Rule 188 : Can is so much better than Can't

Last week I joined Slimming World in an attempt to finally lose the baby weight (who am I kidding). I went along to club night, paid my subscription, bought some cereal bars, got weighed (less than I thought:o) and came home with a book full of lists .... lists of things I should eat, lists of things I can eat and lists of things I have to eat. Now I know the secret of losing weight is not eating cake, but honestly, if it were that easy then I would be thin already. And I also know that none of these lovely lists have cake on them ... I'm not stupid enough to think that this diet club has some secret scheme for weight loss. However, I do think that psychologically the list thing works, because it's all about positives. All week I have eaten yummy food, in vast quantities. We have tried new recipes, some very odd (curried mushy peas anyone), but never once have I even thought about cake. And perhaps that might just be why it will work.

Rule 62 : Sometimes help comes from the most unexpected places

With all the upheaval here at home, what with operations and Christmas, our laundry had got a bt out of hand, and clothes were all mixed up. Consequently, I've been living in the same few outfits over and ver again, and was feeling like I had nothing to wear. But this afternoon I was flicking through the TV channels and somehow ended up watching a program about capsule wardrobes, and I went and looked in my cupboard and realised nt only do I have all 24 requisite items for the perfect capsule, but plenty more to add to for all occasions. So, rather than having nothing to wear,I now I have insufficient occasions for all my clothes, all thanks to accidental TV surfing.

Rule 187 : Don't judge yourself against someone else's projected ideal

I just to have a friend who I really admired and wanted to be like. Her family seemed to work beautifully, and she seemed to have life sussed. I used to look at her and wonder how she managed to live such a perfect life, and why I couldn't do what she appeared to do so effortlessly. But I have come to realise my error ... She only 'appeared' to be like this. The more time I spent around her and her family I realised that things weren't quite as they appeared. Actions didnt match words, and things weren't quite as they were portrayed to be. And that was when I realised that I was trying t live up to a fantasy, that I believed this family lived as I perceived them, and that even they didn't live up to the ideal in my head let alone me. So now I need to relax, stop being so hard on myself and accept that my life and family aren't so bad, they just aren't a fantasy family either ...

Rule 350: Perhaps carrots aren't evil after all

For the past ... 27 years I have religiously avoided the eating of cooked carrots. This aversion was caused, as I have always asserted, by my Aunt, who poisoned me at the age of 11, with her oven roasted buttered carrots. It was most certainly they, not the sticky red Dracula lollipop that made me vomit all over the bathroom floor. And so, ever since then I have avoid carrots, and so avoided vomiting. This has mostly been successful. I avoid morning sickness, tummy bugs and can travel anywhere, on anything without even a hint of queasiness. But this week, in an attempt to encourage the smallest child to eat mushrooms, I traded and said I would eat the dreaded carrots if she faced her mushroom fear. And I did it, I ate hem, and I am still fit, well and unvomitting ... And the mushrooms ... I chopped them so finely she didn't even nice them !

Rule 44 : Most things can be proved, but it doesn't mean they are right

One of the interesting things about having such a diverse group of Facebook friends is the amazing variety of articles that appear on my wall. Reading these for the past couple of years something has become very apparent to me ... that if you look hard enough on the Internet you will find an article in support of any point of view. This is all well and good, but lately I have been having to remind myself that this doesn't mean that all these article and their associated points of view are correct. People can interpret things in many ways, and facts aren't always what they seem. In my youth I studied statistics, and the tutor told us of a case where the 'figure' could be misinterpreted. It went along the lines of this ... Young children who receive an adequate milk supply are more likely to grow up and suffer cancer than those who don't The tutor pointed out that this could be interpreted as implying a link between milk and cancer, leading to claims that the former caused the later, whereas it was actually a link between growing up and cancer, in that those children who has an adequate milk supply lived longer and therefore were more likely to contract cancer than those children who did not get adequate milk and so died in childhood. I must remember this lecture when next I read some implied wisdom from the Internet.

Rule 16: Sometimes putting in limits can be liberating

Mollie and I are going on holiday this year with some friends, something were are hugely looking forward to. We are driving to Spain, staying for a few days in an apartment and then hopping on a cruise ship to sail round the Med. The ship has been booked for ages, but I have been hesitating about booking the other bits as I was unsure when to go, how to go and where to go. But last night, My friend phoned and we booked a Travel Lodge room for the Monday night in Dover. Something quite small, and only a fraction of the trip, but amazingly it has cemented everything and now I have sorted out the ferry, an apartment in Spain and hotels en route ... Now we are so much more excited about the trip than we were (which was quite a lot before) all just for making the decision of when we go ... the vagueness has gone and suddenly our trip feels so much more real :o)

Rule 77: Things are more circular than they would first appear

We have recently had experience of many different ways of life, and have been interested to note that often, if you take the opposite ends of two extremes they are surprisingly close together. For example, some children we know are taught to respect and obey authority figures simple because they are in a position of authority. Conversely, some other children are taught that they don't have to automatically respect and obey authority figures, these things should be respected. We found both of these children playing in a hidden corner, both evading the authorative adults, and rebelling against what was 'expected'. Although their experiences were different, the reasons for their behaviour were the same ... they expectd the adults would try restrict them and so avoided them, and ultimately ended up not being able to access activities. The same can be seen in politics, when the far left is as limiting and restrictive as the far right ... I think the lesson from this is balance ... Anything to the extreme can be bad, so don't go too far left to avoid being right.

Rule 132: Little things can make a big difference

Last night, after changing the bed, I also put away all the stuff that had accumulated on the bedroom floor over Christmas ... It took about ten minutes. When I woke this morning though, it was so nice to open my eyes to a tidy space, and it lifted my whole day. Mollie did a similar thing. Both windowsill in the hallway have small caged pets on them, and we have a tartan carpet ... this is not a good combination, as every flake of sawdust shows. Ten minutes spent by a small girl with a Hoover though makes such a difference ... it never fails to amaze me how much nicer it is walking down a bit free hall :)

Rule 277: There are some things it is never too late to do

I've been waiting a few days nodonor some help to change the bed and put on the electric blanket. This is good, in so much as it must be warmer this year in this house, because it was on in late September last year, but not good because last night was chilly, so I spent several of the wee hours shivering. So tonight, even though it was past eleven, I changed the bed, on my own, and boy was it a hard job, lifting our lovely think mattress twice on all four corners, fiddling the wires through the wrought iron bedsides, and then doing the duvet dance to get all four corners in the right place. But wow ... It was so nice to get in to nice, clean, cosy sheets ... worth every minute of the effort

Rule 27: You can still have sunny thoughts even if it's an overcast day.

Today was, predictably, rainy. It seems to have rained every day here for ever, I'm sure there has been the old dry day, but they are so few and far between, well you get the idea. However, today I am not to be beaten, so have marshalled the troups and spent the afternoon planning summer holidays and vegetable gardens. Plans have been found for making raised beds from old pallets (we are hoping to have a ready supply of those from the animal feed store next door), and maybe tomorrow we might venture out to the garden centre of inspiration.

Rule 93: Every new day is a new start

Somehow I feel like today should be that day when everything changes, when resolutions should be made and the world should become perfect. But then I worry I'm not ready for it, it has sneaked up on me in all the chaos of Christmas, illness, operations and schoolwork. Life changing can't just happen, it has to be planned for ... but I don't want to wait another whole year. So that is why I need to remember today that every new day is a new start. This isn't the only morning where I have the chance to make things better, and it doesn't all have to happen overnight. A small change each day will do perfectly thank you ...