I have been trying to live in the moment and avoid counting out the remainder of our stay in Hildenborough in "last times." It's hard, but I've mostly been managing. There have been some I have allowed - my last commute in to work was a positive, although it then took my breath away when I let myself think that I am becoming temporarily economically inactive. It didn't take long for me to remember why I like working outside the home!
Reality is sinking in - we now have a tenant for our current home (yay!). I've got the keys for the new home. The children are booked in to their respective pre-schools - Itsyboo will start two mornings a week and I will have nearly six free hours every week in term time. The mind boggles.
So I've been slowly saying my goodbyes to Kent (and Godstone farm. Seriously, what will I do without Godstone farm?)
When the going gets tough, we go to Godstone
I knew we needed a change of scene today, though, even if it meant curtailing our mad rush to get things done. So we piled into the car and headed out to Camber Sands. The kids went wild chasing amenable dogs. The literal wind quite blew all of our metaphorical cobwebs away, and we finished an hour on the beach with rosy cheeks and ear to ear smiles.
I don't think we'll ever get to the point where we feel ready to move*, but we're definitely starting to get excited.
*Apart from Miss A, who gets up every morning and asks if we're moving to our new home today.
With less than a week to go to the move, I have been madly de-cluttering. As we're being professionally packed, I won't be evaluating things as they go in to boxes, and as I recently discovered a box of baby rice that came with us in the first move (Itsyboo was well past baby rice by that point), I made it my mission to move only useful things.
Of course, I still needed to buy a tortilla press before we move because ¡tortillas! In the next six days!
As part of my de-cluttering, I have been trying to use up fridge, freezer and store cupboard ingredients. I made hummus and, after a small wail that I had run out of tahini (quel horreur!), I chucked in a lonely roasted red pepper that had been languishing in the fridge. Served on Tuesday, Itsyboo studiously ignored it. It was orange. He didn't want to eat the orange thing. Today, after a tentative poke with pitta, he realise that hummus can be orange and inhaled it in short order. Glad that my son is so very textbook!
That's good, since our food choices are going to get increasingly random over the next few days as I make a real effort to empty out the freezer. Perhaps if I just coat it all in orange hummus, I'll have a fighting chance of getting some of it into his tummy!
I don't do New Years resolutions any more - no particular strong feelings there, I just think that it's a lot of pressure to put on yourself on the day after you've stayed up too late* and drunk a small vat of alcohol (yes, I am a parent of small children, why do you ask?). But, as usual, in the first week of January, all the papers are filled with lots of articles on how to improve yourself (and, seemingly, one article each about how resolutions are stupid).
I am, however, no stranger to good intention and "improve yourself" type thoughts. My first experience with meditation was at a yoga retreat a few years ago (pre-children!!!), which was probably the most healthy, relaxing experience of my life. Seriously, folks, I came back glowing with inner health. And I fully intended to keep meditating, but you know how these things often go...
So, in this frenzy of helpful articles on which diet to do, how you can do micro-exercise, etc, I came across one on meditation and, as the initial part was free, decided to give it a go. For four days now, I have spent ten whole minutes sitting quietly in the morning meditating.
So far, my main breakthrough is that I have a cold, and more of a cold than I had been willing to admit. "Checking in" with my body, my thoughts were "snot... snot... snot... ick..."
So there you go. Meditation has told me I'm sick. I clearly need to spend the day wrapped up in my duvet. Who am I to argue?
So, we're moving, and I've found it much harder to blog about this move, because it often makes me feel like a crazy person. I'm excited and exhausted and entirely fucked off by turns.
We are definitely moving. We have signed a lease. We will soon be leasing out our own house (another crazy moment... honestly... it feels like my house, warts and all...). We have now withdrawn our Kent schools application and submitted an Oxfordshire one.
It's serious. We're going in three weeks. I'm taking deep breaths.
