve been filling my spare time reading internet articles and blogs relating to Buddhism, but having something tangible in my hands makes me feel as if I’m being a bit more active in my learning.  Of course I’m still pretty clueless, so if anyone knows any helpful sites or other books that would be of interest, you know where my comments box is.

We’re having a good weekend, all in all.  We bought a shiny new iMac which Mr Fox has hogged!  I don’t mind really, I have my laptop so I doubt I’ll use it all that much, but it gives him the excuse to sit at a desk in the spare room and look important.  Today however he is up to his eyes in what I like to call Tax Return Hell, buried under a mountain of letters, invoices and statements.  If he doesn’t emerge from the room by the evening I’ll call in a search party.

Tomorrow it is my father’s birthday, so many happy returns to him.  Sadly I won’t seem him on the day since I live a couple of hundred miles away from my family, but he has some good mail winging it’s way to him.  My brother turns eighteen next month which scares me to death - I remember the night he was born, hell I even remember my mother telling my sister and I that she was pregnant with him!   I have no idea what I could get him other than the usual aftershave/clothes/jewellery.  I’d like to get him something a bit special since it is his eighteenth, but… I’m clueless.  I’ll check Etsy, maybe it’ll surprise me.  Then another birthday on the horizon!  This time my sister’s twenty-second in March.  Luckily she won’t be back in the country until mid-April so I have a little extra time to get her something.

The Metformin is making me so tired; once it gets to ten or eleven at night I have to drag myself up to bed before I crash out on the couch.   I’m really hoping this passes, I don’t fancy spending goodness knows how long feeling so exhausted all the time.

The house is completely quiet.

I’m showered, wrapped up in layers of sweet-smelling creams, warm pyjamas and a stupidly huge hoody whilst the baby sleeps upstairs and Mr Fox is out for a while. Thursday evenings are my evenings, I treasure them almost as much as (now horribly rare) long lie ins, huge cups of coffee and indulgent afternoons spent browsing in book shops. My daily yoga sessions, whilst no doubt very basic, are definitely having an effect on me; I feel calmer, more focussed and my patience levels are through the roof, which can only be a bonus when I have a toddler constantly leaping over “the line” and waving mischievously to me from the other side.

I’m also trying to work up the courage to visit the local Buddhist centre at some point. I wouldn’t call myself a Buddhist, far from it since I know very little about it, but after doing some (well, a lot) reading and having my interest piqued by BBC 2’s Extreme Pilgrim (horrible title but amazing programme, especially the first episode (once he moved from the slightly touristy Shaolin temple in China) I’d like to learn some more. I’ve found some fantastic blogs on the subject written by people with knowledge I can only dream about so I’ll keep reading, keep learning and see how I go from there.