Blogging, Life and the Universe

Once upon a time we were wedded to our blogs. Followed others with great passion from the safety of anonymous keyboards though with a genuine sense of care and affection. Then we move on and what happens to those bloggers, what happened to me?

At least two of those bloggers have passed on, one I knew in real life. My children are adults and live independently. Mr Doris and I celebrate 20 years with a renewed vigour that has taken some determination and effort. Friendships have evolved and careers have taken extraordinary changes. My father has a mixed dementia and after a year of intensive support we admitted him to a care home for his safety. Sometimes he is completely with it and shouldn't be in a care home and sometimes he is on another planet. He found a new woman to love, she too has dementia. He has never smiled and laughed as much as he did this past year, but they are now in different care homes because society can not cope as they may want to sleep in the same bed and cuddle.

Emotionally I am in the best place I have ever been. I now work for myself, in my own treatment room at home doing things the way I want. I've expanded my offerings and with ease go from doing a beauty treatment to sessions of therapy using EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) or tapping. A variation of tapping: Matrix Reimprinting, has been really significant to me rewriting traumatic events from my childhood so that I am able to move on and feel as if I had the nourishment I should have had back then. Writing this blog was cathartic in its day and helped along with the other learnings along the way of life, but it has been the tapping which has been significant. Now I get to work with others and help them too with this incredible therapy.

In the past years Mr Doris and I have travelled, with significant travels and lots of little travels this year. In the past year Mr Doris has studied and changed career. With just a few years off 60 I'll go with him to his graduation in a few weeks. I thought I did well to change career in my late 40s but it seems we are never too old to learn new tricks.

The sun has been shining in the UK for a sustained period of time. How lovely it has been to not have to wear many clothes!

And then there is Facebook. I got into it late, embraced it and now have a problem with it. The less I do social media the happier I am. I clearly still have issues to work with and whilst I appreciate being able to know friends and family are alive and well, there is a point where I value my privacy and don't wish X who I met once upon a time to know what I commented on such and such post. Then we either get the "everything is fabulous, I am fabulous" posts or the "woe is me, you don't understand" posts. That is unfair of me I know, because there are really good bits and snippets and information and I love seeing baby pictures. So I relate this back to the blogging years and how Facebook feels in comparison. Blogging was more sedate and, for me, could be done almost anonymously. I liked that, a safe place to consider, ponder and share.

PS. Oh yes, and thirteen years to the month since I first blogged. I was late to blogging too!

Gift of breadmaking

She could have done as I have and watched TV programmes and then youtubes and then found a recipe and had a go. Instead I was asked to give her a lesson in making bread which is what I did.

I brought my bowl and and yeast and scrapers and baking tin and liner. She bought a bag of white bread flour. I also brought a little bread making booklet free out of a newspaper and given to me by one of my helpful clients. I purposefully suggested a basic white cob as that was the first loaf I made and was hugely successful and launched me on my bread making career less than a year ago.

A cob is baked on a tray or stone and is free form but a tin was the desired utensil so we adapted and popped the dough in a tin. Her first loaf was well risen and if anything over risen due to an extremely efficient airing cupboard. Nevertheless, it did not suffer too much and the baking aroma infused the house and drew down her teenaged children from their bedrooms.

There were smiles all round and excitement. Though a little teasing as her son noted we were sat in front of the oven for half an hour watching bread cook. Watching my protege excited with glee with her very first loaf, proudly showing it off, was a really amazing feeling for me. Like I said, anyone can learn by themselves but I was honoured to be asked and to be there at this very first loaf. We all stood around tasting little squares of warm buttered bread. Deliciously biting through the crusty crust into the soft bread it was most satisfying. I am waiting to hear when the next loaf has been baked.

Incognito blogging

Thank goodness for the unused Chrome browser on my computer when it came to showing my 16 year old niece how to set up a blog. When I tried to show her on my regular Firefox and then tried the IE I hope her eyesight did not catch the name of my blog url as it flashed up on the suggested list as I tried to enter the blogger url.

Then there is the whole way that Google has inveigled itself across our lives so that it is impossible to show anyone anything on one's own computer without revealing the pseudonyms I may chose to use. One can't do anything without first having a google email account. It is my computer and on the on the whole no-one uses it but at times like this I wish I kept things more discreet. Or at least, thank goodness for that Chrome browser.

