My Birthday Eve {a blog for my mum}

These are two people from my tribe. They are crazily cute together, don't you think?


We planned our trip before we left; a stop-over at a well known brand name health store and a trip to Santa. Everything else would be a bonus if we had the stomach for those crazy pre-Christmas crowds.


Today was hectic in Stirling. The crowds; a mixture of bleary and wide eyed human beings in all shapes and sizes searching out last minute presents of bath sets, chocolates and perfume. Shoving, pushing and pawing ensued.  It's easy (too easy?) to forget the real meaning of Christmas when you're swamped with a sea of human anxiety and desperation shoved into such a small space - with no allusions to anything remotely religious - and it's easy to get rushed and panicked along with the masses.


And today, something strange happened. I felt the anxiety with the crowds. It started off as a strange heat under my collar then a thump too much from my heart...we took sanctuary in our health food shop, where it was relatively empty and people-free, and I unravelled myself from my 'Narnia jacket' (a term coined by B) and it felt like peeling off layers of my anxiety. The truth is: I just don't like crowds. And this is why I am my mother's daughter.


Growing up with Edinburgh at my feet and then moving to London, I should be 'used' to the crowds, but I am not. The crowds thinned around mid-afternoon and my anxiety was dampened - I just felt thirsty and heavy eyed. I began to think of my Saviour, Jesus Christ, and it seemed odd that once the cloud of anxiety had passed that I began to think of Jesus. To think if it wasn't for his birth, we wouldn't celebrate Christmas. My birthday wouldn't be known as 'Christmas Eve', it would just be another day. And if Jesus hadn't been born, there would be no Redeemer. No great sacrifice.


In life we all go through sacrifices and it's made me reflect on my mum's sacrifice to me. Not only giving me a home inside her body for 9 months (unknown, no less!) but the biggest sacrifice was the danger and pain she put herself through to get me here - a Caesarian section without any kind of numbing or pain relief. 


The story goes a little something like this: an epidural was given, she kept telling them she could still feel everything - and move - but they thought she was trying to put them off to wait for my dad to get to the hospital. Wrong again. They hadn't given her enough of the epidural. She was told to sit up and push - yes, push - because I was so high up (Roman followed in the same vein.) And she did it.


All of that, to give me life. So that I could celebrate my birth every year. 


This birth story has been fed to me each year; piece by beautifully scary piece. Drip by drip, the lines of the story have played out, with an added detail here and there as I grew up and could understand the details more. I never really pieced together those details until I was in my 20s and asked my mum to tell me the full story, from start to finish. I had never known about the pushing and when I was a few weeks away from delivering Roman I discovered another fact: my mum went into spontaneous labour on that Christmas Eve morning in 1985. She felt the tightening and loosening of her body, the signal I had sent to her brain to tell her I was coming. I was ready to be born, despite her requiring a Cesarean.  A few hours later, I was born, after a lot of drama. For someone who feels so awkward being centre stage, I think my entrance into the world was my first and last major drama.


We come into life not really knowing what's ahead of us; all the pain and joy in one big mixing pot, waiting to happen. But I know that for all the pain and all the suffering, all the sacrifice, the joy is a much bigger prize than the pain. I'm just so thankful to my mum for giving me the gift of life - and because of my birth and my being here on earth, I married Bryan and together we have Roman. That's a very big prize. And a very special 'present.'




Follow: @MamaChaser 
Email: carakirk@hotmail.com

Childhood Dreams.

I grew up right here.

When I was a little girl growing up in a small Scottish village I day dreamed. All day, every day I would imagine my life unfolding and what I wanted it to be. When I woke up I was excited; sights, smells, sounds were as clear as a newly tuned piano being played.


My future seemed so far away - like trying to eat a bar of chocolate with a fork and wearing gloves at the same time. But in that dream of my future I saw clear prizes: many notebooks were going to bursting full of stories, of ideas, of narratives of my day dreaming. My notebooks would be turned into something. Something "really cool."


But I know now that my life was to turn out very different. I kept getting sick as a child and nobody really knew the depths of that until my older brother got sick, too, and we were sent off for tests. The tests were clear; we got a clean bill of health. Except I didn't feel any better, nor did I feel reassured. I kept how I felt to myself to avoid being thought of as a "faker."


