Tomorrow, I’m going to Shepherds Bush to see Old Crow Medicine Show.
If you’ve been following Sunday Music posts for any length of time, you will already know about OCMS and my love for the music.
So in honour of hearing them live for the first time, more OCMS
Wagon Wheel was the first OCMS song I heard
January is done. So I’m just going to go through the numbers and then talk a bit about them.
1. Drinking. There 31 days in January and aside from the New Year’s Day champagne, I’m not going to drink in any of them.
30/31 – I was queen of not drinking, until Thursday night. When, with 6 hours to go I cracked at dinner before the theatre and had a glass of champagne and a glass of red wine. Note to self, don’t go out with my mother during dry January because she is an evil tempter and I have no will power! Overall though I feel pretty good about this, it was much easier than I expected. However, although my liver probably feels good about my month of abstinence, I haven’t really seen any other benefits. My skin isn’t clearer, my sleep was slightly better in the 2 week of January and then went back to being rubbish, I didn’t lose any weight but I’m glad I did it as I feel that it’s given me an opportunity to look at my drinking, as the daughter of an alcoholic, I like to check in with that every now and again…
2. Food. I will take a packed lunch to work every day and I will eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
Lunches 21/21 – This is really all about planning and is really good for my health and my budget.
Five a day 31/31 – I’ve hit the targets but I can’t honestly say that I’ve felt better or worse for it.
3. Coffee. I’ll drink it three days a week for January (probably Friday, Saturday and Sunday!). The other 4 days of the week I’ll drink herbal tea!
19/19 – This was probably the hardest goal. Some days, Monday and Tues this week I really wanted a coffee. Once I was out of the house in the morning it was fine, but I did spend the first week or so reaching for the coffee and remembering that it was a tea day.
4. The messy cupboard. By the end of January it will be tidy. It will have new shelves, I will be able to find things in it!
1/1 – It was so nice to get this done and it’s been so nice to use. It’s fuelled a organisation kick at home and I’m starting to tackle other ‘messy’ areas in the house
5. Sleep hygiene. Sunday to Thursday sleep rules are. No computers after 9pm. In bed and ready for sleep at 10pm.
20/22 – Two slips, both towards the end of the month. Both of them about sleeping time not computer use and this weeks slip was on the 31st and ’cause I was at the theatre (Kiss Me Kate), I’m comfortable with that.
6. Self Care. I will moisturise every day, I will remove hair weekly and I will look after my feet!
31/31 – I could just stroke my lovely soft skin all day but that would be weird!
How it felt.
Really good. I had two slips on the sleeping front and one on the drinking but other than that I rocked this! I award myself a solid A, well done me. I set January’s goals to be simple and small because I wanted them to be easy to stick to, I’m lazy and lack will power and January is a nasty month. Even so, it was hard, especially in the last two weeks when everybody has been falling off the wagon and into the arms of a G&T, what really helped me was wanting to have a full house, to start the year successful and focussing on the ultimate reason for setting the goals, to build (word of the year) a different kind of life this year. January was me proving to myself that I can do the things I set my mind to, I just have to remember why I want to do them and not be a brat about it.
Which leads me quite nicely onto February’s goals. What worked in January was setting realistic goals, last year I set goals that were easy for me to derail, if I had a target of gym 3 times a week, I’d miss one and then all of them. So I need to be a bit more realistic at the same time I need to step it up a bit..
Goals for February 2013.
Food
1) Continue with the coffee and add booze to that. Coffee and alcohol, no more than 3 times a week.
2) Take my lunch to work – this is about healthy momentum and budget. So no Friday ‘treat’ day.
Self care
3) No computer after 9pm on a school night (Sun to Thurs). This has really helped get me to bed on time and have an organised home, both things are really important to me!
4) Moisturiser and general maintenance. Same as last month, I don’t feel it’s a habit yet, so more of the same until it is.
Home
5) Paint the living room. Painting the flat is one of my 2013 goals and I think having one ‘big’ thing to do every month is helpful. Also I’ve planned to do this on the 16/17 February and having it as a goal will help keep up my momentum when I’m moving the books out of the living room!