As I started showing my young relative how to do things she soon asked me if I had a blog. A small white lie may have passed my lips as I'd rather keep the blog incognito and therefore open and honest which seems a contradiction.

Following on from the monthly outings I did last year with a friend and will continue this year, and from having a quick read of Boomtown Rap's Movie Reviews of 2013 and realising how little I go to the cinema, my dearest Mr Doris and I have resolved to go to the cinema once a month this year. At least once a month will be a huge increase for me as I have probably seen two "cinema" movies in the past two years and both of those will have been at our new pop-up community cinema and therefore late releases. Mr Doris has been out to see more but then his choices of films are not the same as mine and I'd hate to waste the ticket price so do not go. Knowing how much he would come with me to see a film I wanted to see then I have said I would do the same with some exceptions. There is no point me going to something with a lot of violence or horror or too much suspense as it would upset me too much. I know that films are generally a work of fiction but I am there, in the film, and am far too sensitive for anyone's good.

There have been other years where I have wanted us to go out somewhere every month, just the two of us, but it did not happen despite the best intentions. This does not mean we do not go out, just that we do not go out enough I feel. And as expensive as a cinema ticket is, it is still cheaper than going out for a meal. As long as I carry any drinks or snacks in my pockets. Unlike the gorgeous independent cinema near where we used to live that had comfy sofas and one could have a very reasonable coffee or tea in a china mug with a slice of homemade cake. I'm hoping we might find such a cinema near us once we put our mind to the whole cinema going malarkey.

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.

Afternoon Tea

Busy morning at work followed by Afternoon Tea with a friend. I am on sugar overload having eaten my half share of the three tiers, and am still stuffed all these hours later into the next day!

Although it was delightful all in all, it was not a surprise to find out that the tea room owner has never had afternoon tea in her life so I recommended that she go to a Hall nearby where they do excellent afternoon tea that could be seen as a bit of a benchmark. These sandwiches left a lot to be desired using shop bought bread that was ever so slightly slightly dried. The scones were better and the little pots of jam and cream utterly delightful. There were chocolate dipped strawberries. In December! I was not keen on the chocolate but then I do not like a stronger chocolate.

The cakes were all hand made and very nice but the meringue should have been left off as it was just shop bought and a tad excessive. I still ate it all!

Afterwards we had a mooch around a charity shop and this children's game caught my eye as I walked in the shop. Oh dear, another headline screaming something other than what it was actually saying. In this case "catch crabs" was obvious and then I did not

read tentacles but testicles! I promise I have not had anything to drink.

This year my friend and I have managed to do our monthly outing. Every single month despite everything. We've been to the National Arboretum in Staffordshire; to country houses; for afternoon teas here and there; visited art galleries; ferried cross the Mersey; and attended the other's family gatherings. I am so glad that we made this commitment and kept it up - just one outing a month to something that at least one of us has not done before and wanted to do. We have managed to do it despite coping with my bereavement and her moving house. I feel these outings have helped to colour my year with a rich tapestry of delightful new memories. Fun and laughter and a "just because we can" attitude. We plan to continue next year with our monthly outings and perhaps try for some more adventurous activities.

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.

Nesting

Here I go on another extreme and passion! Or is it simply a matter of doing something and doing it until it is all done?

My sister was horrified when I said I was going to get my mother's bone china dinner service out the loft of my dad's place and asked if she objected if I had the china. Not that she wanted the china at all or had any plans for it, she was adamant that under no circumstances was I to start cluttering up my life with it. Well, it is a matter of perspectives. I may not have chosen this particular pattern but it is still lovely and it is fine china.

Under stealth mode, I have these last few weeks looked out second hand dressers and all sorts of arrangement including a rather lovely 1930s office bookcase with glass doors on top. Then this last weekend it all came together after the latest episode of Strictly (come Dancing) I set to with re-arranging the main room of our already over-full apartment to incorporate a Welsh Dresser. This included draining the fish tank and re-siting it. "Luckily" the fish had one by one over the years popped their clogs a while back and so I didn't have to worry about any. (New fish are on their way.)

Early Sunday morning my dad was obliging. I drove over and helped to get the china down from the loft and with his bigger vehicle picked up my chosen Welsh Dresser from the second hand shop down the road. It is a "marry-age" of a stained pine top which is extra tall and just what I imagined in respect of dimensions, with an oak sideboard with tapered front corners so there are no sharp corners for me to manoeuvre in order to get to my desk which has been moved along with all the cables tidied and ratified. Darling Mr Doris was a tad concerned as I'm unplugging wires here there and everywhere. Probably in case he was going to be called in to re-instate everything, but no, I am the mistress of the puzzle and I not only had everything back up and running, it looks so much tidier and neater.

