The One Where My Jeans Fit

I have mentioned a couple of times that I’m trying to keep an eye on what I eat and attempting to be a bit more active. This lifestyle change is partly to stop myself from getting into a miserable rut of nothingness but also to try and lose a few pounds after realising I had hit the same weight as when I was pregnant – not a great feeling.

Well, it’s been just over a month since I made this decision – I have been for exactly one run and two sessions of swimming. I have also done several hours of torture exercise on the WiiFit which I have borrowed from Liberty because that involves neither going out in the cold or getting wet.

This is why I don’t get on with keeping fit very well – I don’t like all the faff and time it takes. You can’t just ‘go for a run’ – you have to flap around warming up and warming down at the start and end (otherwise it hurts even more than usual), you can’t just ‘go for a swim’ – you have to get changed into ridiculous costumes that show off everything, get cold and wet, get back out again, get dry(ish), drag your clothes onto your damp body again and go home smelling like a chemical factory. Eurgh. It’s just no fun.

I do actually enjoy swimming. Apart from the wet bit. And the costume. And the fact that it costs a million pounds.

But yes, I am trying to be good. I’m not doing so well on the exercise front, I admit, but I definitely doing better on the eating side of things.

I started using MyFitnessPal online to try and track my calorie intake and just be more aware of what I was eating. It made me a tiny bit mortified.

I got really strict for a couple of weeks – making a definite effort to eat healthily and in small portions and so on – and made a discovery. Being strict with my diet makes me miserable.

It might make me thinner, but that’s no use if I’m grumpy, irritable, morose and depressed – I was winding myself up, never mind everyone else. And it was horrible not eating the same as the rest of the family – I’d cook them all tasty looking dinner but because I’d over-eaten at lunch, I’d have a bowl of rabbit food and half a slice of bread. I hated it.

So I have stopped that – I still use MFP, but only as a guide and I’m not so strict about it. I don’t beat myself up if I have a fat day because there are plenty of days where I go for a walk, or a swim, or just eat better so I’m fairly sure it evens out. And I’m not a mental, evil psychopath either, which is a bonus for everyone.

The thing that has stuck from my strict patch though, is my improved snacking habits. Half of my issue with food was that I grazed all day on whatever was to hand. I’ve stopped that now. I have restricted myself to two snacks a day maximum – usually one between lunch and dinner and one between dinner and bedtime – and this has become more of a habit than anything now. I also try to eat breakfast most days, something I was terrible for not doing before.

Has all this worked? Has the grouchy week and the starving been worth it? Well, yes, actually.

According to the Wii, I have lost about 4.5lb which isn’t all that much, but it’s enough for me to be able to do my favourite jeans up without a fight again. And for Caius to ask if I’d lost weight because he noticed my clothes fit better.

So yes, it is working and no, I’m still not very good at dieting or regular exercise. But I’m finding a system that works for me and hopefully I’ll be able to drop a couple more pounds over the next few months until I’m at a comfortable point and I can learn to balance there. And maybe get fit enough to manage more than 12 lengths of the swimming pool without wanting to lie on the floor and expire for half an hour afterwards.

February Blues

January is renowned for being miserable – the grey come-down after Christmas, cold and quite often a bit short on cash and with a few extra bits of podge after over eating and over spending through the festive season.

This year, February is worse.

On the 2nd February, the parenting blogging community was stunned and shocked to its knees by the loss of Jennie and David’s beautiful nine month old daughter Matilda Mae to cot death.

Many of us had never met Matilda, many of us have never met Jennie – but through our blogs and Twitter we feel like we know them. We do know them, they are our friends.

Blogging is nothing like what I expected when I created Carole Finds Her Wings back in June 2010. I made it to be a ‘book blog’ for reviews and posts about writing and reading but over time it very rapidly turned into what it is now – a place for me to be me and a place for me to ‘socialise’ virtually. It’s about my family, how we muddle through life, it’s about books and writing, it’s about reviewing things we love (or loathe) and it’s a place to put feelings down on ‘paper’ because that’s how I work.

I wasn’t expecting it to make so many friends. By having a family blog you open a window into your life for the world to see and by reading other people’s blogs you look into their windows and share their lives too. You share people’s happiness, fears, sadness, hope and confusion. You help each other through rainy days, give each other ideas, laugh, cry and discover together. Blogging has proved to me that sometimes, you don’t need to have met somebody to be able to call them your friend.

When I saw the announcement on Twitter that Matilda Mae had gone to join the angels it took a while to sink in. My whole Twitter stream was full of shock and sadness as everyone came together to mourn the loss of a baby we have ‘known’ from the moment Jennie announced her pregnancy. It was too horrible to be true – how could there be no more photographs of that beautiful smile appearing on my computer screen? How could she just be… gone?

