Having visited my sisters recently I was suprised to see how shy my baby niece was. She is nearly two years old and full of life, and she gets on with me famously. It’s just that every time I see her it takes up to an hour or so before she comes out of her shell. I am naturally a shy person and so is my sister, so I know how debilitating this condition can be. Shyness has led to many missed opportunities throughout my early adult life which makes me wonder where I might be now had I been outgoing and bubbly. At University I didn’t join any of the societies I was interested in and only had the courage to speak to people when I was under the influence of alchohol which lead to many hangovers and regrets the nest day. Dutch courage is not the answer. When I left University I gradually lost contact with the few friends I had as I was never confident when contacting them. This has led me to feel depressed at times.
I have also noticed that some people I have interacted with who have sometimes given the impression of being arrogant or cold and unfriendly, were actually just shy. Only realising later made me realise that, that was how I must come across to people sometimes, in my desperation to end the conversation.
I used to think that shyness was due to nurture, not nature, but seeing my niece now I’m not so sure. My advice to any parents who see their child developing into a shy person would be to learn how to overcome shyness before it leads to unfulfilment in later life. Drama and acting classes can be a great way to bring people out of their shell, as can many other methods of building self esteem. I now know that socialising is a skill not a natural born talent, and like any other skill, can be improved with practise as I have learned with an online course and some reading.
It seems like a long while since Sherry and I were discussing her taking redundancy and us possibly moving to a lovely country cottage in Ireland, when in fact it’s really only been a couple of months. However there is no escaping the fact that so much time has passed in a blur it is quite frightening. We are still toying with the idea of moving, however with all the uncertainty in the economy at the moment we are just biding our time until we feel it’s right to make a move. The one great thing that has come of her redundancy is the fact that we get to spend so much more time together, and seem to enjoy eachothers company so much more. I did wonder if we would find it a bit much suddenly being thrown together, but of course my fears were unfounded. If anything we have got closer as a result of it which is wonderful, I think it is because we are just more relaxed with our time together and seem to appreciate eachother more, whereas before it would almost be a case of forcing ourselves enjoy the time we were spending together no matter how tired or stressed we were as we knew it was only a matter of hours before we’d be off our separate ways joining the daily grind.
On the downside we do seem to be very good at spending money these days, which isn’t actually a problem but when you look at the months spending sometimes it’s a bit like “wow, honey we really need to reign it in a little”. I have to say that we have had some one-off expenditures like the garden decking and the annual membership for the wine club, which are both sound investments in our eyes. I can’t complain, even with all the gloom and doom that is being bandied around in the media, I can’t help but smile to myself while feeling like life is good.
Some friends of ours recently joined a wine club and we have been lucky enough to help them sample their first delivery, there was an introductory offer of some sort that meant they got a mixed case of 12 bottles of wine for a bargain price. Never one to turn down the offer of wine I suggested that if they brought the wine we would provide suitable food and we could make an evening or 3 of it. The wonderful weather we have been having lately meant it was a great opportunity to dust off the bbq and have a bit of a “sending off” for our old patio, soon to be usurped by the fabulous decking we have talked ourselves into having done.
A few evenings of succulent fish & chicken washed down with a crisp refreshing white and melt in the mouth steak (the only way to eat steak is medium rare off the bbq) washed down with a fantastically heavy red we had all agreed that the wine club was a great idea, so much so that Sherry and I decided to join, which meant our friends would get a free case of wine of their choice for recommending us – win-win all round! It seemed only right that we share our introductory case with them as they did with us, so more bbq’s and excessive wine drinking ensued, then of course their free case of wine arrived – we were laughing that the wine club was successfully turning us into alcoholics and that was how such clubs stayed in business as we made our way through yet another delicious bottle of Chilean Merlot.
We are waiting for our first order to come through, and I have to say I am thoroughly looking forward to it’s arrival. We always used to pick up a couple of bottles of wine with our weekly shop, but this feels different, you can sit and sift through the seemingly endless selection of wines at your own pace and once you have placed your order the short wait for delivery seems to add to the excitement of it all – wondering if you have picked a good selection, or whether you will have a total clanger in there. We are still having evenings of wine sharing with our friends which is great as we get to try wines that we wouldn’t have necessarily ordered, and find are definitely going on our list and likewise for them. It seems so far the wine club is proving a good investment, I am already looking into suitable wines to christen the new decking with…..
Sherry and I decided, influenced of course by numerous TV shows on the subject, to re-design our garden. Now there isn’t anything really wrong with the garden as it is, but in our wisdom we agreed that perhaps some decking would be nice, not the whole garden, just part of it and we can set up a nice seating/bbq area for the summer. Seeing as we already have a big pond in the garden, we thought that maybe we could look into getting a bridge put across the pond to reach the decked area – after all, it’s been done on the TV shows.
