Carly has a list. She knows there are lots of things out there that she does to feel grounded. They go in phases. A bit like her friendships. Firstly, she had friends from her school and her youth movement, then from university and finally from her work, her local community and knitting. These knitting friends rarely talk to Carly about what they have in common. They talk more about their lives in general, their goals and aspirations but more often woes and upsets. Well apart from the work friends. They do groan about work. And that really means they moan about other people. But for sure, Carly doesn’t talk about politics. This is a big no no. Carly hates fierce, deeply held argument. Challenge oh yes. But politics. A big NO.
So what phase is Carly in now to feel grounded? She muses about how many other divorced women with young adult children are in the same phase. Carly hopes none, as she likes to be an individual. This is a bit of an obsession. She even hopes her list of what she does to feel grounded is bespoke. She wants to be decidedly original and individual. She hates the thought of being just like other people.
First up. She likes to burn incense. She takes it everywhere with her so she can burn it to feel grounded even when she is not in her lovely and calming home. At work, she definitely burns it. And gets reprimanded. Really, she thinks, a burning incense stick is not likely to burn down a hospital. Why can’t they ban smokers instead? They are a much more serious threat. Not just to the fire service but to their own health and others who breathe in their despicable smoke. Really Carly has never had any time for smokers. She has never learnt to smoke and remembers many times when she was younger of chopping up other people’s cigarettes and hiding those very thin papers people use who roll their own. She does understand it is an addiction and her actions don’t help but they seemed to mollify her strong feelings about smoking at the time. Now she has a loaded water gun at work to fire on any of her co-workers who smoke under her window. Woe betide anyone whose smoke curls up and wafts in through her window. Also, she acknowledges she is always there to enjoy the incense and if it really got out of hand, she could extinguish any flames with her water gun. Finally, she comments to herself, that lots of people passing her office really enjoy the wonderful smell of the exotic. It feels like a no brainer to continue. Carly decides she must just fight on with this incense battle.
Carly realises to feel grounded she needs to appeal to her five senses. Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, and Touch. After brushing her teeth, she puts on a costly special face serum to keep her wrinkles under control. Carly likes to be in charge, but it seems that she cannot just order her wrinkles away, whatever the expense. Anyway, Carly says that wrinkles make you look kindly and grandmotherly. She strokes her crow’s feet and sighs. She does massage her face, and this feels good. She did once have one of those head massage devices, but she kept poking the wires into her eyeballs. She loves to have an Indian head massage with tonnes of oil. It feels great but then she must deal with her hair sticking to her head. She once had this problem when she was a swimming teacher. Her hair became so dry that she that decided to condition it with cooking oil as this was cheap and plentiful. Unfortunately, she couldn’t leave home for a week because she ended up looking like a soggy chip.
Carly decides to have body massages instead, but they are expensive. In this new phase of keeping a tighter hold of the purse, she only has them occasionally on holiday. Instead, she regularly hugs her sons. Her daughter is in a phase of not allowing Carly to cuddle her. Carly hopes this phase passes soon. It is tedious and upsetting for Carly who doesn’t know why her teenage daughter is like this. Sometimes you cannot understand these things, ponders Carly.
So, this covers smell and touch. Actually, back to smell. Carly likes to wear a perfume she once made on a course. She does love to go on courses and this one was sensational. She has called her perfume Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. It should have a prime number of the letter m as Carly likes prime numbers too. Did you count? It is 13. Anyway, this perfume has lots of base notes and has a very rich scent. She has kept a list of the ingredients as she has filed away attending this course in her work appraisal folder. She knew this didn’t help her on her journey to being a better doctor, but she could suggest that the course made her a more rounded person? She thinks so. One son thinks this perfume is too overpowering and it makes him gag. Carly tries to be thoughtful and when she sprays herself with this perfume, she creeps down the stairs and goes past his room hoping it won’t waft under the door. She holds her breath erroneously thinking this might help the non-passage of the perfume. She knows this is the same as the breathing in she does when she drives her car between bollards.
Carly likes to listen and watch the essential elements of nature – water and fire. She completed a personal development course where this was really encouraged. She lights scented tea lights next to her bed early in the morning and late at night. Always two or three as this plays in to her prime number obsession. She drinks a cup of herbal tea when she wakes up using the travel kettle her mother gave her. It is good to increase her fluid intake. She has been told that this is the best way to get rid of bags under your eyes. She has a pitcher of cool water by her bed and forces herself to regularly drink from it. But really drinking water is so very dull and Carly doesn’t do boring. Luckily Carly does other things that make her feel grounded that aren’t boring! Yoga is not one of them, however. Carly forces herself to do guided yoga daily for 10 minutes. This is more to keep her back supple and free from pain. It seems to do the trick. It doesn’t make Carly very Zen, as her mind wanders all over the place during this short yoga session.
After yoga, Carly does a seven-minute workout which actually takes all of nine minutes as there are regular breaks of a few seconds between the various exercises like star jumps, push-ups and triceps dips. She does this downstairs in the garden whilst her cats watch her bemused. Carly has read some literature that this is the only exercise you need to do in a day. By not paying much attention to detail, Carly has failed to read the small print that you need to repeat this workout several times a day. Instead, Carly convinces herself that she is fit as she rarely uses the car and cycles everywhere. Cycling does her the power of good. She can respond to tricky emails in her head, so that her responses are much more measured when she replies later on. Some days she likes to reel off rhyming words. She recently worked with a doctor called Clea. There is a huge list of words that rhyme with this name. She does it in alphabetical order, so she doesn’t miss possibilities out. Previously she used to practice her Latin declensions when cycling to the station on her way to school. Let’s see if she can remember. Paro, paras, parat, paramus, paratis, parant. Fabulous. She has no idea what that verb means but is happy she remembered how it went! In fact, it might be wrong as Carly’s memory of Latin is wobbly to say the least. Carly is deluding herself about how fit she is getting as she has an electric pedal-assist bike. But for sure it keeps her grounded and she goes out in all weathers and will cover most distances she needs to travel.
Carly recently invested in a water feature. This is quite an embarrassment. It has lights that cycle through the rainbow spectrum. It is also rather small and insignificant. Her cats love to reach up and drink from it. So, it might not be great at helping Carly to feel grounded, but it is preventing her cats from being dehydrated. That is some solace to Carly.
Her cats are around for Carly to stroke. Well certainly at night when they sleep on her bed. Except Carly is then asleep too. They and their predecessors have been a constant in Carly’s adult life. She just adores cats. She recently went on a yoga and writing retreat in Greece and Carly took some postage stamps of cats and distributed them to any feline-loving fellow participants. Her nemesis Caroline was writing a book about how cats who could talk, helped the French resistance in WWII. It was an enthralling story to hear. Carly can only write about her own personal experiences. It might be because she is not very imaginative. But actually, she thinks she is fascinating, and Carly hopes others think similarly.
Playing the card game patience and doing dot-to-dot or spot the difference are also grounding for Carly. She doesn’t like those adult colouring books as she finds too difficult to colour in so slowly. If she colours in fast, she goes over the lines, and this is highly unsatisfactory. Carly does more things to feel grounded, but this is enough for the time being.
