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.