Black Dog

Today we have had mental health awareness training at work.  Such an interesting and enlightening day and so well taught.  It was a privilege to learn a little more and I felt a congruence between my values and role rather than having to always wear a tough front, working in a male dominated industry.  The tutor played a beautiful Youtube clip called "I had a black dog, his name was depression"  and I had the experience of being found out by a cartoon! Sometimes simple heart felt advice can be best presented by means that stealth under the logical radar. I am so glad that I had mentioned my journey with depression at my supervision session the previous week as it led to an offer of help in being aware of how winter vulnerable I can be. 

Summer Rain

Saturday night I drove out to see a friend for tea.  It was the most bizarre drive, wearing sunglasses against the glare, with windscreen wipers full on, dipped headlights against the lorry kicked up spray, and watching the thunder clouds build ahead as I drove through the heaviest rain we have had all summer. By the end of the evening, sitting in the car again in shorts, my feet were freezing and I had to wear a sport top with long sleeves for the first time in four months.  Now it is sweaty, muggy weather again and spit spattering rain with a dark menacing line of gray advancing over the tops of the budleia and treetops. My friend and I watched the rain from the kitchen door, fascinated and glad.  I guess it has been many summers since I have been happy to have it rain!!  Usually it thrashes down in Devon, which is why it is so beautifully green.

It's the end of July and I think nature is doing the end of summer is approaching, conserve and change thing.  Seasons don't always correspond to school holidays.  My garden begins to look tired and exhausted, despite lashings of recycled bath water (no aphids stand a chance) and semi religious dead heading to make sure the plants flower their hearts out. The plants are getting wild and straggly.   I've invested in some tins of paint and brushes as I also get the urge to batten down the hatches and make sure everything is shipshape and winter tidy in late summer and I like painting and decorating as a nice time wasting/money saving hobby!  I think it is because the days are still long and the heat dissipates in later summer sufficient to make swinging a paint roller for a few hours a day a less sticky and more appealing prospect. And I also got a 10% discount which makes me happy!!

Reset

I have survived the week on the "Our Path" nhs sponsored programme for those who either want to lose weight sustainably or who like me hate having blood sugar that isn't consistent and want to learn what decent nutrition is and untangle the ball of knots that is dietary advice from the myths, TV rubbish and supermarket marketing.

It's been enlightening.  Each day I have had articles to read, mainly on CBT - positive thinking, magical thinking, mind reading.  All useful and things that I should know anyway from my reading but it has been helpful to have a reminder. I've mainly discovered that lunch is a key meal for me and that tea in the evening can be light.  And that a strong breakfast includes some protein, fat and complex carbohydrate.  The old adage of breakfast like a king, dine like a lord, sup like a pauper seems to be true!  I can truly say I haven't felt hungry and I am embarrassed to realise that having a sandwich lunch plus lots of fruit/low fat yogurt was probably unhelpful.  For me it is a little like turning from ordinary petrol to a higher grade performance fuel!  Not being constantly hungry and fighting the horrible feeling of imminent blood sugar crash is very nice.  I felt like I was always trying to prevent the crash and rein in the appetite!

However, it's been an interesting week for the truly unexpected side effects of long term cheap simple carbohydrate and caffeine intake.  I spent two days feeling truly dreadful - tired, irritable, low mood, and a crushing headache and inability to concentrate.  Caffeine is a pick me up and my advisor and I have agreed to two caffeine shots in the morning - which is fine by me - and the rest of the day is as it always was - decaff plus water/peppermint tea.  The peppermint tea is a leftover from a previous employee at work with a taste for interesting tea bags.  My colleagues have made various rude remarks so far!!  That's their problem, not mine I realise.

I've re bonded with dark chocolate as a good friend, and certainly can't quite believe that this is both easy and cheap - less fruit, no rubbish, lots of cheap fresh and frozen veg.  Next week I move onto "restore", the long term sustainable way of life plan!  And I will be making thai fish cakes......and a coconut dhal......

Our Path

I've signed up for what describes itself as a lifestyle change.  I am wary of pretentious labels but I can see why it calls itself this rather than a diet.  I'm little and only a little bit chunkier than I should be so why bother?  It was designed for diabetics, and, with this in mind, and with both parents in the at risk category and me with the unstable crash and burn of truly dodgy blood sugar regulation, it seemed sensible.  It features dietician advice, online support and the cheapo version I signed up to makes me recycle the step counter I used for the cancer charity step challenge last March.

The handbook and recipe guide arrived in the post.  Two smallish spiral bound blue notebooks crammed with good advice and some nice sounding recipes.  I have had a lifetime so far of eating what I am given and am now considering that the "healthy eating" industrial marketing machine has sold us down the river. Sensible guides on eating whole, unprocessed and low glycaemic index (complex carbs, no sugar) foods, restricting fruit (which I love) and maxing out my vegetable intake along with full on greek yogurt.  The plan starts on Monday and having to curb my carbs makes me nervous.  I had a fear it would be expensive, but the advice is so simple and basic, that, like setting a budget, I assume - which will need road testing - that I will find joy within effective basic "rules"

I think I will miss lots of fruit and milk chocolate.  Dark chocolate is great, but really too "saintly halo" for this newly "converted" non drinker and life time non smoker.  I want at least one good vice somehow.  Apart, of course, from coffee drinking!  We were encouraged to go through our fridge/freezer and cupboards and throw out anything that didn't correspond to the new guidelines.  I am not entirely sure what I think about the fact that I have complied.  It is my health after all, but it just feels a bit worthy some how.  But, if I stay health for longer then I think it will be worth it.

