Some announcements

Good evening! I'm in bed with cold toes and a stomach ache.

1 - I tried drinking some tea to help with how gnarly I feel this evening. It did not help. I must be terminally ill.

2 - I met roughly three thousand new people today here in Cowboy's small home town in Montana. All were very lovely. I remember no names.

3 - I was expecting turkey and roast potatoes for Christmas lunch. I got prime rib and pasta salad. America is so strange.

4 - Cowboy is disappointed that there isn't more snow. He wanted me to be as cold as possible while I was here. I'm just pleased I brought my long johns. It is quite cold enough, thanks.

5 - I'm in the process of moving my blog from Blogger to its own domain name. This is more complicated than I first thought, but I'm nothing if not stubborn, and I'll get it done, by George.

6 - Who is George??

7 - Nothing like a bit of Bach Cello Concerto to soothe the brain after a busy day meeting people, but it's a little odd to be able to hear Yo Yo Ma breathing in my bedroom.

8 - I miss the heck out of Richard. I imagine he is spending most of his time like this:

9 - It seems Cowboy and I are the only people in the world who like a good firm mattress on a bed. I have struggled to sleep since we left our home in Washington, as every bed we've been put up in has been about as firm as a wet sponge. I'm developing kyphosis.

10 - I love the word kyphosis. It makes me feel clever.

11 - I'm going to bed now. The end.

Self-care and starting again. Again.

Self-care is a big thing in the trade that I've been learning over the last few years. If you spend your working life using your own body to assist other people to feel better in their bodies, it can be wearing - on the joints, on the fingers and thumbs, on the muscles, and on the soul.

Tonight, slouched on the sofa in my most disgusting clothes, having scarfed down an entire packet of Jaffa Cakes in a bid to feel good about where I am in life, I realised I'm not being good at self-care. Again.

I haven't eaten the five-a-day in months (the orange in the Jaffa Cakes sadly does not count). There have been days where it hasn't even been one-a-day. I've let these days slip by and accumulate. Oh, tomorrow will be different.

We've all made the resolution that starts right after we jump gleefully off the wagon. Right now I'm watching the wagon leave without me, telling myself I'll take up running again to catch up with it, while I plan more ways to make myself sick enough that I can't get out of bed tomorrow.

It's not the food that's making my body sick. I can only blame the nation I live in for so many things. The supermarkets in this part of the country are stacked with goodness that I could sink my teeth into, but instead I end up reaching for the boxed mac and cheese, telling myself I won't really eat it.

It was delicious, by the way, with a good lashing of black pepper.

I could eat the good food. I could tell Cowboy that beef is off the menu, he can just suck it up, it's steamed fish and vegetables from now on - although I'm not sure how long our relationship would last if I cut him off that abruptly.

I cleaned the stalls in the barn today while he was out, because it was physical activity that would get me warm and breathing a little harder, and it felt lovely. Later, in my Jaffa stupor on the sofa, the thought suddenly hit me in the face like a wet sponge.

You are really quite depressed, Bee. You need to do more exercise, and eat better, and you'll feel happier again. You always do! It's ok. You can fix this.

So I did the sensible thing and went to get into my pyjamas and go to bed in a funk. Here I am.

The first step to self-care has been to put on Beyonce in my outrageously loud headphones and blast some empowerment into my eardrums. The second step was to google counselling in this neck of the woods and discover that the gym is so very much cheaper, gracious me. So, my therapist will probably be telling me to squat and push rather than asking me how my week has been. But that's ok, I get the same end result of being a more normal human being.

Added bonus: revitalised buns, abs and guns of steel.

Here's the kicker: this whole thing is a cycle. Every few months, I get into this dark, deep place, and I have to haul myself out by my arse again. This blog will become a catalogue of pledges to start again, to change again, because I get happy and I get complacent, and then I get not happy again.

It's ok to keep starting again. As long as I keep checking in and noticing that it's bad, it's ok to have to keep restarting. Ignore all those snappy Pinterest posts about how if you're sick of starting over, stop giving up. Bullshit. Start over as many times as you need. Good for you!

