Dear Diary

My laptop tells me it's 2.43am so I have to assume tonight is a night I won't get much sleep. It's not that I haven't tried. I've spent 2 days sorting out paperwork and getting things decluttered and tidy. I don't know where all the papers come from but since we moved house the pile seems to have grown out of all control. Maybe it's because we are spending more time in the garden and less in the house that things are getting left.

So, I bought some files and storage boxes and got on with sorting them all out. The re-cycling bin is full of shreddings from all the junk that comes through the door so, I should have a clear mind on 2 counts. Firstly, all my papers are sorted and dealt with and secondly, all the junk stuff is now re-cycled.

I thought an uncluttered mind meant sleep would be a given.

Apparently not.

Normally, when I can't sleep I get up and make a hot chocolate drink, Milky drinks are supposed to make you sleepy. I finished mine some 30 mins ago, but I still feel wide awake.

I have slept for maybe half an hour when I first went to bed, but something woke me and I then couldn't get back to sleep.

And the later it gets the more my once clear, settled, restful mind becomes completely focused on the fact that I have to be up for work in less than 4 hours.

And it's not the thought of going to work that's a worry. I enjoy work, it's not stressful. I enjoy working with my colleagues, we have a laugh, we work well as a team. I don't have a difficult time with traffic.

And so, I sit here trying to fathom out what is keeping me from sleep.

When suddenly, a noise catches my attention. Not from outside the house, but from within. And it's not the dogs as they are in another room and the noise came from within the same room as I am sitting.

It's a distinctive noise, it needs no investigation but instantly, I know what woke me and what is keeping me awake.

I'm hungry. The noise was my stomach telling me it wants food. Now that I know what it is, I will never be able to sleep until I satisfy my need for food.

And then begins a further dilemma. There is only one thing that will meet the need to enable me to sleep. But is is seriously off the list of foods. It's my weakness challenging me in the darkest hours of night. The only thing I ever eat when I get these night time munchies is toast. But toast is simply bread in disguise and bread is my downfall. I cannot have just one slice. Once the aroma of hot buttered toast fills the kitchen I know there will be a second slice and a third. Somehow, 3am muesli just doesn't work.

So now, I have admitted I am hungry, I have admitted I want toast. I accept sleep will not be easy tonight, but I need to try and catch a few more hours before daylight enters the house.

Maybe if I promise myself a slice at breakfast it will calm my brain cells enough.

It's worth a  try.

A new home to hide the clutter.

I don't know about you but I have memories of visiting older people when I was a youngster, who always had a writing bureau in the room where pens, notepaper, stamps etc were always kept. I always loved the idea of sitting at a bureau to write my letters. Of always knowing where I could find a pen, the sellotape or some string. In all my adult life such items have always been loose in a kitchen drawer, correspondence that needed dealing with is always in a pile on the corner of a table, orktop, and gets moved around as I clean.

Finally, I decided the time was right to find a nice bureau. Something that looked good in itself but had lots of drawers to keep all my 'stuff' in one place.

So, we trawled the internet and came up with this lovely, oak bureau.

It arrives in the back of a van tomorrow.

Jabba the Hut

 4 weeks ago I woke one morning and, as I swung my legs out of bed and sat up, this was the image I saw in the wall mirror. Admittedly, I didn’t have my glasses on so my vision was a little unclear but it shocked me.

Shocked me enough to do something about it.

That evening I decided I had to face the truth. I needed to lose some serious weight. And so finally, my mind set was right.

I set the Wii Fit board up and faced the awful truth. Since Christmas my weight had crept up another 7lbs. It was time to reverse the trend. Obviously, since working full-time and not playing golf, my exercise regime was reduced to an evening walk with the dogs and a longer one at weekends. If the little character on the Wii was to be believed, I had some serious work to do.

So, I have been very strict on what I eat and very focused on my daily exercise and body check. I have used my arthritis as enough of an excuse for long enough but it is possible to exercise if you’re sensible. And finally I am.
And it’s paying off. My first target was to lose 8lbs  – and I achieved that on Friday. It’s very rewarding to have fireworks and messages of congratulations come up on screen. And so, the next 7lb target has been set for the next 4 weeks.

I miss bread. It is my weakness. I only have bread at the weekend now. I have cut out a loaf every week

I now eat lettuce. I’ve never found any enjoyment in eating lettuce. It is a pointless food. It’s a lot of hard work for little reward.

Until you add balsamic vinegar. Suddenly, lettuce becomes not only palatable, but also, dare I say, enjoyable. Why didn’t anyone tell me this before?

So, weekday mornings see me on the Wii fit for my daily weigh-in and fitness check followed by a healthy breakfast of Muesli, fresh fruit & yoghurt. Tuna salad for lunch and something sensible for my evening meal. With my job being so close to home it means I don’t get caught in traffic so can have my meal before 6pm, so no more late night eating. Pizza’s, Burgers and other take-a-ways have been off the menu for me for a month now and I am beginning to crave a Pizza – but that will have to wait.

That will be my reward for reaching my next target.

It just fell on me ‘ead! So I ate it.

This greeted us on the door mat when we got home one day last week

I had been bidding on a pair of bookends on Ebay a few days earlier and had won. This was the card left by the Postman to say he had tried to deliver them.  Ooops!

