New Year's Resolutions (Cliche but Necessary)

It's the 29th December 2017 and I am planning which changes to make in 2018. You might want to get a chair and a cup of tea because this is going to take some time.

HEALTH

My health has been pretty terrible for a while now. I constantly have colds, like literally every 2 weeks or so I will come down with apocalypse-grade lurgy that renders me all but bed ridden for days. I am done with being sick all the time. DONE. So I'm going to try and do something about it. I've always been a bit of a sick-note when it comes to colds and what not - it's a family trait unfortunately - but I keep thinking back to the one time - about a year, 3 or 4 years back now - when I actually caught very few colds and the ones I did catch were only mild and short lived. The main things that were different about my life then were 1) I ate more healthily, 2) I exercised regularly and 3) I was less stressed in general. It's well known that immune systems are boosted by good nutrition and regular exercise and that stress damages your ability to fight disease. I may not be able to do much about stress (although I am going to try) but I can definitely do something about the other two and that's got to help, right?

FOOD

I have allowed myself to get into absolutely appalling eating habits. I have lived on junk food and what I call 'filler food' - not necessarily junk, but stuff that fills you up without necessarily being nutritious, for waaaay too long. I am aware that this is a combination of comfort eating and convenience eating, as well as a bad habit. It needs to stop.
My weight is not technically a problem if you look at things like NHS BMI targets etc but I am over a stone heavier than I was when I was healthy, and as I have Ehlers Danlos syndrome, that extra weight is bad because it's causing me to have hip problems again. So whilst my main target is just to improve the quality of what I put into my mouth, if that results in me shedding a few pounds it's a bonus.




EXERCISE

Biggest new year's resolution cliche ever, right? I need to get my arse in gear and get moving. I hate exercising outdoors (apart from walking, that's OK) so this part of my resolution is going to have to involve going to the gym. I have one at work, which is cheap, and literally 3 minutes walk from my office, so I have literally NO excuse not to go there. Other than feeling a bit sheepish and embarrassed when I rock up for the first time in 2 years immediately after New Year and start exercising, thereby proclaiming to the entire gym community (which includes various people I work with on a daily basis) that why yes, this is a new year's resolution, feel free to judge and laugh etc. But I guess I will just have to suck that up and get over it eh?

STRESS (and FUN)
This one is a little bit out of my control because there are various things going on in my life which are very stressful but also unavoidable and all I can really do is ride out the storm. However I have decided that it must be possible to at least minimise my stress somewhat. I'm hoping that better food and regular exercise are going to help. I'm also going to make a big effort to get more sleep (I am a terrible night owl) and also to give myself permission to switch off from whatever stressful things are happening and do something fun for myself at least once a day. I'm going to try and keep blogging, because that's fun and therapeutic, and I'm also going to try and get back to writing. I'm going to read regularly, because I love reading and it's hugely escapist, but it's fallen by the wayside these last few years.
One thing I want to spend LESS time doing is playing on my phone. I can literally lose HOURS scrolling through social media and in between the interesting updates from friends and family there's also a lot of negativity and pointless crap. It's actually really depressing and draining, not to mention addictive. Instead, I'm going to play video games, because in similar fashion to phone-scrolling, you can switch off your brain (the part that worries) and just focus on playing, but in a fun way rather than a 'look at this picture of a starving puppy/ guess what terrible thing a politician just did again/ here's a news article about some kids who got murdered' way. It's important to be aware of these things, but not to the extent I flood my brain with it 24/7/365 and end up depressed and distraught at how shitty the world is - even if you try to help, there's always one more terrible thing that's out of your control and it gets to you after a while. I need some down time.

I'm also going to try and practice better time management at work. One of my biggest stressors recently has been having to achieve miracle-grade levels of work with insufficient levels of staff. This is through no fault of my own, and is unlikely to change any time soon, but I tend to get overwhelmed and lose focus, then spin my wheels doing stuff that's less important, which wastes time and makes things worse. I see some A-grade use of calendars, white boards and to do lists on my horizon, to help me stay focused. As well as forcing myself to delegate work, which does not come easily to me.

