Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

I cannot tell you what a horrible night it is. Listening to Anything but the Girl. Utterly white, middle of the road, bland and unchallenging. It's bliss. I love it. Yesterday i forgot that the time went forward for the summer. Not that it makes a great difference. The weather is still wet. That said each year has been different since i began taking notice. We think that spring should be like that and summer like this. Nothing of the sort. It just does whatever it wants to do. I know this because every year something 'unseasonal' occurs to piss off the good folk of the RSPB. One year it was a really really hot and dry February and March. Then it rained for most of April and all the birds that had built nests had them swept away. The year before last the sand eels didn't show up in the Gulf Stream and the seabirds on Rathlin starved. Another year it snowed in the middle of April. Yet another it rained all of June, July and August. Five years ago blackbirds were building ...

Yesterday my mother did childminding 6,000 miles away. We were Skyping and she watched Ghin shuffle about like Yoda, in his dressing gown, admonishing me with comments like Eh, careful he's gone into the hall. Oi, watch, what is he doing now. It was weird, like having a vitual child alert, but in Singaporean. As she worked away, i washed dishes. I have gotten used to this now, but this was clearly a novelty for my parents, the visual of me doing domestic work. My dad even went so far as to say, You're a scholar you know Steph. Washing dishes! I maybe or have been a scholar, but it wasn't Hogwart's a graduated from, so the dishes ain't going to magically do themselves now are they? However, i did say, it is because of that that it's important to do the dishes - there is hope for the world when scholars do the dishes. There's this great passsage in Chogyam Trungpa's Shambala, which sums this up. Great Eastern Sun vision....is based on appreciating ourselve...

Here's the vid after all that... (Yep, i't's back to said drawing board) I've been trying to upload this video of Ghin doing the laundry but it isn't happening. As i do this, i ruminate about nagas, google aimlessly and wonder what Spa i can find in Northern Ireland which i can possibly go to to take a break from the rigors of motherhood. It turns out there are precisely three spas here. It sounds unbelieveable, but i suppose the undertaking of a Spa is a pretty big one. All that luxury and no one to use it...possibly. I wonder how much longer this is going to take. I'm so bored... I have put so a fair bit of weight since my return. I calculate that if i start running everyday now, which should theoretically be easier since it isn't so dark for so long now, i would be able to get back to where i was within two months. If i dieted it might take a little less time. It would be nice to be happy in somekind of swimsuit for the summer. Especially when it ent...

Here are some pictures of Ghin enjoying Irish Stew. Born to eat it, he is. He works hard for his money, uh ha, uh ha, so hard honey honey... We had a weird day today. It consisted of much waiting around to find out if we were to attend a wake - when i say we, i don't include the children. In the end i didn't go. Childcare was somewhat haphazard and i became too tired. It was also too late for Ghin. I look at the things i am surrounded by and sometimes a chill goes through me. My life...was this how it was meant to turn out? Two beautiful kids, i never ever underestimate that - whole civilisations give their eyeteeth for this - but beyond that...it reminds me of when i was thirteen and i thought, i can kinda see my life until i reach 16 - and then what? What will i do with it? Watched The Apprentice today - it's a new episode, the English version. I previously couldn't bear it, but for some reason it now makes entertaining viewing. Perhaps watching twenty somethings with...

As i continue practising, the most difficult practise i discover is humility. Not in general, but when i know i have overcome a difficult situation. Feeling proud that i have done is is an indication at how new this still is to me. I know when i am able to not go, well done Steph! is when i've arrived. On a move well executed, it is currently impossible for me to go (to myself), hey i did ok there, didn't i. And then the after thought of this self congratulations, i'm better than everyone else. That's what really pisses me off. Perhaps if i could say, i did really well there, and i am no better than anyone else - because other people have been doing this for ages and i've only just discovered it, might help. I think i'll try doing that the next time. The upshot of this is a great longing to have humility. I think that the state of humility is the state of ultimate grace because it means that you've managed to practise the way in a very concrete manner - and ...

