The strangest things can make us happy, put a smile on your face and your heart jump with joy, even make you physically react with a positive action and exclamation of “yes”. I think this shows how my life has changed out of recognition, as that was my reaction when I opened the draw this morning to get a spoon for my breakfast. The dishes had been piling up for a few days in the dishwasher so yesterday I had to use a dessert spoon to eat my porridge, I know that is what most people use, but I like to use a soup spoon and when I saw one sitting there, well I reacted like an idiot, as I said, the strangest things make us happy. I have noticed over the last few years that it is more and more the small things, the things that I wouldn’t have probably even paid any attention to that now just make me happy. I like everyone else used to be too busy for the small things, but somehow once your life has been brought down to the basics, it is those very basic things that mean the most.

There is a line there that I don’t like, I have taken it out and rewritten it several times, but I can’t find any other words to describe it, but I still don’t like it, “brought down to the basics”. It sounds as though there is something wrong, or bad about the way my life is, but that just isn’t true. The only other way I could have said it was that is was “brought back to the basics”, but my life has never been this way before so that was wrong in other ways. Living a basic life, one where you eat, breath and sleep, is a basic life, the baseline were we all connect, it what we do with the rest of our time that changes our lives from basic into whatever it is we individually find happiness, value, and achievement in. I gain all of those from my life, but to the outside world, I doubt without me spelling it out, many would understand it at all. We all have been forced to see our lives through the images we see in magazines, on TV and so on, we are drip fed the illusion that a basic life is somehow boring and dull, that we have to have every gadget, all the best and most expensive of everything. To dress like a model and to be out there going to the best places, being part of a world that parties and plays, if your life isn’t covered in glitter then there is something wrong. An illusion that I clearly am not immune to, as that is way, I used the word “down”, a very dull word, for a life that is as far from dull as I can think of.

There is something really reassuring about knowing how your day is going to be, just like being housebound I never thought that living within a routine would suit me at all, as my working life was the total opposite. I thought I was someone who thrived on pressure and the unknown, as both were the facts that faced me daily, now I can’t help but question if I really did thrive on it, or if I was simply putting up with it out of a need to earn a living. Stress is the one thing that is guaranteed to make anyone ill, when I had to stop working in the office and I had to hand over the care of the call centre phone system and all other internal responsibilities, my health improved dramatically for a couple of years. The change was dramatic at first, so much so that it was them that I started to form a routine that worked for keeping my health on the level, my life became basic, calm and ordered. Six years on and I now find pleasure in the very thing that I once feared, being broke, but stress-free and happy. I don’t think there is a single person out there that wouldn’t be helped by letting their lives become just that bit more basic, I know that people have to work, but we honestly do pile on more pressures outside of work, that we all could change and become healthier for it. So this morning I opened a drawer and I found a soup spoon, a tiny thing that brightened my morning for just a few seconds, silly, but without silly, the world would be a much duller place.

Last night I sat and I watched the finale of “The Voice UK” and for the third year running the singer I didn’t like, won. We don’t watch that many reality TV programs, but even though I never pick the winner I do like “The Voice”, but no matter how much I like these programs I have never ever voted. I know, that is meant to be the whole point of reality programs, that the audience is in control and have the final choice of who the winner is, but that part just escapes me, why would I waste my money on a phone call? I can’t help wondering though how many people just like me watch these programs and don’t vote? We can’t be the only people who have never picked the phone up, so just how many people really do make the final decision, they never give out the number of votes received, it might only be a hand full for all we know. No one would accept the result of an election without hearing the figures behind it, so why do we just accept a TV show that is making money from us, not declaring the votes. To make it worse, NBC actually have in their contracts for those taking part, that if they choose they can ignore the audience vote! I know it doesn’t really matter as it is just entertainment but I just couldn’t resist asking the question, it’s just the way my brain works.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 06/04/12 – The great easter egg hunt!

The start of the Easter break, the kids are on holiday, adults off work, and the weather is dull and wet, well surprise, surprise. There are loads of things in this world that you can count on being the same forever. It is almost as though it is written in a book somewhere and when imagination is lacking, nature just does what is expected. We all have things I am sure that we remember that will fit into that thought, but there are always the exceptions.

I remember an Easter holiday before I knew I had MS and before I had lost the wide eyed world of childhood. My Grandpa on my Fathers side loved his grandchildren with a passion that only grandparents…..