Special Delivery to my front door

Not bad Amazon, not bad at all...

Today started off well, considering I was lying in bed, listening to the rain outside my window. This was slightly frustrating as I had planned to go to the New Forest and go for a 5 mile walk with my camera, however sadly I can't control the weather! Whilst lying in bed, I thought about stuff... my life, my boyfriend, my work... I tend to keep myself really, really busy, so I don't really just sit down and think about things, let my mind wander as it were...

I got up and read my emails - One was from Amazon, saying that they had dispatched my order. Considering I'd only ordered things on Friday afternoon, I was impressed to see that they had dispatched it already, especially on a Bank Holiday Monday. I'd 'treated' myself to a spiraliser as I'm keen to try and continue my healthy eating and thought I might make some 'Courgette pasta' and other interesting shapes with vegetables. It might just be a fad, but hey.. It was quite cheap, so why not? I also decided to buy 'Dream Phone', which sounds rather crazy considering I'm a 30-something woman in a serious relationship, not some teenager in the 80's who wants to dial the massive pink 80's phone and find out who is her secret admirer.

.. But come on, doesn't that sound FUN? Think of it - You plus 2 or 3 friends, Saturday night, few bottles of wine - You play 'Cards against humanity' and then DREAM PHONE.... OK, so maybe it's certain people's idea of Hell, but I know my sisters and friends will find it amusing :-)

After I got out of bed and made myself breakfast, I decided to slob out on the sofa under a duvet - something I really rarely do. I decided to watch 'Animal Park' (the one at Longleat) and got quite emotional whilst watching the baby monkeys try and find fruit in some wooden brush heads that the keeper had set up for them, to keep them busy. Hrm... Is this PMT or something else? I guess I'll find out by the end of this week... :-S

Breakfast was a banana, a slice of Orange malt loaf and some prunes - I only ate half the prunes in the photo as by the time I had eaten my banana and malt loaf, I was rather full. I did want to get out of the house, however, so went to grab some food for my Boyfriend who was getting back from his LAN gaming event in Milton Keynes. He hadn't asked me to, however I thought he'd probably be knackered and having eaten rubbish for the last 3 days, might appreciate some tasty and more healthy food. In the process, I also bought food for lunch (Marks and Spencers fuller for longer range, chicken Yakatori skewers and some BBQ Wholegrain crisps) and dinner (I am making myself a BBQ Chicken wrap with salad and for pudding - grapes!).

M&S seemed to have a lot of reduced items and I'm certainly no snob when it comes to grabbing a bargain. Best before today? No worries, happy to oblige! 

Unfortunately, it continued to rain for most of the day. I mostly vegged out on the sofa, watching random TV and then my Boyfriend texted to tell me that he was home. I popped round with his food and we had a quick chat - Everything was good... until I burst into tears and told him that I'd been quite lonely today and was worried that everything was 'so good' between us, that I was petrified of us breaking up.. I mean.. What.. the.. actual.. f**k? Seriously? this is not me... :-S I'm not a crazy, mental person who worries about stuff to this level...

As per usual, my Boyfriend was lovely and supportive and wasn't edging nervously to the nearest door, or to the phone to phone the men in white coats to say 'She's crazy, take her away'... However I am certainly feeling a bit odd at the moment. I didn't stay long - as I said, he was really tired from all the things he'd been doing over the last few days, but thanked me very much for the food and said he was likely to eat and then fall asleep on the sofa.

After I got back, I realised that Amazon had actually tried to delivery my package! However as I wasn't in, they'd left it with my lovely neighbour. I knocked on her door and collected the package (I'm very lucky to have such lovely neighbours.. we don't really talk, just a friendly 'Hello' but we always take each others packages in and that's about that...) Hurrah! My things have arrived! I'm certainly going to be doing some spiralising this week :-)

Dinner is currently underway, I am just oven baking my BBQ chicken before creating a lovely BBQ chicken salad wrap and following it up with some grapes if I get peckish later on. It's a shame I'm back to work tomorrow, but I am certainly not feeling the same level of dread that I felt a few months ago... 

Now.. what interesting spiralising recipes can I find on the internet..... ?

Healthy eating is helping me be busy, but happy!

I can't believe it's already Thursday

Looking back 3 months ago and I was dreading getting up each day when I knew I had to go into the office. I've not been in my new job for 2 weeks and I'm really excited about undertaking new things, learning stuff and basically working with nice people. Yesterday was a great day - Went into the office which was easy as the tube strike had been called off. 