6) Dust under the bed, find out what’s underneath it. I sweep and clean around the bed and although it’s not a weekly task, it should probably be a bi-annual one. Also you may have noticed over January, I’m in an organising mood, this it part of that.
Exercise
7) Gym twice a week. Again this is one of my 2013 goals, so time to be dedicated about it. Tuesday and Thursday lunchtime, no messing about, no being a brat. Also I have a 5km booked in June so will need to start training properly in March, this is a good run up!
8) Three times a week I will do the set of exercises below three times. I think that Monday, Wednesday and Saturday might work quite well! I won’t enjoy it but I am going to do it.
20 squats /12 sit ups/12 press ups/1 minute plank
Eight things, some continuations of last month, some working towards 2013’s major goals, some because I’m getting a bit obsessive about the state of my flat.
I will be celebrating the end of my dry January with manhattans at the OXO Bar.
If you’re still not drinking, ideas here and here.
If you are, have fun don’t overdo it and drink lots of water…
Welcome to Friday and the first day of February! What I’ve found interesting since last week!
1) Some hard facts about the economy. We all need to take a hard look at ourselves. Well, here’s the thing about 2006: the economy was in better shape than today, but it still wasn’t working for the majority of Britons. And unless we’re honest about just how crocked our economy is, how the private sector doesn’t create jobs and hasn’t done serious investment for decades, we won’t get out of this mess.
2) The Birthday Dinner. Last one I did was about five years ago, I ask people over for Friday Night Cocktails and go out for family dinner for those reasons.
Seems like a nice idea, the birthday dinner. It is not. It is a tedious, wretched affair. It is also an extravagantly expensive one. In these wintry economic times, we need to scale back. I hereby propose that the birthday dinner go the way of the $4 cup of coffee, the liar’s mortgage, and the midsize banking institution.
3) How childhood helped the species.
In the nasty and brutish prehistoric world our ancestors inhabited, arriving prematurely could have been a very bad thing. But to see the advantages of being born helpless and fetal, all you have to do is watch a 2-year-old. Human children are the most voracious learners planet Earth has ever seen, and they are that way because their brains are still rapidly developing after birth. Neoteny, and the childhood it spawned, not only extended the time during which we grow up but ensured that we spent it developing not inside the safety of the womb but outside in the wide, convoluted, and unpredictable world.
4) The Circular Tube map. My mind is blown. It seems to make more sense geographically but whoa..for comparison see the current one TfL use.
5) Three Lies about Celery. I happen to love celery but this was really funny!
Celery eater Martha Rose Shulman writes: “I’m a big fan of celery, both raw and cooked, as the main ingredient or as one of several featured ingredients in a dish,” and then proceeds to instruct her readers on how to cook and eat the thing, as if celery were capable of being eaten and digested, when everyone knows it just rolls around in the mouth, becoming more and more fibrous, until one is obliged to spit it out in a napkin.
The last time I did a books post was way back in October. Rather than hash over last year’s reading (if you’re interested the list is updated here.) I thought that I’d take the last Thursday of the month to post what I’ve been reading, why and talk a bit about the books. If you guys what to tell me what you’ve been reading or what you think of the stuff I’ve been reading, that would be great too!
January has been busy with doing things that are not reading, working, organising my life, trying to get enough sleep, the Internet. As a result I don’t feel that I read much at all in January. Three books and I’m in the middle of the fourth..
The Light Years – Jane Elizabeth Howard
Jane Elizabeth Howard is 90 this year and Radio 4 are going to serialize the four Cazalet books that are loosely based on Howard’s own life and family. So if I’m going to be hearing them on the radio, I felt I should read the books. As luck would have it, Ma owns all four so I borrowed them.
