and out the other side (hopefully!)

i passed my exam.

n's job has finished.

physio is kicking in and my foot is slowly getting better.

four more days of work then two weeks of christmas holiday.

my sense of humour is speaking to me again.

ditto sense of ridiculousness, beauty, and some degree of patience.

i think it's going to be ok.

phhhhhthpt*

*in honour of bloom county. welcome back bill!!!!!

my project management exam is tomorrow.

that is all.

actually no - that is not all.

**warning - superfluous unwarranted moaning ahead**

my foray into housekeeping is disastrous. the dishes never end - i can't seem to get them properly clean no matter what i do and how hard can it be??? i have two degrees for fucks sake and i can't clean a wine glass????? i'm starting to take it personally. the chicken curry i am making for supper has the ominous first line ending "and marinade for 2 hours" which i knew but somehow conveniently forgot until an hour before we are supposed to eat it. the uk is debating bombing syria like it is some sort of game of risk and not at all like they wanted to do the same thing but on the other side a few months ago and no one seems to be batting an eyelid. how is this even a debate? these are educated men? in what weird post-empire hallucination could this ever be considered a good or even rational idea? between n and i we are working over 100 hundred hour weeks (mostly him to be fair) and not only do i miss him but the wheels are coming off of this whole "civilised lifestyle" thing we've been attempting. turns out it is shockingly reliant on someone actually being in the house cooking stuff or cleaning stuff (or in the shop buying stuff). and my heel hurts. for no reason it really really really really hurts. it started last week - just started aching, and it has got steadily worse. i can't run. i can barely walk. it really hurts. i didn't fall or pull anything (that i noticed - i'm not THAT old) it just started hurting and now it's trying to kill me. and my project management exam is tomorrow.

i can't even be bothered to be cranky. i just want it all to go away.

productivity! hear me ..... *yawn*

today i locked up my inner sloth and got things done. oh yes. i made a list and everything. and most of that list is ticked off. except the 'iron shirts' but that was just hopeless optimistic naivety and is never going to happen unless i have a job interview or something. i cleaned the bathroom (even the floor! no mom - that does not mean i don't usually clean the floor - ok i don't usually clean the floor. sorry.) i did laundry and made chicken stock. i did the dishes (oh god they never end do they? never ever end. it'a good thing they're associated with something i love so much or i would never do them either and we'd eat off of paper plates). i studied for my project management exam (it's in 2 weeks. imagine how much i'll accomplish avoiding that baby?) and i answered a shit ton (technical project management term) of emails. i bought groceries (from a list! even loo roll! i am so grown up today) and i have even practised my trombone. oh yeah, and a 8.2 km run.

the run was amazing - the weather is due to change this weekend so this was probably the last run in shorts and a tshirt. the sun shone, the trees waved in the wind, and i loved every minute of it. except the bit where my socks wore out and i landed up with a big bloody (literally - very gross) blister on my left heel. the universe will not abide perfection. but the feeling of pounding down the lanes in the wind - just fantastic.

there's a lot to be said for slothfulness you know. i'm knackered. i can't believe it's only 6pm. i still have to make dinner and there's more dishes (surprise!) and i still haven't put the hoover away (it has a cord that is not only a trip hazard, but seems to possess agency and lies in wait. it does not go quietly.)

but first a well earned beer and a graceful collapse onto the sofa. i may even try this again sometime next year...

more of a graceful collapse

it's friday night and i have to admit i am not charging into the weekend in any way - i feel more like i am slumping over the finish line. except there is no finish line - why do we even use this as a metaphor? it never bloody ends and it never will end until you do. happy friday everyone!

so yes its been a rather sloggy old week and i have been fighting the existentialisms. for some reason they are always accompanied by a feeling of failure for not being more ambitious. the cognitive dissonance in these two complaints should be a clear signal that these feelings probably have more to do with not having enough vitamin d or sleep or coming down with a cold or something than any life critique but it all seem so plausible at the time.

