Joy Pockets for December

Where on earth did this year go to?  When I think how quickly it has passed, particularly the last quarter, I get a little freaked.  Is the rest of my life going to go by so quickly?  Sometimes I want certain aspects of it to be done and dusted but to wish for that to happen means everything else must pass quickly too. 

December is most of all a Christmas month.  But it is also a time of great stress and worry for a lot of people.  Especially today.   That is why I think it is particularly important to take note of the little things that happen to make us smile.  So these are my joy pockets for December.  Some are big, some are small and one or two are just plain OCD weird.  But they’re mine.  All mine.

I won a dress!  Me that wins nothing!  Ever!  A truly lovely dress that I intend to blog about anon.  And what’s more, it was delivered to me within 5 days.  None of that waiting around stuff. 

 

Realising I have lost almost three stone in 18 months.  Not only do my clothes fit but I feel much better.  My body feels stronger.  It is not the slow, sluggish one I inhabited this time last year. I can run comfortably.  I can sing a song without breaking for breath.  My aches and pains seem fewer and far between.    

Opening my email one Friday afternoon and seeing not one, but two messages about being successful in my quest to have something published.  And one of them was a paid piece.  I have made thirty euro through my art this year.  Thirty euro towards a pair of new running shoes.

I turned 40.  Not a bother on me. Despite, or maybe in spite of, the depressing jokes and mind-sets about an age with a zero attached to it, I don’t mind being forty. I am twenty years older, wiser and a lot more confident than I was at twenty.   And to celebrate I had a lovely birthday meal with family and friends.  Delicious food, great company, nice wine.  Great fun.   Quote of the evening came from Iarla.  “Mammy, why do you look pretty this night?” 

The week after that I had a date night with Mister Husband and I got to wear another new dress.  Not the one I won, a different one.  With new shoes.  Car to Bar shoes.  My feet didn’t complain too much the next day either.  Best part of the next day was a late afternoon nap.   I’m getting old you see.  Quote of the evening.  “You’re never forty!!”

Ellie Goulding.   This is a definite joy pocket for December.  A British singer songwriter who has been around for a few years now and I have to admit, one who passed completely over my radar first time round.  She was just background noise until she released the first song “Anything Could Happen“ from her new album Halcyon and I am hooked.  I have been listening to her every night since.

I sometimes get into a little tizzy at not having posts ready for the blog but I still manage to come up with something at the eleventh hour and I have not missed a deadline in a year.  It was a little arrangement I made with myself when the blog was born and it means a lot to me that I have been able to keep it.  

My blog is a whole year old.  I love it.  I love having something that is me.  For me. Just for me.  Something I get to do alone.  I get to write about what I want and thankfully, so far, people are liking it.   

The days are shorter and dark by 4.30pm.  It is not possible for me to get in a run unless Smallest Boy goes for a morning nap.  Recently, there were gaps of ten days where I was using a Davina McCall DVD as a method of offloading some pent-up frustration.  An early morning phone call from my sister in law offering to sit with the kids while I went out for a run was manna from heaven.  I was light of foot and lighter of heart after that run.  It only strengthened my resolve to get back into it properly in January.

I have never been one for New Year’s Resolutions.  Why wait for the start of a new year when there is the start of a new day in a few hours?  But for 2013 I already know what one of my goals are.  I am going to hit 10k before the end of the year.  If you can run 5k from scratch with only 6 weeks of training, I will use the same game plan to reach 10k. I am really looking forward to it. 

A weird one this but I burst into tears in the middle of a glorious sweaty work out with weights one night. I felt better immediately.  Whatever was building up inside me just came out and I let it.

My lovely breastfeeding support group will be meeting up for the New Year on 8^th January and in February I will be doing a Parent to Parent Support training course.  I am really looking forward to this. 

I got offered a product for my blog.  Something to run a competition with they said.  I said, yes please and thank you very much.  But they never got back to me.  Never mind.  I got a mention in their Facebook page which was a great buzz.

Smallest Boy is getting bigger and hardier by the day.  I swear he grows overnight.  He is starting to make a real attempt at talking.  A lot of it is still sounds but he is making the right ones.  And one day he fell over, got upset and turned to me for an unprompted kiss. All was right in his little world once he got it and he was off to raise devilment again with his best pal Juno the dog.

Shy Boy will turn five on New Year’s Day and he has asked for his birthday party to take place in one of those indoor family centres. Personally I would rather stick the cocktail sticks from their sausages in my eyes than go there.  We always have parties in our house.  But this year, as I feel he would be more comfortable there with four or five of his new friends, this is where his birthday party will take place.   

The two school go-ers had their Christmas service and I was delighted to be a tad late as it meant Iarla was leaving his classroom just as I was walking in the door.  He saw me and went pink with pleasure.  He knew I was in the hall even if he didn’t see me there.

A little bit of Christmas fun was bought for a tenner in the discount store.  Reindeer “anklers” and a red nose for the car. 

I know it’s important to wash your hands on a regular basis.  And I do wash them on a regular basis.  They’re raw with the washing.    But I especially love doing this when I’m out in public.  It just feels so cleansing.  I love watching the dirt from the escalators, the car door handle, the sticky mess from the boys and the handling of money residue turning the water brown.

I don’t like to cook.  But sometimes I get a mad urge to do something new and that’s when I enjoy it.  Oldest Boy has developed a fondness for chicken and vegetable soup.  I made chicken stock so I can make him soups from scratch.  The house smelt fantastic for ages afterwards.

We put up our Christmas tree.  I made two cards;  one for the café who feeds us each and every Saturday morning and another for Liam’s playschool.  I do not like the lads to help me when I make and do.  This is the anal side of me.  I allowed them to stick on one piece of cotton wool each to make the snowman.  But I let them do whatever they liked with and to our Christmas tree.