Howard says that she wanted to write about an ordinary family. I know that we all think our own lives are ordinary but I do think that a novelist, who was married to Kingsley Amis, should have a bit more self awareness than that. If by ordinary, you meant that the Cazalet family are typical of a certain type of upper class family between the wars, then you could make your case. It may be the class warrior in me but families that have servants do not to me, seem ordinary. As it is, the characters in this book reminded me a lot of the characters in a Mary Wesley novel. I was interested in what they were up to but I didn’t really like or understand them very much and occasionally I just wanted them to grow the hell up and stop being so bloody stupid..
So we have the parents, the Brig and the Duchy, their daughter, Rachel, three brothers, Hugh, Edward and Rupert and their wives, Sybil, Villy and Louise. Also various children, in-laws, friends and servants. Everyone goes down to the house in Sussex in the summer and the action covers the summers of 1937 and 1938. Things happen to the characters but not a lot seems to change. This felt like an introduction to the family rather than a story about them and I didn’t care what happened next. I will read the next one because I’m sort of interested and I have the books, but I wouldn’t have run out to get the next one, if they weren’t sitting on the ‘to be read pile’.
Now for something completely different. Seraphina is set in a world where there are humans and dragons and dragons can take human shape. I can hear the eye rolling from some you from here! However, I am an unashamed fan of well written fantasy and YA and this is both. In Goredd, the humans and the dragons have an uneasy peace, preserved by a 40 year old treaty. The book opens with the funeral of a royal prince, found dead in a way that implicates the dragons, just as the ‘Ardmagar’ the dragon leader is about to visit to celebrate the peace. Seraphina is a court musician and something else (I love the fact that her name, Seraphina derives from seraphim which means ‘fiery ones’, is a clue).
I loved the world building, I enjoyed the relationships and the honesty about them. Seraphina says of her stepmother.
I tried to smile. It was an unspoken covenant with my stepmother: we both tried.
The only thing that didn’t quite ring true for me was that Seraphina told me that Glisselda was her friend but I didn’t see it. However, with everything else that they both have going on, that’s a minor detail. This is the book that kept me up past my bedtime because I wanted to know who and how and why and what next. My only major complaint is that the story continues and so I have another book to wait for!
This is a self published book by Gretchen Powell. Gretchen blogs at ‘Honey I Shrunk the Gretchen‘ and this is the first book she’s written. I read her blog, I’ve commented on her blog and that’s as far as I know her, I paid actual money for the book. So that’s the disclosure stuff out of the way.
It’s easy to be snobbish about self published books. While I admire people who sit down and write a book because I lack the creativity and willpower to be able to, it’s also true that some books just aren’t good and some good books need an editor (JK Rowling I’m talking about you and the last couple of Harry Potter books!). Sometimes self published books are not good and need an editor. I’m so pleased that this isn’t the case with Terra.
It’s YA and dystopian (there you go with the eye rolling again!), it sits firmly in the Hunger Games/Insurgent half of this genre and I liked it. The characters are well built, I read a review that said that Terra is frustratingly stubborn and that about sums it up, it works from what we know of her but it’s really annoying. I do hope that we’ll gonna find out more in the next book (the story ends but sets us up for the next installment) about her father ’cause it seems odd. The revelation in the last couple of chapters was not what I was expecting and I can see some clear influences from other books. I also had a couple of questions about the world building but not enough to pull me out of the story.
I’ve already passed it onto the eldest god-daughter who is reading way ahead of her 12 year old self and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the next book.
Something is Going to Fall Like Rain – Ros Wynne-Jones
I’ve only just started this. It’s about an aid worker in South Sudan and I think it’s going to be sad and make me think of things that I don’t really want to think about. I’ll let you know.
The inspiration for these came from Eat, Live, Run, they looked good and I had all the ingredients except walnuts. Come on guys, you didn’t really think I was going to say I didn’t have any whiskey did you? Yeah like that’s gonna happen! I may not be drinking this month but there is always whiskey in the house. There’s a legend that if the ravens leave the Tower of London, the country will fall, my house without any whiskey in it would be a disaster of similar proportions.
I didn’t want to go out and buy walnuts, but I did have little snack pack of cashews and cranberries and as luck would have it, it came to half a cup so I just subbed them in.
