It has not been a good week.  It's been a bad week.  In fact it's been a stinking week when I've been driven to ask major life questions such as would it be wrong to kill my new boss given her terminal levels of stupidity?*

And since the answer to this  question, of course is a great big emphatic "Yes Macy, killing your boss is wrong", let's ask another question.

Let's ask if Buddhism has anything to help this situation. Because this is a question we haven't asked before,,,

Becaue my yoga teacher is a fan, and because yoga is a Good Thing, and becaue as far as mad ideas go I've had worse, let's get in the car with the Cherub and head for the hills; where, yes, Scotland does have a Buddhist centre. If you want to head there yourself it's conveniently located in the middle of nowhere.

Let's head off out the house in a hurry, with only Google map instructions as a guide, and Cherub as reluctant pilot....Let's start worrying that we are heading the wrong way after heading off the Edinburgh by pass and failing to see any road numbers that match Google's.
Let's spend the best part of an hour driving through small villages with no maps but friendly locals with no idea where the Buddhist centre is, before washing up  in a Starbucks in a service station beside the M74
Let's get a Starbucks and  wonder if this is really worth it, before heading off, this time with a map.

An out of date map as  it turns out.

Let's, in other words, spend the best art of four hours traveling to the Kagyu Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist centre in the west.

And having turned the prayer wheels, and walked through the herb garden and sat in the temple -  let's give up being a smart arse and cynic, and general know it all. Let's hear it from the Dalai Lama

“If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.” 

It's better isn't it? It's great.  Be assured, on Monday New Boss can expect to be positively cudgeled with compassion


*
(For yes Penny has been replaced, and never have so many been so quickly reminded of the old addage "Hold onto Nurse for fear of finding something worse...")

Good morning blog world! How are YOU doing?

This morning I'm looking at my nose.

That's right.  My nose. I have been studying it very carefully in a good clear light.
 I know, I can can hear you asking, what's wrong? What's the problem with your nose Mace? To which I can only reply. Nothing. There's nothing wrong with my nose at all - that's the problem.

See, it was a thought I had.  There I was, applying a newand  incredibly expensive engineered skin serum, when it occurred to me that I never put this stuff on my nose. I don't know why not.  Laziness? Cutting out an extra 30 seconds from my morning routine every day? Misguided economies? With the price of this stuff who can afford to do their whole face?  Just basic wilfulness??  Anyhoos, the fact stands, that in all my thirty-odd years of dutifully applying face serums, creams, moisturizers, youth lotions and what not to my face I have never applied any to my nose.

That's right, for whatever reason, my nose has never had the benefit of moisturiser, serum or youth dew.

So this must show right? Since my nose has not benefited from peptides, Retinol A, wrinkle reduction, or revitalization of its epidermis, it should by definition look a good couple of decades older than the rest of my face which has benefitted from such miracle creams.

And it doesn't.

Unbelievable I know.  But I can see no difference.

You know your input is valued on such major questions. Feel free to advise....

What do you know.  Turns out that three deaths* in just over three and a bit years is my limit.
Turns out I'm a lightweight that way.
Turns out a retreat under a metaphorical duvet was needed after the second deathbed, and the second body, and the second funeral and the second choosing of coffins, and readings and cremations and it all just brought back everything - and I didn't even have the bloody pills I was prescribed after the dog died.

But let's skip to the good news. There's a limit to how long I can spend in a self pitying fog.

Which is lucky because The One Remaining Aunt (TORA!) has also had her problems. My mother has been visiting her in her dreams.  No really.  TORA is quite insistent on this.  And because TORA is not the most sensible person on the  planet, well maybe she is psychic, so you know, hang in with me here.  Anyway, apparently my mother is annoyed, and exasperated, and trying to tell TORA something. She's shaking keys, and walking away.
And she's doing this on a quite regular basis.

TORA reckons she's telling us there is another will. Without saying anything to TORA, I suspect that if my mother is creating in psychic space it's very likely to be because her remains are still out at the crematorium and she wants to go home.  Actually, come to think of even if there is no such thing as an afterlife, my mother's remains were definitely overdue for collection from the crematorium.

This is a long preamble to me saying I collected my mother from the crematorium.

