Monthly Archives: October 2011

Solution focused fitness plan

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Today I was on day one of a training course.  It was a therapy course so we naturally had to do some role plays.  The trainer asked for a volunteer with a real life problem that he could interview and demonstrate the model we were being taught (Solution Focused Brief therapy, if you are interested!)

Anyway, I didn’t volunteer but, as always seems to happen, I did end up being volunteered by the others.  I don’t really mind.  I am not naturally shy (believe it or not!) and I did have a problem I needed to work through.  So it was fine

My chosen issue was my difficulty in maintaining my fitness and health.  I go to the gym for a couple of weeks and my motivation drains away and I cancel my personal trainer and slip back into my sedentary ways again.  It’s an ongoing problem, and I wanted to discuss it with someone to find a solution

So this was the ideal opportunity

The conclusion was that I actually HATE the gym.   This is true.   Even with a personal trainer I can’t stick at it for any length of time

Having thought it all through with the trainer AND the group, who all became very personally involved with my issue (I have a way of doing that), the class was divided

Half thought I should stick it out for a bit longer and the other half said why do something you really detest so much?

When I go to the course tomorrow, they’ll be eagerly waiting to hear if I went ahead and did the training or not

I didn’t go

I feel so much better now

In a totally unhealthy way

 

Would you like fries with your chips?

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Over the years, I have made many friends online, from different countries.  My sister refers to them as my ‘virtual friends’ but they are all quite real and some of them I even exchange Christmas and birthday cards with and we all chat on Facebook!   Mostly, these friends live in the USA – a place I have never visited

One of the things I find most entertaining and interesting about these friends from over the pond are the discussions we have about FOOD

This weekend we were discussing fish & chips, a traditional British dish

It all started when my American friend posted up some ‘things’ on a plate that turned out to be hash browns – they looked like little chips to me, and in a way, they were – small fried potatoes.  Not what I thought a hash brown looked like and not much like our chips either

So I posted up a photo of some chips, along with a portion of fish.  This was followed by her version of the same, except the chips were hidden under the fish and she had COLESLAW and TARTARE sauce with them…..SHUDDER!!!

Here, it is vinegar and/or ketchup.  Up North, you might get curry sauce or gravy with your chips (also WRONG) – but never coleslaw or tartare sauce!!!!  Well, ok, maybe tartare sauce if you are having fish-fingers but not with fish and chips, surely?!!

In America there is also something called ‘steak and chop sauce’ – made by ‘London Pubs’ and advertised as ‘a ‘traditional British sauce’.  On further investigation this turns out to be Daddies Sauce, or Brown Sauce.  A must with fried eggs (for some!).  But NEVER with steak or chops!!!

Anyway, it just delights me to find out these little differences in the accompaniments to the same food

It’s Sunday – I should be having a traditional roast beef dinner.  But we are having pasta instead

I’m so cosmopolitan

Mumsy hair

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I have a dilemma

Well, I don’t really.  But I am wondering how much longer I can keep dyeing my hair pink and get away with it

I mean, I’m in my fifties now, I should be thinking about going grey, shouldn’t I?

I’ve been grey for years actually.  It is just hidden under a pink fringe and a dark brown crown.   But it is very time-consuming to keep it this way, I have to re-dye it every two weeks when the roots start to show.   Otherwise I look as if I am wearing a bizarre sort of wig

Half of me thinks it would make life a lot easier to go natural.  But then, how would the spiky look fit in with the grey?  Would I need to change the style as well?

I have an abject fear of MUMSY LOOKING HAIR

NAN LOOKING HAIR would be even worse

Maybe I should just wear a hat

Animal Abduction!

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Last night was one of those nights again.  Around midnight, we were disturbed by our dog stirring at the sound of a cat wailing.  This went on for a bit and we were just dozing off again when the neighbour’s dog started barking.  They must keep this dog in a kennel as it was clearly outside and it went on and on and on and on

I can only assume the owner lives alone and works nights and is therefore not at home when this is going on as there is never any attempt to shut the dog up  

It is difficult to know which house the dog belongs to because of the layout of our little estate and I was on the point of getting up and walking round the block to try to establish which garden it was coming from, when another neighbour yelled for the dog to shut up.  This seemed to have some effect as the dog went quiet

At the same time as all this was going on, as if it wasn’t noisy enough, we could hear the sound of some engineering work being carried out on the nearby railway.  Well, I assume that is what it was.  Could have been an alien spaceship landing

In fact, maybe that IS what it was

And that’s why the dog was barking

And stopped so suddenly!