I'm going to go and eat cereal for dinner. I'll start over in the morning.

Weird Soup: Sweet potato, carrot and lettuce. Yes, lettuce.

Yesterday, Cowboy and I bought a bed. A real one. A new one! It's king size, we can barely open the bathroom door now, but by golly did we sleep well last night. No more lumpy, bumpy, tipping-us-out-of-bed futon. Thank goodness.

The best part is that we bought the bed from Goodwill, and the whole set up - frame, box springs and mattress - was just $550. It's nothing special, but it will tide us over until we have saved up for a good bed.

I made weird soup today. Here's how it goes (and sorry for the awful quality photos, taken on my iPhone with zero good lighting in my teeny tiny kitchen):

Catch a serious cold from your cowboy boyfriend (fiance... psh, details), and crave soup with curry and and orange colour to it.

Find two sweet potatoes and four carrots in your fridge. Perfect! Soften half a big onion in some butter in a big pan while you chunk up the carrots and sweet potatoes.

Find a romaine lettuce in your fridge that has seen better days, and blame the cold medicine while you chop that up and throw it in the pan too. What on earth was I thinking?

Fry everything for a few minutes to get the juices going. Wonder what just possessed you to put lettuce in soup.

Add a good twist of black pepper, a generous shake of curry powder, and for whatever reason, I also threw in a bit of nutmeg - probably out of habit.

Cook the spices for a moment, then add some chicken stock because you don't have anything else to hand. I used just enough to cover all of the vegetables and get them all cooked through.

Make a cup of tea and watch the cat play with a wasp for a while. He really is getting big these days.

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Cut yourself a generous piece of red velvet cake and discover that Netflix now has The Pioneer Woman's cooking show. Sit down on your sofa and forget about your soup completely.

Remember the soup about twenty five minutes later.

Remove it from the heat and blend it up, whilst saying a small prayer to the household gods of soup that it doesn't come out green, or worse, brown. I just bought a hand held Kitchenaid stick blender at Costco yesterday for a bargainous $24. I love Costco.

Say thanks to the household gods that the soup has come out a lovely golden orange colour. Wish that you had added more curry, and some cumin when you'd started, and add those things. It also needed salt and more black pepper. Say another thank you to the household gods that the soup doesn't taste of lettuce at all, it just tastes delicious and sweet and spicy and warm and happy.


Success!

Apologise to Cowboy when he comes home just as you've finished cooking and gets hit with the smell of curry, which he doesn't appreciate. At least it covers up the smell of infected feet that he has brought home after going shoeing.

I am excited to eat this soup later with some crusty bread. I hope you are excited too!



Here's the short form:

2 medium sized sweet potatoes
4 carrots
1 romaine lettuce
1/2 large onion
1 tbl butter
Approx 1 pint chicken stock
1 tsp cumin
1-2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp nutmeg
Salt and pepper to taste

Slice up the onion and soften in the butter. Cube up the carrots, peel and cube the sweet potatoes, and chop up the lettuce, and add them all to the pan. Stir to coat with butter and allow to fry for a few minutes. Add the cumin, curry and nutmeg, and salt and pepper. Cook for a further 2-3 minutes. Add chicken stock and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes or until the root vegetables are soft. Remove from the heat and blend. Season to taste.

Fear and hate

I had flu the last few days. It was pretty miserable. I'm starting to come back from it now, and I'm enjoying the "massive and sore lymph nodes in the neck" phase. Immunity is an amazing thing.

I am often overly concerned with other people's feelings, to a fault. It's a weakness of mine, a powerful urge to please everybody, all the time, even if it means sacrificing my own needs, wants and desires. I take grudges held by others very personally, even when they're not held against me.

I'm reminded of Master Yoda's wise words.



Fear is our protective emotion. It drives our desire to survive. But to live in fear of other people being fearful, angry or hateful is not really surviving...

So, I'm taking a lesson from this guy:

Keep your footing, as best you can, and trot on...

"She's not doing well."

