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#8yo collect moments

~ Fridgesays ~ Leave a comment

When my son was three I began to ask him a series of twenty questions, except for when he was six (unsure what happened?) As a result I now have a collection of his opinions on the basic ‘favourites’ in life. Somethings have remained steadfast and I don’t see them ever changing (his favourite colour has always been green, I blame Hulk), others bounce around like his food preferences and some alter like the wind blows. This year we reread them together and he laughed at some of his responses. I will continue this self indulged thread until he refuses to play, a little part of me hopes he is 45 years old and still playing the game, as what we now have are a collection of memories – things come and go, but memories are often free have a priceless value.

(If you’re interested in reading his 7 year memories as a comparison Click here )

1. What’s your favourite colour? Green

2. What’s your favourite toy? Orco (giant cuddly Orca whale that’s also a puppet)

3. What’s your favourite fruit? Mango

4. What do you like to watch on TV? Mickey mouse and friends (shorts)

5. What do you like to eat at lunch? Plastic rolls (basically, for all the organic and homemade food I prepare – the boy adores a supermarket sandwich??)

6. Who’s in your family? My Mum, Dad, Pearl (our dog) stick insects, Burple (leopard Ghecko) and Nathaniel (tortoise) , fish.

7. What item of clothing do you most like to wear? My green dinosaur head T-shirt (it’s from Boden and gets a lot of love

8. What game do you like to play? Hungry sharks evolution (haven’t a clue?)

9. What’s your favourite animal? Crocodile

10. What song do you most like? Anything by stick figure – World on fire (he loves chilled music in the background when he’s reading or playing)

11. What’s your favourite snack? Raisins (This was news for me?)

12. Favourite book? Beast Quest (he loves the series)

13. Who’s your best friend? Luke

14. What’s your favourite sport?  Judo

15. What’s your favourite holiday memory? Going on the cruise to see the whales

16. What do you sleep with? My teddies

17. What do you like best for breakfast? Waffles

18. What do you like to do outside? Play the game ‘it’

19. What’s your favourite drink? Mocktails

20. What’s your favourite dinner? Margarita pizza , no macaroni, or burgers, or steak, or tortellini, maybe a cheese board with grapes? I can’t pick and now I’m hungry.

It’s not your job to like me, its mine

~ Fridgesays ~ Leave a comment

Quote Anon

Early this week I saw a quote from Mike Tyson (actually the Mr sent it to me – the old romantic) it said “Social media made you all way to comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face”

Mike made a good point, there is a freedom when you hide behind the screen, people say things they never would utter face to face, within school I’ve seen hundred of arguments, torments and cruel words typed amongst friendship groups, usually from children that in person would never say boo to a goose, least of all a friend that last week slept over their house

However, there is a new disrespect online that I think its even worse…when people apologise for being themselves…

“Sorry about the mess in the background of this photo but”

“Mum of three and I’m exhausted, sorry for the lack of filter”

“its late at night and I can’t be bothered to do my hair”

“even a filter can’t save the bags under my eyes”

“I know I need to lose some weight, but I wanted to show you my dress”

To be being authentic is the most sexy, empowering and wonderful thing anyone can do. I am tired of seeing immaculate images of the ‘perfect’ home on instagram, the manicured look, the woman holding a vintage bike (that we all know she is never going to ride) and holding a bouquet of flowers over her face, I’m tired on the pastel brick walls and the quirky corner of the home….Give me the messy buns, the chaotic livingrooms full of too many plastic toys and a coffee cup that was abandoned circa 2017… its life, its real and it comes with its own beauty. Sure its lovely to see pretty homes and I’m certainly going to share with you when I’m off out somewhere fancy (well pre 2020), I’m also partial to a pretty front door (it comes with being in your thirties) but please love yourselves.

If you can give yourself one gift in this chaotic world…love yourself more. Love your crooked nose, the belly that housed your children, the dress with the pockets…its not always easy to love what you see in the mirror but a drip feed of daily kind words is a good start. Talk to yourself how you would do a friend, or at least stop internally talking to yourself when you think mean things.