For those who have never held human remains, let me tell you know, they are surprisingly heavy. And it's impossible not to feel the person with you as you hold them.  So it  felt only right to fasten my mother's urn into the back seat with  a seat belt. What you going to do? Put your mother in the boot?

Then the problems started. I didn't know where to put her.
She couldn't come back to mine, because I still have W's ashes and they hated each other in life.  In death there would be one unholy conflagration. Cheesetown could be annihalted.

So she had to go back to hers.
 But where at hers?

It seemed too Norman Bates to leave her urn in her old seat in the living room. A wee bit odd putting it in the window.
Odder still to put her urn on her bed..What you going to do? Tuck it in?
She couldn't be in the kitchen.  We still use that.  That would be wrong.
And what kind of person would put their mother in the hall cupboard? With the shoes? When she only had one leg?
And she couldn't go in the garden; it's going to rain till Christmas

Sigh.  She's in the back of the car for now. I'll figure this out later.


*If you count Ned, which my god I do.

It's the breathing init? Whoever said "don't sweat the small stuff" was wrong. Get the small stuff right and it all falls into place. And, take it from me, sometimes just keeping on breathing is a start...
That's why I go to yoga.
It stops the voices in my head.

I'm a late convert.  No way am I ever going to be one of the world's bendy people not now, not starting from here. That's me at the back of the class trying not to  snicker during the omms, trying not to fall over during the postures (whee! I'm a tree!) and hoping nobody notices when my sun salutations sink slowly behind everyone elses.  I love my yoga class.
I started off going to reduce my blood pressure and ended up staying for the mediation and peace. At the end of the evening I float out of that class on a karmic cloud that lasts through until the next day.

Except I haven't been for awhile because stuff happened. That was my first mistake.
And I didn't book into this evening's class.  That was my second mistake.
Assuming I could cruise into my yoga class just because I really, really need some inner peace might have been the final mistake.  The receptionist was having none of it.
Nope the class is full
But..I'm a regular
But I really need to go. It's been a terrible couple of weeks. I'm stressed, and wound up and look, it's a Yogic Emergency
The tears in my eyes might have been overkill...but I wasn't going to do it, I wasn't going to play the winning card. I wasn't going to say "my mum's died and nobody needs meditation more than me right now in the whole of the West Lothian area. Bump bendy girl in the pink leotard instead of me".

Hell. I'm not that cheap.  I can breathe at home.

She didn't believe in God. Most definitely not one that would know better than her about anything.
My mother took advice and guidance from no one.

But she did believe in Estee Lauder. She did believe very ardently in the power and efficiency of Ms Lauder's Time Zone day cream. Following her last admission to hospital I was, in fact, sent out to get more supplies since The One Remaining Aunt (Tora) forgot to pack any in the rush to admit her.
Turns out she stock piled it.  I might have doubts as to its ability to "dramatically reduce the signs of ageing", but it looks like I have inherited several jars of this miracle cream, unopened, still in their original packaging.

If I were to believe the blurb on the boxes, my skin should be dramatically transformed. I'll let you know how that goes.

I spent years as a vegetarian, whilst she believed that a every evening meal needed meat or, at least, fish.  Her last shop was on the second of March; turns out I've also inherited a freezer full of cuts of meat; sirloin steak,  pork sirloin, frying steak, pork chops.  Stuff I have no idea how to cook, but I can read the price tags and I simply refuse to throw this away, and who else would want food from dead people?

So I am perusing recipe books; I'll let you all know how gingered pork roast turns out.

And she believed very, very firmly in the superiority of doctors.  My mother would have as soon poked a priest with a stick as question her GP about anything.
And on this last point I very, very definitely disagree with her. Because I'd been wondering for some time about why it took so long for her to get referred through to a specialist. Why it seemed that she only got referred after I phoned her GP directly.  And why it was that everyone in the same ward, getting treatment for the same condition had been referred at a much earlier stage.

On the 6th May I sent her GP a letter, questioning why it had taken so long to diagnose my mother's condition, and why her family were not kept informed of the prognosis despite my phoning the practice repeatedly.
They still haven't replied, so I've taken a deep breath and sent a polite follow up letter.

I'll let you know how that one goes too.