A good clean of the dresser and screwing top to bottom, and an extra good wash of all the china (the newspaper most of it was wrapped in was 2004 so nearly 10 years in the dark) and then bit by bit placing it. Incredibly, this dresser was made for this amount of china. I am so surprised how complete and undamaged it is - just the handle of the cream jug has a problem that needs fixing and might be an issue though for the moment tiny blobs of blu-tack hold it in place. It is a complete dinner service for six people complete with serving plates and bowls and platters. There was once a cake stand but that has long since broken. There is a coffee set for six and a tea set for six.

The even more amazing thing, which I had sort of envisaged, was that the sideboard now also contains all sorts of dining stuff from around the kitchen and our bedroom. All in one accessible place and freeing up vital kitchen cupboards. In the last week or two the kitchen cupboards had been getting a zealous work out from me and now this. Yesterday morning saw other changes with the kitchen counters being cleared and re-organised/re-designed. After I take my daughter to work shortly I'll continue over to the next town and get a new table covering to match the new style, and possibly new lampshades. We have the cheapest paper shades which have served us well and can stay as lampshades are more of a considered purchase unless something fabulous and low cost stands out.

Even my son complimented me on how nice the dresser looks. And it does. It makes me smile and it looks stunning. The brown wood works perfectly with our brown dining table and chairs whilst bringing out the delicateness of the white bone china with its pink and gold decoration. My sister has yet to find out what I have been up to and to see it. That should be interesting if her views have changed.

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.

A study in bread

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Goddess of domesticity

Something most remarkable has happened in our neck of the woods - the domesticity goddess came to visit a couple of weeks ago and is still here. It started off with a need to either throw out all my good hair bands (for clients) because the velcro had worn out or else to pick the velcro off and sew on new extra long patches. Amazingly, I fetched the sewing machine from my sister and took the latter option. Having completed a job (double yay that I completed something) I then looked around at what else I could sew and took a couple of sizes off my favourite summer shift dress. It is a simple blue gingham Marks & Spencer number that I bought from a charity shop over six years ago and I still wear even though it was getting baggier with my shrinking weight. Now it fits me fabulously, all slim and curvy. All enthused I then hemmed some gorgeous sarong fabric I have and used exciting stitches as it is a computer sewing machine. It took some work getting the tension right and there are still issues which I will work out in due course.

A couple of days later, somewhere out of the blue, I decided to make my first loaf of bread. It was an incredible success. Delicious, risen and not the slightest whiff or taste of yeast. A delight. That weekend followed with waking up unnecessarily at 6am and wandering into the kitchen. By the end of Saturday I had made at least three different types of bread, including wholemeal, a tin loaf, Paul Hollywood's eight plait loaf, and Chelsea Buns. I had always thought Chelsea Buns were too difficult but not in the least. At the end of the day I took my basket of baked goods and walked over to my sis and family to share my wares with suitably impressed responses.

Sunday was a similar story and by the end I had made whole grain malt bread (aka Granary but apparently Granary is a trademarked name!) which I consider to be one of my best breads so far, burger buns (just four so that my son could make us burgers for dinner), bagels, and started a sourdough starter. The bagels were mixed by hand as I do not have one of those fancy kitchen mixers and my goodness the workout I received. They were actually good and tasted like bagels - maybe not the best bagels but not too bready. When making them and with all the workout I thought I'm never doing this again. It was like having a baby, once the finished article was there I am full of excitement to do them again and how to improve (that last bit is definitely not like having a baby because they all come out looking perfect no matter what!). Talking of which, my son actually took a picture of my bagels to show his friend and even wanted to to take some in to work to give to his baking friends! I declined as they are just my first batch and will hopefully be better other times.

Since then I have had a full work schedule though somehow have managed to experiment with making crumpets and yesterday I made French baguettes. Oh my goodness. The baguettes looked like something out of a proper bakery and tasted pretty good. I don't have any fancy equipment and used a floured tea towel to help shape them and put them onto a regular baking tray to cook - I don't have a baking stone. The French sticks can still be better and so I am looking forward to making those again. From 500 gm of bread flour plus a little yeast, salt and water yielded 4 medium sticks. A bag of bread flour costs 80 pence and contains three times that amount of flour. I reckon the cost of running the oven for twenty minutes plus heating time cost as much as the flour.

