Looking forward to 2014

Looking forward to 2014 requires reflection on the year that was. 2013 will forever be one of those significant years in my life. Not one of those years where the memory of it turns to mush in an oblivion of the same old tunes.

First and foremost this is a year about life and living and making the most and new possibilities and ever evolving. Ironically it took the death of a very close friend which was very painful and far too soon. When someone is given the diagnosis and prognosis it is hard to believe so that it is still a shock when it does happen. I still find it very hard to believe she is really gone and never coming back. Death seems so final, and yet there is something lasting in the memory that holds us close. That I can still talk to her in my head, and that, more importantly, she is talking back to me.

I can see her now, being tickled by what I have done and achieved this year.

The wheels have been in action for some years regarding selling our house and that completed at the end of January. Even though we sold at a loss I thought we would be rolling in it as a result of clearing our debts with the proceeds but curiously that has not been the end result which just goes to show how pathetic our income is and has been, though over the course of this year it has improved. I thought I would feel more with our debts being cleared though to be fair all that was rather overshadowed by my friend dying.

The beginning of the year saw my 50th birthday and a celebration. Not the really big event and dance I was originally planning but nevertheless a heartwarming and significant celebration of my landmark year. The beginning of the year also saw another friend and I commit to monthly outings to places one of us had never been and always wanted to go. We kept it up throughout the entire year and it has enriched my life feeling like I have done things and gone places. Unlike some years when one reflects on all the places one could have gone to but didn't, this feels like an achievement.

The early part of the year saw me making bread, something I had never done before, and here I was doing it really well. Creating and baking and putting the food of life on the table felt significant and enriching.

The spring time saw me take to running. Again, something I had never in my life managed before and certainly had no desire. Suddenly I could run for an hour and not need to stop nor be out of breath. Never mind the good feeling hormones that produces there is something in the psychology of feeling strong and who knows what else I might be capable of doing. In time the bread baking took a bit of a side step as there are just not enough hours in the day with fitting in work too. Those skills are not lost and I was thrilled to be able to whip up a Ciabatta on Christmas morning for our Antipasti starter.

Another thing that took a bit of a sideline this year was our allotment. Partly because it was so disappointing the few crops we produced for the amount of effort put in. Or perhaps it was a case of the preparation of the allotment gave me the greatest pleasure and we have lost our way a bit. Growing crops is such a learning curve and I wonder how much I really want to learn on that score.

We travelled to see old and loved friends in Germany and for the first time darling Mr Doris and I visited Berlin. A place I wanted to go since the 1980s and I was not disappointed. Driving a hire car past the landmarks of a great city felt like such an achievement.

At work I have been proving my worth and it was most satisfying in the day or so before Christmas to have my boss call me to one side and acknowledge what I do. Verbal appreciation does go a long way.

The kids are 24 and 19 years old and are way taller than me. They are also more appreciative. Not perfect or consistent by any means but a whole lot better. They are both making their own marks on the world and finding their way bit by bit which is really heartening.

My darling husband has held me close and yet enabled me to go and do all the things I've either needed or wanted to do this year. Sometimes I can see by the way he looks at me that he really appreciates me. We'll be coming up to fifteen years of being married in the year ahead which seems to me to be an anniversary worth celebrating.

I reckon 2014 will be a year of consolidation hopefully peppered with a few more new activities. One of which will be my returning to college one evening a week for sixteen weeks in order to extend my qualifications. Once again I will no doubt be the oldest girl in the beauty school and most likely older than the tutors again. Education always leads on to other things so who knows what may come of it.

Fingers crossed that my son is able to move out because he will be 20 and I do think he would benefit from the freedom of being in his own space. Yes, I know I will gain a room and we can spread out a bit which would also help a lot but it is more about what is right for him.

In 2014 I can see that our income is growing so that we are in a position to do more. I have cousins in Australia I have wanted to visit since being reunited in 2006 but I do not know if our finances are quite there yet.

