This week has been tough. First full week back at work, getting up in the dark, the miserable January weather and horrible commute, it all feels like the grey gloom will never end and I really wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life in bed weeping or asleep. The news doesn’t help, Paris, an NHS crisis and currency worries for the Euro, snow falling in the Middle East and Syrian refugees. It all feels like the world is going to hell in a handcart.I know I’m not alone, everyone seems to be struggling right now. It’s easy to be miserable in January and I while can’t do a lot about events, I can do something about my own personal gloom, ’cause actually things aren’t actually all that bad in my life at the moment. So these are some of the random happy things and happy thoughts I’ve had over the last week.

Being part of the village

Last week, Christina and Tom came for drinks and it’s a thing of beauty to have watched two people go from being children to be responsible (and lovely) adults and to have them still want to hang when they really don’t have too.Next week, I get to go to Strasbourg and look after Ms T because Jo is on a course. I always reckoned that I would get married and have kids and it didn’t happen and yeah, it sucks. What I got instead was something else, I’ve become something like a Universal Aunt. Whether, that’s babysitting, building lego with the nephew, being the sympathetic adult to the tortured teenagers, running the book club with the god-children, all of it fills the space were children of my own would have gone and I didn’t get the chronic sleep deprivation either!  I am a part of the village and mostly it makes me happy.

Friday Pain au Raisin

It’s back, my reward for a week well done!

Business as Usual

I’m not going to lie, I enjoyed the hell out of my two week Christmas break and taking the tree down on Epiphany made me sad but there is something reassuring about getting back to every day life, eating normal food, not drinking every day and having the living room back to normal. 

 Books and Reading

I read every day but sometimes I read because there’s nothing else to do and sometimes I chose to do nothing but read because I enjoy it so much. This week it’s the later and it makes me happy.

What’s making you grateful for your life at the moment?