So it begins

I had 'the' dress experience yesterday.  With no particular plans in mind the intrepid wedding party hit Oxford Street only to be met initially with closed shops.  Apparently Sunday trading doesn't begin until midday these days.  I remember when there was no Sunday trading but that is a whole other blog.  So we took in a beverage and made a plan.  First shop had no wedding section.  Second shop had no wedding section.  When questioned staff informed us that the wedding season was over and everything had been removed, is only available online and will return in January.  So that was helpful.

Bridezilla reared up and declared that if the next shop had no wedding dresses then we were all going home and never coming back.  Ever!!  And then we saw the sign 'occasion wear' and the hope kindled.  And then.  And then.  White and cream and ivory gowns.  The sunlight gleamed in through the window, sparkling off sequins and gems, creating etheral beauty everywhere you looked.  The girls peeled off while I drank in one dress in particular thinking I never could.  Then it was come and see this - what about this - do you like this - how about this.  As I flitted we collected gowns including 'that' one and made our way to the changing room.

Dress one was too small.  But that's ok, there's always one that is too small right?  Dress two was too clingy and if I didn't have excited girlies sitting outside I wouldn't have ventured but I had promised to show so out I trotted with 'I don't like it' firmly planted on my lips.  Dress three was that dress.  The secretly desired one, the one that I had been thinking about in my head but wasn't sure would be for me.  With a negative head shake and a gritted acceptance that it wasn't going to fit, I tried on the gown.  I have to be careful, I don't want to give too much away but oh, that dress.   And so I went to show, nervously standing because this is the one I like so please like it as much as me.  Please oh please.  And they did, and not just that you're my friend so I won't hurt your feelings yes I like it like it.  The old man waiting for his wife liked it too.  Dress four was never going to be anything but you have to complete the trying on rigmarole just in case.  And so we tried and paraded and agreed that it was not the right one.  It even felt wrong putting it on.

How do you know that you've found the right dress?  You wait 20 minutes or so and then go back and try it on again with your bridesmaid in their dress and you get a photo taken.  Then you look at the photo.  Then you cry.  

And so to the point.  It's really real.  Let's make it the most perfect outfit ever.  Whilst sitting eating ice cream and watching biggest loser (I know, I know) here are my decisions.  My 10k training plan finishes soon - I'm going to move on to the half marathon training plan.  I'm going to start attending GoodGym runs when and where possible.  I'm going to add in some additional training - a little Tae-Bo, some yoga, T25, Jillian & Bob and some swimming.  Keep mixing it up.  If I haven't made it, then I don't get to eat it.  Sounds a little simplistic but hear me out - it removes chocolate, crisps, take aways etc but it also means that any yumminess I do want has to be home made which cuts out the chemical bad guys and makes it so worth it.  On the rare occasion I do eat out it has to be as whole food as possible.  I was doing really well but I lost my focus and gained 6 pounds.  Now I have physically touched the reason for needing the focus.  So let's do this.

Aaaaaaaaaand relax (or alternatively eggs & bread)

But don't go to sleep.  

Because it's only just nearly not quite yet almost midday and there are a billion and one things to do.  That old health visitor chestnut - sleep when they sleep - ha!

I was asked the other day how many blogs I read and I had to bashfully reply with none although I did read your one post.....trails off into silence.   I would love to read more blogs.  In fact I'd love to read more period.  I saw a meme the other day declaring that after work and sleep we have a spare 72 hours a week. Not sure if I completely agree with the math on that one, pretty sure that I get 1 possibly 2 hours an evening if I am super lucky.  Plus if you have time to write memes about how much time you have spare then you obviously have too much time on your hands!

As I sit here, I cannot help but feel like there is something I should be doing.  I mean, I know there are lots of things I could be doing and some of those are probably jostling each other for attention at the top of the should list but I honestly feel like I've forgotten something.  *runs to check baby is actually in cot*  Oooh look at that, a few minutes of wrestling with the English language and now it is definitely midday which means lunch!  My excitement overflows and knows no bounds.  Ooooh fresh bread.   Ooooh eggs.    Ooooh the two together. Mine is a simple life and I wouldn't change it for the world.

I don't want to wash up

Or hoover.  Or do the ironing.  Or clean the high chair, put the washing machine on, flash wipe the floor, do the bottles, review the book I should have already read, put buttons on the cardigan, wrap Father's Day presents or file paperwork.  Or the other million things that are jumping around in the corner of my eye, whispering to me - you should've done me by now, why are you so lazy.  Because I just am and I don't wanna so there.

