Are you ready for this?

Are you? Are you ready to hear about a new me?
There was something about becoming 50, half a hundred, nearly old that made me stop and take stock of what I was doing with this life that is, it is terrifying to say, more over than begun.
I moved to this house with it's beautiful view, with the river just outside the back door and every night, when everyone else was asleep, I would stand at the back door and look out and breathe. I love the view from my house, I love my garden, I love how clean the air is and how fresh the world looks. 
At night time, the lights on the water have a gloriously calming effect and as I stood, one night, I couldn't help thinking that out there is so much beauty, so much to see and do and here I was, hiding. I hide behind my fat, my fears, my misery. I hide behind excuses and depression and day after day, week after week and year after year I have watched life pass me by.
I have 6 children, 2 grandchildren, so many friends and chances to enjoy what life has to offer and here I was, just here, hiding.
So, at the start of the year, when everyone was thinking about new years resolutions, I was feeling as though I couldn't start another year, I was sure I couldn't finish another year and I felt hopeless, completely and utterly hopeless.
I felt at a crossroad and that somehow I had to make a choice, so I did. I decided that I would go to the doctor with an open mind and tell her just how things were. Physically I was old, so tired, pain filled, every joint hurt, I was slow, everything about me was shut down. I don't think I have ever been as low as I was at the start of this year.
So I went to the Dr and I told her that I was afraid by the way I felt, that I was sure that I was physically as well as mentally ill and didn't know how I could keep on keeping on.
I was fatter and heavier than I have ever been, less confident than ever and I hurt.
 I had an X ray and discovered I had cervical spon.dylitis and that's why I had pins and needles in my hands, why my arms were numb and why my shoulders hurt so much.
When I went to discuss the results with the Dr she spoke about physiotherapy and pain killers and then whispered something about a referral for exercise and then quickly started talking about something else. I stopped her and asked what the referral for exercise was and she told me in a somewhat dismissive way that it was a prescription of sorts for time at the gym, a personal trainer who would work out a programme of exercises suited to me.
I looked at her and said ( guided by some insane inner voice, confirming that the mental health issues were perhaps worse than even I knew) " Let me have that"
LET ME HAVE THAT!  I did, I said that, my lips moved and everything.
So she did, she gave me a sheet of paper that I was to take to the gym, give to the trainer and she would get me moving. The paper had some boxes to tick and the Dr ticked a box that said " High impact" HA! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
Oh my hell.
What had I done?
I felt pretty sure that if the shame didn't kill me, the exercise would, my blood pressure was 169 / 111, my blood tests for cholesterol were actually great, impressive even, the tests for sugar levels were OK but more in depth testing showed that diabetes was not too far away in my future. My weight was morbidly obese and my BMI was 46. This so wasn't going to be pretty.
I put it off for a week or three but I was determined to do this.
I was also referred for Cognitive behavioural therapy and I decided that I would go for that too. Mind and body, double whammy.
I went for the induction at the gym and was weighed and measured, BP taken and BMI noted. Steph showed me the machines and worked out a plan for me and I was to go twice a week and work that plan both times.
I did as I was told and every time I came home I was shaking, head to toe shakes and I would eat a quick lunch and sleep.
I started off doing 2-3 minutes on the stationary bike, the treadmill and I would try the Elliptical  ( Cross trainer) but that thing almost gave me a stroke, I just couldn't do more than 90 seconds before getting the most excruciating pain across the left side of my head and neck. So I gave up, I concentrated more on the stationary, recumbent bike and rather proud of myself would do up to 8 minutes at a time!
At the end of the 6 weeks I had lost a stone ( 14 lbs) 4 inches of my waist and reduced my BMI to 43.
I had reached a point where I liked the feeling I had when I left the gym, I went to all 12 sessions booked on the referral plan and I knew that in order to keep losing weight ( having changed the way I eat, stopped eating rubbish and cut out diet coke and drinking more water) I would have to keep going to the gym. I realised that I had not taken any pain killers for my joints or neck for the last 3 weeks or so and that my hands and arms were less numb.
Today, 14 weeks after starting at the gym, I have lost 36 lbs, 7 inches off my waist, my BMI is now 40, I am classed as obese ( see ya 'Morbidly' don't come back, ever.) and my BP was 139 / 84.
I can now do 30 minutes YES THIRTY MINUTES, Half an hour on that bloody Elliptical machine, at an average speed of 9.4 kmph.
This is me, a new me, a me that is proud of the choices I have made this year and stuck with them. This is a me that can look out the back door and see that rather glorious world and know I can be in it and enjoy it. A me that knows I am doing everything I can to get better, to feel better and do better.
I like going to the gym, I like walking in and feel excited when I set goals and achieve them. I like not stopping when it hurts, I love that I keep going when I really, really want to stop and every time I see the numbers on the scale go down I rejoice and feel so thrilled, I can't wait to try harder to move it down some more.
THIS IS ME!
I am quietly confident that I can do this, that I can escape from the misery I have been hiding behind. I have never stuck with any kind of healthy living plan for this long before and never, ever have I exercised. I have hated any kind of exercise for as long as I can remember. I used to run cross country for a while in my 20s and I went to the gym when I was married to the first one, I loved that and then I conceived Sophie and that was that.
I really love the weight lifting at the gym but have cut right back on that part because I stopped losing weight, I am still far too big to turn that fat into muscle! I have incredibly impressive biceps under the fluff and as much as I enjoy all that huffing and puffing and ripping of muscles, I am not ready to look like a Russian shot putter! So I do that maybe twice a week and the fat burning, sweat making gym work 4-5 times a week. I also bought an ab lounge ultra sport sit up chair.

