Disappointment ....Postponement....Relief ...and the Ladybirds

It was like high summer in the garden today.

Today was the hottest October day in the UK since 2011....up to 23 degrees. I wear a floppy sunhat while I  weed and wait. I'm weeding the path and clearing the brambles and rampant ivy growing up around the big old gas tank in the front garden. 

I'm waiting for the Calor Gas engineers to come and replace the old tank with a new one.

 They are unavoidably delayed. In spite of my repeated requests to at least let me know if they are going to come at all, they never arrive.

It's been a long struggle and many phone calls to get this date in the dairy at all, so my disappointment is sharp.

 All day I've had the doors and windows wide open. Black flies and a flock of lady birds swarm in on a warm wind and settle on the ceiling and the walls.

Autumn leaves swirl in though the back door and litter the quarry tiles in the kitchen. I leave them there. And trust the ladybirds will find their way home.

And  finally, after much support and encouragement from my sisters, I make another phone call. This time to the fireplace people.  I postpone having the old fireplace ripped out and a wood burner installed. So I don't have to choose a fireplace surround under so much time pressure.

I will have it all - the fire and the surround - just not yet. I'm not ready to make these decisions from the shaky place I'm still in...still at a loss as to how to create my life here when I feel like a limb-less baby out of my cot most of the time.

I tell them I'm having a personal crisis. Which I am - a crisis of self doubt and unreadiness -  it's my way of buying time.

 Because there is more ground to nourish....there is still something to grow out of my doubt and uncertainty, my not knowing. And going through the barrier of ' I can't let people down' is all part of this growing. 

I feel so relieved ....and still uncertain ...but at least I can breathe again.

And because I love the symbols that constantly appear in my life ....like the ladybirds in the kitchen ...I look up the rhyme and see that I'm just like little Ann...hiding...watching...waiting ....trusting from the safety of the warming pan.

Ladybird ladybird fly away home,

your house is on fire,

your children all gone.

All except one,

and that's little Ann,

and she has crept under 

the warming pan.