The sourdough starter is being nursed. I am just using the flour and water variety and currently it is at the stinky stage. By early next week it should transform into something supposedly lovely and can be used as a yeast substitute. I am gobsmacked that at last in my life I can eat homemade bread and think "wow" this tastes amazing and not taste the yeast.

One wonders how long this curiosity and enjoyment will last so I am just enjoying it for now. Part of me wants to retire and just bake bread and sew! I have lots of photos of course - just like a new parent. However, as I am off to work shortly it was either a case of what baked goods could I make before going or write a blog post. Photos will have to be added another time.

Busy day and weekend ahead. Have to be somewhere at 6am on Saturday and Sunday as I am volunteering at a community event. Oh joy, when I said I would help I had no idea it would mean 6am starts. And bread making will have to take a back seat. At least I can tend to my sourdough starter.

Ferry Cross The Mersey

As a child in the early seventies in a faraway country I had a teacher who used to bring his guitar to school and as we did our work he would play us tunes and sing. And if one looked up from one's work and caught his eye he would wink at you with his happy bearded smile and you'd carry on working, wanting to do your best. One of the tunes he used to sing and play was Ferry Cross The Mersey and I just knew from this lyric: "'cause this land's the place I love and here I'll stay" how much I wanted to escape where I was and that I would love England.



At the end of last year I created a bucket list on which I have "Ferry Cross the Mersey" as I have never done it. I've been to Liverpool just a few times but never quite managed the ferry. Well, today is the day!!!

Since the beginning of the year, a girlfriend and I have said we would do one outing a month to places or do things we have always wanted to do. Yes it will be cold and we will need to wrap up very well indeed. We'll do the ferry first (which she has done being a Liverpool lass) on which I believe they always play that tune, then we'll go to the statues on the beach at Crosby: Another Place which I have been to before but she has not and then we'll see what time is left and if we'll fit in a Liverpool gallery that neither of us have been to.


Whoopee a day off :-D

Feminine Genius

When I am good I am smokin'! First thing today I set to and sorted our mystery cupboard. If we lived in an old house it would be the cupboard under the stairs, the one where the vacuum and the cleaning materials are alongside the re-usable shopping bags and the carrier bags. The duplicate cleaning materials and the multitude of washing up sponges yet there are never any when you want them. The singular solid builder's glove has been thrown along with the debris of four years of living here leaving order and virtually a little grocery store of supplies neatly stored. The dustpan and brush were never handy and then I realised I should just shift the hook and bingo, maybe our lives may become tidier simply because the cleaning materials are more accessible.

The real genius began when I turned my attention to our cooker. We live in rented accommodation so the landlords are responsible for such things working. When it broke down again for the umpteenth time a year ago they decided to replace it. The engineer did so but the door never quite fitted. It would creak and not shut properly so when cooking the heat would escape out of the sides of the door wreaking the surrounding fascias of the cupboards. Mr Doris tried fixing it, I tried tweaking it, we told the landlord of the damage but they did nothing. Today I took the door apart. Four tiny little screws were all that held the door together. As well as a good scrub to all sides of the glass panels I studied the mechanism.

Poked.

Looked.

Tweaked.

Considered.

Pondered.

Dabbled.

Experimented.

Wiggled.

And then it became blindingly obvious that this flappy piece of metal was not incidental. That it was there for a reason. Suddenly things began to clunk and click into place. A few minutes later the door assembled and everything reasonably horizontal and opening and shutting like a dream. Looking shiny and clean. And fixed. Oh yes, when I am good and I am very good! Leaving me pondering that when the cooker was installed it was not installed properly.

14 years ago today...

... we moved in with the darling Mr Doris. So this is our 14th Christmas together. Although I do nothing more to note this anniversary than to acknowledge it, I remember it second to our wedding anniversary and more than the date we first met and the such like:

• Possibly because the day was so significant and went significantly pear-shaped and righted itself within the day? That was on account of the moving people I had organised deciding they were not going to move me after all once they fully realised how much stuff I had compared to the size of their van and just disappeared on the day of moving and luckily the second choice removals made themselves available to rescue a damsel in distress. 
• Possibly because as a unit with my small kids I took a step off a very big precipice into the unknown without any back-up plan? 
• Or maybe because I recognise that Mr Doris had been so brave to allow familyhood fall around him in one fell swoop.

