Month: June 2020

Goodbye Ted

~ sophiesparkles321 ~ Leave a comment

I was a teenager of the nineties. It felt like it then, and maybe it’s a phase that continues today that all teens go through as my niece surely collects them, but teenage girls love teddies. I loved my teddies. I had that cute and cuddly bedroom filled with stuffed animals. I was gifted teddies. I had my precious ones from childhood. And then, in the age of Skill Testers, I mastered the art of winning them. Naturally, my collection grew to be sizeable. But teens don’t stay teens forever, and while I struggled to store them when I lived at home – in nets from the ceiling and an old-fashioned wicker trunk – inevitably I grew up and they all moved into storage.

I think they did move around a little bit. I found them last year in my parents’ spare room still stowed in the wicker trunk. But the time had come. I pulled them all out, gave them a wash and took pictures of those that were the most memorable. Gifted ones with love, still soft and fluffy ones, and my favourites. I knew they deserved a better life, to be seen as real and loved and cuddled by smaller humans. Continue reading →

Moments

~ sophiesparkles321 ~ 1 Comment

I have always been a busy girl. Priorities out of alignment. Letting work or study or clutter take up all my time. Everything else would get an excuse, sit lower down the priority chain. If I could just get X out of the way then I’ll have time for Y, I’d think. But it never happened. When I was last working, life genuinely was busy in my job, always having kids to chase, parents to answer to, my own impossible expectations to meet. I started this idea of making tea, taking that moment while the kettle boiled, to breathe, to do nothing, to think nothing, to be mindful. To notice the sound of the kettle, the smell of my herbal tea bag, the feeling of my feet on the ground, my back pressed against the counter. I didn’t drink hot drinks, especially in the Middle East, so even if I forgot to make or drink the tea, which I frequently did, in boiling the kettle, I started buying into this notion of taking a mindful moment for myself. Continue reading →

Housewarming

~ sophiesparkles321 ~ Leave a comment

I moved my stuff in my new apartment the other day. Boxes upon boxes of stuff crowding up my living room. It was stifling. Overwhelming. But full of hope. Here we are five days later and I can start to see the rainbow at the end of the storm. I think, I can see why people have housewarming parties. It’s to celebrate the joy of making it through the physically and emotionally draining process of decluttering and packing up, hauling your worldly possessions to somewhere new, and then unpacking it all, designating new places for things, buying and building new furniture pieces and making a house into a home. Well I’m on the final stretch now and after the lessons learned, and the pain and problems I’ve been through, I’ll be well and truly ready to share the joy when this is over. Continue reading →