young f made me laugh this week though - "we have a new blanket" he said, showing me a beautiful grey plush throw. "my daddy said it was made of old cats sewn together but my mummy said he was only joking." i love how he felt compelled to give me both sides of the story. he cares a lot about fairness and i really like that about him. when we watch telly together he brings me one of his teddies so i have one too. of course then he looks over and cackles and says "let's smell their bottoms!" he is only 4 after all. in case you are wondering,  teddy bottoms smell much like the rest of them.

that's probably a better metaphor than finishing lines, come to think of it.

i've had better days

it didn't seem like it was going to be one of those days. it's been a long week, sure. on tuesday, my team and i hosted a seminar/workshop for an external networking group that made me want to gouge my own eyes out with a toothpick but that is only to be expected. ("how do we measure productivity and how do we relate this back to flexible working initiatives?" see? here - have a toothpick).

and although i have a move this weekend at work - small, but complicated and very political, involving multiple agencies including the police with all of their various networks and bureaucracies, i felt like i was more or less on top of things.

which is why i was very surprised to get in the lift this morning and see one of the team i am moving standing there with a printer in his arms. maybe it was one of those 'sliding doors' moments because before that lift ride everything was fine and after - nothing was fine.

the lift ride was too short to get any sense out of this chap so i dumped my bag at a table and went off to try to figure out what was going on. it is too boring to relate further detail but suffice to say this was the moment when i twigged something was wrong - very wrong with the technical side of this move.

when i got back to my table i had figured out enough to have a low sinking feeling and an intense desire to make about 50 phone calls simultaneously. i dialled with one hand and reached down into my bag for my breakfast smoothy only to encounter - breakfast smoothy. everywhere. i hung up and rushed my bag to the kitchen.

so it turns out it's really quite messy extracting 600 mls of escaped smoothy out of a backpack.

and it went on like that for pretty much the whole day. by late afternoon i was looking carefully when i crossed the road because frankly, it seemed like bike-courier hit-and-run was the next logical step.

i think i resolved the technical issue, which seemed to be one part "oh when you said computer equipment and listed pcs and printers i didn't realise you meant printers - we only do pcs - you need another company and another set of engineers for that" (this, less than 24 hours before the move - after 6 months and multiple meetings and minutes stating things like "blah blah blah engineers to disconnect/reconnect all computer equipment as listed...") and one part "i thought so and so was doing it so i didn't think it was worth mentioning". that second one is guaranteed to send any project manager worth their salt into the stratosphere through pure incandescent rage, followed closely by the first one.

hopefully that's all the misunderstanding and bad luck out of the way and the move tomorrow will be a breeze. we'll see. i had a plan b before today, but i've added a plan c and d now as well.

i'm home now, and dry (it was raining. of course it was raining. i pretty much expected it at that point. i had remembered an umbrella this morning only it was covered in strawberry smoothy...). i have a large glass of wine, and i've more or less recovered my equilibrium.

after all, it could have been much worse. i might have not seen the guy in the lift and i wouldn't have realised anything was wrong for ages. i could have sat in spilled smoothy. and i didn't get hit by a car or a bike or anything else except for a wave of stupidity, and that, at times, is simply unavoidable.

free sunday

it's sunday and we have no plans. i woke up this morning, thought - we don't HAVE to do anything today - grinned, and went back to sleep for another 45 minutes. these days are getting rarer and must be protected as the endangered creatures they are. when i got up i made coffee and spent a chunk of the morning working out a design for some knitting based on a cushion cover i saw in yesterday's guardian magazine. you need space for that sort of thing - hard to think creatively when half your brain is thinking about grocery lists and what time you have to be somewhere. 

n is busy in the kitchen - probably getting ready to bottle wine (about 20 litres - from a kit) and cleaning the kettle from yesterday's beer brewing (porter - not from a kit!). i should be helping him, but i'm being deliberately obtuse.

yesterday's guardian magazine also had a column which made me sit straight up and go huh. the whole thing is well worth a read but this bit especially - 

