Sunday 20 December 2015

Time to say goodbye

My Guiding spirit has finally been broken. I am at that point in my life that I need to say enough is enough and walk away.

For the past 9 years I have been Brown Owl - at times very rewarding and at others a very thankless task.

I have met some fantastic people and am proud to say that some of them have become very good friends - there are many experiences in my life that I would not have had, had it not been for Guiding.

I thought about stepping down about 18 months ago, just before I started my prescribing course, but another long-standing leader beat me to it. Since then I have only gone through the motions and now feel that it is starting to show to the girls.

I am tired - I am the only leader who turns up week after week, the others rotate through. Barn Owl has offered to cover me at times when she has seen how down I am, but I feel guilty asking her to do so, as she is busy running her Ranger unit by default and she never has any other help!

My house has cupboard, after cupboard full of brownie stuff - boxes of left over craft, cupboards of just stuff! I want my house back, I want my life back, I want someone else to take over the responsibility of running the unit.

Work hasn't helped in that I seem to be working 14 hour days at the moment and at least 5 hours each Saturday - and no there is no overtime as its the NHS and we're broke!

This time last year, we were trying to deal with the sudden death of one of our fellow Guiders - it was not her time to go, how can life be so cruel? The past couple of weeks, has seen me thinking about her a lot and maybe this hasn't helped with how I am feeling in general, but I know now is the time to say goodbye.

I hope that I will return to Guiding sometime in the future, I just know that if I don't walk away now, I will come to hate Guiding and will never return.

I have challenges for the New Year - my weight loss has never really got going, so I have persuaded a group of Guiders to help me complete the half Moonwalk in May - it's meant to be 13 miles, but because it's a new route this year, we will have to do 15 instead!! There will be 5 of us walking that night so we will have fun whatever!

So , when I finalise the program for the coming term, the email that will go out to the other leaders will also say that my last night will be the 17th March  - light the touch paper and stand back - how many of the other leaders will stay? Who will step up and run the unit? It will become interesting I can tell you!


Saturday 8 August 2015

The never ending weight battle!

I have blogged before in a roundabout way about my weight and what I was doing to try and loose some of it.

Well things have gone a bit astray and I am almost back to my starting weight :( I am however able to still fit into my new clothes which seems quite strange!

Life has been hectic since I returned from Tallin and I haven't been able to make time for Zumba or even fat club!

This week, Monkey is away with the Army once again for his annual camp and so I thought I would make time for me. I have begun gently though - Zumba on Monday night and aqua aerobics on Wednesday night. My plan is for Zumba on a Monday and Tuesday and Aqua on a Wednesday, walk to Brownies on a Thursday and meet a friend to walk with her and her dog on a Saturday morning.

I do not have time to attend a physical fat club meeting either anymore, so have decided to cancel my subscription for now and look at the online version instead. I have not yet signed up to that - I will see how things are going come September.

I do love a gadget and so I have invested in a Fitbit - a fancy pedometer that talks to my phone and tells me what I have been doing, it even tells me how many floors I have climbed if I can be bothered to climb them instead of taking the lift at work!

I was due to be meeting my friend today for the walk but she has had a bereavement in the family and so I haven't done that today, however, hubby is off work tomorrow and the weather is looking ok, so hopefully we will have a stroll to Wistow and back.

When I see some of the patients at work and also the complications my mum is having through her diabetes, I realise that I am a ticking time bomb and I really do need to do something about this - it becomes a harder challenge as you get older to loose weight so I need to do something and do it now.

My eating habits have become poor recently and I think it's about how tired I am when I get home - I can't be bothered to think about making my lunch for the following day and so I just nip along to the cafe at work the next day and buy a sausage roll - they sell lovely ones!!

I have managed to do well with fruit and I seem to be filling our fruit bowl 3 times a week at home now - even Monkey was eating better before he went to camp.

We rarely get to bed before midnight at the moment and eating around 10pm doesn't help much either. I am also up and leaving the house by 6:45 each morning so am tired before  even get to work. All of this needs to change - we say it each week that we should be in bed for 10pm but it just doesn't seem to happen!

Hubby and I also made a pact about 3 weeks ago to stop buying the reduced pastries when we were on our way home and not to have sweet stuff in the house - all well and good but when it comes to that time of the month - I NEED SWEET STUFF IDEALLY CHOCOLATE!

I have charged up the Wii Fit Board too and am hoping that on the days I don't do exercise or the long walk, that I will spend 20 minutes or so on that - it will track my weight for me too, so fingers crossed I can start to loose something.

Lets hope I can do something about this now, before it gets too late!


Saturday 25 July 2015

Family Night Out

Each year, our small work department, has a Petanque challenge. Since starting there, I have never managed to make the night as they tend to hold it at the end of June, usually on my husband's birthday!

This year, they have held it at the end of July - I duly signed up, and then thought last week about asking the boys if they would like to come along too!

Surprisingly, they said yes!

So the evening looms -  it was forecast for heavy rain - and yep, there was heavy rain all night! The mood was somber in the car on the 40 minute drive out to the pub where it was being held, hubby apprehensive about being in a social situation with people he didn't know and not having alcohol to boost his confidence, monkey sulking as he had an evening planned in front of the X-box!

However, once we were there, things got better! We were pitched against a team where I only knew one person but we all got on and had some fun. Having never played Petanque before, we all just reverted back to the game we knew it as - boules from monkey's younger years.

The pitch was muddy and each time we threw a boule, a divot appeared in the ground! The rain poured, the boules were muddier each round and there was nowhere to wash your hands in between throws - they needed a bucket of water to dip your hands in to wash off the mud and to wash the boules with too!

