stuff and things

I was going to write about co-dependency, how I finally understand what it means - it does not mean what I thought it meant - and how I now realise how deeply afflicted with it I am, on various levels.

Trying not to allow it free reign is ... interesting ... and I was going to tell you a funny story about a funeral, but the blogging energy comes and then goes before I can get to my slow moving laptop, to be honest. It's hard to drag myself out of the sea of Meh to actually tell a story. But yes. I see myself.


Currently occupying my brain (though fast being driven out my neighbours' parking space shenanigans) is what to spend money on. Mostly, we have No Money and we never spend it on anything. We lived for seven years with a toilet that didn't flush, you might remember.

Of late, we've painted the kitchen, put up a new curtain pole, hung my mother's lovely old curtains, and we have finally, finally, found and bought some new plates and pasta plates that I looooove (also blue, everything's blue, blue is the best) and actually spend money on them - seventy quid, so far, and I plan to go back and get cereal bowls and maybe even side plates. I love them, they're so pretty.

Nice things soothe my soul.

Except, so often they don't provide what I hoped they would. Like this very expensive bed I'm in - very expensive mattress was never comfortable, is even less so 12 years later, and then twice as expensive again bed I fell for is ... shit. And it's huge. It was meant for a family and now I'm the only one in it. I would like to sell it (though probably I'll be able to sell it for an eighth of its original price) and buy a normal sized bed, and get a normal sized mattress that would stop me having back issues. But something that isn't made of nasties. The problem is, in Ireland, very little alternative, non-toxic stuff is actually on sale here, and after being so badly burned, I'd like to actually try it first. But I'd be tempted, at this stage, to just get something unhealthy, but comfortable, because maybe a happy back now is an ok trade off for ill health later. Sigh. I don't know.

I want a new bathroom, or two. Not the hideous mouldbox we've lived with for nearly 20 years. But maybe I have to buy a fucking parking space instead, because the stress of dealing with our neighbours will send us all insane.

A new radiator system. A stove for the sitting room (to replace the open fire I put in that is horrible unecological and has a smokey chimney).

I'd like a new food processor, I have to admit, but after producing a cold Christmas dinner this year, I also want a lovely new range cooker with loads of ovens, except they all seem to get terrible reviews, and what's the point of having loads of ovens if none of them work well? No more millstones around my neck, please. The trouble is, now I've bonded with the look of the range cooker, a normal cooker no longer delights me, and I might just live with my shit one instead of buying anything else. It's an impasse. In my virtual spending world, that is.

Complicating all this hypothetical cash wrangling is my consumer/recycler's guilt about buying anything at all. I really don't know how people do it.

But, in fairness, my plates still make me happy every day. Maybe I should just amass a whole dinner set, and never invite anyone to dinner in my cold, scruffy, inhospitable house.

I'd better go to sleep. I'd love to dream of a lottery win, but it may just be parking anxiety dreams.