Gumboots and Muffins and Ruth

My life is busy ... it’s kind of action-packed.  And if it’s not action-packed, then my mind in one of those really really busy ones.

Mostly, I believe, my life is like this because I like it that way however there are days when I just run in the brick wall of tiredness & confusion.

My body goes along with me for so long and then, voila ... it just gets cross with me. 

So yes, I can zip over to Ireland, drive for the first time in 7 years, traveling over 500kms from east to west and then back in 4 days.  Go fishing, go boating (and find out I'm not good on boats), climb up the side of a small mountain to visit an extraordinary church, and spend those few days in a house full of delightful Scottish people ... and their accents.

I can have an Australian Blue Heeler dog run into my legs at the speed of sound and I can attempt to walk the resulting pain out but ... I believe it was about there that my body started rebelling.  The ankle swelled, it was painful all the rest of that day.  Less painful on waking, it continued with the attention-seeking swelling.  I ignored it.  It persisted.

Brussels Airport taught me a lesson about asking for help, when perhaps it was too little, too late.  So the ignored swelling went crazy and made me quite the miserable creature, with nothing but that long corridor in front of me.

Yesterday I did stuff I don’t remember ... but I did stuff.  Really.  There was laundry and dinner and answering emails and stuff.

Then came today, and I had the most hilarious appointment.  I do love my Belgian friend, Ruth.  She’s a writer who has just finished her first book (which went on to win the Gouden Meeuw award in 2011) but more on that when she has copies for sale.  Anyway, there was this thing she needed me to do today ... this thing that I can’t write of without smiling .  She needed a photograph of herself.  She had a plan.  She needed me to photograph her up on a roof with a book.  Not her book but anway ...

I couldn’t resist.  I started taking photographs the moment she got on the ladder, wearing her cute little gumboots pictured below.  Then there was this moment ... captured while she was between the ladder and the roof. 

And later, when she was climbing down, I’m fairly sure I would have stopped taking photographs in time to catch the ladder as it fell ... had she not stopped it with her feet. 
Yes, I’m sure I would have.

We recovered over coffee and her delicious homemade blueberry muffins.  I left the house with far more than I arrived with, including a signed copy of her book!  Dank u wel, Ruth, for picking up my tired self, making me laugh, then filling me up with delicious food and good coffee. 

Meet Ruth, or some of her.