I’ve never been a big fan of garden centres, with their funny smell and awful piped music, but Sherry has always loved meandering round them choosing new plants and various other unnecessary things for the garden, however now we have a real project on our hands I was looking forward to going, after all this was proper gardening, in fact more construction than gardening and I was looking forward to seeing what new tools I might need for the job. We had a slight disagreement over which centre we should go to, with Sherry finally agreeing that we would really need to go to a bigger centre that would hopefully have a decking section where we could find out what we could and couldn’t do – I think the clincher was when I pointed out there was no point having lovely decking with a pretty bridge leading to it if no-one could get to the decking as the bridge wouldn’t hold an adults weight.
I’m still not a big fan of garden centres. Somehow they managed to take all the fun out of my new project, making it more gardening than construction – don’t get me wrong there is some heavy work to be done, but it just doesn’t seem as appealing any more. We are going to have to get someone in to do the bridge over the pond – while I could have undertaken it, it seemed very complicated and I just couldn’t face the stress that would creep over me every time someone crossed it “are they going to fall in? Is it going to fall down and leave us stranded on the other side?” those kind of thoughts, we haven’t made a final decision yet, but it wouldn’t cost much more to actually have someone do all the decking, I would just need to do the prep work, which is basically ripping up the garden that is already there and leveling out the ground. If it means I don’t have to go back to a garden centre any time soon I might just take the offer up.
So, 4 months into the new year - thats over a quarter of the way through, and by rights my new fitness regime should be well and truly underway, with pounds falling off and miles being run again, except that doesn’t seem to have happened - at all. Now, of course it’s down to me and my motivation to make it work, and of course my motivation left town about 6 weeks into the year when I was seeing no postive results, just feeling knackered and achey for my efforts. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy and that I would have to suffer for a while as I got back into things, but I hadn’t anticipated just how hard it would be to get back into running. Carrying an extra 7 pounds just isn’t funny - it seems to make running so much harder. It was so easy to sit on the couch and say ”ah it’s only 7 pounds, I’ll have that off in no time” I just didn’t bargain for the extra strain that weight was going to put on my body as I started pavement pounding again.
My poor knees have taken the worst of it I think, coming back from a 2 mile gentle jog they suddenly started to hurt - a nasty deep hot pain in not one but both knees, like they were saying “what the hell did you go and do that for?!” it eased off after about 5 minutes but I don’t want to feel that again for sure!
On the plus side, I think I am over the worst of getting back into my fitness regime, runs are getting easier and while I haven’t lost any weight according to the scales, I am starting to feel a bit lighter and tighter, which can only be good - at this right I might be able to tempt my motivation back and sign myself up for a couple of runs later in the year……
I’m finding myself sitting on the sofa, wondering two things. 1) When the hell did my stomach get so big and 2) Where did my fitness go?? Last year I was doing well, going for regular runs, managing to get a half marathon and 10k under my belt both with respectable times. Then something happened, (more…)
Well, how things can change. Having found that beautiful cottage in Ireland on the internet Sherry’s mind obviously went into overdrive – she has always wanted to live in a country cottage, with fresh air, beautiful scenery and one day children running around causing merry mayhem. (more…)
As I’m getting older and watching my friends get older, I’m noticing it more and more as they have children. When I’ve visited family and met my younger cousins who we’re seven or nine years old when I last saw them are now sixteen or eighteen - they’re adults! Yet I feel the same as I did but it really makes feel like things are quickly moving on. (more…)
My Wife and I have been considering emigrating for many months now and recently there have been some developments. (more…)
Well that was a great Christmas, but how come they always end too soon?! One minute you’re finishing work for the holiday and then its all over? They say that time flies when your having fun, why can’t it fly when things are dull or your at work? I suppose your not supposed to wish your life away, but it seems that Christmas just ended for last year!
This year I got to enjoy it through the eyes of my niece Mel as being one she was old enough to open presents by herself. She took a bit of persuading but once she realised that wrapping paper is meant to be removed and there was a present waiting inside she realised that she had loads more goodies waiting for her. We got her an Elmo, you know, the character from Sesame street which was soon promoted to her toy pushchair buggy. She now gives it regular hugs and goes ‘aaahh’. We also got her a rug that’s in the shape of a cuddly dog. It has really soft smooth fur so should keep her warm when she sits on it. Her mother bought her a wooden toy kitchen with toy food stuffs like fake cans and fruit , as well as pots pans and some other utensils. We had great fun pretending to cook and eat - she looked at me like I was stupid when I pretended to eat imaginary food, and when I offered her some she laughed.
We were going to go back to my sister’s place tonight to celebrate the new year, but unfortunately they’ve all caught colds so we’re staying well clear. Their neighbour’s family has the 24 vomiting bug that’s going around, he was cleaning his brand new car out the other day, eesh! I guess I’ve got all that top look forward to, oh well..