So I'm going to try to write about it without being a crazy woman. And maybe I'll find something funny to say about it. I mean, we're going from a village of 4,600 people within walking distance of a good-sized town to a village of 1,250 in the middle of an area of outstanding natural beauty. What could possibly be funny about that?!?
I can trace my Christmas sense-of-humour failure to Thursday. I took the kids to Santa's Grotto at Ruxley Manor.
Objectively, the grotto gets a 9.5 out of 10 from me. Miss A, who was, as usual, impeccably behaved, had a fantastic time. The "Father Christmas Experience" lasted about an hour and involved singing songs, throwing snowballs at naughty rats (trust me, it made sense at the time), making reindeer food, decorating ornaments, and finally, getting a present from the man in red himself. I have deducted a 1/2 point from my rating due to the fact that both Miss A and Santa look quite startled in the official photo.
Fortunately, it was not the type of Santa where you lay out your holiday wish list, as Miss A had expressed her intention to ask for a sandwich for Christmas (yes, it was before lunch...). Santa has already arranged a non-food based gift based on earlier conversations.
My experience, though, was not 9.5/10 for reasons that are entirely my fault. You see, Istyboo is going through what we might term a "challenging" phase. If his vocabulary were a bit better, I think he would spend his waking hours shouting "Destroy! Destroy!" interspersed with charming, cheeky smiles. So I spent the hour chasing him around the various sections of the grotto pleading with him to participate in the activities and stop with the smashing. As a final farewell, when I was finally getting him out of the grotto, he managed to grab the camera lens and twist it out of focus. That's my boy...
So, feeling mentally bruised and battered, I reacted badly to some minor frustrations on the gift receiving front and threatened tearfully to call off Christmas (I may also be reacting to the stress of trying to get a move organised in six weeks OVER THE HOLIDAYS). Honestly, what is the best way to deal with gift givers who consistently get stuff you neither need nor want, who have ignored both direct requests and the fact that you have hobbies, who give you things that you will either immediately return or pass on to the charity shop, without acting like a complete asshole?
I recognise that this is a problem akin to "my diamond shoes are too tight" but I get frustrated because it makes me feel like the givers are just fulfilling a perceived obligation as quickly as possible rather than expressing any emotional closeness.
So, advice and happy Christmas thoughts are appreciated. I've now un-cancelled Christmas, wrapped all the presents now and put on my Christmas Eve Yankee Candle (purchased at Ruxley Manor!) to soothe myself. Bring on the carol services!
I have spent the last month sorting out our mountains of paper clutter, fifteen minutes a day. Today is the 20th of the month and I have now, finally, tamed the mountains of paper. So... we had about five hours worth of paper clutter around the house. *shudder*
One of the gems I came across were some old Myers-Briggs personality tests. I have always come back ENTJ - the "E" of which one of my friends questioned. "Really?" she said. And I shrugged. Because it really depends on my mood whether I'm going to be the life of the party or hiding in the kitchen.
One place that I am definitely an "E" - getting my energy through social interaction - is running. C can go off for hours at a time by himself and come back glowing (though he is currently claiming to be the strongest E ever on the planet - yes, we got distracted by Wikipedia...). I find that a run with company seems to pass in mere moments, while a solitary run is... longer.
Every Saturday, I wake up thinking that I could just stay in bed. And every Saturday, I see that I have left my running kit out and so, of course, I have to put it on. And having donned my stretchy, breathable spandex, I have to eat a healthy, appropriate-to-running breakfast. And having eaten my porridge with a bit of fruit, I then have to get in the car and go to Sevenoaks. And then, before I even know what has happened, I am hitting the coffee shop glowing (or something less glamorous than glowing... trust me) with fresh air and exercise. It's the reminder of my post-run high that gets me to set out my trainers on a Friday night, since I don't want to miss out.
The next step is getting out this Wednesday night - clearly the morning momentum isn't going to get me out in the evening, but I'll just try to recapture the memory of my post-run bliss and see if it can get me out the door on a dark and stormy night.