APPEARANCE

One of the little things that always used to help me with stress was taking some time to pamper myself. I've let that slide. I'm going to try and fix that because I know how much better it makes me feel. I'm not going the whole hog and becoming high maintenance but I am going to make the effort to do my hair, nails, make up, to actually bother with jewellery, and to wear clothes that I like and which make me feel good. I'm also going to make an effort with my skin as I have basically done nothing for the longest time and I deserve not to be dry/spotty/whatever any more.

CLUTTER
I have pretty significant hoarding tendencies and have done my whole life.  Not "Hoarders" TV show grade hoarding, but enough to be an issue. It was terrible when I was a child. I've got a lot better since then but I'm far from perfect and it gets worse when I'm stressed. And I've been stressed for the last 3 years, so yeah. My house could definitely do with some work. I find that very overwhelming to deal with so I've been putting it off but I need to do something now because it's on the verge of becoming a really big deal. I've recently been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome which is a big part of the problem tbh - one facet is that I get very easily overwhelmed if I don't have 100% control of my life, and decluttering items that I've previously dealt with by careful stacking and hiding in cupboards etc can be messy and overwhelming!! So I'm going to need to do it gradually. It's also very difficult for me as I also tend to get very attached to everything, but that's another thing I'm going to have to get the hell over because otherwise I'm going to drown in my own junk by this time next year.

FINANCES


This is a big one and significantly linked to my hoarding tendencies. I waste waaaaaaayyyyy too much money buying crap I don't need to try and make myself feel happy (and really just achieve adding to the pile of things I need to declutter as well as adding to my debt mountain). I realise that this is a problem. I am going to try and do something about it. Miracles take longer (especially when dealing with a problem that's taken years to build up) so I am not going to set my sights too high and start talking about being debt free within a year or any tosh like that. However I am going to set myself a challenge: No Unnecessary Purchases for 100 days. Henceforth to be known as 'The Great No-Buy'. Starting the 1st January, before I buy something I am going to have to think: do I really need it? Do I have something else that I could use instead? Obviously things like food and medicine are still allowed, although I have to try and keep expense there to the minimum (I am a bit of a food hoarder and tend to buy things 'for later' or 'just to stock up' and this is not going to be allowed during the no-buy. I am going to try and use what I already have instead). I can still get new school shirts for the Boy when he can't fit into the old ones any more. I can still buy shampoo when I'm out of shampoo - but I have to use up all the stockpiled shampoo first, or come up with a really good reason why I can't. I can't buy new make up because it looked nice/was a colour I don't already have.

She's alive!!

Wow. It's been a REALLY long time since I last dusted off this blog and did something with it, huh?

Sorry about that. Life has been pretty... complicated. For a ridiculously long time. I'm lucky I still have any vestiges of sanity at all, never mind the ability to blog. I'm not going to bore you with a long list of the things I've had to deal with but just rest assured it hasn't been pretty and honestly I'm done with ALL of it.

Anyway this is my attempt to get my metaphorical sh*t together once and for all and try and get back to blogging, and indeed life in general. That doesn't mean that things are simple again or that everything is hunky dory - far from it - but it does mean I'm pretty sick at dragging along in the aftermath of chaos and I'm ready to try and carve out some sort of normality and fun in what is otherwise one long stream of OhMyGodWhatTheHellAmISupposedToDoNow.

So yeah. It's nearly new year's eve 2018. The perfect, if slightly cliche, moment to make changes to your life and try to dig yourself out of the poop pile life saw fit to bury you underneath until now.

It's probably best to assume that any and all resolutions and improvements I have made previously on this blog have gone a bit down the toilet by now and I'm basically starting from square 1. Keep your expectations low, people...

31 Days of Cheapness

I found a great frugal food website the other day: Cheap Family Recipes, and I'm really excited to share it with you!

The authors of this site have provided meal plans and shopping lists for incredibly cheap family eating. They claim that, if you follow the meal plans and shop wisely, you can feed a family of four for a month, for about £100. The recipes look tasty and well balanced, and they have two plans on offer: the vegan version, and a version that includes meat. They also offer the whole thing FOR FREE. I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I am rather excited to give this a try. Starting tomorrow, I will be following the Cheap Family Recipes 'option two' vegan meal plan for 31 days.

Bean Curry (pic taken from http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk)

Now, a few disclaimers. The prices on Cheap Family Recipes were calculated in 2010. Prices have gone up exponentially since then, pretty much everywhere. So I am under no illusion whatsoever that this will be quite as cheap as they're claiming. BUT the principle is still sound. The recipes still use very cheap ingredients so I'm interested to see how cheap it'll be to eat like this in 2014.