Oh my good heavens, it doesn't feel like it is doing anything, so you keep doing it and then a few hours later, you realise you were working those abdominal muscles and maybe it would have been wiser to pace yourself and slow down a bit!
I think it will take me a while to believe I am losing weight and changing how I look and feel. I still look at clothes in the size I was, I still feel that shame and desire to hide away but I going through the motions, I am behaving as though I don't feel that way in the hope that habit will become reality, that one day I will feel as confident as I may appear.
I like not feeling helpless, in fact I love it. I love waking up and thinking of small things I can do that I can I couldn't do last week, or even yesterday.
I am finding the strength to be me. Hope is a glorious thing.

I have stuff to say, so much stuff, hilarious stuff and boring stuff, important and moving stuff and it's all right here, in my head. If only I could get it out onto this page, it's just so much easier on Facebook, isn't it, one sentence and all my peeps know what I am doing and thinking and feeling and they can LIKE it and we're all pretty darn great.
The trouble with that is, it's very unsatisfactory to look back on. I'm not even sure I know how to find old stuff on Facebook and over here, on my blog, I can look at any time and see how I was and what was happening and how itty bitty and sweet my children were, way back when.
Awwwwww, how cute were those boys?
They aren't so cute now, they are all handsome and tall, lanky great streaks of back chatting hormones, that's what they are. Well the bigger 2 anyway, Eli is still like an untrained puppy, he flings himself all over the place, he jumps and climbs and if he had a tail he'd wag it. Sometimes, when he is feeling a bit left out he pretends to be all adolescent and door slammy but he isn't very good at it and he is still a bit cute with his cheeks and all, so we laugh at him or just watch him with a puzzled expression and he'll stop and carry on with being 9.
The other 2, well they are really good at it all, like GOOD at it. They are pretty great at the huffing and puffing, the slamming of doors and throwing of things, they are masters at holding onto a grudge and the grudges? Oooohie those buggers are growing on trees, no shortage of those, no way, you want a grudge? Ask a 12 year old, they'll drag one out of nowhere and hand it to you on a platter and YOU DID THIS TO ME!
Seth's school has a trip in February, to Paris and it is only £295 + a new passport £46 and spending money etc etc. He mentioned it about 27 years ago and then yesterday he was all "Well, you don't care do you because DID YOU PAY FOR MY TRIP TO PARIS?" ( yes, loud, always LOUD because I am dim and speaking normally won't sink in so it must be LOUD!)
"Well, it's £295 and a new passport and this is something we need to think about and plan and decide on"
"What? WHAT? But I want to GO! I NEEEEEED to go and it is PARIS and everyone who has parents that like them has already paid"
Oh my glory days, it is all so exhausting and wearing.
I manage to keep calm, usually, I practised on those big kids and learned that calm and bored, oh so bored, is the only way to go. A little spark of temper or frustration is like a glorious prize to a tween, if you let them see that they may have hit a nerve it's all downhill from there, you may as well give it all up and move into a home, they've won and you'll be in a corner rocking and humming and praying for the day when you go shopping with a sholley and buy individual cottage pies and a pack of mini battenburgs.
So, very quietly and as if I can barely manage to gather the energy together I said " Actually, it's almost Christmas and no-one in our house needs any 'stuff', I would love to not buy anymore stuff for you to pile up and not use. A trip would be a great present, it's a big present though, so if you choose to go to Paris that will be your Christmas present.
You also have to remember that there are 3 boys living at our house and you are all equal, maybe next year Isaac will really want a trip or something that costs the same as this trip and it will be his turn. If you go to Paris this year, you will not have the option to go to Barcelona when the school goes. All big choices Seth, you get to make the choice."
Guess who doesn't really want to go to Paris after all?