It's not because I'm adverse to keeping house and it's not because I want to live in grime but sometimes I just don't want to do the things I'm *meant* to be doing.  Usually I come up with some wacky way of getting the jobs jobbed by trying to do them all at once in a weird multi-task way that satisfies my OCD tendencies and drives the dearly beloved mental.  No! I'll shout.  You can't wash that up until this glass that I haven't finished using has been rinsed in super hot water that no human can put their hands in and I'm not ready to finish the drink in this glass because I have to go out for five hours and find the absolute most perfect tea towel.  Actually I'm not quite that bad.  By the barest of smidges.  

The mentality flows over into food too - I want to be healthy, I really do, especially when I need to set a great example for the little man but sometimes I just don't want to be good.  I want to have croissants and hot chocolate for breakfast with extra cream.  A juicy burger with fries and onion rings and a sundae of heart hardening wonder washed down with bone thining aspartamine laden diet coke.  Fresh pasta with ooey gooey cheese sauce and garlic bread or maybe a Chinese buffet of sumptuous beigeness.   My inner child rebels every time my growed up voice says you really ought to be doing your jobs, you really shouldn't eat that, you know you'll only regret it in the morning. Ahhh shurrup.  

Clean sheets day

I love clean sheets day.  It also happens to fall on housework day which I don't like so much but it is the reward for all the boring sweeping, dusting, mopping and chemicalling.  There is nothing like slipping into crisp, clean sheets - even though the duvet and pillows are the same, the mattress is the same, the whole bedroom is the same.  Fresh clean sheets lend a new sorta something to the boudoir.  Housework Mondays has a small upside.

I've figured out why it is so hard to blog.  I do have the occasional original thought and at times it sounds amazing in my head and I think to myself - ooooh must remember that one, it will be a corker.  Sometimes I even manage to construct sentences and paragraphs that dance with awesomeness.  But then something happens and the day runs past, I have to do this, that and the other so all thoughts fall out of my sieve head and fall through the cracks, never to be seen again.  The end of the day rolls round and I have time to sit, prepare my thoughts, crack out the blog and nothing, nada, zip.

That end of the day is where we have to fit in tv time, eating time, crafty time, dearly beloved time, sitting in a crumpled heap time, overlap of all jobs I didn't get done time, feeling guilty for everything I didn't do time, daily worry about baby boy time and last minute OMG I can't believe I forgot that time.  Thank goodness there is clean sheets to fall into.

Cancelled

Lately all the awesome shows I've been watching have been cancelled.  It does make you wonder why the powers that be listen to the sheep herd and not the actual intelligent idea thinkers.  The early cancellation of these shows is quite annoying because I'm left with I wonder what happened, did they ever find out the big concept and who kissed who.  The only good thing about the cancellation of Firefly was the round-up film Serenity and even that left possibilities of further adventures tantalisingly out of reach..  Thank goodness for Castle and a regular fix of the somewhat filled out Nathan Fillion.

I've been poorly sick this week which has been both good and bad.  In my fevered state I cried at the thought of having the fan on and when I heard my little boy griping I was lying under the quilt, unable to move, unable to open my eyes yet constantly saying his name.  And my temperature wasn't even that high!! Mummy flu is pretty serious, first it begins with the OMG I feel so ill - how can I possibly survive.  Secondly you have a big long list of things you need to do and exactly minus that amount of energy to do them with. Finally you have huge amounts of fear at the thought of your baby boy catching your nasty germs.  But I think he had it first and gave it to me, plus his poorly sickness wasn't as bad as mine.  Perhaps the effects increase with person size seeing as I am at least fifty million times bigger than him it stands to reason that I will be fifty  million times sicker.  I was almost on the verge of wishing I was cancelled.

I like the way time rolls into time when you don't have regular structure, it means that there are rarely any deadlines so things are never cancelled, they are just moved along.  For someone who doesn't cope well with mostly self imagined failure, it makes for a perfect match.  In fact I might even go so far as to say nothing should ever be cancelled merely postponed for another day.  When I feel like it.

Softly softly catchee monkey

I'm learning to be patient.  I'm not very good at it.  Patience sucks.