This was a picture i think which we took of Oisin probably when he had just gone one. Possibly around the age as Ghin. For some reason i keep thinking he was older - maybe around two...but how could that be right when he had just started walking? Anyhow, he looks so like Ghin here. And so like Peter as well. When he walks about now, he keeps his hands in his pocket, just like daddy, and the other day, i could have sworn that it was Peter from behind when i saw him - all serious and thoughtful. But we always think that Ghin looks different from Oisin. The truth is, that he's a lot more like him than we remember.

Ghin attacks the Easter egg ... Oisin makes an Easter braclet for me from the eggs he collected from the Easter bunny. Us three... as Sir Topham hat would say... chaos and confusion.... Easter 2008 came and went with some but not too much chocolate. The Easter bunny dutifully showed up and deposited his tiny sparkly parcels in the garden - Oisin, who does not like chocolate as much as a child should, found the hunt more egg-citing (badam!) than the chocolate itself. Peter got a white chcolate egg from G&B and Ghin helped him eat it - as you see in the pictures. We didn't do much else, apart from think silently about Peter being away for the next week or so. It is weird, but we now miss him even more that we have Ghin. I think it's the small things, like the way Ghin wakes up each morning and shouts over Dad! Or the goodnight kisses. Or just watching, sharing Ghin's staggering around. We have refixed the Skype and now are online with my parents again. They are thrilled w...

Ghin when he had his cold. Sipping apple juice while on the road. I feel so sorry for him - for a child who hates the car he spend so much time in it. Here's one with the retro setting on. Oisin on the last day of school. Getting ready for their singing performance. Part of his Spring book - it reads The Mother Hen Awaits Her Chicks. Now according to Oisin his teacher came up with the statement - but according to the teacher he did. I have no idea who to believe. I don'r really mind either way. Because the school is just the kind of gentle, tender and nurturing environment which i have wanted for him and myself. Essay I'm really sorry having been so remiss to anyone who still bothers checking this page. I've been working on the school's website and time isn't much. It makes no sense, but i somehow feel DEEPLY RESPONSIBLE for the house and the state or rather statelessness it's in. Peter and Oisin do their share as well, but i could be doing so much more - th...

Everything is important, everything is intense and of the greatest interest. that's what ghin tells me as he points and babbles at the washing machine - or Leapfrog drum. I can't tell which. But i answer him anyway, Yes, i say, bring it here - in case it is the drum. He ignores me. his attention has shifted to his bowl of cereal lying on the floor. A soggy heap of cheerios which he has drizzled with apple juice. He picks it up and begins shovelling bits into his mouth as he walks away. Even his walking is urgent. He draws his arms up and goes off i his mini walk-run. It's the kind of walk like the ones which walkerthoners do. Bach's A minor violin concerto - a tribute to Anthony Mhingella. We are here and we are gone - and the essence in this life is its sweetness. What do we have if we have ignored it? The distillation, the wisdom of the bees, to sip this colourless liquid and transform it into a healing gold. That is our duty, says Bach, i have plucked this out of the...

There is the outside and on the outside the birds are singing evensong. Evensong - sweet, filled with the day's longings, filled with the news of possibilities and impossibilities, filled with a completion and satisfaction which we humans shall never know. Or we could know - we never choose to know. Sometimes, just sometimes, i do touch it, briefly, for a moment - for a moment i am entered into the birdsong and i am bouyant, lifted by a fluttering beyond the register of any instrument. A month has nearly passed since my last entry. My days between that and this have been filled too with the comings and goings of wings. Flutterings such as the ones the starlings that gather twigs and fluff make in the garden. The busy-ness of business - the business of bringing up a child. Children. Ghin has begun to toddle more certainly with greater certainty. The stomps. The independance. He delights in this. He giggles as he reaches daddy. Daddy he shouts. Truck he is beginning to say. Dog! Cloc...