Isaac, oh sweet Isaac, he has started at comprehensive school and what a traumatic time it has all been for him ( and me) what terror lies in new places, new people, new things.
Sweet Isaac, my gentle boy has been pushed and tested and thrown into this terrifying new world and it has been the most heartbreaking task to make him do it. There is little more heart rending than a beautiful boy standing rigid with fear, tears streaming down his face because walking through that door is just to hard, means too many new sounds and faces, experiences and situations.
He has cried, puked, run away, hyperventilated, growled, cried again.
You know what a hero is? It's a little boy of 11 who gets dressed, takes a deep breath and says " I think I can do it. " and then does it.
You know what real joy is? It's watching a little boy run back to the car and say " I love it when it all falls into place!" because both his friends arrived at the same time as him.
You know what relief is? It's a text every morning at 11.19am that says "Having a great day!" or " I was scared but I am OK now" or even just "DOUGHNUT!"
He loves the cafeteria, thank goodness for that cafeteria, when all else failed he couldn't resist those doughnuts! He didn't eat before 4pm for 3 weeks, so afraid was he that eating or drinking would make him need the toilet that he just didn't eat or drink until he came home and then one day, at 11.19 he sent a text saying " I bought a doughnut, an appletizer and a milkshake" and we haven't looked back since.
He can go on line and check his balance, he can see what is for sale and can show me what he has bought.
We have to top that balance up every now and then because he just loves that cafeteria! They don't take cash or even have a card, they have fingerprint recognition  and that is so exciting for him, it means he doesn't have to speak to anyone, he can pick up, take what he chooses to the till, touch a screen and leave. Technology at it's best for a little boy who finds speaking so hard.
The school have been great with him, his teachers have accepted that they will get emails from me with Isaac's worries and they reply explaining whatever it is he needs to know and then he relaxes and is able to walk through those doors another morning.
Today he told me that his new school is a number 4 on a scale of 1-5. 1 being the worst he has ever experienced and 5 is as good as it can ever be.
We are so relieved that he is settling, I am sure that after half term he will slip back a bit and be anxious again, re.scue r.emedy has been miraculous too, a few drops under his tongue has meant going from frozen terror to calm and being able to walk through the doors to registration. I bought him the pastilles and he would chew one before school and at break time, now he doesn't need to use them, they are just in his bag as a security 'blanket' Thank you little yellow flower drops of sanity!
Elsewhere in my life, I have started group therapy, that's a whole post of it's own though! My goodness, what at thing that is.

Will you look who came for tea?