We were the first match to finish - there were 4 other matches going on as we had about 20 people there. We thrashed our opponents - 14 - 1. They were happy though as they wanted to win Valerie the Wooden Duck and Spoon - the booby prize!

We won a commemorative plate - a large oval plate which was "borrowed" from the pub the first year they held the challenge and which someone has subsequently decorated and added the names of the winning team from each year on the back!

This year, our team name will be proudly written - No ifs, just buts - this was the best we could come up with as Far Canals, Norfolk and Hope, Ginger Nuts and Ginger Buts were all rejected!!!

Food followed and monkey was very polite and held his discussions well - loved the part where he was telling a consultant how protein works with his gym routine and muscle build-up!!! To give him his due, the consultant was very good and sounded impressed with monkey's knowledge!

Hubby offered to drive, so I was able to have a couple of drinks which was good too!

All in all a good night and the boys seemed happier on the trip home  - looking forward to more of these nights out soon!

Monday 13 July 2015

Pregnant :(

Today, I have been sent this picture.

To sit and look at it breaks my heart, while at the same time, being ecstatically happy for my baby brother and his wife.

While I understand that they have been trying for a couple of years now to get to this point and have had to undergo IVF to get to here, the other part of me, feels distraught and unable to put on my happy face.

It reminds me , yet again, what a failure I am. I have only been able to carry one baby to full term, had at least 2 miscarriages, if not more, have also undergone IVF - but ours was not successful.

I know that there are still another 28 weeks to go for my sister in law, but to have got to this point is a major step for them.

I have sent my congratulations, told monkey that he will have another cousin just after Christmas - out of all of the cousin pregnancies, I think he will be the happiest about this one - this uncle and aunt are his favourite - he was an usher at their wedding but only because he was too big to be a page boy!

I am still estranged from this side of my family, I understand that our middle brother has sold his house and is about to move, but he is yet to tell me this or provide me with his new address - maybe he is waiting for it all to go through.

I have no desire to see my Dad's wife, but with this new one arriving, it may make things very difficult, or it will just emphasise once again, that we are not really welcome in her house at any time.

Time will tell, but in the meantime, I will continue to hope that all goes well for my sister in law and that she has a good pregnancy. I know the birth will be difficult, as she had a fractured pelvis when she was 16 following a road traffic accident when in Italy, so there will be added complications with the birth - with my knowledge of midwifery, I would think she may have to have an elective section - not the best thing to start your life as a new mum as, but she will cope - she has a very large Italian family and of course, my Dad's wife!

Monday 18 May 2015

And so another 5 months passes by!

Life for me has been as busy as usual!

Brownies is full on as always - we have 32 girls and have finally had to move to a new meeting place as the old one was really just too small to fit us all in! We have moved to a church hall which has a large tarmac'd area outside but the best part is the large hall and a big and clean kitchen which we can use!! This term has been hard work, as we have had to think about how to run the meetings now that we are at the new hall. The Mummy Owl rota has continued with some them really great and others very hard work, but we get through them all each term. I've managed to get them to use our Facebook page to ask to swap nights as I have told them that they need to sort out the changes - I really just don't have the time to do it.

I have been away for the weekend for our County Training weekend. I haven't been away for one of these for a long time now and really ummed and ahhed about going but now I'm glad this I did go. There were a very small number of Guiders who went this weekend - 32 - and so it felt more cosier than normal. While I was there, I was "persuaded" to join the staff side for Charnwood which is an international Scout and Guide camp which is held very 5 years. I did do it in 2011 and was part of the First Aid team - not where I want to be this time around. However, the head of the First Aid team from last time also does not want to be part of the First Aid team either, but is keen to lead the Special Needs team and has asked me to be her deputy - now that I could do. So now, I am waiting to hear if we have been successful in our job applications!

When I was awarded my Midlands Chief Guide award, I met a Brownie Leader from Birmingham who had taken a group of Brownies to Lapland for the day and I was really keen to do that with ours. Kelloggsville was keen to help me with this, but when we came back to speak to the other leaders in our group, they weren't so keen so we left that idea for the time being. I talked about this with one of the Deputy County Commissioners this weekend who advises on International trips and said I would be keen to lead a County-wide trip to Lapland for our County's centenary celebration in 2017. That seemed to have a great reception, so it is now my big plan to work towards. I think I will have enough support and I don't need to have my International license for this as it is only a day trip!

I managed to pass my Nurse Independent and Supplementary Prescribing qualification finally after a lot of hard work! I had to resubmit my portfolio after failing it by just 2% but last week I found out that I had finally passed it! So that now means that I can prescribe drugs just the same as a doctor can!

My Consultant has returned to work and I am so glad that she has. It has however been difficult for her as her work colleagues have not been supportive and have made things hard for her - trying to make her have a caseload which includes patients with cancer and this has been clear from her occupational health consultant that this should not be the case. We have had many tears at work when she can no longer cope with how they are treating her. She is now at the point where she is thinking about leaving and going to another Trust but would also like me to go along too - I'm flattered but not sure if I can do the commute each day as it would be almost double the distance but on the other hand, I don't know if I could be on my own at our current Trust with the lack of support I had last time! We are about to ask for a higher band for my job and this may be the decision breaker - if I can have that higher grade, I may well stay but if not, then maybe it will be time to move to the new job instead!

Life is always about decisions and I suppose I have many to make at the moment.  I will try and write about them as I make them, but I can't make that promise  - my track record is never good!!