Building with Lego

When I was little I had a red, square biscuit tin full of assorted lego.  As it was the early 70s, there were blue, yellow, red, green, white and opaque plastic (window) bricks.  They came full size, half size and some little infill sizes like corners, I think.  I seem to remember bits you could use to top out a roof or a wall.  There were little red wheels of lego brick with rubber tyres that annoyingly came off in the bottom of the tin, and various grey and green base boards you could use to build a tower or a rocket.  They weren't very hi tec and part of the fun was digging around in the tin for the different bricks and colours.  At least for me.  I wasn't a great builder - my dad certainly was, and a very patient man too!  I think he probably got as much fun out of it as I did, if not more. I guess he never had anything very special in an extremely poor working class childhood.

So today, I was reminded of the lego tin.  My patient new colleagues are helping me to scrabble around in the multi coloured tin that is a new work situation.  Little collections of blocks are appearing on the baseboard of my experience.  A new project, working out some of the systems, learning names, trying to figure out why there are two dead plants outside the door that no one seems to notice! I am encouraged.  I am trying very hesistantly to learn to "speak tenderly" to my tough on me self and remind said self that my "hard service" in another chunk of my life is finished and a tiny bit of hydration is filtering through the clods of clay

Waiting for an MOT

Candle flame flickers for someone I barely know
I stand before Jesus and hope the guttering light will continue my prayer
I'm sure that's not orthodox evangelical thinking, but I know Jesus listens anyway.

It's hot outside and this building is dark stone cool and echoing.
I sit with a chunk of local pebblebed stone, smooth against my hand
"building a cairn of hope" says the information board above the pile of similar stones.

I turn it over and around, it fits against my fingers and palm; it's a good fit.
Brown clay, it reminds me that I am mortal, that life is limited here.  I realise that I've stored up the sadness of leaving and new starting so it's a good place to be a bit reflective.

Silence is a friend sometimes - however, the stone starts to look a bit like a chunk of soda bread or a pasty.  I've never been good at being serious in a sustained way - a black sense of humour has got me through most situations and taking the rise out of my intensity is advisable or I become horrible company.  I was always a poor drinker - it brought out the iceberg depths that surprised me and meant I had no shell to crawl back into.

Happy Mondays

It's going to take me a little while to get used to working part time.  I have worked full time since I was 19 and that's a long time ago, a lifetime of the colleagues I work with plus a couple of years! I am not entirely comfortable with the idea though two part time working friends assure me I will get used to having an extended weekend and that I can eventually pick up additional work.  They laughed when I told them I set my alarm clock and prepped overnight oats for breakfast, just as if I was still starting work at 7am on a Monday morning.  Short memory I think.

Having taken the car for its MOT and spent time drinking coffee in my favourite hideway I hit the pool for a burst of lengths.  It's strange being with the leisurely pensioners and young mums and dads instead of the thrashing up and down the poolers and kids doing swimming classes.  My friend tells me I am practising for retirement, working part time.  I am uncomfortable with the thought - I have many years to go, hopefully!

I spent 11 years endlessly, workingly, competently, with a bunch of "boys" who called me "one of the lads" and the words "work life balance" didn't enter their heads or the head of the boss, bless them.  I'm not entirely sure but I think that working so solidly didn't help me and that learning to be and to be balanced is going to take immense practice.

Thunder and Lightning

It's not often I long for a nice long, loud thunderstorm.  Today is one of those days.  It's sticky and humid and somehow I have lost my enthusiasm for endless summer sun!  I don't recognise me with my tan and stripy feet - and a proper "T shirt" suntan.  The air is sucked dry of all breeze and my head feels full of cotton wool.  Perhaps it is - I've either got an ear infection or it's solidly blocked up.  The flipside of being a swimmer who is only sometimes compliant with wearing a swimming hat.

Jellyfish appear on my new journal.  There's a jellyfish invasion on my favourite beach and I'm a little reluctant to haul back into the water.  There's a band playing in the pub at the end of the street and so I'm getting free live music.  They are good!! Taken together it's reminding me of 1976 when I was young and carefree and at my first guide camp.  Reservoirs drying up and cracking and water rationing threatened.  Ah the benefits of having a long memory...

Swimming in the sea with my dear friend, trying every stroke I have to swim round three buoys, slapping the buoy sides and ducking under the chop of the waves with open eyes.  Cheese scones and icecream, cream teas on the lawn to celebrate the NHS 70th birthday.  Good summer memories of the best weather we have had here in Britain for many, many years