"We view certain items – in another McCracken phrase – as “bridging goods” that connect our lives now to our hoped-for futures. You want that Smeg fridge because it expresses something about who you want to be (such as: sufficiently well-off to care about nice fridges). So you buy it, but then the Diderot effect kicks in. And soon you find you’ve accumulated many of the signifiers of the life you dreamed of, without the thing – in this case economic security – they were supposed to signify."

the sun is shining and i am beginning to feel guilty not only about ignoring n beavering away in the kitchen, but also by being inside at all on this lovely day. guess i better get a move on. this is an afternoon for a bonfire and new season cider i think. hello autumn!

why are you asking that?

 brilliant. just brilliant. the whole article.

from "the mother of all questions" by rebecca solnit

"We talk about open questions, but there are closed questions, too, questions to which there is only one right answer, at least as far as the interrogator is concerned. These are questions that push you into the herd or nip at you for diverging from it, questions that contain their own answers and whose aim is enforcement and punishment. One of my goals in life is to become truly rabbinical, to be able to answer closed questions with open questions, to have the internal authority to be a good gatekeeper when intruders approach, and to at least remember to ask, “Why are you asking that?” This, I’ve found, is always a good answer to an unfriendly question, and closed questions tend to be unfriendly."

more running

another beautiful run this afternoon through the kentish countryside. these runs through the lanes can only happen in the daytime now - it's too dark in the morning before work or when i get home. the dark days are coming.

vicarage lane, kent. not so much fun in the dark.

which is why yesterday saw me purchasing a wind-proof, water-proof running jacket so bright that even my 11-year old self in the throes of a serious fluorescent jelly bracelet phase (not to mention the fluorescent shorts and t-shirts - hyper-colour -remember those???!) would have been appalled. i also picked up reflective armbands with flashing lights.

on the plus side, now if you hit me -  i'll know you were aiming for me.

it's decorative gourd season

 happy autumn!

warning - extremely bad language in the link - but very very funny.

photo evidence

cause i still can't quite believe it myself...

start

finish

i did it!!!!!!!

no stretcher required - phew. i even had fun (now a year or two ago if i'd heard that i would have recommended you cart me off for some pretty hardcore psychiatric drugs because clearly i needed them). i finished in 1 hour, 9 minutes and 2 seconds - and i wasn't last - and i beat the guy in the super mario costume (that may sound ungracious - sorry). i wasn't even the slowest faversham running club racer :)

i just don't even know what to do with myself now! although whatever it is it really needs to start with a bath.

scaredy-cat

in ten minutes we will leave the house and i will join 600 other runners for the faversham 10k race. scared doesn't even begin to cover it. i have a sore throat too - although i honestly don't know if its a coming-down-with-a-cold sore throat or my body's last ditch attempt to stop this nonsense and bring me back to my senses. i am trying to explain to my body and mind that it would be eminently helpful if we could be together on this endeavour but so far they are not on speaking terms. i just hope when push comes to shove they'll snap out if it or i may be the first runner to actually have to be stretchered off, stiff as a plank, from the starting line.

oh well. as i'm sure someone once said, what doesn't kill you, doesn't kill you.

holiday - dobrota 3/9/15

sunday we took the (very late, very hot) bus from dubrovnik to kotor, montenegro. we found a bank machine and a taxi and arrived at our apartment in dobrota. first impressions were a little shaky. for one thing we were starving and very very hot. my phone wouldn’t work and we didn’t have keys. it was SO hot. but marko turned up and we got settled and had a bite to eat. it takes a little getting used to – it’s not as accessible as a greek island but the view is breath-taking and the gin is cheap!

sunset from our balcony

on monday we walked along the bay to the town of kotor to stock up on groceries and get cash. food is super cheap. we spent the afternoon swimming in the apartment pool and then at a beach bar where you sit on comfy chairs drinking beer, then swim, then have another beer.  bliss.

the apartment pool

n swimming at the bar

it is a lazy afternoon – n is still napping. i got up early this morning and went for a (very hot) run. we had breakfast on the terrace, a lazy coffee at the restaurant at the bottom of the steps, a swim and snorkel (a hundred shiny tiny rainbow fish…), lunch and reading on the terrace again then naps when the sun chased us in.