When we are out of the house, Brinkley lays on the doormat  and looks through the glass panel that runs down the side of the front door. What is happening for the first time in his short 3 and a half year life is that when the post is being delivered it now comes through the door halfway up, and falls on Brinkley’s head.

So he ate it!

Neil went to the Post Office the following day, taking with him the evidence that they had a package for us. Fortunately he got a worker with a sense of humour and he got the package.

Thinking back over the houses we have lived in since we got the pups, none of them have had a letterbox in the door, they’ve all had a box mounted on an external wall so it’s hardly surprising that this new method of the mail arriving has caused Brinkley to retaliate.

And so, we are now the proud owner of a letter box cage.

And, I'm bidding on another pair of bookends as I type, with 3 minutes left I am the only, and therefore winning bidder so I'm off to keep an eye on the last few minutes.

Dear Diary

Today we acquired 4 grown tomato plants and several sticks of rhubarb.We spent last weekend putting the glass into the greenhouse that was at the bottom of the garden.

I needed something to put in it and, as we are at the wrong end of the growing season, we were happy to give a home to some surplus tomato plants grown by one of Neil's golfing buddies.

There are even some small tomatoes already growing.

I finally got my rhubarb plant a couple of weeks ago. One of the customers I deal with at work, well....chase for money, has a Conservatory business based in a garden centre. He was coming through to bring me a cheque so I cheekily asked him to bring me a rhubarb plant too, as I have had no luck growing my own from seed. And then, even if I did, I couldn't eat it until it was 3 years old - that's a long time to wait for a crumble! Anyway, I had every intention of paying for it but he wouldn't let me, I still made him pay his account though. Never mix work & gardening!

The rhubarb plant is still a little young to be eating it and so, when we were over at our friends this morning relieving them of their surplus tomatoes they mentioned that they had a surplus of rhubarb as well. So, ever keen to help out I offered to take some off their hands.

Once home, tomato plants carefully re-homed and watered I decided I would make the crumble ready for dinner. I always part stew my rhubarb and so I cleaned and chopped it and put it in a pan with some sugar and a little water and left it on a low heat to gently stew for 10 mins.

Now, it turns out that rhubarb has very little smell as it cooks, and burning rhubarb has even less and so, an hour and a half later when I went into the kitchen I suddenly realised that I had forgotten to set the timer, had forgotten I had left the pan on the stove and that by now crumble was probably off the dinner menu.

I think it highly unlikely the pan will be recoverable and so it looks like my few sticks of rhubarb will be a costly moment of forgetfulness as we had said any new pans we needed to buy would be to match the recent, expensive, cast iron ones, which I have to say are very good pans.

I wonder if they would survive slow burnt rhubarb?

 

Apps and Androids.

So, we use simple pay-as-you-go mobiles to make calls and send texts. It's enough.

Or is it?

A couple of months ago Neil started to ask questions such as what's an app, what's Android about, should we have one of these new phones everyone is getting. What would we use it for. All we do is make calls and send texts but we couldn't help but feel that technology was leaving us behind, to the extent that we don't know whether we would use one because we don't understand what they do.

Then Neil went with one of his sons when he collected his new i-phone.

'Show me what it does' said Neil.

'Well, if you do this it does this, and then you can do this for it to do this, and when you need to see this just do this'.

And all that went straight over his head.

And the thought of having one of these new fangled phones went out of his mind.

Then we moved house and didn't have an internet connection, and there was an anticipated time frame of 3-4 weeks before the phone line would be connected.

'One of those phones would give us internet access while we were waiting for the broadband to be installed', said Neil, 'maybe we should pop along to the phone shop and have a chat with someone'.

And so we did.

We worked out that we were both topping up our mobiles with about £20-25 per month - which just so happened to work out as the perfect amount for a contract internet phone. Mmmmmm - being the cynic that I am - that seemed a little coincidental - but I decided to go with the flow. The young chap then proceeded to explain what we could do with the phones and lost me after about 2 minutes.

'Let me ask the questions I want the answers to and you tell me whether it can do it' I said.

Can I get my email? - Yes!
Can I make phone call ?- Yes!
Can I send and receive texts? - Yes!
Can I read the blogs I follow? - Yes!
Can I access Facebook? - Yes!
Can I browse Google for info? - Yes!

OK, I'm interested.

And so, half an hour later we both walked out of the shop with our Galaxy S Android phones.

For the next 2 hours we sat in almost complete silence while we read the manual and pressed a variety of buttons trying to set the phones up to get email, ring when it should, and get the hang of dragging our finger across the screen to answer a call. It took a while.

Then, of course, we wanted, nay.....needed to visit the Android store to download an app, just so that we could say we had.

So we sat and tried very hard to think of something we would want to know so desperately that we had to be able to get it at anytime. But inspiration and need were both lacking in huge volumes.

Then finally we realised there was something that would be so useful to have at our finger tips, no matter what time of day or night. Something that would change our lives and justify the longevity of having these new, shiny, all singing all dancing internet phones beyond the installation of our broadband service.

And so, filled with excitement, we both set about downloading the ' Weatherbug' app. Now we would always know whether it was to be a sunny day or not. Our lives has just been significantly improved!

Oh, it is to be hoped there are more exciting apps to be found over the coming months!