One thing I did realise is that I've been charged something crazy like £16 a day to travel just in Zone 1 as I'm getting off the train and going through a barrier with my oyster card and then leaving after my journey.. it seems to think I'm 'touching out' of the station and then 'touching out' of the tube station but not touching in anywhere... I honestly didn't think I was that bad with certain technology, but maybe I am? Either way, it's cost me a fortune these last 2 weeks so I'm going to try a different route tomorrow and see if Oyster can work out what I'm doing!

Breakfast yesterday was a slice of malt loaf and a banana - I'd say it was the same as today, except I've run out of bananas! Lunch was a ready made Japanese 'Teryaki chicken' rice salad as my ex-management coach came to my office to say hello. He'd never heard of the company before but was looking for a dowdy building in the City... I think he was rather impressed when he saw a gleaming, glass skyscraper ;-) It was really lovely to see him and we caught up on what each other has been doing. He even gave me some more suggestions about how to further my career and what to do in my new company which is lovely, considering usually my ex-company had to pay him £££ an hour for this kind of support. 

My mid-afternoon snack was a packet of Sainsburys mango which I have always loved. I've tried a lot of different types of mango but this one is just brilliant - I swear they must lave it with cocaine or something as it's really sweet, but very easy to eat. I've been buying the 35g packets so I don't overeat as the 100g packets would be gone in one sitting, easily! 

After getting home last night I started cooking for myself and my boyfriend and it was another Marks and Spencers chicken dish - this time it was M& S lime leaf and coconut chicken escalopes which I served with rosemary roasted baby potatoes, steamed brocoli and carrots. It was absolutely gorgeous and I'd certainly try that chicken again - it wouldn't be out of place served with rice, to be honest.. although there's sauce, I don't think there's enough to make it a proper 'curry', but the flavours are lovely. 

My boyfriend had kindly picked up my antique bookcase that we tried to get in the car at the weekend but it was too big to fit in his Audi by 2cm... 2cm!! so annoying! So he borrowed his work van and very kindly picked it up for me. It's a rather large glass bookcase, but for £30, it's brilliant and will be perfect for storing DVD's out of the way so they don't get covered in dust. After we dropped the work van off and picked up his car, we decided to head to the pub for a quick drink. After my 1.5 weeks of healthy eating, I was keen not to get drunk and then get the munchies, but really fancied a nice glass of red wine - so thought 'Sod it'... I had the glass of wine... and I DIDN'T get any munchies whatsoever... My willpower is quite high at the moment.

Today I'm working from home and lunch will be a lovely baked sweet potato with beans. I need to go food shopping at some point today, however the company seems to have a lot of phone meetings over lunch time (very different culture to my old company) so might have to make it 'late night' shopping, instead! 

I'm really looking forward to the Bank Holiday weekend and also to finishing my 2nd week in my new job - Who knows what interesting (and healthy!) food, I can find in the canteen tomorrow? :-)

Ginger beer and... chicken?

Even though it's Monday tomorrow, I really don't mind.

Sunday has been a lovely end to the weekend - It's been a few months since I felt this relaxed about going to work tomorrow and in some ways, I'm even looking forward to it. There's no horrible stomach pains and no worry in my head at the moment.....

I realised on Saturday, when I was putting my hair into a no-nonsense bun, that it's quite dry, so I decided to give my hair a little bit of TLC this morning and once out of bed, stuck on some leave-in-conditioner that's been made specially for afro hair, left it in for 10 minutes before washing it out and then putting even more conditioner in - it's made a massive difference and my hair feels and even looks a lot better. Breakfast was once again, a banana and a slice of malt loaf - I think I'm going to stick to this breakfast for the next week.. and see what I can do after that. I don't think it's overly substantial, however it's certain;y getting me through my new job in the mornings and best of all.. it's quite healthy :-)

My boyfriend picked me up at 9:45 and we went to try and pick up my antique bookcase that I won from eBay. Unfortunately, for the first time ever, it didn't fit into his car! By 2cm! Do'h... So instead I'll try and organise a van in the next couple of days to pick it up. We then stopped by a large Marks and Spencers, had a cup of tea and went food shopping. It was nice having a cup of tea (even if my Boyfriend did decide to buy a sausage bun for breakfast which looked really tempting..... Thankfully I resisted even sampling it!) as we hadn't seen each other for 6 days and I really missed him. We caught up on what each of us had been doing as we don't really ever talk on the phone when we're apart... just 2-3 texts each day, always in the evening. 

