Not going to lie, last week was tough. The last week of November is tricky for me generally as the SAD kicks in, it was Stef’s anniversary on Thursday (14 years later, it doesn’t pack the same emotional punch as it did but it’s still not my favourite day of the year). In addition, I had raging PMT, went to a funeral, found out a trip to the Southampton office was cancelled because of train problems (is there anything more sucky than being up hours before you normally are and discovering that you didn’t have to be awake?), there was also a doctor’s visit, an allotment work day, babysitting and a couple of work things that were testing my patience.All that to say that I got through it without too much crying and no losing my temper, which I consider to be a tiny miracle and I’ll take them where I can find them. We are now out of November and into December, nearly halfway through winter. I have changed all the music on my phone to Christmas music. I did this for the first time in 2016, after reading this and while I don’t take it to those extremes, it was very useful in helping me cheer the hell up. I did it again last year and boom, a new tradition is born….

Although I sanction Christmas music all through December, the tree and decorations won’t go up until Christmas Eve, it is still Advent (I have two calendars this year) and can’t be Christmas until after Ma has her birthday which is tomorrow. As it family tradition, I have a good chunk, well three days off work to help her celebrate.

So my plans for this week are to celebrate Ma’s birthday, work as little as possible and celebrate Jane’s birthday and have my haircut on Friday. Other than that it’s Grace on Saturday and maybe a walk with Sarah and Fred.