Little Things Please Little Minds

.. and mine is no exception.

Several things are going on in my life in a strangely orchestrated fashion, but it would be daft to go on about dreams, delayed-effect life changing experiences and spiritual direction in a post about a kitchen spatula.

Daft, however is my middle name. You have been warned.

Daft bit here:

A while back I had this really, truly horrible dream. The kind that wakes you in the middle of the night, keeps you in a between-worlds state until daylight and is sitting there like an ominous vulture on your shoulders, when you wake. Here it is, if you're bothered. At the time I brushed it off as physically, more than subconsciously influenced - the side effect of external matters rather than a penny dropping on the flat and calm surface of the near-stagnant pool otherwise known as my psyche. Or something.

In short, I was killed, with nothing left to do but get on with the process of being in shock, pre death. The fight stopped and my 'enemy' helped me to a comfy chair. No, no mentions of Spam, promise. Nor Soft Cushions, (and here, because I couldn't find a Spanish Inquisition video, is something, erm, different. But not completely.)

The thing is, as any psychologist could argue, it may not really matter what the dream actually meant, what matters is what, ultimately, my subconscious accepted it to mean. This is that:

With some overlap between them I have gone from teenage (always a screwed up state to be in) to a bad, oppressive first marriage, to 23 years of being the defensive parent of four kids, two of them with rather tiring special needs needing a lot of care and a lot of explaining. I've been on amber or red alert for the past thirty years, or there abouts, like I lived constantly at the corner of a boxing ring, ready for the bell to go. Human messes took up all my time, saving hearts from getting squidged by a bad dad or a bad school system or whatever, took everything, and (cough) I got to the point where I was fighting against myself, simply out of habit.
Stuck in a pugilistic rut.
Becoming routinely focused on the intense things in life.
Narrow minded.

In the dream I attacked me, I fought me and I killed me, or at least the bit that was so passive aggressive (did, did, and died).

I am out of the ring, then. Boxing career over. Gloves off and no going back. Finally, finally I am looking round for tea and biscuits, a comfy chair and a nice magazine. Finally I quite fancy having a few material comforts and pleasures.

Looking at these before now would have been like being asked to go window shopping for dreams at the expense of conceding the match. It wasn't on, and all that daft stuff like owning a home or having a holiday or fancy clothes or new, well, anything, even having any item 'just so' (instead of nearest, cheapest and 'it'll do') - to be honest it all looked to me like the pointless pursuits of those with too much time on their hands. Yup, I guess I'd had my martyr's hat on so long, I was getting a superiority complex from it.

So anyway:

Here I am, then, free (from myself) to relax and look at all the pretty things. Free to get ideas. One friend is helping me work through what it is that I want; I've also been picking up the philosophy behind things like NLP and Huna, albeit originally with my tongue firmly in my cheek.

I find I am actually now ready to believe that if I sit here and focus, even on material things, the universe will help me out. That if I decide what I want to have/want to be and relate that to being 'all about the real me' (yes okay its always all about me, but the question is, which one? Pardon?), in other words if I can see these things as natural expressions of who I am right now, then we're only one step away from the Huna/Silva idea that visualising yourself as having something already is the surest way to get it.

Yeah (cough again,) sorry, that just got too frilly for me, too. But I'm up for believing it.

The kitchen spatula!

Phew, I knew we'd get here.

This morning, given the date and all, an msn friend and I were discussing the pros and cons of tossing over turning. Pancakes.

Neither of us, however, could remember what the turner-flipper thingummy was called, so I went googling, and discovered that some online kitchen shops simply call them turners, whilst others call them spatulas. It seems to be down to personal preference.

The odd thing was (and I swear, this just doesn't happen to me; ever) I found myself going all girly and daydreaming about kitchen utensils; scrolling page after page of ravioli tins, pasta machines, garlic presses, designer coffee pots; you name it, and actually enjoying myself. No little voice in the back of my head telling me I'm being daft, or selfish, or greedy. Peace. I started getting a picture of my dream kitchen, which, until today, I genuinely didn't know existed. Tres bizarre.

To give you a rough picture, I still have the gas cooker I bought new as end-of-range (on sale) 23 years ago (plus or minus a few bits like the numbers on the buttons, or the handles on the grill pan). The cupboards are 1970s Council cupboards old enough to have traditional hinges on the doors and were here when we moved in. The electrical goods have been bought only as their predecessors blew up, on sale and from the nearest shop with the quickest delivery, except the fridge freezer which we had time to shop around for and therefore purchased second hand. No dishwasher.

Like I said - I had a serious case of 'It'll-do-itis'. Opus Dei's got nothing on me, mate, I've been birching my soul, by the looks. Bloody bonkers.

The kitchen spatula (but really, this time):

So my mum has this family heirloom kitchen spatula. Don't laugh. It was my gran's and was kept and used because it is just such a fantastic shape. Worn in, over the years, it always was just the right thickness, with an odd angle at the tip, which made turning things over in the pan a lazy, easy, flick of the wrist, instead of the shovelling motion you have to use with the modern, straight ended things. These days, scrubbed to a sliver over the last hundred years, it has this slight curve to it like worn silver, fits my mum's hand and 'flipping' angle perfectly and everything she ever fries turns obediently on command like something out of a Disney movie. You sort of expect mushrooms to giggle and burgers to sing a little chorus in tune with cartoon bluebirds on the windowsill. Honestly.

I grew up using that spatula, and looking back, I've never found anything quite so handy. If you think I'm nuts, that's fine, but just imagine being given something different to peel potatoes with. You're used to what you're used to and you want what you want.

So here (finally, after searching about 60 google links) is my spatula. IT'S MINE, I TELL YOU! Even though I don't own it yet.
Fairly typically, I can only find it in an American store that doesn't do exports. Just as typically, a search for the manufacturer 'World Cuisine' came up fruitless from this end.

So.

So I'm just going to bookmark the page, focus on this decision, and let the Universe help out. I want.

Sending vibes out now.......

"Here spatchy-spatchy-spatchy, come to mummy."

Tags: MontyPython, Dreams, Spatula, Huna