Any which way, I was brave to make the move and Mr Doris was brave too. I like that. To this day I still do not know how we fitted all our furniture in with his, arrange it into some order and then six days later I cooked Christmas dinner for us all and his lovely Jewish family. I can still see all the happy faces sat around the dinner table squashed in by furniture and feeling the love and feeling we were home.

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This post has been chosen as one of the Best of Holidailies today. Yaaay! :-)

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Warrior Diet

These past couple of months I have been experimenting with fasting. Prior to that I have been experimenting with eating healthier and for over a couple of years I have experimented with a no-added-sugar and no-alcohol diet. The net result is that I have felt good on the whole. I still have my blips such as the other day with one depression after another I couldn't stop eating and wangled a whole cheesecake down my gullet in a 12-hour period plus sundry other items. 

Yesterday I started the Warrior diet. Rather unwisely without any preparation but I felt it was right for me just to jump right on in as that sometimes suits me. In any case, there was one very major hurdle for me to overcome and that was my attitude to breakfast: I love it and feel it is the key to everything yet the Warrior diet consists of no eating or consumption of any calories over a 19 hour period and then to have a five hour window every day, about the same sort of time and preferably in the evening when all food consumption takes place and you eat all that you would normally eat in a day. Therefore, no breakfast if one wants to interpret it that way. I weighed up eating my lovely breakfast on my own to family meals with my beloved and there is no competition.

What is more, when I started yesterday, I had a busy and late day at work knowing that I would have an active work day involving physical work. My previous experiments in fasting days actually meant one had a breakfast and then fasted until the next day apart from a little miso soup. So going without breakfast was new on me and what a revelation. I not only survived, it was actually alright. I managed all my physical work, I didn't feel tired and apart from some prattish thing I was doing much later on (after I had broken my fast at 5.15pm with a breakfast I took in with me to work) was actually quite sharp enough.

After the "breakfast" I was extremely full on the smaller meal in my presumably smaller tum which was a bit worrying by the time I was home and Mr Doris was cooking us a lovely meal and I didn't feel quite so hungry. Nevertheless I ate as it is still very important to have all your calorie intake each day but only within the eating window. And then there is the next key point for me - never to eat late in the evening and here I am doing just that. Throughout the day I drank black tea, green tea or water to keep hydration up.

Day two today and I do not have a late day at work so I can modify my food window to say, from 2pm to 7pm, or 3pm to 8pm. I have quite a bit of running around to do so that will be interesting to see how I manage. This is all experimental. In recent times I have read some ideas about the body going into repair mode during fasting rather than growth mode and that fasting only has to be the equivalent of a good night sleep plus a bit more. There are all sorts of fasting such as IF Intermittent Fasting and Alternate Day Fasting and so forth which I am researching too.

Since I am going to be fifty years old soon, I have been doing all sorts to try and get myself into better shape for the future. Not just physically, but also health wise and mentally. I have no desire to become one of the walking dead, just fitter and healthier. It will be good to see what role this may play.

Sacked

I am, I am, a good girl I am. Really. I've just been chatting to a friend and as you do, one conversation jumps to another and I suddenly worked out how many times I have been sacked in my time and it turns out four times! Actually, it would be nine times if you count the five times one mad employer sacked and re-employed me over a one week period when I was doing some work with her overseas, but then I am only counting that as one time. What is it about me that gets myself into these situations?

All these employers were women and very difficult ones who I had seemed to win over, at least for a while. With the exception of the last employer, I had worked very hard for them for over a year, and in one case on and off over several years. I worked and gave everything I had and yet something happened and obviously it was not enough.

My current employer knows about my last employer sacking me. Something happened today, something good I had done and was being acknowledged for, to which I cheekily asked my boss that if I ever do anything that she felt I overstepped the mark, to please speak to me about it and not to just sack me. Bless her, she was appalled at the thought and it was sweet the way she assured me she was not going to sack me. On the whole, this employer is not difficult. Actually, she is very kind and good at growing her business. A rather good state of affairs and reasons to be cheerful.

Ninety-Four

That's the age of my oldest client, Lillian. That would make her born 1918, before the end of World War I. When women still wore long skirts, although they were starting to shorten for some. The year the Russian royal family were shot. Lillian lived through the second world war, nursed the war wounded, made toys for the war orphaned at Christmas, served in the houses of the gentry, married and had children. As she loved her parents, her children in turn love her. Lillian is bed bound and yet lives in her own house with carers and mainly her daughter doing all that is needed.

