January - a roundup of fun stuff

 

I've been meaning to do an update on where I am with some of the goals I mentioned in this post. (I haven't updated on our financial/retirement goals for a long time because we've been at that really boring stage where nothing really interesting happens, just the numbers go up slowly and steadily. However, I will be updating you in the next few weeks because things are going to be a bit exciting soon. I shall say no more!)

Art - ended up expressing myself creatively in a different way to painting - sewing! I haven't done anything with the sewing machine for a couple of years then suddenly I had an urge to pick up the fabric one Sunday evening and make myself a couple of face masks. Can't believe I actually did it instead of making excuses, as I have done every week since last year's lockdown! 

Striking while the iron was hot, I decided to make a plastic bag holder with a gorgeous Emma Bridgewater tea towel I was given. I knew I would never use it as a tea towel, as it was too nice to ruin, but wanted to see it every day. The tea towel was already seamed so all I had to do was sew the long edges together and then thread some elastic through the bottom seam. It already had a hanging loop on it.

Because of these two projects, I've slightly adapted this goal to include anything crafty, and this month I have a goal to make a new cover for my buckwheat hull pillow. It's 20 years old and has holes, but is a vital for me to comfortably sleep so I will find a suitable fabric from my stash, use the old cover as a template and reuse the zip. 

Also, I found myself a free art history course to do - History of Art and Western Civilisation - over at the Smarthistory.org site but I haven't started it as I keep being side-tracked. I'm only really interested in the Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite period, but some of the other historical periods (particularly Egypt) look so interesting I might go through those as well.

The Gothic - After my last post I had a good clear out of my wardrobe, getting rid of anything that didn't 'spark joy'  and went on a hunt for some basic additions to my wardrobe. This is rare for me. I hate a) shopping and b) paying full price for anything 😊 I found only one item I liked but unfortunately it was so poorly made I sent it straight back when it arrived.

Cheap sweatshop clothes made of thin, shiny unflattering material. I'm not sure what I thought it would be made of when I ordered it but lesson learned. I'm back to square one. I'd like find something made of a reasonable-weight cotton or jersey that is sustainably produced and isn't so thin it shows my underwear. It's actually a really tall order.

When I started looking at other aspects of how I dress I realised I have been hiding parts of myself because I don't want to have to deal with other people's silly comments. For example, I like strong, dark coloured nail polishes and winged eyeliner but don't often wear them as they can attract somewhat negative attention. So, last month I ordered a couple of nail polishes - black and petrol blue - and a liquid eyeliner for myself and have started wearing them. I've only had one person comment during a meeting to say I was doing so well to get dressed nicely and do my make-up and nails every day. It was a genuine compliment and made me feel good. 

Jigsaw puzzles - actually managed to get three done in the last month and am on to my fourth. 

Martin made me a jigsaw table for Christmas using the base of an vintage ironwork garden table that the previous owners left behind. He made it so it can sit flat or at various angles and is just the right size for a standard sized 1000 piece puzzle. This is it at the highest angle but I rarely have it up that high, it's usually only about 3-4 standard books high.

Reading - I manage to read five books in January.

Wedlock, How Georgian Britain's Worst Husband Met his Match by Wendy Moore

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (better late than never!)

Can't Hurt Me by Dave Goggins

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson

I'm happy with that!

Exercise - some good and bad here. Managed 300 crunchies for 24 days, then my birthday happened. I didn't do any that day as my brain talked me out of it, and then the curry and alcohol that night upset my system for days. In the last seven days of the month I did a grand total of 200 crunchies. Oops!Bit of a fail there.

Still, in January I completed 7,400 crunchies, walked/ran 68km and did 27km on the exercise bike (last two days of the month; Martin bought a secondhand one for my birthday and I finally got it set up). I also managed 4 sessions of bodyweight circuits and 3 yoga sessions. I lost 4lbs in weight, no longer have a bad back and my posture has improved. 

Something definitely to be said for strengthening your core!

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Steel Kitten

Navigating the choppy waters of midlife

Brisbane Susan asked me a couple of posts ago how things were going with my mental health. The way out of my mid-life crisis seems to be a long slow old process of peeling back decades of behaviours that no longer serve me and finding out who I am and what I enjoy. Changing those situations and relationships that hold me back and/or won't allow me to be myself or try to drag me into ways of reacting I don't like is not a quick process. If I want lasting change it has to be that way. I have to unlearn and relearn.

There's an awful lot of people out there who want to pull others in to their dramas, and during lockdown there is a hell of a lot more drama than normal to fall foul of. I find social media has a lot to answer for in that respect, which is why I have a limited presence on any platform. I  have a Facebook account with no friends (nor will I accept any requests) - it is purely there to allow me to follow a couple of smallholders who breed animals I'm interested in. I don't have a Twitter account and I have pretty much abandoned Instagram, except to see my sister's posts. I don't bother with online news portals as they have a vested interest in posting appallingly negative and 'click bait' stories. Pintrest just makes me feel dissatisfied, so no more of that. I've become more resilient over the months at resisting this negative stuff. 

The only two platforms I spend any time on are Youtube and Reddit, and I have orientated my home feeds on both towards uplifting material focused on simple living, learning and growth. I don't read or leave comments. This deliberate elimination of the most pervasive and damaging negative elements in my life has meant I'm feeling better about myself than I have done for a long time. But I still have some way to go. I still have some odd days where I am utterly drained and feel completely useless (not related to anything lockdown) from the moment I reluctantly open my eyes and on those days I have established an emergency routine that I know works for me.  