As a community we have pulled together, crying with Jennie and each other as she and her family try to find their way through this situation every parent dreads, offering what we can in the name of help and support to them and each other.

I for one have been holding my children very close over the last few days and thanking God for every second of it.

Then, yesterday, a second round of bad news hit me. This time not on-line but in real life – another loss but this one much closer to home, a part of my own family.

Where I had been finding my feet again and pulling myself out of the slump that the start of February had left me in, I slipped again. Death is not an easy thing at any time. In this second case it is almost easier to bear because it came later in life – it wasn’t at the beginning, but nearer the natural end. The ‘right’ way of things.

But it still hurts, there is still a person missing who was there before and there is a very important and close member of my family grieving beyond anything I have experienced myself. I feel useless – they live quite far away so I can’t just drop round to help with the housework or to take some milk or biscuits round and make sure they sit down and have a cup of tea. My parents have gone to stay with them for a while to help, that eases my worry a lot, and we have sent down a parcel for them with a few things in to help them find a smile in all the stress and sadness. It’s not much but we all pitched in – the Smalls chose a packet of sweets each and decorated the box with stickers and felt tips, we chose a few other bits and pieces together – some practical and some silly, in the hope that it will help ease a little hurt and let them know we love them and are thinking of them all the time.

February has not been a good month so far, hopefully March will be better when it comes. It should be, after all my ‘baby’ is going to be two on the 1st – if that isn’t a reason to celebrate, then I don’t know what is!

 

Matilda Mae and Nargus Ara, may you both rest in peace and know that you live on forever in the hearts of all those who love you.

Only Human

Trying to reorganise your life is tiring work.

I have spent a lot of time this month sorting, tidying and rearranging the flat and trying to get myself into a routine of keeping on top of the housework without it getting too much for me.

I’m getting there.

On top of that I’m trying to keep myself a bit more active – I’m aware that sitting around staring at screens half the day is no good for me either physical heath wise or mental health wise. So I’ve borrowed WiiFit off Liberty (because she’s started going out and doing actual real running instead of pretend running like me…) and am trying to remember to turn it on for a bit each day on top of trying to get outside at least once a day – even if it is just for two minutes to empty the bin.

I do feel better for it all, and I’m hoping that this slight shift in lifestyle will help me feel brighter and be less susceptible to my depressive episodes which are no fun for anyone. And it might get me back to a weight that isn’t ‘overweight’ for my height without any specific dieting. Maybe.

The only trouble is, right now, I’m tired. Very very very tired. I’m still adjusting to everything and the kids are both being handfuls and it’s dark and cold outside almost all the time so all I seem to want to do is sleep.

This is making me stressed because if I’m sleeping then I’m not doing housework, exercise, looking after the Smalls or keeping up with my reading or writing targets but if I don’t sleep then I’m too tired to do any of those effectively.

I’m struggling to find a balance that works and the thing that is suffering most is my writing. I’ve grown to hate sitting down to do it recently because I feel like I’m just doing it for the word count. I don’t want to do it for the word count, I want to do it because I love it. I am nearly done with the novel I started over November and I want it to be good, I want to relish writing the ending and completing the first draft. I want the ending to be enjoyable to do, not a slog to write X thousand words by the Friday after next or whatever. So, just for now, I’m giving myself a bit of a break – I’m still writing a bit every day but I’m not punishing myself if that bit is only 250 words. It will get done eventually, maybe not as quickly as I had hoped at the start of the year but it will be done.

Writing takes more energy than I sometimes give it credit for and, when I’m so exhausted from just trying to get through the day with two chaos machines to clear up after and feed etc, I just can’t do it the justice it deserves.

I hate it when I hate writing because writing is my favourite thing to do.

With that in mind I am going to stop trying to be Super Woman and try to remember that, right now, I don’t have the energy or time to do everything every day.

It’s not doing anyone any good.

Hope In The Cold

Life is hard.

Sometimes it’s too much to bear.

Sometimes you’re the one left to pick up the pieces. On your own.

Whilst we’ve all been out enjoying the snow – building snowmen and throwing snowballs, Gretel Parker, a dear friend of many, both online and in real life, has suffered a loss most of us don’t even want to think about. Her partner of 21 years – Andy Macauley – her sweetheart, companion and very best friend, passed away unexpectedly, alone in the snow.

Andy died without a will and the months between now and when the lawyers decide what is left to whom, if anything, are going to be a daunting and financially difficult time for Gretel – there is a funeral to arrange, not to mention bills to pay, and everyday life to manage – and without Andy’s wage coming in, Gretel’s financial situation is nothing short of precarious.

Gretel blogs about life in beautiful rural Shropshire and makes the most beautiful things, Tori and Arthur adore their copy of Mrs Mouse’s Cupcakes, but the wage of an artist and blogger is not enough to pay a mortgage.

