We made it!

Two years, three months and eighteen days after we met in Montana, on a dreary, rainy day here in the Pacific Northwest, Cowboy and I got married.

And we are living happily ever after.

Last minute

It is rapidly becoming the last minute. I am down to last minute meetings, last minute socialising, last minute packing, last minute shopping, last minute panicking, etc etc.

Today has mostly been about last minute hair dye, as I realised it must be almost a year since my mother slapped henna (I use Caca Rouge from Lush, and have done so for over ten years) all over my head and I propped myself up for several hours while the mud did its miracle thing on my hair.

With what feels like several tonnes of goop and clingfilm on my head at the moment, my neck is rather sore. That may have something to do with the killer upper body workout that Mark the Magician made me do this morning. His trainers matched the walls of the gym today. I was rather impressed, but I don't think it was intentional.

"Rather than mess about with more reps," he said, as I sipped water in a recovery break between push presses, "how about we just build up this weight to about that of a saddle?" This man has paid close attention to my goals, and I love him for it.

If I can now push 60lbs over my head three times, without dying immediately, hopefully I can avoid the shame of flinging Cowboy's saddle, forcefully and enthusiastically, into the side of my horse instead of over her back.

I've also ended up doing some last minute bonding with this little monster, who has spent the last nine months completely ignoring me.

She has finally realised that I will scratch her ears, rub her belly and bump heads with her at her every whim.

I'll even feed her. I'm that kind of cat person.

I think she might be a little sad when I leave, if she even notices, of course.

I'm not really going to miss her needle sharp claws being dug (with love) into my legs, arms, neck, feet, fingers, etc.

She can be a little over zealous with her affection.

She also likes to dribble on me when she's really enjoying the bonding session. Then she likes to shake her head and spray the dribble all over me, and whatever it is I've been doing whilst petting her. Thanks, Marmite...

You love her or you hate her. Her name really is appropriate.

The Release

Holy Nancy Spumoni Snow Boots... (spot that reference)

It's often said that you never know how much pressure you can handle until you're under pressure. I'd actually go a step further - you never know how much pressure you've been under until that pressure lifts.

Yesterday was a big day. On the face of it, the pivotal moment was a little over an hour spent at the US Embassy in London, and most of that was sitting and waiting. It wasn't exactly strenuous or difficult.

The relief, and the release, that came with that magical little word, "approved," was like a bulldozer. I feel totally drained. I expected to feel exhilarated, thrilled, excited, uplifted, enthused.

All I want to do is sleep. My muscles ache, my joints are sore, and this is not the usual post-gym fatigue. As the tide of adrenaline washes away, I am aware of just how much tension I was holding. It's a wonder I've been getting anything done at all.

I am taking a couple of days to sit with this new development in life. Moving to another country, another name, another way of life is a lot to get my head around. My decision to go ahead with this is being met with mixed emotions from different people. I'm sure there are doubters, but I'm trusting my gut on this one.

Now I think I'm going to go back to bed.

Waiting

September already?! I need a sit down, the year is going by so fast.

This isn't really a bad thing, given that I needed time to pass quickly so that I could get back to my real life as quickly as possible, and get out of this sticky no man's land of waiting.

Less than 48 hours of waiting now. The official verdict will be in. Getting my visa has been a long and tiresome process, although judging by the forums on Visa Journey, our application has been relatively smooth, swift, and uncomplicated. I feel rather lucky about that.

Current projects include making bunting at the kitchen table for next year's celebrations. It's oddly soothing.

"I feel stronger..."

I am a bit of a nerd, secretly. I love a good RPG on the X-Box or on my computer. I adore those roaming adventure games where you build your trusty band of comrades and go on quests.

One of the games of years gone by that I loved (but never finished), was Planescape: Torment, an epic game of storytelling and imagination. I think I only played it through the once.

What stuck with me most was what the only playable character would say when you had enough experience to level up. In his gruff, battle-worn voice, he would growl:

I feel stronger...

I feel like I'm levelling up. Today, I completed the third run of the Couch to 5k programme - that's week one done and dusted. It was tough, but probably because I chose to run up and down hills in the village, instead of running on the flat. It was good to see the little progress map move to week two. It was good to get home feeling like I could have gone on for longer.

I feel stronger. Apart from how my knees hurt, and I have a new pain in my shoulder.

My mental fortitude still leaves a lot to be desired, as I can think of nothing but chocolate, biscuits and cake at the moment.

No news from the school in Seattle yet. The suspense is killing me.

The first run

I went for a "run" today. I'm going to use that term loosely. Let's remember that I haven't run anywhere since last March. A long and complicated combination of sheer laziness, preoccupation with exams/studies/horse riding, injury, illness, travel, new injuries, more illness, more travel, and yet more illness meant that I didn't really run in the last year.

