One week of calorie counting and stepping

It's been a pretty successful week to be honest but rather challenging and somewhat tiring.  The success has been the calorie counting and achieving some sort of balance between eating and drinking normally and not going overboard, maybe even dropping weight.

I also managed to progress several thorny work matters, work on the house, keep up the exercise and even buy some Christmas presents!  This sounds good but I feel strangely down.  It could be time of the month or just one of those things.

I'm not unhappy much or very often but it seems as though, even through happy times, brief spells of unhappiness are not far away. Strange.  I seem to have been unhappy with Richard quite a bit over the last few days too, sad that he doesn't seem to be as affectionate as I want him to be.  I'm sure this is time of the month stuff as I remember these feelings happening before but it doesn't make it any less unsettling.

Work contributes to this dissatisfaction.  However much I achieve there is a mountain left behind unachieved, some of which may, at any time, suddenly become crashingly urgent.  It seems as though, whatever I choose to focus on, something else becomes urgent.  Gah!  Enough of this gloomy stuff - what about more positive matters?

We have been decorating for the last few weeks.  Well, to be honest, I haven't been doing much decorating at all, Rich has.  I have been doing everything else.  The shopping and cooking and cleaning and the planning of colour schemes.  It's going quite well. We have one evening left of painting and then just the cleaning up and painting of radiators and the carpet being laid on Wednesday.

I had a massive buying spree on Friday evening buying new pillows, duvet, duvet covers and sheets, curtains and cushions.  I had to buy 2 sets of curtain as I couldn't decide between 2  colours - I'm hoping the teal set are good as they were half the price of the oatmeal! I can't wait until next weekend when we will be moving the furniture back into our bedroom and putting out the finishing touches.

I will then, finally, be able to display my first prize from Lady Captain's Day at the golf club.  In case you don't remember, and why the hell should you, I won a lovely Dartington crystal vase.  Lovely but teal.  Nothing in our house goes with teal.  So what to do?  Ebay it?  Stick it in the store?  No -redecorate our bedroom in a colour scheme which will accommodate it of course. Nearly there.

Today was a good day.  No golf, no football and no hangover.  I was up reasonably early and took the dogs straight out for a run in the sunshine.  While I would usually stop to take some photos I was actually concerned about the running this morning so I didn't bother.  As a result it was a much more strenuous run and hopefully burned some more calories as a result.

Then home for breakfast (first showering Minty who had rolled in something unspeakable).  After breakfast Richard was back to the bedroom of doom for more painting and I was off to the supermarket.  Then home for chores, unpacking, laundry and cooking a roast chicken supper.  Now, we're watching Strictly Results before I head off to the pub for the quiz.  Phew!

Typing all this has had the effect of cheering myself up, making me realise how lucky I am and how little I have to worry about.

While life is tough at time and fitting everything in is, frankly, impossible, there is plenty of good stuff knocking about too.

These photos are the ones I took with my big camera before the battery ran out on a frosty lunchtime walk last Tuesday.

This is the middle of the village walking alongside the Beggar Plot:

The dogs are a bit of a pain on a frosty day: the scents must linger more or something as they take AGES to get anywhere and have to investigate every little thing.

Something here was VERY important.

I love the way the frost lingered on the hillside and the blue skies glistened.

A field full of black sheep -  wonder if they are all badly behaved?!

Weigh-in tomorrow to see how I have done in my first week of stepping and calorie counting. Fingers crossed peeps.