Activity and attempting to answer the prompt for today.......

Oy, I tell you, I am being thwarted on every front here. I grabbed the chance to do the varnish when the rain was absent, and somehow, a few of the names have furred. I must have had the can too close. So here we are, sanding, painting and getting an emergency few tags ready to replace the ones I am not thrilled with. In actual fact, I think Jackie would have been happy with them all, but,,,,, hmmm. This is me here.

I can't tell you how productive I have been this morning. I amaze myself. I did a coat of the glue mix on the other side of the stars, and they should be nearly dry. I sewed up all the now stuffed hearts. I have cut all the ribbons to stitch on once I have wielded the pinking shears. I have been to aqua, varnished the other side of the tags and other wooden things, wound all my ribbon into manageable coils once I had spent half an hour untangling them all. I have had lunch, cut, sanded and painted the tags, and here I am.

I need a nap.

Oh, and I have also done a load of washing and hung it up on the airers to dry.

I left aquazumba with damp hair today and I just caught a glimpse of it in the mirror. That would be the minus side of all the positives today. I look like a scarecrow. I was talking to Marge on Skype last night and she commented on the wild hair then. It is worse now. I told her I had been out in the rain and was not bothering because it would be all nice and smooth after aqua. Unfortunately the scarecrow prevails. I think I will go and do something about that just as soon as I have pinking sheared the 36 hearts.

And the rain is about to fall.

Well, the hair is still a mess, it is 4 hours later and it is dark. But the hearts just need the ribbon on them. And the stars are dry. Fear not, I will not run through yet another impressive list. I have supper to think about next. I forgot to defrost anything. But we will not be starving. I can paint and cook at the same time.

So, in the interests of trying to write something even vaguely edifying today, I popped over to the Blogher NaBloPoMo Writing Prompts page. Now I am trying to think of what the bravest thing I have ever done could possibly be.

I just phoned a friend who has known me forever and asked what the bravest thing I have ever done could be. I wish I could tell you I had rescued a child from under the feet of a rampaging elephant or something. That is not going to happen. Sigh. I could do with some really fascinating events to relate right now. I lived in Africa, for heaven's sake. Life doesn't work that way.

Bravery is a "relative" word. It is hard to assess myself, because bravery is more of an objective assessment, made by someone else. You see, I sort of wade in to things, and never assess things like risk. Are these things brave? Maybe to other people. To me, they are just doing what seems right at that moment. Coming to a strange country as a new bride? Brave? Probably. I was young, you see, and I never thought of bravery then. It never occurred to me that it may be brave. I just did it. Taking on the might of the NHS? Probably. But I never gave that a second thought. It was the right thing to do. I knew, you see. I knew something was wrong. And that fight goes on.

Being in the middle of student riots attempting to end apartheid? Probably. I was young then, again. It was right. Brave? In retrospect, definitely. Battling with school authorities for friends? For my children? Ask any mother what she would do for her children. I am willing to bet she would never use the word brave. Just what needed to be done. The way I have dealt with the CRPS was another of my friend's suggestions. I am a fighter in that I do not ever want to be seen as a victim. I battle to be normal. To look normal. I will not be a "sufferer". I will be Linds. End. Of. Story.

Doing the inquests for Geoff and those 2 other people a few years later. Brave? Not to me. It had to be done. It is very hard to assess one's own actions, you know. To attribute the word, "brave" to one's self. Or anyway, it is for me. I find it almost impossible to find something to list here, but others, on the outside see things differently. I have a mind which computes things very fast, and everything I do is instinctive. If I stopped to think, or assess risk or wonder what the fallout would be, I would not be me.

Walking into a classroom for the first time.....now that was brave. Teenagers can be monstrous. Sitting next to my Dad as life slowly ebbed - I would never have chosen to be anywhere else, but to someone else, maybe watching someone you love die is brave. Watching Geoff. Brave? It never entered my mind. I would never have been anywhere other than there next to him for those long hours. But brave?

I am not a wimp. I don't back down from things. I face life head on, and don't spend a great deal of time weighing up possibilities, - assessing risk in another parlance. The bain of my life is our multitude of Health and Safety Directives. Do you know that if you use a ladder for work, you have to go on a course to learn how to use a ladder safely????? Just climb the stupid thing. That is my attitude.

Once, a few years ago, a young boy got into trouble in a quarry full of water. He was drowning. And - I will NEVER forget this - 2 policemen watched him drown, because Health and Safety rules said they couldn't dive in and save him. They may not have been able to save him. But at least they could have tried. I would have passed them at a flat out run and flung myself into that water to try. Un*******believable.

I will never pander to the obvious...think before I speak. I am not good at watching what I say. But I am not by nature nasty. I think fast, do and live with the consequences.

Brave???

Maybe to other people I may seem brave. I like to think I am a warrior at times, but always for other people. (I am not so warrior-like when it comes to my own battles.) Other times I am a bowl of mush. But I never ever assess what I may have done in terms of bravery. No-one does something and then thinks - Wow, I am so brave. Unless they have an injection and don't wail. That is brave. If you are 3.

So the answer to that question - "what is the bravest thing you have ever done" is this:

I live my life the way I have chosen. I will throw myself into battles for everyone I love without thinking of consequences. I try hard to be a voice at times, for those without a voice. I never stop to think. This can be a major failing, but it is part of me. I don't want to live a cautious life. I don't want to be an onlooker/bystander. I want to be part of life. Risks, the unknown - all part of life.

I am getting to it - just hang on a moment......

The bravest thing I have ever ever done, is to write. To dare to put the words down on the computer screen, paper, anywhere. Me. This is me here. That takes courage. Yet there is no fear of failure, you see, because I simply have to write, and I had to start somewhere. That is why I love the blogging thing. I write. I say things. You read. We interact.

It is a start, anyway.

I am just a normal everyday 58 year old woman. Welcome to my life.