my reading spot

yesterday we had our sail on the monty b - a 40 ft yacht. it was amazing – we even got to sail! n tacked and helmed the boat. there was loads of swimming. i even got to jump off – twice!

i'm jumping off a yacht!!!!!!!

happy

the taxi driver yesterday said it’s been the hottest summer – drought and stupid hot. he says he quite likes the idea of london’s 10 degrees and drizzle. i think i can wait awhile though…

holiday - dubrovnik 29/8/15

after another lazy afternoon in polace we caught a very hot very stuffy ferry to dubrovnik - another hydrofoil with no air conditioning. we were like cooked chickens when we were finally expelled, gasping, onto the dubrovnik docks. we found the bus easily and were deposited outside the pile gate in the early evening. it was quite the shock after quiet mljet – suddenly people everywhere! thank god for gps – i just turned on my phone and we winded our way like james bond through the narrow old town streets to our apartment (about 1 million stairs up).

dubrovnik old town

the apartment was perfect, and so was dubrovnik although we got a bit touristed out after awhile. saturday morning we waked the walls (!!!! - i have always wanted to do this!). it was hot hot hot but we were early enough that there weren't too many people. by the end i was about as hot as i have ever been i think, but very happy.

view of old town from walls

walking the walls

we spent the afternoon swimming and drinking rather expensive beer at a beautiful bar cut into the rocks called buva and generally had an amazing time.

buva (from the walls)

one of the buva bars

swimming at the bottom (i'm down there somewhere!)

on sunday morning we got up really early and went for a quiet walk before the tourist hordes descended. it was so beautiful. i have always wanted to go to dubrovnik and i loved it.

dubrovnik old town

dubrovnik old town

dubrovnik old town

holiday - mljet 27/8/15

soline – a very odd place indeed. 

we got up early yesterday and caught the ferry from split to mljet. mljet is an island on the dalmation coast - it is special because over half of it is a designated national park, and there are two large inland salt-water lakes in the park. the ferry was a hydrofoil- you couldn’t go outside which was disapointing. the trip took about 3 ½ hours – a few stops, as more and more people got on.  we got off at pomena, mljet. it was much smaller than i anticipated. we bought our tickets for the national park, and asked how to get to soline. bikes or walk - "no cars on the park paths". how far? bike man said 10k, park lady said 3. turned out to be 6. 6 hot sweaty kms. but a beautiful path – turquoise lakes, pines, and the ever-present background (foreground?) buzz of the cicadas or pine beetles or whatever they are. Neal says they sound like they are shaking miniature maracas, I think they sound like a sprinkler rotating.

path in mljet national park

soline is a road with a row of restaurants on one side (using the term loosely!) and a row of buildings on the other. we found our rooms with a little difficulty, and went exploring.

soline

everything here happens very slowly, if it happens at all. i get the feeling they wish we would all just go away, although they are friendly enough when you talk to them. maybe it’s been a long summer. i would be cross too if all i looked at where grumpy entitled skinny tan italian women! (there are A LOT of those). we swam in the sea, and the big lake. neal has now snorkelled! There’s not so much to see but it’s still fun.

there are three sets of rooms and each “house” or set of rooms seems to have its own “restaurant” so we have stuck to ours. each restaurant has a huge outdoor cooking oven/grill. Last night we ordered grilled fish and got a huge platter with 6 of the yummiest fish I’ve had in a long time.

soline restaurant

the kitchen

the problem to solve today was how to get out – another 6 km roasting hike with bags not enticing. we rented bikes (eventually!) and found a route where an island taxi goes. we continued on to polace- beautiful. bigger, and much posher. some serious yachtage.

polace restaurant

it seems like everyone in polace is there in the evening and goes out during the day. we had a restaurant more or less to ourselves for the afternoon. went for a swim, and came back, via the lakes. the park paths were really fun to bike. it is opposite in soline, where everyone comes for lunch and by evening it is only us here – and a few more families all staying. we watch the setting sun glinting off of the pines and listen to the cicadas.