Today's effort was a start on a long road. I downloaded a "Couch to 5k" app on my phone, made sure I had some appropriate funky house to run to, and peeled myself into my running clothes. I laced on my trainers. Then I made myself look in the mirror. If I didn't go and run now, I was just an idiot wearing running clothes in the house.

I strapped on my heart rate monitor and my GPS watch, items I purchased in a rash of enthusiasm a few years ago. I really only love them for the calorie burn calculation that they produce.

The first episode of this Couch to 5k programme was mostly walking. There were eight runs of one minute each. I don't know what was more depressing: that the runs were only a minute long, or that I was wheezing and coughing my way to the end of each minute with barely another step left in me. I am horrifically unfit, to a degree that I don't recall for many years. My dance fitness came on so gradually, I didn't appreciate how in shape I was when I took up running the first time. This is a firm slap in the face. I need to put in work.



Luckily, it was a beautiful day, and I only got chased by a dog once, so it was a nice outing. I also got to see frogs in the village pond, and I do love seeing frogs.



By the time I got home, 32 minutes after I'd left, I had burned 240 calories, most likely through panic that I was about to die of heart failure. The lady on my app congratulated me heartily on completing the first session. I felt pretty pleased. The next run will be on Monday. Let's hope it's less gaspy and a bit more springy. I expect I will be stiff tomorrow. I'll deal with that when it happens.

Pushing forward

Last night a friend of mine posted a link to this video on Facebook. It was about 1am and I couldn't sleep. I thought I'd watch the video, turn everything off and then go to sleep.



Suffice to say, I watched the video, cried, and then couldn't sleep. I'm excessively emotional these days. Sam Berns sadly died just a few days ago, just 17 years old, but that's not why I was emotional. What struck me was his uplifting positivity and perseverance.

Those of us lucky enough to live in relatively wealthy and developed countries are privy to a very safe, comfortable lifestyle. We are rarely hungry or thirsty, we have warm beds to sleep in, stylish clothes, and if we have a headache, we can take one of any number of painkillers to get rid of whatever is challenging us. We face so few real challenges that when something difficult does come into our lives, we flail about in panic, wondering how on earth we will cope.

The human body is extraordinarily resilient. Even with Progeria, Sam's body endured 17 happy years and allowed him to achieve some of his ambitions. Whilst he may appear slender and fragile, his skull protected his brain through the years to produce this intelligent, thoughtful and inspiring young man, who wants to show other people how to be happy. It's ironic that we so often look up to people who appear to have 'difficult' lives for advice on how to be more content with our own. Sam is firm on the point that he has a very happy life. Is that despite the challenges he lives with? Or do the hurdles give him perspective on what is important in life? Maybe we would thrive a little more with a few more sticky situations to battle through.

I loved him most of all for his words on pushing forwards. I am often guilty of lingering over the past, or dragging it along with me, or looking back at it and sighing. Challenge can stall us in life, surround us and make us come to a standstill, as if we can do nothing until the challenge has somehow disappeared again. Sam encourages us to push forward, move on through it all, to not be embodied by the obstacles in our lives.

I'm adding it to my resolutions for the year. I'm going forwards this year, not back.

Starting somewhere

You have to start somewhere, don't you? Julie Andrews would suggest starting at the very beginning (that's a very good place to start).

When I lay in bed this morning, wondering how on earth to summon the energy to just roll off the mattress and fall into the bathroom, I felt a bleak despair wash over me. I have spent a week looking at websites of personal trainers, and then feeling too cowardly to email or call them. I've looked at my wasting quadriceps and gluteals and felt ashamed and terrified by the thoroughly poor state of my fitness and strength.


On my recent trip to London, I wandered around the Natural History Museum, and had to sit down next to an elderly couple after I walked up a shallow flight of stairs and felt dizzy, light-headed, breathless, my heart pounding. In the words of Nicki Minaj: You outta work... I know it's tough. But enough is enough.

Thinking about it, I've been out of work(ing out) for months. I tore my plantar fascia last June, which healed up in time for me to go to America, where I tore up most of the soft tissue in the medial aspect of my knee. That healed up just in time for Christmas, when I was struck down with various germs that have kept me laid low for a few weeks.

Cowboy told me last night that Sunshine is fat and out of shape, and huffed and puffed her way through the entire ride last night, grumpy about how bad she felt. I think I understand what she's going through.

Here I am: over-sugared, under-sweated and acutely aware of my body's tendency towards premature ventricular contractions at bedtime. My PVC gets worse when I'm unfit, I've learned.

