And here we go again.

And so the slow slide into my twice yearly introspection begins. It’s usually not pretty and I tend to wallow a bit. I do this once at the end of the year and again when my birthday is approaching. For those who like to plan ahead and book flowers in advance, I will be 35 on the 28th of April. 35 seems a bit more significant as it’s halfway though the allotted Three score and ten years and I am not going to wait till I am 40 and find that I am still a bit of a fool.

Loads of questions are asked and I never seem to have answers to them. So this year, I thought I would share my questions.

What have I achieved so far?
I usually take the glass half empty stand but I am forcing myself to look at the positive. I have a lovely daughter, a husband I think I undervalue a lot, food to eat (It has been said that the contents of both my freezers can see us through a 3 month famine:), a roof over my head and love in my heart. So why I do I still feel empty and very tired. There is something missing and all I have so far cannot fill the chasm. This leads me on to my second question.

Am I where I thought I would be?
No. I have to accept that the standards I set for myself are a bit tough. I need to accept that my aspirations have to be achievable else I am setting myself up to fail. So I will try the no expectations route for 6 months.

Why am I still overweight?
I have the answer to this in an Oprah Aha moment and will blog about this soon) Bottom line, I do not like myself enough.

Why am I not happy?
Dunno.


Hey ho. One day, it will all come together and I will look back and think I was such a fool to beat myself up over things I really had no business worrying about. So again, my late grandpa’s words ring true “And this too shall pass”

One thing I have strongly resolved to do is to speak my mind clearly to all without the room for misinterpretation. My friend Bernie said I did this a lot when I was pregnant and has sworn to flee the country when next I tell her I am pregnant! I think the time has come in my life to cut out all the deadwood and things that do not add to me. Sounds selfish but having spent the previous 35 years being the nice girl, the gloves are off. Sounds ominous. What this space for the fallout!!


Resolution for April
Do at least 2 things I have wanted to do and never did. Outlandish ideas welcome.

This and that

Saw this on Vixen's blog and just had to share. Brought tears to my eyes





While I was watching this and wailing, Lopes starts calling me from her bed saying "My nose is running" That made me laugh. She has this viral cough, cold thing. After a year of Harry Belafonte's Try to remember" as her bedtime song, we have found a new one. A friend sent the song to my phone and it is playing in an infinite loop on my phone as we speak in Lopes room.




Ahh. Just found the Harry Belafonte film of Try to Remember on Youtube. Quite strange. This was the first time I heard the song on the Night of a 100 stars. I was 10 years old. Off to bed before I put all my favourite songs in one post!



PS. Played the youtube video of the Harry Belafonte song for Lopes this morning. The smile on her face just makes the last 2 sleepless nights worth it :)

That Was The Week That Was

This was an exercise suggested by Pilgrimage to Self

A time log of my week. Was not supposed to be this long!!

My Background
Work Part time
Run an online retail business
Mother of a 3 year old


Monday (Work day)

7am. Wake up. Get out of bed at 7.30. Make a few phone calls and sort out flight details for Father in Law. Have shower
8am. Get daughter up, shower, breakfast and get her ready for nursery. How come I can never find matching socks in the morning. Note to self. Have everything ready the night before.

9.15. Leave house and drop Lopes off at nursery at around 9.45 and get to work for 10am.

10am – 2pm. Work, work and more work. Loads of spreadsheet analysis. What fun. 15 minute meeting, Should have been about an hour but I left after my bit on the schedule. Hate meetings, especially those that don’t really impact on my role.

2.15pm. Off home. Nice work if you can get it.

2.45. Stop at Brent Cross for some shopping.

4pm. Get home. Have a snack and start making dinner. Offload dishwasher and give the dishwasher a clean with the new fangled dishwasher cleaner. The jury is out on that product. Sucker for advertising, me!

6pm. Where has all the time gone? In the last 2 hours, I have cooked dinner, laid out some clothes and downloaded, formatted orders for packing and printed out labels. Sent emails etc. Did some grocery shopping on Tesco.com. Absolute Godsend.

DH and daughter arrived around 6.30pm. Dinner and some writing practice for Lopes and TV on in background.

8pm. Lopes and I had a long soak in the bath. What decadence! Dragged wrinkly selves out of bath at around 8.45 after topping up bath twice with more hot water.

9pm. Story and bed for Lopes. Sang three verses of Harry Belafonte’s Try to remember. This has been Lopes’ lullaby for about a year now!

9pm – 11pm. Pack orders, weigh orders and stamp orders. Put in mail bag for mailman (DH) to take to post office tomorrow.

11pm. Prayers and Sudoku and Bed.