There is a long run I would like to do which would entail me doing a whole lot more training. The run would take a number of days and involves running coast to coast. The idea excites me though equally I am happy to pace myself with that desire as I met someone who also took up running this year and already is out of running distances through permanent injury. I will be starting 2014 with my shoulder injury which is turning into a frozen shoulder - something that is not conducive to the busy working life that I have! Clearing that up will be significant too and blinking essential especially as I have not been running so as not to exacerbate it.

Here's to 2014 and all the unknown and yet to be discovered treasures of the year as well as consolidating all that 2013 has given.

New Leaf November

It is Autumn though really Winter is beckoning and yet I feel like it is a Spring time in my life. Two full years of accounts have been done and submitted to the accountant with the current year almost up to date to the day. The meeting with the accountant was amazing as she declared part way through the two hour number fest, "Do you notice I am not letting you go? We are going to get this done now so that when you go home you can put those papers away and never look at them again." I burst into tears in response to her gentleness and kindness! Admittedly I had also been awake since 3am getting papers sorted and had been on some very nervous energy. In less than a week that little miracle took place and it has transformed and uplifted me. I vow never again to get into that state. Never.

Our main kitchen and dining area with the new dresser of china continues to look fabulous and is looked after and kept clear. Today I go to the china man in the market where I have ordered a 3 litre china jug to use as a vase and six matching mugs to hang on the up-to-now empty hooks of the dresser with a pattern that I am hoping will complement the existing china. He has promised I can take them all back if it doesn't work. The living area now needs the discarded piles of papers from sorting my finances to be sorted and shredded or dumped. In my targets this weekend is our bedroom though to look at the state it is in and that it is all my stuff creating that mess no wonder I usually call it "my" bedroom. Darling Mr Doris is so patient and kind about it all and does not give me grief just excuses such as how busy I am. And indeed I am. Yesterday I took my daughter to work in the wrong direction to work; worked back to back from 9am to 3pm and then home and then out again to a nail client and did both feet and hands and then home again to change for yoga at 6.30 from which I finally returned at 8pm. No wonder I flake out at the end of the day.

Last Friday I started my first week of a free trial gym membership. It is five minutes walk away and gives me access to the swimming pool and all the classes as well as the gym. Whilst I may have been working hard on getting my accounts together in this last week, progress in life continued and I managed four trips to the gym and two yoga classes! Yesterday I committed to the one year membership as they had a very special deal on and is the best value of just £25 a month with nothing to pay until January. As long as I can manage to get nearly a month's worth of membership each week I'll be very happy indeed. It gets me off the cold, wet and dark streets and actually working on my core strength as well as running. I have discovered I love the rowing machines. My left arm and shoulder have been giving my a severe problem for weeks and weeks now and is only slowly improving. I'm hoping a gentle work out will help it recover better.

Shall I mention the nightmare that woke me up this morning? Something that counterbalances all the good stuff happening. It featured my mother. It was in younger days and she was in full form shouting and screaming and upset by a current friend of mine who I like and admire in real life and yet is such an unassuming and apparently quietish sort. Something had transpired in the dream and my mother and her had an interaction in which my friend had innocently repeated some of the things I had said about her. In life my mother never ever liked to hear good about anyone else. I suppose it is as if it took away from my mother. Anyway, in this dream I am going between the two camps trying to placate and calm. The difference being that I confronted my mother. I shouted at her and told her to stop and that what I thought about my friend had nothing to do with her. In the past I may have told white lies to smooth things over, this time I didn't. It was a hard and aggressive dream. The good thing is that I spoke up and responded to my mother. There was no happy ever after and it was all very difficult and nothing quite resolved. It is what it is and I am not sure there ever will be an easy answer or explanation for my mother and me and why it all happened in my life.

I am fifty years old and here I am still living the nightmares of my youth. Thankfully these are only infrequent occasions and becoming rarer. Yesterday with joining the gym I was thinking maybe with my fitness I can live to a hundred and then I will have had over fifty years without my mother in this world. Maybe the dream was in response to that "evil" thought! That is the flip side to where I am at with the new chapter in my life and feeling good about it and the positive changes.

If the rain is really not bad after all then the allotment may also get a look in from me today. Either way I am off to the gym shortly for a good workout. I still can not believe this is me. Fully paid up gym member with her accounts up to date and a beautiful home emerging, doing a great job with her very happy clients. Frivolously buying a china jug and matching mugs that she chose herself. I want to grin but I also want to cry. In real life I smile a lot which I know is infectious, and underneath, sometimes, is such a level of pain and anxiety and tears that I share only here.