Andy was the only family she had, she has no living parents and no siblings, the usual ring of support is missing.

And so it comes down to us, her friends, to help her through.

The Gretel Parker Project has been set up by Gretel’s friends to try and find some hope and support for her in the cold, dark place she has found herself in since Andy’s death. If you can spare anything at all to help her, even if it’s just a pound or two, it would mean the world – the last thing she needs after losing the person she loved more than anything else is to be unable to pay the electric bill or buy food.

If you can’t make a donation then please, please, spread the word about the project – be it on Twitter, Facebook or word of mouth. Re-post my blog post or the project page itself, right now we are Gretel’s family and support circle and every tiny thing we do can help.

We are the hope where all hope is lost, the fire in the snowstorm.

Please help my friend if you can.

Breaking Point

I suck at housework.

Really suck.

Clean I can do, tidy I cannot.

I need this to change because it’s majorly getting me down.

Today I have decided I’m going to really, really try to sort things out. I have attacked the kitchen already – the floor needs washing but aside from that it is tidy, organised and more clean than not. There is a box of stuff headed for the charity shop and I can stand in the room and feel calm and happy.

I want that feeling in the rest of the house.

I’m going to start with the Kid’s bedroom now, whilst they are at their Dad’s house, then make my way round the rest of the house over the next few days.  Once I’ve done the big mass clear out and clean up, it will be easier to maintain, right?

This is my theory anyway.

It has to work because I’m feeling a bit wobbly at the moment and it’s starting to feel like life is too big a mountain to climb again. I don’t want to feel like that, I’ve been there and it’s no fun and it makes everyone else miserable too.

I’ve hit breaking point, but this time I’m fighting back.

Falling Into Place

I am not a tidy person.

Anyone who has ever been in any bedroom that has ever been mine will testify to that, probably with a slightly terrified expression on their face as they remember it.

I get worse when I slip into depression and then being in a hideous environment makes me more depressed so I do less to fix it and get worse and so on and so forth until I am a quivering heap in a corner surrounded by clothes and plates and boxes and toys and other life debris.

I want to change. I am changing.

I am currently sat typing in this room:

Granted, it still needs hoovering but it is more tidy than not.

This is how I want to live.

My bedroom is currently still the same as every bedroom ever and I actually feel my happiness slip a little whenever I walk in there, but after the last few days hard work (and a helping hand from Caius) it is the only room left in the flat in need of some serious TLC. The only room.

All I need to do now is keep it up. I need to tidy up the kids toys at the end of the day before I collapse in a heap for the evening, I need to make sure I keep up with the washing up every day and put the dry clothes away rather than leaving them in stacks around the place. I need to put an actual wash on at least once a day to stop it piling up into a scary mountain of biscuity toddler-tshirts and my scruffy hoodies.

I need to find a routine.

Astrid the Motivational Octopus reminds me of some tasks daily and gets sad whenever I forget thus sending me on a guilt trip and making me do it (‘I die a little inside whenever you forget this…’ and such like) and I’m trying to make things into habits so I do them without thinking.

Things are slowly starting to fall into place and I’m slowly starting to feel like, actually, things might be okay. Really okay. Everything.

Life isn’t going to be perfect, of course it isn’t – I’ve got two toddlers who are growing up at four hundred miles an hour and run through life (and rooms) like a pair of hurricanes, sometimes in harmony and other times bouncing off each other and causing widespread mass destruction, I’m in a relationship which inevitably isn’t going to always be easy because you’re endlessly in that dance of existing closely with someone else who is just as entitled to bad days and different opinions as you are, I’ve got to muddle through food-shopping and the like, run a house and stay on top of my intermittent depressive episodes.

But it’s going to be okay. I’m looking forward to the future. No, scratch that, I’m EXCITED about the future because it’s starting to look like real life and positive and I’m not facing it alone.

Everything is falling into place – from the washing up to my hand in that special someone’s – and I’m telling you now, I’m going to learn where everything belongs and remember it all.

Life is looking up and I’m dragging the housework along with me.

Failure. And how I stopped being one.

Supposing you have tried and failed again and again.  You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down. 

~Mary Pickford

Sometimes you read a quotation and think ‘pretentious rubbish’ and sometimes you read one and think ‘that’s it! Perfect.’ For me, the above quote is one of the latter.

If I had read it a few years ago I probably would have been in the other camp.

What happened between then and now was a lot of things, including for a time, being a total failure on many levels.