The first thing I do is NOT post on a social media platform or text anyone about how crap I feel, as responding to the deluge of comments that will come back could produce a negative spiral and drag me down a rabbit hole for hours. I do not want a sympathetic discussion with the 'ain't life awful' brigade', who seem to pop up at a moment's notice whenever there's a whiff of you feeling a bit down. I don't talk to anyone how I feel, apart from mentioning to Martin when he comes in that I've had a bad start to the day. 

The next thing I do is refuse to give in to it, and definitely not lie down and sleep! I don't do 'a duvet day' because this depressive funk can go on for days at a time. A duvet day can become a duvet week. I drag myself into cleaning and organising - I'm someone who likes to see the visible benefits of effort expended so upgrading my surroundings has an immediate effect. 

I really have to push myself to start, and that first step is awful.  I begin with something very small, like wiping down a worksurface or washing up a used cat's food bowl, and build up from there. Sometimes there are a few minutes between tasks and I just stand there, drink tea and look out of the kitchen window while my brain rolls around screaming at itself, but eventually that passes and I move on. I take bucket loads of Vitamins C and B complex and make sure I eat small regularly spaced out protein meals throughout the day. At some point a walk or a ride on the exercise bike happens while watching the latest episode of a series I'm following on Prime, usually after lunch, and that's followed by a hot shower and a bit of TLC (body lotion, face mask, perfume, make-up, etc). I take the time to make a nice meal later that day, something I wouldn't ordinarily do because it takes time and effort. At about 9pm I drink a night-time herbal tea concoction and take a vitamin C and magnesium pill before going to sleep. 

If I do this routine I know I've done the most I can to set myself up for a better day tomorrow. And it usually is.

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Steel Kitten

It's not easy this zero waste business

Cold and snowy here this morning, although it doesn't stop the cats, who have been shooting in and out since 7:30am. Sometimes I wish I had the zest for life that they do!

So I went to Morrisons early one morning to do the weekly shop and endeavour to practice some zero waste principles. It wasn’t that easy this week it has to be said; a lot of what I bought had packaging because there was an absence of anything else to buy that had little or no packaging. For example, I buy Knorr stock pots, which come in small plastic pots, because they are gluten free and have recyclable packaging. I’d like to hunt down a large bottle of concentrated stock or find a gluten-free stock cube that has compostable packaging and not foil. Using my own homemade stock is fine for recipes requiring large volumes of liquid, but not for adding concentrated flavour in dishes like chilli or bolognese.

I did make several good decisions that I'm pleased with. I put back two organic chickens that were half price and going out of date. I put them in my basket but realised as I was walking round that I already had a whole chicken, two chicken crowns and a roasted chicken in the freezer, and I was just buying them because they were a bargain not because I needed them. That was £12 saved.

Martin asked me to get some flowers for Audrey’s birthday, which I did and I made sure they were in paper wrap not plastic, however, that decision bought its own issues - the price label was not peel off and tore the packaging. 

I bought bacon from the butcher’s counter instead of off the shelf like I usually do but I had stopped short of taking my own containers as I felt too self-conscious about doing it. I knew that I could wash reuse the thin plastic bag a few times but I could not reuse the plastic container that comes from the pre-packaged stuff on the shelf.

Audrey had asked me to buy some individual creme caramel’s for her but for the second week running Morrison’s had run out. I realised I had a packet of make from scratch caramel in the cupboard and thought I could make them up into individual pots (paper inner bag and a carboard outer packet). However, I lacked small containers at home to do them so I made the conscious decision to buy six small plastic storage containers with lids so I could make a pint of caramel and then dispense it into individual pots. Yes, I bought plastic but it is highly reusable and stops 6 individual pots going out the door each week. I may have to buy more as Martin often has individual trifles as well, and that's another 6-7 pots a week out the door. Give him a whole trifle and he will eat it - at one sitting  - so I will try and make up some individual ones for him too. 

We had roast lamb (all of the ingredients out of the freezer and fridge) for Audrey’s birthday and Martin asked me to pick up a Pavlova and a birthday cake. I decided to make them both myself. The pavlova was very easy, I had eggs from my chickens, sugar/ cornflour/vanilla extract in the cupboard and bags of frozen pre-prepared summer fruits in the freezer. The only thing I had to buy was whipping cream which of course has a plastic pot, but those pots are quite a convenient 9-inch size and I often keep them do use for seed pots. I used a Hairy Biker's recipe for the base, and it was lovely.

The cake was a different matter. OMG, the icing! I forgot how hard it is to do writing! I had all the ingredients to make up a Victoria sponge in the cupboard but I didn't have, and what I ended up buying, was marzipan and soft icing for the cover, and edible flowers and icing paste for the decoration. Of course those have got their individual packaging too. I had a complete brain failure in front of the shelves and ended up buying the lot. I could not remember how to make up a thick enough paste to do the icing, whether or not I had the colouring for the writing, and where on earth my icing kit was. It’s been that long since I’ve done any icing at all! I was standing there, blocking up the aisle, lost in thought so decided to just get those items on this occasion before I was on the receiving end of any more dirty looks and tutting from masked shoppers. 

But, in reality I’m not going to need to make proper occasion cakes that often as we only generally tend to have iced cakes on our birthdays and Christmas, so a maximum of, say, five cakes a year. This is one of those scenarios when buying a cake may be more zero-waste than making one, and something to consider in the future. It won't be as personal though, which perhaps is more important. 

I was very pleased to only put out one bag of recycling this week, although before I could get a picture the local litter womblers picked up all the recyclable litter from the neighbouring lanes and placed the bags outside on my drive for the dustman as they went past! So everyone walking would have thought I had THREE bags of waste. The Womblers normally put a printed group 'Womble' sticker on them so the dustman know they are not someone's personal rubbish but these bags didn't have a sticker. 

Oh, how I gnashed my teeth when I saw that!

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Steel Kitten