house of...

in our house, we have a blackboard in our kitchen for planning out the week's meals, as well as updating whatever statement of identity fits with the mood that week.

i wish we'd been taking photographs of the board each week to commemorate such obscure gems as "house of pavlov's she-wolf" and "house of crazy p", or the more measured and thoughtful "house of which twentieth-century feminist are you?". still, come 2010 we have determined to make an effort to record our moments of madness for posterity (or blackmailing opportunities).

let's hope the moments of inspiration don't dry up under the pressure...

catching the worm

i think i must officially be a grown up. for what other reason would i have voluntarily got out of bed at 7 am on a saturday morning for no reason other than being awake? i mean, it's not like i had a plane to catch or small children to wrangle.

still, if it means i get round to the bakery in time to purchase some of the most delicious cinnamon tea loaf known to man (tm), i don't mind too much.

the death star must have had a canteen, right?

good decisions

it's a constant struggle for me to fight against my natural inclinations towards sloth and ice cream and guide myself instead towards veges and exercise. for a year or so running captured my interest and enthusiasm enough that i did it on a regular basis without any struggles and felt great.

but a combination of the novelty wearing off, being sick of avoiding unhealthy foods altogether and getting really busy at work (which equals long days and lack of interest in doing anything other than falling onto the sofa and not moving for several hours), as well as discovering i had anaemia has led to me falling off the exercise wagon somewhat.

i hate that my immediate emotional response to any given situation is to think "what can i eat to make myself feel better?". even after several years this is still my initial reaction, though i've got much better about purposefully doing something else instead. i'm determined not to fall into the spiral of feeling crap about myself so eating to make myself feel better, then feeling worse because i've got fatter, etc etc.

i don't think i'm ever going to be at a point where i don't have to think about this all the time. but hopefully i will get to a point where it's much easier to make the good decisions (even if my motivation is based largely on being able to fit into vintage coats).

r.i.p.

Queen of the road: fergie and her humps;
Originally uploaded by esther p.

as esther said, "to fergie, queen of the road. may your humps be ever roomy, your consumption cured and both eyes rested as you pasture on the car farm in the sky."

many miles travelled, many adventures undertaken, many memories forged...it's been a good journey.

pandemic, schmandemic

today on yahoo, swine flu is only number six in the list of top ten searches. it trails in behind harry potter, michael jackson, madonna, orlando bloom, and david beckham.

it's good to know that the british people don't get distracted from the important things in life by such small things as potential epidemics (despite the best efforts of the media to stir up panic in all directions).

light enough to travel

i've been thinking a lot about travelling lately, just taking off with a rucksack and an open-ended plane ticket and seeing where i end up. the months i spent in my mid-twenties doing just that (almost five years ago now, frighteningly) were among the most challenging and enjoyable and hardest and best of my life.

i don't want to spend the rest of my life thinking about "that time i went travelling"... i want to do it again, to be footloose and fancy free. to only have as much stuff as i can carry, to do laundry at every opportunity because you just don't know when you'll next come across a washing machine. to spend nights freaking out over beers because i don't know what i'm going to be doing in a week's time. to sleep in shared rooms and hoard forks because hostel kitchens never seem to have enough. to wear the same pair of flip flops for months, to walk through a new city every few weeks. to fall in love: with a city, a country, the mint-that-was-also-a-lozenge, new music, beer, cocktails, food, people and a little bit with home all over again.

right now i am promising myself that i will do it again. it may not be exactly the same, but i will give myself the chance to live free, if only for a little while.