I had a bit of a rocky break-up with my childhood sweetheart at uni, I forced myself to go out there and feel good and found a new person to share my life with, got carried away with the emotion of it all, got engaged, got pregnant. I battled my way through final year of uni getting bumpier and bumpier and see-sawing from ecstatically happy to pathetic and miserable as the rollercoasters of university life and pregnancy met and multiplied. Liberty dragged me through the crap bits and kept me laughing so I finished on a high, ready to face the world when Baby arrived and determined to live the life I dreamed of, now I was accustomed to the idea of motherhood.

Then PND hit. At about the same time that the fuzzy honeymoon period of my new relationship ran out. I crashed and burned and cried and fell apart, picked Tori up and walked out of the flat.

But I got up, brushed myself down, walked back in and determined to make the best of it for our baby girl. In hindsight, I probably should have stayed out but I can’t go back and I can’t change the past so there’s no point dwelling on it.

I went back and slowly but steadily sank further and further into the fog of depression, setting aside who I was in order to keep my partner and my baby happy. I thought that would fix everything.

It didn’t.

I was determined for a number of reasons that Tori wouldn’t be an only child and so, despite everything, I got pregnant again. Ready for this to be a whole new start.

It wasn’t. It made it worse.

I lost my desire for life. I didn’t want to play with the kids, I didn’t want to talk to or see anyone, I couldn’t focus on anything, I let everything in the house pile up til it was at a point that both depressed me even further and overwhelmed me too much to fix. I just stared at Facebook all day because I could click through lots of things not having to concentrate for longer than a few seconds.

I made sure the kids were clean and fed and safe. I never dropped that responsibility, but I didn’t enhance it. I didn’t want to sit on the floor and be silly or colour in or anything. No urge to at all.

So I went on anti-depressants. What people often don’t realise is that anti-depressants don’t make you happy. They just make you numb.

I wasn’t sad anymore but I wasn’t anything else either. I still didn’t want to play with the kids and I simply didn’t care about the washing up or the cobwebs.

And I wallowed and I didn’t get back up.

I failed at a million little things and I let that failure define me.

Then I cracked. I thought some dark, depressing things and a voice in my head said ‘enough’.

I had friends and family who loved me and it wasn’t doing any of the four of us in the household any good me being the way I was.

So I  left.

And in doing so I stopped failing.

I took the kids and me out of an unhealthy situation and started over.

I found my way through, not on my own, but with help. I got myself and the kids a flat and started to pick myself up.

I play with the kids, I colour in, we go to the park and play silly games. I can focus on things for longer than forty seconds. I laugh. I still suck at housework but I try and I do enough for the place to be clean, even if it’s messy (and I genuinely don’t own an iron…).

I still fail. But I am not a failure.

I keep trying. That’s the difference.

It’s wet outside.

The internet tells me that Shropshire is going to try and get a month’s worth of rainfall out of the way today. And continue for the next few days.

I am not sure I approve of this decision.

The kids and I have basically drowned in the space of five minutes this morning (although splashing in the puddles was fun) and the drippy and chilly after-effects are not so pleasant and don’t encourage me to venture out again over the coming days. I don’t like this.

I get cabin fever when I’m cooped up never mind the kids. At the end of three days if I don’t get them out they will be climbing up the walls and I will be battling with Dennis. It’s harder to beat demons when you’re trapped in small places which means I’m going to have to brave the weather. But I need to think of something worth braving the weather for. It’s all one big clumsy circle of not-particularly-pleasantness.

There are times I wish I had a car. There are times I wish I knew the place I lived better. There are times I wish I was a more organised person. There are times I wish I didn’t suffer from depression.

As it is I am where I am, who I am, with what I have so we will brave the weather together even if it’s just to go to the shop to buy a loaf of bread. We will go to church on Sunday even though it’s a bit of a walk and we’ll get soaked if it rains.

We’ll make the best of it and somehow find the sunshine through the rain together because that’s what families do. And we are a family even when it rains.

Lessons In Life #43

Lesson #43

No matter how you feel – get up, dress up and show up.

I have cried pathetically many times before events I have attended because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to dress up. I didn’t want to paint on a smile and talk to people. I just wanted to stay home.

I didn’t.

I got poshed up, took a deep breath, fought out that smile and turned up. And nine times out of ten I loved it.

So get up and go – it might be better than you think.

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What are these Lessons In Life? – See my first post here to find out.

Lessons In Life #39

Lesson #39

Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

Even if it’s just a walk round the block or to the shop to buy a bar of chocolate. I spent an awful lot of time cooped up inside when my depression first hit and it made the world very small and very dark. I didn’t realise this until I dragged myself out to the shop and then the world had been so far away for so long it was huge and scary and intimidating. But I felt like I could breathe.

Now I try and get outside every day, even when it’s raining and even if it is literally just for one minute. It’s worth it to share a smile with a passing neighbour, to hear the flurry of wings as a starling shoots past or get the whiff of approaching rain in the air.

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What are these Lessons In Life? – See my first post here to find out.