We decided to buy food for both lunch and dinner in Marks and Spencers so it wouldn't interfere with the rest of our day and I decided to buy some sticky salmon with rice and teriyaki skewers for lunch and we decided to buy some limited edition chicken breasts, vegetables and potatoes for dinner. Once purchased, we headed home... shoved all the food in my fridge, ate lunch (which was really, really nice) and then headed off to the car workshop that my Boyfriend partially rents with other people so he could pick up some things he left there whilst working on one of his cars recently.

One of the nice things about the workshop is, it's in the middle of nowhere and there's loads of animals and birds around - including a lot of grouse! Apparently it's some kind of free range farm, where they are bed and then used as sport. I don't personally agree with shooting animals for sport, however that's an opinion I won't expand on tonight - I do, however, enjoy trying to feed them and watch them, so once my boyfriend had picked up his things, we drove very slowly up a track and saw all the grouse, literally... hundreds of them! It was kind of like being in Jurassic Park, where the vehicle was moving through the field of dinosaurs.. there were grouse darting in all directions and we just watched them for a while, trying not to scare them.

As the weather started to get worse, my Boyfriend suggested we go to Fort Nelson a Victorian fort that has a lot of impressive guns! It didn't take us that long to get there and we really enjoyed ourselves, walking around, just talking, looking at different things. I can't say I'm overly interested in artillery, however it's still an impressive place to go and was free admission. I always like to give some money towards the upkeep so after we walked around for a good 1.5 hours, we paid a small visit to the cafe (No..I didn't have any cake at all.. just a cup of tea!), bought a few things in the gift shop and made a donation. 

By the time we got back, it was late afternoon so we settled down to a nice couple of hours of TV which included this weeks episode of the Great British Bake off before enjoying our dinner of chicken, steamed veg and roasted new potatoes. Yummy! 

It's funny, however this week I've found it pretty easy to eat healthy and am really enjoying not feeling bloated, constipated or just generally crappy - My sleep is once again getting better and I'm keen to keep it up. Let's hope that next week is as motivating, despite the horrible weather on the horizon :-) 

Weather makes a lot of difference

I'm not overly keen on UK Weather normally

We might have some good things going for us, like, funny pudding names such as 'Spotted Dick' and amazing TV shows such as 'Sherlock' and 'Geordie Shore', however the weather isn't overly amazing and even in Summer, you can never tell if it's going to rain, be cold or be glorious sunshine.

Today seems to be sunny - REALLY Sunny without many clouds in sight. 

I love the weather when it's like this - It makes me so happy and makes me think that there's so much more to life than my job and the stress that's currently happening. It also lightens my mood to think about my friends and family and the fact that I'm not the only one going through a bit of a bad patch at the moment. 

I have a tendency to send random postcards to my friends and family - nothing major, but a nice poem, some random words if they're going through a tough time or maybe have done something really positive recently, just to let them know I'm thinking of them. I bought some postcards yesterday and sent them to 3 of my friends - 1 has just got a new job, 1 is going through a divorce at the moment and 1 is feeling down over her appearance, so I thought I'd send them some postcards today and I'm hoping it will make them smile :-)

Work hasn't been too bad so far (considering it's the middle of the day) and for lunch I went to Marks and Spencers and grabbed something there - However, it's still healthy and still really, really tasty. My friend / colleague suggested we go to the park and sit in the sun on her picnic blanket, it was amazing!

We chatted for an hour about random things and listened to the birds chirping - Sadly the hour was up far too soon, but it was nice to get out of the office and even nicer to have some headspace for other things, other than worry and stress - I really think I need to learn how to meditate - I tried it once, but haven't tried it again and I do wonder if it would help at the moment.

Tonight I'm seeing my friend who had the gastric bypass in December. She's done amazingly well but is feeling a bit down at the moment due to some of the side effects including hair loss - I'm going to try my best to cheer her up. I know some people don't agree in weight loss surgery, however the way the NHS seems to have treated my friend has been amazing, and she's been very, very strict about what she's eaten and has lost a lot of weight. I don't think it's the right path for me, but I don't think it's right to judge her. 

God, the weather is so nice today! :-)