I made a couple of changes to the method, cause I don’t have a stand mixer (dammit!) and they turned out really well, the texture of a brownie without the chocolate. The whiskey cooks off and pairs nicely with the brown butter. Normally, I’ve always been a bit suspicious recipes that call for brown butter, it just seems like another step and for me another way for me to burn an ingredient or myself. In these it adds another dimension to the flavour and is worth the extra step. I just let the butter heat up over a medium heat, kept a close eye on it and turned off the heat when the butter got really foamy, it took all of five minutes, the trick it seems is to show it no fear…
Cranberry and Cashew Blondies
adapted from Eat, Live, Run
What
4oz butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
Half a teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 tablespoons of whiskey (I used the default Irish)
1 cup plain flour
Half a cup mixed cashew nuts and dried cranberries
How
1) Pre heat the oven to Gas Mark 4/180C/350F.
2) Butter an 8 inch square pan
3) Melt and brown the butter until it’s golden
4) Put the sugar in a mixing bowl, add the browned butter and beat together
5) When the sugar and butter are combined and the mixture looks fudgey, add the egg, vanilla and whiskey and beat again
6) Add the salt, flour, cranberries and cashews and mix until all combined.
7) Spread in the baking pan and bake for 20-25 minutes.
8) Leave to cool and slice, try not to eat them all in one go!
Monday was a difficult day.
The rain rained, the wind blew, people were annoying and I was tired and grumpy. I sat down to write about something but couldn’t think of anything useful to say.
In 13 weeks time, I’m going to Amble again. I’ve decided that it’s my second favourite place in England, the first being London and the third Broadstairs. So I decided I would post some pictures that of those places in the sunshine, because it will cheer me up. Tomorrow I shall be more cheerful…
Welcome to Monday. How was your weekend? I had another quiet weekend, however, I’ve been an organising demon, I’ve cleared out lots of messy areas in the house, been a good daughter and am ready for what the week has to throw at me..
Friday Night Pizza and non alcoholic drinks….by this point if I’m at home on a Friday, you know this is gonna be the routine..
On Saturday, I woke up headachey and if it had been any other month I would have assumed that I’d drunk too much wine the night before, however, this could not have been the case ’cause of dry January so who knows why, stuff happens! After a conversation with Ma about the glories of her new kitchen and another with Christelle just catching up, I started on the housework and fell down a cleaning wormhole, where I started and kept seeing things to sort out. Apart from the usual routine, the bedroom window needed some serious cleaning to combat the war on mould I’m waging on the flat, it’s an old house and the windows at the back of the house are double glazed but installed into wooden frames which is not best. The white kitchen cupboard finally has doorknobs! I’ve been meaning to do that since October!
I did some serious sorting in my bedroom, I started by getting all the detritus on the surfaces either in their proper place or in the bin, then started sorting out drawers. There’s more stuff to work out and keeping things tidy is a never ending task but the bedroom looks much calmer and in order now! And yes, that is a pile of books waiting to be read!
On Sunday morning, I got up and after breakfast,
I went to Surbiton to admire Ma’s kitchen, before that though there was blue sky from the train, it feels like ages since we’ve had a sunny day. Ok it was windy but I’ll take what I can get.
The kitchen is amazing and looks so much bigger, it’s also a great relief not to be attacked by kitchen doors falling on my head when I try to open them! Ma and I took a walk to the supermarket to fill her giant new fridge freezer! Then Christelle came over and we moved the old fridge out of Ma’s living room where it’s been living for the last couple of weeks and into position for being picked up in the week. Then we all headed into Kingston to buy a new kettle, toaster and bin for the new kitchen. Floating around John Lewis looking at kettles and stuff is a nice relaxing time for me. I like shopping that doesn’t involve changing rooms! However, Christelle and Ma are not so keen and we went to lunch and then walked down by the river to pick up the car Ma had booked.