Frogs, creativity, holidays and living

Before July flies away a little guest visit is in order with a quick update. Going backwards from this point, I started eating frogs on Thursday with a great audio book. All the usual stuff one really does know that resonates at this point in time. Something that I am implementing at a point when I was pulling my finger out any way. Amazingly, I have just found it on youtube and if I am correct then it can be listened to here though I had mine from audible playing to me direct from my phone.




My lovely Mr Doris and I have been on holiday and had a road trip across Germany - I love driving and can now say I have driven through Berlin and across Germany. Visiting special friends and just being.

The bread making continues interleaved with running. I can now say I am a runner and running six or seven km in one go is no problem. Remembering that just a matter of weeks ago I could not run and had no stamina. My thighs are developing nicely thank you.

Often on my mind is my friend who passed away at the end of February. The impact hits me again and again at any point in a day. In some aspects of my life I have been in a state of suspension since then unable to move. Strange how that can co-exist with all my other activity.

Coming back to the frogs, I am working on eating them, one at a time. Starting with our income and empire building once again - this time with specified goals written down. Other goals include living and loving and being happy. Extending my creativity to painting and yesterday coincidentally I met a couple of women who only started painting in their 60s and 70s - so one is never too old. First though, are the finances and some single minded determination.

Da Do Run Run

Maybe it should more correctly be Da Do Ron Ron but this suits my purposes:

I met him on a Monday the song begins, whilst last Monday - our Bank Holiday Monday - my daughter invited me to run with her and others in a major 10k race next year. Thinking back to the moment she asked me I can not run and do not run, but the offer to do something with her was far too immense to not embrace it. I could not run for a bus and a few years back I did do a bit of training with someone and built up to about ten minutes or so of running interspersed with plenty of walking. That was a huge improvement on anything but I did not continue training and found it tough.

With the same gusto that I applied to bread making, the very next day I set off early in the morning on my own to begin a new training regime. After all I have a year to build up to 10k. It is hard to know how or why but on that very first morning I set off at a gentle jogging pace and ran continuously for a whole five minutes and then walked for 10 minutes or so to cool down. I was not out of breath. The next day I ran for a bit longer and so forth. By the fifth day I went with my daughter to a proper shop and had my running style analysed and bought the right trainers and some running socks which are a dream compared to my now scratchy sports socks.

Yesterday I began a sub 60 minute 10K training course which is free on my phone app - RunKeeper. That app is highly recommended and can be accessed online as well as on the phone complete with maps and running times and pace alerts as you are running. On Monday I ran 3km continuously and yesterday I ran 3.2km continuously in 23 minutes which was the "Slow" pace dictated by the training schedule. Today is a rest day which I shall now start to honour. Tomorrow I shall run 4.8km as part of the schedule which will be interesting and a real push but we will see. If I have to walk some of it I will.

Last Friday morning I managed to put bread on to prove and then went out for my run and then was back in again to bake bread and I was still at work by 8.45am with one of the loaves to give to someone! And I feel fantastic. Something has to go though I decided yesterday and that was the sourdough. Despite having made a creditable sourdough loaf on the weekend I really am finding it too much co-ordinating at the moment so the sourdough starters (including a back-up one in the freezer) were dashed.

With all the running, and walking - I am doing long walks after my runs in order to cool down gently, I was wondering how my Warrior diet would cope and so have been re-reading about it and have been inspired. Many sports people use the warrior diet (eating each day just in a five hour window) though I am reading that tiny fresh fruit snacks or nuts are sometimes eaten during the fasting hours, so I am good to continue. In fact exercise is the one thing I have neglected as part of the warrior diet/lifestyle. It seems my darling Mr Doris has been either inspired or put to shame as he now has the Runkeeper app on his phone too and is now cycling or running. After all my baking has continued apace and all this consumption needs to be balanced out. With my warrior diet I haven't put on any weight but dearest Mr D looks like he has been gaining a few inches.