And lunch and breakfast, over night  trips to Bath and London, day trips to Totnes and Torquay, Plymouth and home again. Words can't desrcibe how it feels to have friends that travel across oceans to visit, from Canada and The USA to Devon to spend time with my family. Cathy, Di, Jenn and Julie, what a time we have had, what memories we made, what strength we added to our friendship.

I adore you. 

 

 

Before and After...

Oooooh pretty! The banisters need to be varnished and we have yet to put up pretties, pictures, shelving etc. I love watching it all come together.

The pretty side of things.

I'm twixt heaven and hell here you know, oh the roller coaster of my days ( not to be melodramatic or anything, or actually, yes, drama IN BUCKET LOADS)
Decorating and making beautiful, it's what we're doing. Good heavens.
So many years of living in other peoples' houses, renting and being moved along, not renting and living with H's dad, kids in tents and H and I with 2 babies in the smallest room in the house, where we got on with it and said how we would laugh at this one day ( not yet and we're 11 years down the line!)
Trying to make beautiful what wasn't ours to change.
Now we can choose whatever we like and we can do it. Oh the joy!
Oh my days I had forgotten how hard decorating is, I started to strip the walls in the hallway, the stairs and the landing at the start of the year, wood chip wallpaper is of the devil, that stuff sticks fast and when you manage to get it off the walls it spreads from one end of the house to the other, chips f wood and strips of soggy paper all over the house, in every room, spread by wood chip fairies with HUGE feet.
Half way through stripping the paper from Satan I had the car incident, it wasn't an accident, accident sounds so dramatic and dreadful, this was a stupid woman reversing into the side of my car, caving the door in and managing to tear a big muscle in my back, 8 weeks of being a hobbly and pitiful old biddy meant no more wallpaper stripping. I paid Sophie to do it, she didn't, my sister said she would do it and that spurred me on to just bloody do it for heavens sake.
At last no more wallpaper, in its stead were walls that stopped us in our tracks with the cracks and holes, 2 cracks went from floor to ceiling in the tallest parts of the walls, you could fit a penny in the gaps, big old crumbled holes where plaster had fallen out. Oh my goodness now what?
The council came and said they would re plaster the walls and 'make good' the cracks, they weren't structural cracks, just small shifting over time had caused them but they weren't of any concern....that's good then.
The workman came and he half filled one crack and he skimmed over the 2 largest holes and he went home.
H did what he does best and he just did it himself, beautifully and  let me tell you, he fills and sands and fills and sands and then he vacuums ( yes, he does, he vacuums the walls, don't believe me? Feast your eyes on the proof then!)

 Oh look, now I've gone and skipped ahead of myself because would you look at my pretty banisters?
When we moved in the first thing I noticed and thought "they're coming down" was the ugly boarding along the stairs.

See? That ugly stuff takes away so much space and light away from the space as you walk into the house, I was determined that somehow I would have lovely banisters and I've done it!
Now look how open and splendid it is..even without the decorating being done.

Open and light, I love it.

So now, the walls are smooth and ready to be painted, in fact this very evening we started to put the first coat on and that's where the hell begins, oh good heavens, 2 coats of white base paint and it looked beautiful, one coat of the colour ( grandly named Stone) and it is clear that 2 or 3 coats need to be done, on friday morning our very beautiful new carpet is being laid, so between now and then we have to do at least 2 coats of  grand stone paint, all the trim in white and leave enough time for it all to dry enough that the carpet can be laid without getting paint on it.
( 1.30am I think I may have just talked myself into doing another coat before I turn in for the night!)