Ma took me home and I spent 2 hours (yep I timed it!) setting myself up for the week ahead, so I cooked lentils and roasted vegetables for this week’s packed lunches, made applesauce, baked cookies, make jelly, did the ironing and put the washing away, did all the washing up and the weekend’s final load of washing. Finally, I made sure that I was ready for the morning. Then feeling quite pleased with myself, I spent the last hour before bed, drinking tea, reading and listening to Russell Davis.
So a good and productive weekend, perhaps a little dull but I’m not sorry about that!
My favourite Isley Brothers song..
Hello and welcome to the last weekend of January. I am so ready for this month to be done with, January feels like the longest month of the year. After last week, when I was getting it done but being a brat about it, I’ve worked on having a better attitude. Part of that has been about reminding myself about all I’ve got going for me. It’s been pretty cold around here, ok it’s been -28 C in some parts of Canada and here it’s hovered about -1 or 2 C so not very cold but it’s been cold enough that I’ve been glad to have a home and central heating that I can afford to run and yes money has been and will continue to be a bit tight around here but not so tight that I worry about the roof over my head. My decisions are about whether I can afford a haircut this month or nice handcream vs. a cheaper one, not a choice between heating the flat or food. There are a lot of people, in the UK, that I know, making those choices at the moment. At the beginning of the month I set some goals to help me plan and build, the type of life I want to have. It’s not easy for me to do, but it is a luxury that lots of people just don’t have. Reminding my inner brat of that this week, has made life much easier.
1. Drinking. There 31 days in January and aside from the New Year’s Day champagne, I’m not going to drink in any of them.
26/26 – 26 days down, five more to go and there is a manhattan in my future. There have been days, Wednesday night for example, when the trains were difficult and it took me 2 hours to get home, where normally, I would have said ‘sod it G&T time, I deserve it’. That didn’t happen, getting out of the habit of rewarding myself for a hard time with alcohol is a good thing I think.
2. Food. I will take a packed lunch to work every day and I will eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
Lunches 16/16 – It should actually say 17 times out of 16 because I made lunch every day and didn’t eat it on Tuesday.
Five a day 26/26 – Not really sure how I managed 5 a day this week, it felt like I wasn’t eating enough vegetables, but I counted it up and there it was, I’m pleased that I’m doing this without thinking about it!
3. Coffee. I’ll drink it three days a week for January (probably Friday, Saturday and Sunday!). The other 4 days of the week I’ll drink herbal tea!
15/15 – On Thursday morning, I realised that I was really looking forward to coffee on Friday morning. I like redbush and lemon and ginger tea but not as much I enjoy the coffee on my coffee days.
4. The messy cupboard. By the end of January it will be tidy. It will have new shelves, I will be able to find things in it!
1/1 – Done. It’s still tidy and it was so easy to set up the bed for Ma on Saturday night and it’s generally so much easier to get to everything, that I’m finding it much easier to do things like the ironing and that hoovering because I don’t have the 5 minute struggle to get to the tools I need!
5. Sleep hygiene. Sunday to Thursday sleep rules are. No computers after 9pm. In bed and ready for sleep at 10pm.
16/17 – I had a slip and on Thursday the lights didn’t go out until 10.30, which I completely blame on the book I was reading, I got totally wrapped up in it and just had to finish. Generally, this week was not a good week for sleep, which is normal for this time of the month and also the reason for the migraine on Tuesday. Those things are great reminders for me of why it’s important to set these habits, it wasn’t a good week for sleep but I got back to sleep quicker and the migraine was shorter (when in that kind of pain 7 hours rather than 24 is like a gift from God!). Also I’m always a bit more sensitive to bright screens after a migraine, so shutting the computer down is easier!
6. Self Care. I will moisturise every day, I will remove hair weekly and I will look after my feet!
26/26 – I’ve finally used up the bottle of moisturiser that’s been sitting next to the bath since sometime last year, my skin is so soft I almost want to stroke me!
So one slip this week but the first in the month. I feel really good about this. I know that these are all pretty simple goals but I’m so pleased with myself for sticking to them so far and I want to give as much focus to them in the next five days as I did at the beginning of the month to finish well!
Nic Dempsey 