If he had meant to make me think that he was about to break up with me, Cowboy did a good job this afternoon. He sent me a few cryptic messages, and ended them with the dreaded "call me later and we can talk about it" phrase. I imagined all kinds of disasters, reasons for him to leave me, accusations and other awful relationship woes.

It was worse than that. It was news about Sunshine.



She had a cough and a runny nose when I was there, and we put it down to the cold weather. She has been this way for over a month now, and has lost weight. Cowboy sounded worried. That's how I know that serious shit is going down.

He's wormed her, and is giving her a course of antibiotics for a week. If she's not looking up by then, it'll be time to call the vet. I hope above all hopes that she bounces back and there is nothing more ominous that she has to endure. Here is more news that I am now waiting for...

It is telling that the thought of losing her makes me as emotional as it does. It might be just down to old memories of losing Domino so swiftly I didn't even fully understand how sick he was, but part of it is definitely about her. For all her issues, I adore her spirit.

Be better, Sunshine. Please.

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.

The Small Cry

I have just come home from the trip taking Cowboy to the airport for his flight home. The airport run is always difficult for me. I usually battle to stay chipper and cheerful whilst the tears rise in my throat.

This time was made worse by the fact that the norovirus struck me last night, and I had next to no sleep all night, had to run up and down to the bathroom several times to be sick, and today I am shivery and aching and the thought of food makes me feel faint.

My dad offered to drive us to the airport, and I slouched on the back seat of the car while Cowboy sat in the front, and I managed to hold it all together until we had to walk in to the terminal and find his check in desk. Mostly, that was because I was concentrating so hard on not feeling like I was about to die that I didn't have brain-space to consider crying.

We don't do long, drawn-out goodbyes. Once I'd got him safely checked in and his bag dropped off, all he had to left to do was get through security. A quick kiss, a hug, and he said "See you later." I forced a smile and said "Yep. See you soon." Then I babbled about letting me know when he lands, and have a safe journey, none of which were things I needed to say. They were just an attempt to prolong his being here.

It's been a lame ten days on paper: both of us were ill more than once, and to compound matters, our plan to have a romantic get-away and make up for er... "lost time" was scuppered by a very unglamorous affliction that struck me, and we were limited to cuddling. Only very little cuddling occurred, because either he or I were contagious, and neither of us can sleep well if we're cuddling. The weather was miserable, and Christmas wasn't as glittery and fabulous as we had imagined.

It made no difference to me. I loved him being here. I don't love that he has gone again. As I always do after leaving him at the airport, or him leaving me at the airport, I have a small cry. It's about the only way to deal with it.

Seasonal thoughts

Christmas Day has come and gone, and as with everything in life, it wasn't exactly all to plan. Cowboy was struck down with germs and spent all of Christmas Day in bed with a fever. My niece ricocheted around the house with luminous green snot pouring out of her nose and a very productive cough - which I appear to have now caught.

We ate food, we played Monopoly, we opened gifts, and eventually I went to bed in the guest room whilst Cowboy sweated out the last of his illness without me. We have bailed out to a family bolthole in Cornwall, where we are doing very little - I am coughing up my lungs and he is enjoying not needing to get dressed today.

I took a few minutes to watch the glorious sunset this afternoon, the sun slipping into the ocean and even seeing the elusive green flash.

I love to come down here, to the very end of the country, and perhaps I will come back here after the New Year and spend some time alone. It is a good spot to work on a book, or a business project, or both.

It's also getting around to the time of year when we all start thinking about the ways we want to change our lives, and make those over-ambitious resolutions. In her Christmas speech, Her Majesty The Queen talked about reflection, and how important it is to take time to look at one's life and think about what there is to be thankful for, in the past, the present, and the future. She has a good point.

January sales and the festive season encourage us to consume, to eat all the food, buy all the good deals, want all the things, be at all the parties, have all the fun. Didn't get what you wanted for Christmas? Buy it for yourself in the sales.

I shy away from all that these days. All I wanted for Christmas, I got: my Cowboy right here where I can touch him; most of my family together for a few days; a cozy nook with a warm fire and a spot to put my feet up.

I hope all of you were similarly lucky :)