We are all something pretty special, we are all unique. Make sure you leave an authentic virtual footprint of awesomeness behind you and never apologise for being yourself

She remembered who she was and the game changed

~ Fridgesays ~ Leave a comment

Quote by Lalah Deliah

Pause. Take a moment – in fact take two. Today’s inspiration is taken from every child I’ve ever met.

A child knows what they like, knows what they don’t like and there isn’t much in between. Somewhere between childhood innocence and becoming and adult we get caught up in what society might think of us, we buy into lies that more money, the next promotion, if we had those shoes, bought that phone, had those items that we’d be happier. Often (except for the shoes) we are wrong and the promotion brings more exhaustion and takes us further from who we are. The noise of the world, the routine of life can often take us so far away from our original truth that we can wake up one day in our twenties, thirties and beyond and not know who is reflecting back from at us in the mirror.

One of the great things I found about lockdown life was it stopped so much of the outside noise. It forced time at home, it gave many people time to reflect, to appreciate the smaller things in life – perhaps what they already have, what was right on their doorstep?

But now what? As lockdown eases (or doesn’t – I’m never sure where we are with it?) we need to take action, perhaps step out of our comfort zones, re-examine ourselves, look at the path we are on and if necessary be brave enough to alter it.

It doesn’t matter if we are talking about redecorating a room, taking up a hobby, altering a relationship or perhaps moving house, emigrating, or having a baby…it all requires the same thing. Action and a sprinkle of truth…one small action will move the domino of life and you will quickly see the joy as the dominos fall and the satisfaction in each tumble, if you ignore your truth the dominos can still tumble but this time it’ll feel out of control. Stressful. Overwhelming or perhaps even worse – the dominos will always stay standing. To play a successful game of Dominoes you need to think, perhaps do the unexpected but ultimately the pieces need to move. Much like the game of life, perhaps the pandemic gave you time to reflect and today I’m posing the question, have you acted upon your intentions? Are you being truthful to yourself?

I have begun skipping and I’m enjoying it more than I thought, I needed to add some cardio to my world and although yoga will always be my go to, I’ve committed myself to 30 days of 500 skips. Whilst its not a full blown exercise regime I’m enjoying seeing my progress and feel its a step (or skip) in the right direction. I had the same revelation when I did the couch to 10K – I’m always surprised at what I can achieve when I actually action something, rather than procrastinate. What’s your next move to a better you?

#7yo Collect things

~ Fridgesays ~ 1 Comment

Quote Anon

Since the little dude was four years old, I’ve created this post to track his answers to the 20 questions listed below. Its joyful for me to see the small changes in his answers and how his vision of the world around him alters. Perhaps not as interesting for those reader who don’t know him, but a timely reminder to do it for the little people in your world. Objects can be exchanged, broken or lose value but memories and creating traditions live on and are priceless.

1. What’s your favourite colour? Green

2. What’s your favourite toy?   Ray, (giant hippo cuddly toy) hulk buster and my mosasaurus

3. What’s your favourite fruit? Banana

4. What do you like to watch on TV? Trap door, Disney +

5. What do you like to eat at lunch? Cheese wrap

6. Who’s in your family? Pearl (our dog), Burple (gecko), the stick insects and our fish, me, Mummy, Daddy. *animals come first it would seem

7. What item of clothing do you most like to wear? Jogging bottoms, like I tried to put on earlier (I made him take them off, its 25C in the UK)

8. What game do you like to play? Dizzy dizzy dinosaur and Chess

9. What’s your favourite animal? Hippopotamus and crocodiles.

10.  What song do you most like? The Mandalorian song (theme tune, he hums it all of the time)

11. What’s your favourite snack? Anything with cheese in it.

12. Favourite book? Worst in Show, David Walliams books, Tom Gates…so many Mummy.

13. Who’s your best friend? Luke, Eddie and Henry

14. What’s your favourite sport?  Judo, I like swimming but it wastes my breath a lot.

15. Which holiday do you like the best? who knows (why?) because we might have even better holidays

16. What do you sleep with? Ray, (cuddly hippo) Croccie (cuddly crocodile) and Ivan (huge cuddly snake)

17. What do you like best for breakfast? whatever’s going.

18. What do you like to do outside? Chill on my slide

19. What’s your favourite drink? water

20. What’s your favourite dinner? Macaroni

You must be shapeless, formless, like water.