I went on with life, I filled notebooks with my thoughts but the day dreaming was getting me into trouble at school and thinking good things seemed to make me feel worse so I gave up on all that when I was about 9 or 10. 


At 22 I became engaged and I really wish that in my mind my life would end when it was good, all those happy years ago, to when I got engaged at 22 until the present day. My Happy Years. My Really Happy Years. Where I know dreams will come true and great things will happen, even if I am not filling notebooks and thinking they will turn into something really cool. 

Please remember I am doing a wonderful give away! For full details go HERE.

I'll call this set: Thoughtful Little Man Stares out of Window.

We spent the last week of March at my parents in the Scottish Highlands.

I hadn't been there in over a year. Travelling and ME don't mix at all. 

The scenes that you see up there are utterly breath taking. I have been all over the UK and little impresses me until I head up to the North of Scotland.

It truly is stunning.

I love being there with Roman because my parents have carpets. This is an exciting prospect when you come from a home without carpets, when your home has horrible laminate flooring throughout (I hate laminate flooring; it's cold, requires more upkeep, attracts more hair, dirt, dust etc and Roman can't stand up on the floor.) 

I probably sound utterly Bourgeois, but there you have it. 

I slept and ate well.

The normal pressures were gone. 

The slurping noises of B eating or the way he breathes seemed to matter less. 

But nonetheless, the days slipped by too easily and too quickly.

And then we got back on the train home where we were back to our old ways of me not sleeping till 4am, getting 4 hours of sleep (me) and the breathing and eating noises really annoying me.

Happy Pre-Easter.

(Image: Cheeky Kitchen)

This cake came up on my Blogfeed.

And talking of feed I would love to feed my face with it.

It looks totally delish. 

Chocolate hasn't appealed to me in weeks so when I saw this I really shouldn't have been bothered but it looks like the old chocoholic in me wants to fight to get out.

Yum.

I love Cheeky Kitchen. Most of the recipes are not vegan and this is a good thing (it's like window shopping when you're broke.) I also have a little loss of will power when it comes to food, although the upside is that I am too sick to prepare, bake or cook anything unhealthy - or well, anything. 

I also love Easter. It's the one celebration I have never, ever had a problem with - maybe something to do with all that chocolate?

The best Easter I had was one year we were at my Gran's. We'd driven through after church like we did every year. Our dog at the time was called Goldie and she went everywhere with us. I can't even imagine having a dog now, they seem like so much hard work on top of the day to day everything else.

So we get to my Gran's and are loaded up on even more chocolate - I think we'd even went by my Granny and Granpa Kirk's, too, so well it was obvious I was going to be OD'ing on sugar. I burst into just about every Easter egg (I had a small frame and was a tiny girl when I was a kid) and had a bit of every one of them. They were sooo good. I never tired of chocolate. I could probably eat it till I burst and then keep on eating it.

And as a matter of fact, I did. We were playing some game we'd invented - which involved a lot of running around for some reason - meanwhile the adults were inside arguing about politics and playing Trivial Pursuit. 

I suddenly had a massive wave of nausea hit me. I didn't feel great at all. I turned back to run inside and threw up all over my Gran's front step. I knew if I admitted to throwing up that I wouldn't be allowed any more chocolate. So I did what any honourable child would do and I blamed it on the dog.

"Muuum! Daaaad!" I shouted from outside. "Goldie's been sick."

Goldie went without food the next morning.

I'm sorry old girl. I hope you're not going to haunt me for that one.

Note to my parents: Yeah, I kind of told a white lie. I'm sorry about that.

And speak of Easter...

Do you fancy a freebie?

Here's what you have to do:

1. Follow this blog (and if you already follow go to 2.)

2. Leave me a comment with your own very favourite Easter memory.

3. Go here to print off a voucher from Thorntons chocolates - you'll receive a voucher for a Treat Egg of your choice.

Last but not least...

4. Take the personalised voucher to a local Thorntons store and exchange it for your yummy Treat Egg. Unwrap and enjoy one on me!

*Oh and I'm sorry guys, girls and dogs: this offer is UK only :(. And well...everyone knows chocolate is poisonous to dogs so I'm sure the dogs won't mind so much.