Onion Tarte Tatin (pic taken from http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk)

 Also, I am not feeding a whole family with this plan, as I am only carrying out this experiment on myself this time. So I have cut all the quantities down to single-person amounts, except where it's something I need for everybody in the house anyway (like potatoes), where I've just bought in bulk like I always do. I'm not sure yet how much it's all costing, mainly because I already had half the required items in my cupboard anyway, but I''ll work it out and put a list up soon.

Red Pepper Pasta (pic taken from http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk)

I'm also keen to see what happens to my body if I start following this plan. I need to go completely vegan again because of the effect dairy has on my skin (Psoriasis, spots and what not) and lungs (asthma), but I've been struggling to drop the last few non-vegan things I eat at the moment, because it's just easier to grab something convenient than make the effort to make a 'proper' vegan meal (and I can't afford ready made vegan convenience food, which is super expensive). I'm also interested to see if it will affect my weight. I'm pretty much smack bang in the middle of the healthy range if you go by my BMI, so it doesn't really matter if I stay there or even put on a little bit here and there. But I eat way too much junk food, which obviously will not be part of this new menu plan, so I won't be surprised if I lose a few pounds over the next month. If that happens, that's okay. As long as it's not more than a stone I'll still count as healthy.

Watch this space for updates!

Cheap vegan cream of celery and potato soup

I shot myself in the foot by saying I'd get back to blogging soon didn't I? Pretty much as soon as I posted that, I came down with the mother of all nasty viruses (thanks to my germ incubator of a child) and was flat on my back for AGES. Today is the first day I am even vaguely able to think about looking at a computer screen without my head splitting in half! Anyway, I wanted to share this soup which I made the other day in a rare lucid moment between coughing and sneezing and passing out on the couch like some sort of zombie. Due to being ill, I had been neglecting the grocery shopping and my fridge was rather empty. So I invented this quick and easy comfort food with whatever I could find.... cream of celery and potato soup!

Chop, and throw into a pan:
One head of celery, one onion (I only had red ones, which was fine except it made the soup a bit grey looking. If you want green soup, use normal onions instead). Three cloves of garlic (this was me trying to kill my virus. You might want to use less). One potato. Add enough vegetable stock to just about cover the contents of the pan, bring to the boil then simmer it until everything has gone soft. Pour in about half a cup of soya milk (if you're not vegan you can use cow's milk instead). If you like it lumpy, heat through and serve. Otherwise blitz it up with a stick blender. This made enough for two big bowls of really thick soup. I had mine with hedgehog bread and it was really tasty!

Happy New Year from Glitter Mountain

Wow... it's been a pretty long time since I blogged hasn't it? 7 months and not a peep!!

2013 was a bit of a mess, unfortunately. We had a whole ton of bad luck: money, health, work, and a death in the family. I pretty much quit the internet while I was trying to deal with it all... there's only so much one person can handle, after all. But I'm back now and quite surprised to see I still have some subscribers! Thanks for being so patient ^_^

I have lots to show you. Watch this space!!

Collecting

The next topic is Collecting and we are supposed to talk about the things we collect. Well sad to say, I am a total hoarder and always have been. When I was a child I always had at least 4 or 5 different collections on the go, Dolphins, My Little Ponies, books, Tigers, little horse ornaments and god knows what else and my room was pretty hard to move around in or find anything because of all the stuff I used to collect and keep. Now I'm older I have had to try and keep my hoarding instincts under control so that my house won't be completely swamped with things!! I still permit myself a few things though, because at the end of the day they make me happy and it would be a sad world if I deprived myself completely! One thing I have collected for years is paper weights. I have about 30 of them dotted around the house and they are beautiful. But my main thing is...

Make up and nail polish!

