Back to the straight and narrow.

Shelagh on our very cold walk this afternoon. It occurred to me that I've put up a lot of shotsof Minty but not many of Shelagh recently...

Winter berries. They looked so cheerful against the iron grey winter's afternoon.

It's been good to have a few days at home (I took Friday and Monday off work). We've done quite a few home maintenance type chores, having the front room carpet professionally cleaned (it's fantastic - like getting a new carpet); hanging up pictures which have been framed and ready to go for months if not years; gardening; tidying; repotting house plants; moving furniture and ornaments around; that sort of stuff.

Now, the house feels cleaner and more homely, just more "as it should be". And it's great knowing that everything is properly clean, not just on the surface. (In my defence, it is a nightmare with 2 dogs and an open fire, the dust gets everywhere!)

It seems a bit like diet and fitness for your body: you jog along doing a little bit of exercise, a bit of eating healthily and bit of relaxing but, after a while, unless you take it seriously, the bad habits creep back in and the weight slides back on. Every now and then you need a "service", an overhaul of your systems and a back-to-basics routine to stop the rot.

I've done that with my eating over the last few weeks but not my exercise. I haven't given up on the exercise, but it's not an intrinsic part of my routine as it was less than a year ago. That is the next thing to tackle. Hopefully it will get easier as I start to feel smaller and lighter.