view from soline

we survived

i've just handed back a very excited (although bathed and pajama'd - go me) four and a half year old to his parents, who really are very good friends (still!). He was actually very well behaved, but when you don't have children, spending 52 hours with a snapper cold turkey like that is a bit of a shock. I am now sitting in my toy-free (how do they get everywhere like that? why so many small sharp pieces? why do they make so much noise? who decided the toy piano needed a bird chirping voice? WHO? I would like to have some serious words with them) and QUIET living room with a rather large whiskey.

he's still in the 'why' stage which can not only get quite trying, but often leads down paths you do not want to go down. "what are the stones in the grass" leads alarmingly quickly to "but why can't we dig up dead people? i want to see one!" (when i laughed about this to his mom, she said "tell him it's not polite to dig up dead people" which i found to be quite an illuminating insight into the british psyche). i also find it alarming how many ways there are to seriously harm yourself when you're four and intent on jumping off of any surface at any height, and running pell mell down stairs, and clumsy at the best of times. my heart was in my throat half the time. "why can't i climb up there?" "because i'll have a heart attack. "oh." "what's a heart attack?"

its good to see how other people live, and there is something completely endearing (if a bit sticky) about chubby preschool arms wrapped around your neck, but i am feeling very very happy with my own lifestyle choices at the moment.

with some trepidation

our friends have entrusted us with the care of their four and a half year old son for the weekend while they attend some fancy celebrations on the isle of wight. i don't know who is crazier - us or them. i am somewhat comforted by the fact that there are two of us and only one of him which evens up the odds at least in the energy stakes. and the fact that out of 52 hours he'll be sleeping (hopefully) for 22 of them so that only leaves 30 hours of actual child care. is that too much telly do you think?!

anyways suffice to say there are unlikely to be any holiday posts this weekend - but i will catch up next week and put up some pics. that us, assuming i survive the next 52 hours!

back

we're back from our holidays - 13 days, 2 countries, 3 unesco world heritage sites, 4 novels, countless swims and sunsets, and approximately 50 billion stairs. our trajectory began in split, croatia, then the island of mljet, then dubrovnik, then down to the bay of kotor in montenegro and now today home. i unplugged completely but i did write notes so in the next days i will try to decipher my scrawls and add a few photos and details of what was a really lovely holiday.

now i will just try to adjust to the 20 degree centigrade drop in temperature and the knowledge that it is back to work and the more ordinary facets of life. most of all though, i feel freer - just knowing there's so many other ways of life and people living them sets me free and opens the doors of a cage that routine and day-to-dayness can wrap around me without my noticing.

but tonight i am content with pulling on a pair of wool socks and trying to get used to wearing trousers again. what a sad waste of a lovely tan!

and again

"how do you get used to it?"
"you get used to not not getting used to it"

from tonight's MASH viewing (still working through the box set from last summer)

i'm going to put this here so i don't forget

 "being comfortable being uncomfortable is a very effective way to be a human"

from here.

i'm going to have to think about that one.

a very english day

the brass band played on the broadstairs bandstand this afternoon. it was my first bandstand as last summer i worked every weekend so missed them all and so far this summer, two have been rained out.

today the weather was perfect - lovely and sunny but not too hot. we had a great programme - we play a mix of marches and old stuff (ww2 songs go down particularly well with our often slightly ageing (ahem) audience). we also do more modern pop-y stuff - happy by pharell williams, abba, etc - and then a few swing-y ones like the bare necessities and new york new york. the crowd loved it, the sun shone, and graeme, our conductor, said so many horrific things to the audience that we nearly fell off the bandstand but it was funny and they loved it.

i don't think you can get more english than a brass band on a bandstand in a seaside town in august.

i even bought a new sun hat! (pink ribbon to be replaced forthwith)

now somehow the weekend is nearly over and we stand staring into the gaping maw of monday. but not quite yet. not quite yet.

so. tired.