Supreme Procastinator

I just had my ass handed to me by a monkey-kicking emoticon (thanks friend x) reminding me that probably the thing I do best is procrastinate about how I can't do the things that I could maybe be doing. I talk a good talk about how it would be awesome if a) fitted perfectly into (2) and part iii swam along nicely with section 4 and all I need to do is xyz to the power of 7.

The key must be to using every single minute of every single waking hour to the absolute best of your ability. However, who do you know who is that perfect?  I mean we see them walking around, looking coiffed and in charge but for all we know, or at least as I like to think, they've got masses of unwashed dishes in their sink or fifteen weeks of washing littering their bedroom floor - maybe even both.

If I was super organised I wonder how much I'd be able to actually achieve, all those little jobs would be jobbed and all those little nooks would be de-crannied but then where is the fun in that?  My actual day went along the lines of taking mr mini cutie pants to the library for new stories, returning home to find an email from the library telling my reserved books had come in.  Cut to extremely unimpressed facial expression.  I guess that's what tomorrow is for.  Along with all those other jobs & nooks that I didn't get round to today.

Keep dreaming the dream - one day, you never know.

(art by Paige Martin)

1254

That is how many books are on my to read list on Goodreads and that is only the books I know about. Who knows how many page turners are out there just waiting for me to find them.  I still get a huge kick from losing myself in a book, curling up on an afternoon with a cup of tea in hand and just losing myself in the pages.  I'm never really aware of the paragraphs and the text, it becomes a moving story before my eyes with detailed imagery and sound, sometimes even taste and smell.  I do not see the words, I only absorb the story and I love it.  Books are probably the best invention in the world ever.  And I am not a purist, my kindle gets almost as much attention as the physical tome and I'm in and out of the library so often that the staff are starting to smile when they greet me.  (Firstly it's Greater London - no-one smiles and secondly they are not librarians because it's one of those new fangled job shop, council payment, spa treatment, gospel church, teaching, cafe libraries *shudder*).   The actual library section has my fingers itching as I long to reorganise the fiction aisles, all the books are sorted alphabetically with the little picture labels on the spine to let you know if they are mystery, sci fi etc and I just ache to put them into little pools of genre.  Perhaps one day I will just start moving them around, I doubt anyone would notice.  What I love the most about my nearby house of shockingly few books is the online service, just log in with your library card and you can reserve any book you like, for freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.  It doesn't usually take that long to come in and it means that you don't have to spend time scouring aisles with a potential sound bomb in the buggy just waiting to detonate.

So whilst I was sadly lacking in my new determination to blog regularly yesterday, I did manage to finish a book (yay) and go to the library and pick up another (double yay).  My first ever real book review has also just been uploaded on the Curious Animal Magazine site so please do my ego a massive favour and go read it, love it, talk about it, comment and share.  I am absolutely desperate to go finish reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss but my kindle needs charging and I have 8 other books in my current reading pile, one of which has a deadline of sorts and I have only just tickled it's intro.  Besides, life shrilly demands that my nose be dislodged from its preferred home of bookdom with jobs jobs jobs.  Busy little bookworm - that's me!

Timey wimey

Imagine that we could go back in our own timeline and make small changes - nothing too life altering but those small things that really fudge up the day.  Everything would probably be all wibbly wobbly and timey wimey but at least we would have a few less stress head days.  I'm mostly happy, I say mostly because it is usually those little annoying frustrationary things that make me SIGH and unfortunately I am wired to react big styley to them.  That being moaned about, I am a great believer in the idea that the choices we make map out our fate - it's a two pronged existence.  A bit like those books we all used to read which had you telling the story depending on the decisions you made, I loved those.  I'd go back over and over, living out all the different options so I'd know exactly what would happen in each scenario.  I think that is what I dislike most about life.  There is no 'what if I did that instead' button and no way of knowing if what you chose was the right choice.  Or even if there is a right choice.  I bet some deity somewhere is laughing their pants off right about now.

Stephen King infamously said that if you want to write you must read everything you can get your hands on and you must write yourself, everyday.  I think I've got the reading as much as I possibly can with a 9 month old sorted but the writing ... well... I think this blog is testament to the fact that I have had no time to write. Not even a smattering of random thoughts on a bimonthly basis but it is good to have unachievable goals in life and I still want to be a writer when I grow up.  All the successful people in life say if you want something bad enough you'll find a way to get it so with a jaunty whistle I pick up my pen and... the baby says 'nap time is over Mummy' smiley face smiley face.