I forced myself up, and made a start. This start, in fact:



I pinned this to a Pinterest board months and months ago. I did it today, and felt instantly better. The best part is that you don't sweat doing this workout, so I didn't have to change into workout clothes and then shower and change back into normal clothes - the hassle puts me off more than the workout itself. Four minutes is doable, then straight back to whatever else needs to be done in the day.

I intend to pursue more thorough and longer duration workouts, as well as this four minute tabata training. There are plenty of hills around here for building bum muscle and quads strength, and for stamina training. I just need to get out into the cold and the wet and the mud and get to it.

Today was just a start, and starting is often the hardest bit.

The library

What a strange start to the year it has been. The weather has been grey and dull, with many parts of this small island flooded and without power. I have spent the last five days in a bit of a funk, not sure what to do or where to go or what I want from life just now.

I look at my colour-coded list of things for 2014. Some have been ticked off already. That should be achievement! It feels like nothing. So many things feel like nothing. I wondered this morning if the demons were sneaking in again, dressed up as sadness that Cowboy has gone home, or dressed as bad weather and an overly sugary diet recently.

I'm undecided.

I had a craving for adventure today, and because the weather was shoddy, I decided the best way to satisfy the wanderlust would be to put Skyrim into my Xbox and wile away some hours. I ran up and down a mountain. I killed a dragon, a bear and a troll. I found a dead goat and took its horns to use to decorate my house. Then I went to my second home (where the wife and kids don't live and I can get some peace and quiet), and built myself a library, a trophy room and a greenhouse.

I sent my character to sit in the chair in the library for a moment, so I could see what the room looked like from the reading spot.

The room is a tower attached to the side of the house, and the bookcases line the walls. With the doors closed and my hired magician left in the kitchen to find himself a biscuit, I surveyed my new reading nook. It's a lovely place.

"Well, bother," I thought to myself, triggering my warrior to get up again and do some more running around. "It's not even a real house." Annoyed and needing to vent some frustration, I ran outside and killed another troll.

I've added the library to my "ideal home" list. It could double as my office, it would just need a large, leather-topped desk in there, as well as a very comfortable chair or a small sofa where I could sit and read. Assuming I will ever have time in my life to just sit and read, of course... That's an amusing notion.

While I live at home with my parents, I am discovering a lack of meaningful space. This is not the house where I grew up, they moved here a few years ago, and it is ordered according to their needs. There is no spare chair in a spare room where I might take myself to read, or to earmark as my spot. My dad has generally agreed to share his Man Cave with me - his study and little haven in the house. Still, I am surrounded by things that do not belong to me. Most of my possessions are up in the loft, packed away and waiting to be shipped to my more permanent home, once I have one...

I crave the home of my own. Perhaps that is why Skyrim's adventures today were mostly about shaping a home and not about killing dragons. Next Skyrim quest will be finding books to fill up my library.

Obligatory 2014 post

2014 is the Year of the Horse (so they tell me), which seems to me like a pretty good start. I actually started 2014 in the bathroom, picking at in-grown hairs on my legs, because I'm just that glamorous and exciting.


I hear Sunshine has turned into a bit of a snarky biatch whilst she's had some time off over the festive period, so Cowboy has gone back to ride her fat butt off and remind her not to be so uppity.

I spent a few hours yesterday with a notepad and a pen, and scribbled out two pages' worth of things I wanted to achieve, acquire and investigate at some point in 2014. Some of them were urgent, and need to be done two weeks ago, including renewing my passport so I can go to the US in February, which is cutting it really rather fine indeed... Well done, Bee.

My two page list has been streamlined and formatted into a colourful Excel spreadsheet of a checklist, with headings like "URGENT", "SH*T THAT NEEDS DOING" and "SOUL FOOD". There are other, more boring and business-like headings for more boring things like my business.

"Soul food" is the biggest category. It's a list of things that I want to experience, skills that I want to practise and improve, new things that I want to learn about. It includes conquering my fear of making bread, learning about how to keep chickens, finally learning how to use my camera in a more advanced way than just pointing it and pressing the button, and going back to do more horse archery.

As I enter 2014, jobless and living with my parents (again, the patient souls), with my partner in crime on the other side of the planet, and having given up something that I worked extremely hard for when I eventually admitted it wasn't what I wanted, I put together this list of soul food in a bid to seek out happiness and success this year, without having to radically change my entire diet, appearance, wardrobe or daily habits.

Yes, I would like to develop gluteal muscle mass, I really would like to have an arse to fill out my jeans, so I will probably need to do something different there, but generally I just want to enhance what I am already very lucky to have in life.

Wishing all of you a successful, happy 2014. Spend time with your friends and family, give some things away, go outside and play in the rain. Be excellent to each other. Etc.