i know an insane man who swears that early morning runs "set you up for the rest of the day". I got up at 6 (6! a.m.!) and was out the door for a 40 minute run by 645 (645! a.m.!) and i can faithfully report that my early morning run set me up for a day of tired legs, sore back, yawns, and a reliance on coffee that - in dependence stakes - would rival liberace's glitter fetish. if this is energised i'd hate to see the flip side. it gets better, right? (just say yes. smile and nod. this is not the time for truth or honesty).

on the up side i'm working from home tomorrow which means no trains - no london - no hordes - no "southeastern apologies for the delay and hopes it will not cause too great an inconvenience". and then it's the weekend (and a 50 minute run on saturday but we are resolutely NOT going to think about that right now).  tonight we're over to our friends h&j for supper - they've just come back from 2 weeks in denmark so it will be fun hearing all about it. i will get a second wind and drink too much wine and eat too much cheese and will realise once again that running is never going to make me thin if i carry on like this in the evening, and then decide (again) that i really couldn't care less.

happy (almost-so-close-you-can-practically-taste-it-but-not-quite) weekend

it was lovely!

they were very friendly :) it was fun. i wouldn't have wanted to run on these roads all by myself but when i knew there were people ahead of me (and behind me - imagine!) it was ok. and the scenery - so beautiful. and the hills - oh my dear god. i know that what goes up must go down, but still. every turn of the road revealed more hill. but all in all very lovely. when my legs can move again i may even go back!

the dreaded runs

i'm sitting on the sofa in my running gear looking nervously at the clock. usually i would be heading home from an after-work run by now but tonight i decided to go check out the faversham running club. they don't meet until 7 (which seems awfully late) so i have another hour to sit here thinking of all the reasons why this probably is a bad idea.

i've been running sporadically for a few years now - i go for a few months, then slack off through injury or an over-abundance of wine and sheer laziness. in June i decided i had to HAD TO keep motivated or else i was going to have to diet. i have no intention of ever dieting so exercise it is. i signed up for the faversham 10k run in september and i have found since then that the terror of bailing in front of other runners not to mention the ten people at least i know who are also running the race has kept me surprisingly motivated. so much so that i am even planning on brining my trainers on holiday! unthinkable.

the running club is new-ish - it is run by our postman and he seems nice. he shouts encouraging things to me when he sees me running. well i assume they're encouraging - i can't actually hear him above my frantic gasps for air, but he's smiling in a way that suggests he has said something lovely and not, as must be tempting, comparing me to an asthmatic hippopotamus. one of my friends in the brass band is in it and loves it. another guy at work has been raving about how much he loves his running club and how it helps him and keeps him motivated as well.

my head was turned.

now that i'm sitting in lycra knowing i am going to have to talk to other people (whilst still wearing lycra!) i am not so sure. i am 41. plump-ish. i have never run more than 45 minutes and that was last week and i STILL can't believe it didn't kill me. i only run so i can keep drinking lots of wine and eating lots of cheese. ummmmm cheese.

oh well. how bad can it be? i never have to go back if i don't want to. maybe i'll learn something - god knows i could use advice on a pretty impressive scale. and i really really don't want to diet. n is making chicken schnitzel for dinner as well so there is always that to look forward to. i shall hoist my sails and gird my loins and with the happy thought of schnitzel, face my enemies! or, you know, go jogging.

i've just stepped out - i may (have) been some time...

or, you know, three and a half months. time really does fly, even when you're not having all that much fun. it's been a bit rough out there - the worst thing by far was having to say goodbye to our lovely adored humph. his arthritis was getting worse and worse and he was in a lot of pain that was getting more are more difficult to control. when he couldn't get up by himself anymore we knew we had to help him in the last way that we could. it was so hard to do - we knew we had to but - oh man, we didn't want to. the vet cane to the house, and he died in n's arms. i miss him so so so much. i know we're lucky that we had 9 amazing years together and i'm grateful for every one of them but i just miss him.

anyways here's the last lot of photos i took with him - these were taken in may.