Tuesday(Home day)

8.30 am. Wake up to kisses from Lopes. “It’s wake up time, Mummy!”

Quick shower and breakfast for Lopes. I have a shower while she eats breakfast.

9 – 10.30 Clear out kitchen and sitting room (We had decorators in last week) Get extra junk bagged and put in bin for bin men. Sorted some laundry.

10.45 Breakfast for me and then loaded clean dishwasher and loaded washing machine.

11.30– 12. Some writing for Lopes. Dot to Dot is such fun. Did some colouring and painting as well.

12.30. Off to Lopes Class

1pm. Drop Lopes off and as I have to pick her up at 2.30, I go to a friend’s house nearby. Leave at 2pm to get the bus on time. I will start driving soon, I promise :)

2.30. Pick Lopes up and head home. Take bus to station and taxi home. I could have gotten up 2 stops before the station and we could have walked home but Lopes fell asleep on the bus. I must start driving soon, please God.

3.30. Get home and get Lopes some Lunch.

4 – 5pm. Emails, orders, blog visits.

5pm. Get some soup out of freezer in readiness for dinner and then veg out in front of telly. Cbeebies is such fun! I am sure I watched some reruns of Diagnosis murder as well or was that a dream.

7pm. Dinner for DH, Lopes and I.

8pm. Bath and Bed for Lopes. Storybook( Emily’s busy day) I must wean her off this book. We have read it so many times but she won’t budge.

9pm. Go up to pack orders but needed some stock from shed. Gave up and went to bed instead. Read till about 11pm


Wednesday (Work day)

Same as Monday except for some reason, I was totally exhausted and left work at 1pm. Stopped at Brent Cross Marks and Sparks for some chicken etc and then came home. Dropped shopping and went to check on Old Lady across the street I had not seen for a while. She had apparently fallen down the stairs around 9 weeks ago (Shame, Kemi!!) so stayed and had a chat. Got back home around 3pm.

Came home and watched Columbo while eating lunch. Refused to get off the sofa till the end and then started making Dinner. I love M&S. Chicken, clean add ready to roast, veggies ready to microwave, stuffing ready to roast and mash potatoes all done. Perfect comfort food for wet weather.

6.30. DH and Lopes get back some

8pm. Lopes bed time routine. Tried a new book and failed.

9pm. Packed all the orders, weighed, stamped etc.

Was up till around midnight. Decided to do some admin and listing and stuff.


Thursday (My day off)

8am. Got out of bed and crept downstairs to put clothes in drier, from Tuesday, and more washing in machine. Laid out breakfast for Lopes

8.30am, Woke Lopes up and got her ready for nursery. Shooed DH and Lopes out as fast as I could.

9.30am. Quiet, peace at last. Put doors on my new workstation which is great. You put all your junk in and then you can close the doors and everywhere looks tidy. I love Ikea. Spent the next 5 hours (I kid you not!) sorting out the sitting room. All Lopes toys go in bottom of workstation, books on top and the middle section has my laptop, printer and all my business bits and bob. Packed a whole box of toys for the loft and another box of Hubby’s tools.

2.30. Sit down to breakfast or should I say lunch. Stay on Sofa after that till around 4pm. I have earned this break.

4 – 5pm. Wash bathroom, mop floor and intended to wash the kitchen floor. Gave up when I could not find the water compartment for the floor washer. Grrrr. I moved this when the painters came in and now cannot find the bits, Oh well.

5.30. Dinner. I love the fact that I got soup in the freezer from the caterer. Makes some days easier than some.

6.30. Day off over, DH and Lopes back.

DH gave lopes her dinner and a shower while I vegged out some more. She got a story but no bedtime song!

9pm. Hotel Babylon and Dinner and then bed.


Friday (Lopes and Mummy Day)

Forgot to pack orders last night so I packed them this morning.

No work, no nursery.

Did not log today as we played and watched videos and ate such junk food. Spent my day so inefficiently, I loved it! Read and napped and surfed and emailed and caught up on phone calls and admin etc.


Summary
Must be an African thing but it’s usually me who does all the looking after my daughter and the house and I must admit that rankles a bit. Will I have another child???

Housework takes a lot of time so a cleaner might be on the cards once I get the house tidy enough!

TV
I have the attention span of a gnat. I have only watched about 5 programmes from start to finish this week. All others are on in the background. Even my favourites, CSI and all other detective and forensics programmes are being relegated. I find www.tv.com invaluable as I read up on the storylines I have missed.

Business
I must find an efficient way to answer customer emails. They just ask stupid questions sometimes!! Need to do some more market research and supplier info etc. Need more time. Might take a week off work and see what I can come up with.

DH
We do not spend enough time together as a couple. Hmmm. Babysitting anyone?