OMG!  Maybe I SHOULD find out where the dog lived and tell the owners that their pooch has, in fact, been 

ABDUCTED BY ALIENS

Life Laundry

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That’s the title of a book I have.  Somewhere (I think it was a TV series too)

It is all about organising your life.  Or something.  I can’t be more specific because I mislaid it soon after I bought it so never actually got round to reading it

I vaguely recall it said something about sorting out stuff though, like drawers and shelves, as well as managing time more effectively and generally being a very organised individual who never has to look for a book they once bought again, because it would be on the shelf where books like that belong

Trouble is, as I said, I lost it

It WAS under the bed.  I remember seeing it there once when I was looking for something else.  But then we decorated the bedroom and under-the-bed got all organised so I can’t find anything that used to be under there now

My underwear drawer is the same.  It spread out to invade my scarf drawer and my pyjama drawer.  And sometimes under the bed

Now, I have too much underwear.  I don’t wear most of it, I just bought it because, well because I could.  Like the book.  I should sort out my underwear

I found a whole rack of clothes I forgot I had recently, in a wardrobe in my son’s room.  And before you say anything, no, he wasn’t borrowing them – I needed somewhere to put some stuff and he had a space.  That was about two years ago.  Need to organise that really

I could go on, the list of things I need to sort out is endless

I never will though  

Life really is too short for laundering

Instead I shall wake up each day knowing it will be interesting and varied.  I will start new projects and never finish them.   I will buy things I don’t need and put them ‘ somewhere’ and then forget about them

One day I will dig that book out and read it


Learning Curves

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I’ve just upgraded my blog and changed to a new PREMIUM theme, which looked as if it had a bit more flexibility than the previous one, although I was rather fond of that

Trouble is, I’m absolutely useless at all this stuff and I’m really lost now!  

I have a blog roll and I can’t remember how to add people.  The font is boring. The pages are boring.  It all looks very untidy.

I’ve just accidentally subscribed to my own blog and I’ve lost my nice photo of the web that I had previously and it’s not on this laptop so I have to fiddle around to get it back.  Even then, there’s no guarantee it will pop up where I want it to!  Sigh…..

So, if the sight of my blog offends your eyes, bear with me, it offends me too!

My technical staff are working on the problem to resolve the issue as soon as possible and normal service WILL be resumed shortly

I hope!

I’m also still learning how to use a Mac which, although I love, is very different from a PC in a lot of ways and I’m always getting stuck (although I have just discovered how to save an image onto the Mac!)

All this is , without a doubt, the most difficult thing I have ever done

And I’m doing it all for FUN????!!!

 

Open letter to the Highways Agency

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Dear Mr Highwayman

Please take note of the following points and act accordingly:

1. When you set up a contraflow system, give me plenty of warning you are about to divert a lane so that I have time to pull into the correct lane in order to get off the motorway at my usual junction

2. At the NEXT junction, bearing in mind I just missed my usual exit place due to lack of road signage, don’t stick up a BIG sign saying WORK ACCESS right next to the exit. This will confuse me

3. At least give me some idea where to get off now, I don’t want to go North but that’s what the next exit says

3. Don’t fill the whole road up with an array of cones, misleading signs and trucks. It’s not an obstacle course, it’s a motorway

Oh, and going back to the time I was returning from my holiday late at night the other week:

4. Don’t decide to close a slip road that I want to get off at and omit to tell me the junction beforehand so I have to go MILES and MILES out of my way to get back to where I wanted to be

And finally:

5. Hurry up and finish these bloody road works! I am developing cone-phobia and an intense hatred of signs

yours sincerely

Mrs Angry from Essex

There.

I think that should sort it