Time to Chill #TheMMLinky
By Jeannette | January 15, 2018
Christmas seems a long time ago now, even though it’s barely been three weeks ago. I don’t think the fact we were gifted flu for the Christmas break helped, it passed by in a haze of sore bones, lemsips and hankies.
We are now firmly into a (rainy) January and life is busy, weekends go very quickly and it can be tricky to find ways to chill and relax, especially if there is always something to get done.
We all have different ways of winding down here, some complement each other and some definitely don’t!
For Hubbie, it’s sport. Either watching it on the tv, a local game or Sky Sports News. Anything and everything to do with sport.
T is much the same, sport is his wind-down. He plays a lot of sports, both at school and when he meets his friends, a football is always involved too. His way of relaxing is with FIFA 18, bouncing on his balls of his feet as he plays, his mind buzzing as he compiles stats and pits teams against each other in his fantasy leagues.
Our D loves to read, anything and everything! We have a tradition that, after she’s had a hospital visit, she can choose a new book, it’s an incentive to tolerate whatever form the appointment may take and – as long as there aren’t any blood tests! – it works. Her choice last week was The Witches by Roald Dahl.
Another way in which she winds down stems from something she’s always done, prancing or pacing. When she was younger, she’d put her toys/books into the centre of the room and zone out whilst she walked around them, now it’s a prance from one end of the hall/garden/her bedroom to the other, totally in her own world.
D and I share a love of music and this is another wind-down for us, she’ll dictate what we listen to/sing along to but, as she’s been brought up with my love of 80’s music, it’s – generally – okay. I’ll sometimes hear her humming an Ultravox/Bananarama tune and she’ll be amazed when I say “ooh, that’s …”, she’ll be unaware/forget that I first heard that song years ago!
For me, nothing beats getting immersed into a good book/music/crochet/catching up over a decent coffee. In particular, having a crochet pattern to do with a measure of stitch counting keeps my mind on that and stops my mind wandering as to other tasks I should be doing – useful, if like me, clearing my mind of all the “day to day stuff” around SN parenting/health issues/”to do” lists can be consuming.
One of the cats always dives under whatever I’m making as soon as I pick it up too!
I wouldn’t call this her “wind-down” as Itsey spends about 85% of her day asleep! Such a hard life!
As I said, sometimes our wind-downs collide. Yesterday “Death Becomes Her” was on the TV and D was quite fascinated by all the special effects as Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn (literally) tore chunks out of each other. I had explained to her that it was a comedy and obviously it wasn’t real life and she found it very funny.
So, that’s us. How do you wind down?
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