For a year now I have been in and out to see this beautiful lady, her body all scrunched up. Her face always a picture when I arrive and so pleased to see me. Like many people who have served, Lillian is more genteel than the aristocracy! Today I was booked to give her a body massage. In effect, as her skin is so fragile and easily bruises, it is more like a gentle body rub, working each of her limbs with a very good moisturiser and then onto her torso discreetly keeping her private bits private although she is of an age now she does not care what she shows I still go through a process of keeping her dignity. All the while, Lillian is sitting on the side of her bed as she finds that the most comfortable position. In order to reach her back and neck I bring fresh over-socks and put them on and climb into bed astride her. Lillian found that so funny last time when I teased her that I was not accustomed to getting into bed with my clients.

This time massaging her hands was a little more sad as I thought they are like the hands of a corpse as they are just skin and bone. With beautiful nails that seem to just blend into finger and bone. Before the massage today I removed all her whiskers using tweezers gently holding her skin taught. Like any woman, Lillian loves having all the face hairs removed and it seems I can do it relatively painlessly for her. I decided to do those today before the massage as I shall be back just before Christmas to give her a facial and to give her ears a good clean around and outside them. It seems the care workers do not do that sort of thing, nor will they do a simple foot soak yet they are paid to wash a client. They are also not allowed to take off their outside shoes apparently, and so walk into people's bedrooms with their outside shoes. The world has gone mad.

Naturally Lillian has a new audience for all her stories and I love hearing them again and again. It is quite a privilege.

Independent fingering

I love it when pillow talk, after thirteen years of marriage, is snugly, smiley and a chuckle. Reviewing key aspects of the day, noting issues, both laughing over the same things, sharing hopes and expressing gratefulness for each other. Today, son's birth father is coming to visit him for the first time in four years and will be staying for the weekend. Mr Doris is delightful and enabling about such matters. I just find it odd when the Ex is around and I find it even more odd when he does not appear in the least bit curious to see his son during these vital growing up years.Thank goodness for Mr Doris, the best dad my son could have ever had.

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Piano lesson yesterday revealed that my fingers do not all work. Or rather, are lazy and I've gotten used to not using them. I have at times in my life had typing as a large part of my professional work and yet I very adequately type with only my thumbs and first two fingers of both hands. Seems my piano playing wants to do the same thing, which is a little difficult when ten fingers are not always enough so one has to use them all and my pinkies keep wanting to fly up like I am holding the finest bone china tea cup in elegant company. Apparently I am not to stress over it and just exercise them a little each day, getting them to all work independently.

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Yesterday evening in the cold, sleet and dark, my sister and I attended a candlelight ceremony at the local cemetery to remember those that have died this year or in recent times. My niece sang in the choir, a brass band played and there was a tree of lights switched on. It could have been a beautiful ceremony except there were too many thank you speeches for organising the event, not enough gravitas and it was just too cold and uncomfortable. How on earth the brass band coped with frozen fingers and lips I just do not know. It still seems strange that our mother is gone and that it is already eighteen months since she passed.

Piano Playing

And just like that, I am learning the piano. Again. It is years since I have played with both hands and decades since I had lessons as an adult. Starting again from scratch feels great. A sense of jubilation as first the right hand plays some notes and then the left hand plays, one after the other in time and notes correctly picked. My teacher plays the jolly accompaniment and I feel like I have achieved much being part of this music making.

We do not have a piano nor space for one, then I recall that in my lifetime I have bought and owned two pianos and ended up giving both away.

Still dancing!

I can still move, shake my booty and dance. And the only two men who got up on the dance floor all evening were my darling Mr Doris and our 80 something neighbour who we took along for our other neighbour's 65th birthday. Mr 80 is a petite looking chap who scrubs up nicely and had some nice grooves - it was he and I who kicked off the dancing for the evening with an elegant little number.

Maybe I didn't join in with the "party" dances and their set moves and routines but I was there with anything freestyle. It was so much fun and just what the birthday girl needed was to know that her guests were having a blast.

Apparently Mr 80 hadn't danced for twenty years as his wife had been ill for so long and then died last year. He had such a grand time and looked so happy when we dropped him home again, as we all did. I just hope he is in good health this morning and it didn't finish him off - albeit with a smile on his face!

I could have danced all night ..... I could have danced all night and never ever stopped.....