~ Fridgesays ~ Leave a comment

Quote / poem / thoughts by Bruce Lee.

Todays post is inspired by Bruce Lee, before I ramble – id like to share the piece in its entirety.

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

Simply beautiful.

I became aware of these words as I listen to the GABA podcast (and urge you to do the same), during a live on instagram Adam the creative and talented creator of GABA usally shares a reading, poem, lyric or thought before a meditation sound bath…one of them was the Bruce Lee reading above. It taught me two valuable things.

The first was to let go…truly let go. Today I had no idea what I would achieve, I let go of constructs such as time – we ate when we were hungry (so much simpler), at the back of my mind I repeated to myself a new mini mantra ‘be like water’….the time we have now, albeit unknown and at times concerning, is also a blessing for me personally. Grounded to home, time with my boys – a blessing that I’m also aware could be snatch back to school runs, work schedules, traffic jams and to do lists at any moment. However, through my days water experiment I found far more joy in the now, zero stress and bizarrely I was more productive. Perhaps opening ‘to do’ tabs of the mind, answering emails in under six minutes (the average response time to an email in 2020) and being productive, is ironically time consuming and unproductive?

We took ourselves off for walks amongst the bluebells (thank you Mother nature), connected with loved ones through various technologies and my sons home schooling happened much more like a running river than a mother (me) juggling and trying to overachieve whilst walking on hot coals and simultaneously smiling. It gave me a deeper sense of connection and gratitude for the simple delights of life and I’m addicted.

The second thing Bruce’s words taught me were about collaboration. Adam obviously had scribbled them down because they resonated with his creative flare, in turn he shared them with his audience and gave me inspiration for a blessed day and as many more ‘be like water’ moments and days as I can flow into my life, this is turn inspired me to write this piece….and once again, creativity seems to bring a sense of calm, restorative joy and flow to life.

I should probably wrap this writing up with a bow, a witty line or perhaps a single sentence… or you could just listen to Bruce, be like water and perhaps you will leave the confinements of being squeezed into a plastic bottle and will indeed find your own flow.

Write until you surprise yourself

~ Fridgesays ~ Leave a comment

Quote Anon

I do this all of the time, sometimes when I read back over all blog posts, I can’t remember thinking the paragraphs I’ve typed, let alone the structure, point or pressing publish…in fact, often I don’t even remember writing the content.

This is why today’s quote will hopefully encourage you to write a little more. Perhaps you have your own blog, a note book, a secret diary or a shopping list. From published authors to list gurus there is always a little more time to write in my opinion.

In school when my pupils are overwhelmed with emotion and they don’t even know why they are feeling the way they are, I usually present them with a pencil and some paper – sprinkle with half an hour of uninterrupted time and the answer is usually somewhere between the doodles and waffle. Letting your mind go free with the written word is one of the best gifts we can give to each other. As the pencil flows across the page somewhere between “I don’t know why I’m writing this” to the ‘love from xxx’ magic happens.

I feel like writing allows me to ‘speak’ from my inner core, a place that’s always in harmony. Over the last few weeks I’ve increased my writing, due in part to having more time but mainly because the need has increased. With more uncertainty comes the need to further anchor the soul, the body tends to follow. If you ‘can’t write’ or if you have previous described yourself as someone who ‘doesn’t do writing’ (like my son – he has an extreme allergy to holding a pencil and sitting still) or perhaps you are looking for a sign…here it is! Pick up a pencil, create the writing area you are most comfortable in (mine includes a cup of Green Jasmin tea), find a platform you are most comfortable in…paper, typing / online or in private and see where the nib of the pen takes you, or the journey of the mouse on your device.

Most of all, don’t overthink it, enjoy the process and thank me later.