The Last Hurrah

The end of my feeble, wasted, lazy existence is nigh.

On Monday morning, I slithered into my running lycras and went to meet Mark. Mark, a personal trainer, owns a little outfit in Oxford called StudioPT, and I have asked him to fix me.

I did my best to put him off working with me. "My fitness is terrible. I am a walking disaster. I am riddled with old injuries." He was undeterred, and unfortunately I had to show up at his private gym and feign enthusiasm.

The studio is well equipped, bright and airy, and has a banging soundtrack. After a quick sit down to discuss my situation, Mark put me through my paces as an assessment session.

He is tall, lean, and oozes power. He demonstrated each exercise with little to no effort, and corrected my wavering form as I tried not to shake too obviously in the press ups. This was nothing like my usual visits to the gym.

Mark is going to whip my butt into shape, starting tomorrow morning. He says he has a plan. I'm slightly terrified.

I'm preparing the best way I can think of, with one last rebellion - sitting on the sofa watching the Food Network, eating a bacon sandwich, and binging on cake.

"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.

Worlds apart

It's getting close to the time when Cowboy will be arriving in the UK for Christmas, so naturally there's a bit of PVP starting to kick in. I am restless and irritable, and scrabbling about for ways to make the days go quicker. It's harder to do that without uni or a job to take up the bulk of my time.

If I had my head in a sensible place, I'd be working on the businesses (mine, and Cowboy's) behind the scenes: adjusting websites, planning updates, drafting letters etc. My head being in an insensible place, I tend to drink a lot of tea and faff about.

Yesterday I joined one of my oldest friends for her birthday celebrations. I drove from the Oxfordshire countryside back to Tooting (where I could park for free as I still have my resident's permit), hopped on a bus to Clapham and wandered down Northcote Road. It was cold, but not bitter. I didn't wear gloves or a hat and I was fine.

We went to the pottery painting cafe and had tea and cake while we dabbed paint on to the various pieces of crockery on offer. I had to resist the teapot with a capacity of an entire gallon. I went for a more demure one pint mug.



The mug features a rope around the bottom, three emblems of London (pictured), a black and white cow (inaccurate, because Cowboy doesn't work with dairy cows, he works with beef cows, which are usually black Angus), a yellow horse (Sunshine) and a blue dog (Blue Dog).

I've never been artistically accomplished, and I'm hoping Cowboy will like it for the sentimental value and its generous tea capacity.

After our pottery escapades, we had a lovely dinner at The Breakfast Club (pie and mash, a side of mac and cheese, banoffee pie), and some drinks in the bar next door. On the way back to Tooting, I went past lovely shops and restaurants, and I wondered why I had left London. I drove back to the Oxfordshire countryside.

Cowboy messaged me from Montana, where he is taking some time out to see his family before he comes over here. All it said was: It hit -40 this morning.

That's in Fahrenheit, but it happens to be exactly the same temperature in Celsius. Minus forty. Minus forty degrees. What alien ice planet is he on?? Hoth?

The only suitable response I could come up with was: No thanks. No minus forty for me. In his little hometown I expect the wind is whipping across the prairie, and there aren't hundreds of lovely shops and restaurants to take refuge in.

I realise I have never been to the US when it's been cold. It worries me more than a little. I will need to invest in a space suit. I mean, in a really good coat.

Last minute home made gift wrapping card making cake baking efforts

I'm a bit of a last-minute person. I like to feel the pressure and the threat of the deadline, it gives me the adrenaline rush that I need to accomplish... anything. If I need to be productive and efficient, I need to be threatened by several deadlines to get it done.

At the weekend, I had nothing to do for the whole of Saturday. I could have done all of the things I needed to do with plenty of time to spare. Instead, I sat in my pyjamas and watched Heartland on Netflix while I knitted (and unravelled and knitted again). Heartland is a guilty pleasure of mine, but I'll happily stand up and say "Hi, I'm Bee and I am addicted to trashy Canadian TV shows about horses and life in the country for a not-so-teenage-any-longer girl. I am a Heartland-aholic."

