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Archive for the ‘Ireland, Co Leitrim’ Category

Families can be so complicated, I am sure that it was always thus. Now we have more family than ever, even though the old fashioned extended family has gone by the wayside we now have a new fashioned extended family because we have our in-laws and we now have out-laws.

No, I don’t mean Billy the Kid or the Great Train Robbers, what I mean by out-laws is that we now have the assorted ex-in-laws.

We have our own ex-in-laws, if there are children involved and we are lucky we may have a reasonable relationship with them. Then we have not only our new partner’s family – the in-laws, we have the ex-in-laws and that relationship in whatever state it is. To top that we now also have our siblings’ ex-in-laws and possibly new in-laws as well. Phew, who has a big enough table for that family gathering?

With the best will in the world it is hard to maintain good relationships with all these new “relations”. Family responsibilities may become very confused and boundaries are ever more difficult to maintain – ah! There is the “wild west” motif sneaking in again – fence wars, boundary problems!

For many of us healthy boundaries within our immediate family may be quite enough to concentrate on, let’s face it – not many of us learned about healthy boundaries whilst growing up. By immediate family here I mean our partner and whatever children we may have between us, for some even this distinction is not clear.

I recently had a conversation with a sibling who assumed that by immediate family I meant my siblings, I was quite shocked and so was my sibling. You can imagine the conversation – sibling: but we are your family; me: yes, of course you are still my family, I now have a bigger family and more immediate family priorities with my partner and my partners children; sibling: where do we come in?; me: I actually left that unanswered and I’m still trying to figure it out, hopefully my sibling is also giving the matter some thought…

Family responsibilities are not clear and easy to deal with for many people and now with all the added family it has become even more difficult.

It may be the case that because of a particular skill you possess you may have taken on the role of doing certain jobs or having certain responsibilities within your first in-law family. When divorce or separation enters the picture that role may not be as clear as it was.

It may be that you wish to continue providing that skill to the now ex-family and there is resentment coming from others in that family, on the other hand perhaps you would prefer to keep very clear boundaries and withdraw from that level of family involvement and other family members resent you for doing that!

It’s even worse if there is simmering resentments or bitterness in the out-law family, not necessarily from your ex, sometimes these resentments come from your ex’s siblings and that can be very difficult to deal with. These feeling can sift downward in the generations, perhaps becoming exaggerated as they do and then affect the children no matter what age they are.

Even trying to write that is confusing, never mind actually trying to live it. Think I will put the kettle on and have a nice cup of tea.

I hope your day is not filled with confusion…

A beautiful morning was followed by a beautiful night. I don’t know what the night sky is like where you are dear reader, here in Leitrim it is only gorgeous right now. It’s almost nine o’clock and I have been popping out to keep an eye on the sky for the last hour or so.

Unfortunately I cannot provide a good photo of the night sky that would give any indication of the beauty I can see so words will have to do.

Yesterday’s east wind has wheeled around to the north and as I stand outside it gusts from strong breeze to good wind, it has that north wind bite to it and I stand in a sheltered spot with my back to the hills to the north of me. The trees around me are singing in the winds (aren’t I being lyrical tonight?).

Those hills behind me are blanketed in conifer forest and as the wind moves across the forests in the distance it sounds very much like waves washing up on a gravel beach.

The sky was very clear earlier and now is becoming a little cloudy, the half moon hangs above my home and it is bright enough to lighten the clouds, which are slowly moving in from the north and east.

The stars are crystal clear, sparkling bright and seem really close for some reason. It’s very cold outside and it’s well worthwhile wrapping up warm so as to be comfortable and to have a good look at the sky, enjoying it’s beauty…

What a beautiful morning this morning was, a beautiful spring morning.

Frosty Leaves

Crispy Moss

This post was prompted by Suzan over at Scrub Oak, who posted about some books she is reading at the moment. I thought I would post about the book I am currently reading.

The book is called Food Is Better Medicine Than Drugs, by Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne.
I think it would be a very informational read for anyone in healthcare or a caring situation. It may help you understand the drugs being prescribed for yourself or for someone you care about

I am still working through the book and will probably do a book review of sorts when finished. It is fascinating stuff although I have to admit that the beginning of the book, which concentrates in the pharmaceutical industry had me fairly angry, huge parallels to the energy industry and the oil/nuke boys wanting to control the entire market and have us all entirely reliant on them – oops - think that’s another post?

The book goes into quite a bit of detail about “blockbuster” drugs such as statins, high blood pressure pills, pain-killers and anti-inflammatories, anti-depressants etc. I found it fairly shocking really that so many of these drugs do so much harm, for example in Britain more people die from prescription non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) than from some cancers.

I have become aware that I don’t know what sort of drug regularity structures we have in this country, do we rely on US FDA recommendations? I must try to educate myself more. The FDA and the British body MHRA are scarily inept and often the people in charge have links to the Pharmaceutical industry, until recently it was not illegal in Britain for MHRA decision makers to be on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies – hard to believe!

The majority of these “daily” drugs are designed to deal with symptoms, not causes. If we never deal with the cause of the “unwellness” then we will always need these drugs to maintain the status quo.

Not only are some of these drugs designed to be a part of our daily lives, some of them actually produce a need for more drugs! Some NSAIDs (including aspirin) are so hard on the stomach lining that they require the use of another drug to protect the stomach and at worst sometimes cause gastro-intestinal bleeding.

I bought the book to educate myself about arthritis aches and what nutritional advice I could follow to protect myself from these aches without resorting to prescription drugs. Anyway, so far I have discovered that the usual healthy food advice applies in reducing the aches and pains.

Supplements such as chondroitin, glucosomine, msm, omega 3, epa and dha (healthy fats) are all advised for daily consumption to ease inflammation and should be just as useful as taking a daily NSAID.  Naturally daily exercise is also important.
That’s what I gleaned so far, I had skipped ahead and had a quick look at the relevant chapter after I bought the book so that I could do some supplement shopping too before heading home and now I am reading from the beginning.
I am hoping that about six weeks from now I will know if the new regime of supplements and taking nuts, seeds and hemp oil will help ease the aches I have started to feel over the last two months.
I am guessing that doing all those healthy things would help delay the onset of the aches for some people. Obviously these are just my opinions and should not be taken as advice to anyone.

Yeah, we had more of the white stuff today!

Snow Deep

I had a lovely morning, I reckoned that the rain would come at some time today so I was enjoying the snow while I could. I did all the morning jobs listening to that lovely crunch underfoot as I filled water buckets to feed the big pot on the stove for hot water for dish washing, decanted spring water from the large outdoor containers into the container that we use indoors, fed the cats and swept the snow off the PV (photovoltaic) panels.

Sweeping the PV Panels

I did the morning jobs at a nice easy pace, enjoying the work, knowing that I would go for a walk when I had finished, knowing that I would walk uphill a bit today to see the views from up higher before the fog moved in.

The Hill Road

Before I emptied the compost bucket into the compost heap I had to clear the snow off the waiting heap first. I knew that the cut grass pile that we use to cover the compost heap was running low, I had intended to move a few of the smaller grass piles closer to the compost area but the snow made that difficult so I emptied the ashes from the fire over it instead.

Snowy Views

I went in to light the fire and I was watching the morning weather forecast say that it was raining whilst it was still snowing outside. However I suspected that they probably would be right eventually so I grabbed a banana and the camera bag and headed off for a walk in the falling snow.

The Tree Line

The Snow Fence