This is my carpet.....I love those colours and can just imagine how rich it will look once it's all down. I have ordered chocolate brown coconut matting to fit from the door to where that little wall ends and then the carpet will start. Hopefully that will clean any shoes before they walk on my posh new floor!
I had a budget of £2000 and I have done it, I have managed not only to have the stair work done, buy carpet, 2 'new' ( to me) leather sofas for the front room, all the paint etc for the hall, stairs, landing AND bathroom but I also paid to have some new cupboards and worktop put in the kitchen.
We went from this

 To this

It's all coming together, so much searching on Ebay and local selling sites, finding workmen that do great work without costing a fortune and of course my lovely H with his quiet determination to do everything beautifully.
H has become quite the genius at making things with wooden pallets that are so easily available and free, I found some pictures on line of 'rustic' coat racks and shelving units that I wanted under the stairs in the new space that is available to us,  he has pretty much made replicas, I am so pleased with what he has done and can't wait for it all to be in place so I can stare at it and feel that glorious sense of satisfaction of a job well done on a small budget.
I wanted to write here about the work before it is finished because once it's done we so soon forget the blood sweat and tears that goes into this kind of work.
What I also want to write about is the sheer joy of being able to do this, how much I love choosing and planning what to do with our home, how satisfying it is to find bargains and put everything together. I am about ready to kick my own arse though because I am just SO EXCITED about it being finished, as soon as I try to sleep, I think up another idea and WIDE AWAKE! What a splendid problem to have at last!

Today, I am half of a hundred,
I am 50 years old, it is true.
I am slightly depressed to be ageing
Though it has it's advantages too.

At 50 you can say what you're thinking,
And pretend you just haven't a clue,
You can wear what is cosy and comfy
With elastic and stretchiness too.

You can say "NO" when you don't feel like helping,
You can say "Yes" when you fancy a bun.
You can look at your waist as it's spreading
And it doesn't at all spoil your fun.

If you're lucky, you may be a Gramma
If you are, then you're blessed beyond words,
You can look and then see that the old stuff
That you though of as fun's for the birds.

All that angst about what seemed important
Is all gone when you start to get old
And the truly important in life things
Are quite clearly and preciously gold.

I am richer then ever I had been,
With my daughter and 5 lovely boys,
Oh and don't forget Josh and my Lola
Because they are the real route of all joys.

I am happy to be half a hundred,
I quite like being me at this stage,
I don't mind being old and quite creaky
I think 50's a marvellous age.

We have chickens, we do, real live ones!
H has an allotment and in his own typical and H like way he has quietly and with determination worked his plan. I knew he wanted chickens and in my typical and Helen like way would look at chicken houses and runs and show him and he would look and say "Uh huh" and carry on.
He mentioned that he was going to build his own chicken house and he wouldn't be buying anything ready made and that's as far as he explained.
Every morning, as we leave for school there will be 3 wooden pallets in the back of the car and I will drop him and the pallets off at the allotment and day by day I have seen just what he has done.

It's almost finished now, it has the full height and a roof, it is enclosed with fences and posts. I need to take some pictures now because it is so impressive, the weather has been horrendous and still, except for the very worst days he has been there, building and making ready.
At the moment we have 7 chickens, 5 are still very young, one cockerel and one chicken are fully grown and every day our one big chicken gives us an egg.
The joy these little creatures have already given us is quite extraordinary, Isaac is particularly enamoured of them and every day before school he goes to see them and pick one of them up, the older birds are called Clarence and Clarissa and Isaac loves to hold Clarissa and she seems to quite like him.
The younger ones are still nervy and the boys change their names every day.
I am astounded at how much these little creatures eat! My goodness, all day long they scratch and eat and eat and scratch! Forget having a dog to clear the left overs, give it to the chickens! They eat everything ( apart from meat though they do love mash made with gravy in it) they love fruit and green vegetable, peelings, bread, cereal, rice throw it down and they'll eat it all.
We give them corn mix and oyster shells too and so far the eggs are pretty darn delicious.

Clarence. who is splendid.

Clarissa who gives delicious eggs.

We also have fruit trees at the allotment and at home, we have blackberries, strawberries, plums, apples, pears, white currants, gojiberries, blueberries and gooseberries.  Tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, kale and green beans.  It is enormously satisfying and it is the making of my H, he is in his element entirely alone all day with the earth and some creatures for company, he is happier than I have ever known him.