Anyway. Sunday morning rolled around and I had an extra hour of sleep with the clocks going back, which has done me the power of good, because I don't sleep well at the moment and I was getting a bit behind. Then I had to jump out of bed and achieve things. I needed to be out of the door and on my way to my niece's first birthday party by 11.30am. I woke up at 8.30am. Lounged until about 9am. Ran to the shower to claim it before anybody else could (my days of sharing a house are numbered), and after a swift blowdry of my hair and some clothes thrown on, I sped to the kitchen.

I had to make a cake. It was for my brother, who can't really eat grains, or sugar, so cake made with normal flour is right out. This makes me sad, because he and I share a voracious love of cake. I had searched Wholefoods in Kensington for the wherewithal to make him a friendly chocolate cake, and finally had coconut flour and coconut oil and enough eggs to produce something for him.

As soon as I had got that in the oven, I made myself some apple and sultana porridge (that's oatmeal, Americans) and set about browsing Pinterest for some wrapping paper.

Being a bad aunty, I had not managed to get my niece a birthday card, nor wrapping paper for her presents. I was frankly a bit surprised I had managed to get her a present, but I'd had a burst of activity on Friday and picked up two lovely books - good thing I didn't get the xylophone I saw first, because my mother gave her a xylophone and it would have been awkward. I needed paper to wrap the books in, and I needed it fast. I usually wrap gifts in pages from old magazines, but decided my one year old niece might not appreciate pages from either the Physiotherapy journal Frontline, nor Western Horseman.

I soon found some suitably cheerful and colourful patterns, and put my shiny new laser printer to work producing several pages of a triangles pattern. A Google search gave me a customised "Keep Calm..." image for the front of her card. The only actual card I had in my supplies was a packet of file dividers in lovely colours, so I chopped the holes and the tabs off a couple of those, and stuck it all together. Not bad.

Couldn't find any sellotape, so resorted to the roll of glue dots that I had used for a scrapbook project for Cowboy over the summer, and glued my home made wrapping paper around the books. Lacking an envelope for the card, I found a roll of cooks' string in the kitchen and looped that around the present, and could wedge the card underneath that.

It sounds awful, I know, to have scraped together this thing for my brother's first born child, but I am a student with long distance flights to pay for, and wrapping gifts and buying cards is an expensive pastime these days.

Here's the end result:



I thought it was a fairly respectable effort, given my distinct shortage of resources, and it blended in well with the other presents at the party.

I managed to get the cake out of the oven and cover it in melted chocolate, slap some make up on, brush my hair and get out of the door bang on the dot of 11.30am, which is fairly miraculous. It was a lovely party.

Other things I've done recently include: eating too much cake, cooking a big batch of risotto, and staying in bed because it's cold outside.

Royal Baby! (and bees)

So, yesterday afternoon, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (aka Kate and Wills) welcomed their first-born into the world - a strapping boy by all accounts. All very exciting, and prompted my house mates to bake Royal Baby Cupcakes, complete with luminous blue icing, as a celebratory gesture. That's about as politically involved as I like to get these days.

Today I rescued three bees from the kitchen, which is quite a victory as far as I'm concerned. If a bee gets trapped in my kitchen (and they fly in through the door all the time in this hot weather), I feel personally responsible for the decline of bees the moment I find the sad, coiled little carcass in the corner. A dead bee is one of the saddest things.

On a more positive note! The bees in the garden are loving the lavender bush which is starting to flower.


It's very pleasing to step outside and hear these industrious little creatures working hard in the sunshine, bickering with each other over the best flower. One day I aim to have bees of my own.

This little lady was very territorial about her little patch.


I'm still nursing my torn plantar fascia, which does appear to be improving, so hopefully cowboy boots will be an option by the time I get out to Washington.

Cowboy was distinctly unimpressed with my bee-keeping ambitions... I'll show him.