I'm sure it is no surprise to anybody who knows me or who has been reading this blog for any length of time, that my main collection is nail polish. I also collect lipsticks and eyeshadows (the picture above is my eyeshadow collection). It may, however, be a surprise to some of you that there is a really good reason WHY I collect these things. When my son was born, for the first three years of his life I suffered from severe post natal depression and post natal psychosis. Life was very dark and hopeless back then, since I hid my condition and it went undiagnosed and untreated for a very long time and I didn't get any help until the child was three years old. Nail polish, and then make up, was actually what saved me in the end, or at least it was the first step in my recovery. My sister in law was staying with us, and one day she painted her nails, then offered me the bottle to do mine too. I had not worn even a scrap of make up for longer than I could remember - but out of politeness I took the bottle and painted my toenails. It felt so weird having something about me feel pretty for once. But it also felt good. So the next day I did my fingernails too. And then I tried a little make up, and then I did something with my hair for a change, and then I bought some new clothes and suddenly I felt like a human being again for the first time in three long years. I have collected nail polish, and to a lesser extent make up, ever since then - and I always will, because it reminds me that I am important too and deserve to look nice and have nice things. Nearly all of my stash is drugstore or mid range; I have very little high end stuff because as nice as it is to have a drawer full of Chanel or Dior, I find it hard to justify the amount they cost when finances are tight.
 I have two Helmers, one for polish, the other for make up, and I spend soooo much time just rearranging the things in them, taking them out, looking at them, having a little play with this colour and that, it's so therapeutic and it makes me really happy.

What about you - what do you collect and why?

Book Love

Today's next topic is Book Love.

Now I have to say that nowadays as a full time employee, mum, wife and blogger, I don't get much time for reading any more, and when I do it has to be on a Kindle because allergies have made it hard for me to keep paper books in the house any more -sob-. But as a child and in my teens and early twenties I was a total book addict. I never had a book out of my hand and if I had nothing to read I felt physically deprived. I remember once when I was a child and sitting on the loo, I couldn't even last the few minutes until I got out of the bathroom so I sat there reading the back of the toilet roll packet just for something to read!! I didn't know back then but this was actually a side effect of having Dyscalculia which I have had all my life... dyscalculics tend to compensate for having learning difficulties with numbers, by being really good with reading and words instead, and boy did I over compensate!! I especially loved fantasy books, sci fi, and also the classics which I found in a local book shop for cheap and had a whole collection of them. I had hundreds of books and loved them all. It's hard to pick out favourites from all the books I love or have loved but here are two of special significance to me: the first 'proper' book I ever read, and my favourite book as a child.

The first 'grown up' book I remember reading is Watership Down. I could read by the time I was 4 years old. Partly because of my dyscalculia, partly because I was rather precocious back then anyway, and partly because my mother disapproved of the new system of Phonics they were teaching at the time and therefore she made darn sure I could already read before I started school. At the age of 4 I was reading more fluently than most people twice my age and once I started school they just didn't know what to do with me. At 5, given the 'Roger Red Hat' book learn-to-read series everyone else in my class at school was reading, I finished them all in less than a week. After a bit of consternation and trying to make me read other books for kids my age (which all lasted me about 5 minutes before I was back asking for something else to do), the teachers just gave up and let me pick whatever I wanted from the top class' book shelf. I chose Watership Down, which everybody thought was waaaaaay too hard even for me. I finished it in three weeks flat and all the teachers pretty much fainted lol. They let me keep the book and I still have it today and love it even now.

The Swiss Family Robinson was my favourite book for years as a child. Dad picked it up in a charity shop and gave it to me as it was one he'd been fond of as a boy. I absolutely loved it and pretty much read the ink off the pages. I loved the stories of desert island life, the way they survived in the wilderness and made themselves such a lovely home from sheer resourcefulness that in the end when rescuers arrived, they decided to stay there rather than leave. When I was older I saw the movie and I HATED it. Hollywood-ised to death, it was nothing like the book... gone were the fascinating tales of survival and the intricate details of how they'd designed this that or the other gadget to make butter or string, made their own fishing nets, or how they protected their little farm area from wild animals. Instead they'd been replaced by cheesy shmaltz and stupid scenes of brothers (who in the book had been decent and sensible) suddenly turned into hormone crazed idiots, fighting over who gets to dance with the girl (why do they have to bring sex into everything??). Even now the movie gives me rage just to think about it. I consider it pretty much the worst movie I have ever seen, just because of how far removed it was from my childhood memories of this lovely story and part of the reason why I rarely watch a movie that's based on a book unless I have already read the book first and seen what it was really supposed to be like!

That's it for Book Love for me. How about you? Which books did you love as a child?