High on Sunshine

It's a song by The Commodores I've been listening to today.

When I was 14 I listened to The Commodores, Stevie Wonder and just about everything funky and Motown-y I could get my hands on whilst everyone else was listening to Soft Cell and Duran Duran. I did listen to chart music but it wasn't enough.

Today I made a playlist of The Commodores' most funky (- and most definitely not soppy -) tracks and burned them onto a CD (remember CDs?) for the car.

Although I had a terrible, terrible, terrible night's sleep and woke up feeling crappier than crap I'd told the family we were going to the beach this evening and I wanted the kids to go surfing, so I kept to the plan and had dinner in the oven and had tried to jolly myself up by the time everyone came home. Jollying up always includes music. It's the best.

Tess and I were at home together while Joel was doing his dishwashing summer job, Gemma was working at Saltrock and Richard was helping other families to get kitted out for the beach at his shop. This is our eighteenth summer with the shop and it's always struck me how rarely we get to take our own kids to the beach because of Richard always working through school holidays through all those years.

I can't seem to shake off some things that have been bugging me recently. I feel unresolved, fragile and self-contained. I lie awake at night feeling anxious at the best of times and last night was a superb example. The sudden rise in temperature today exhausted me and I felt really lame and fragile. I'm so glad I fought against the demons today, though and stood knee-deep in the ocean taking photos of my kids in the bright evening sunshine. It was the perfect tonic (that and the Commodores! :o) ) .

We had dinner in the garden this evening and then I pootled in the rather poorly veg patch.
Tess is still not 100% - her hot and cold achy thing has turned into a persistent cough, but she loved being in the sea and I'm sure the salty air is good for fighting nasty little viruses like that.
I wish we'd managed to persuade Gemma to come with us too but she doesn't tend to hang out with us anymore
:o(

PS I've put comments and info back on :o)