The Epitome of Blah

Hey yoooooo! Hope you are all well!

This has been a funny old week… I started the week feeling Blah.

I partly put the feeling of blah down to being too poorly last Sunday to get to church. It clears my head and realeases a lot of the worries I have by handing them over to God…. he has afterall, got my back like no human could ever (Mat does come as close to it as humanly possible… this is definitely on my long list of things I am so immensely grateful for). I akways feel more ready for the week ahead with a good old praise session. The walking challenge has an emphasis on challenge that I physically was not ready for. I forget that I don’t do the same things day in, day out, so I have to cram a lot of steps in big long walks on many days to attempt to stay on target. Physically I find it less painful to spread out the steps over the day.

My first weigh in at Slimming World was an interesting and overall positive experience. A very well intentioned but misfiring lady decided to impart her wisdom that step challenges are too easy to cheat on and the watches (that she pointed to around my wrist) just counted how many hand waves I did. Well, now I am not deluded, I do know they are not 100% accurate but I am by no means cheating… as anyone who actually knows me would know I can’t allow myself to do this even with something that seems innocuous. Anyway, then I got on the scales and I had lost 6lb! Not a bad start (the painful legs seemed worth it on a selfish level in that moment) and despite the little comment “that won’t last” from the again well intentioned but clearly misfiring lady I felt proud of myself and positive for the next part of my journey. The next weigh in I had maintained which is ok cause as you will see I was away from home for the weekend and was completely off plan and didnt drink enough either. I also joined a 3lb club (3 of us are aiming for a 3lb loss this week) which adds a little fun addition to the week.

On the same thread as weight loss… here’s a little update on the Million Step Challenge. I am behind on target for this month but I’m not overly worried yet as I have some good ideas how to get back on track… I plan to take lots of photo’s ofwhere I go. So if you would like to see more of more of the beautiful places I get too drop me a comment or maybe we could have fun with hash tag…. post a pic on Twitter or Instagram and #LoopyLaura and tag you in my pics as I post.

Soooo the reason my blog is late this week is because we (Mat, Isobel, Cam and I) went to Durham on Saturday and Sunday. My mum, sister, nephews and nan live there still and my brother was also visiting. It’s my brothers birthday at the end of the month so we wanted to have a family meal to celebrate. My nan is not able to join in with these things anymore as she is in a care home and she’s just too poorly to leave the building now. It breaks my heart everytime I see her now. Parkinsons steals so much from her. A lot of people (including me until the last couple of years) thought that it was just a shake that you couldn’t control. I don’t think any of us were ready to deal with just how debilitating and all-consuming the disease is. The moments we glimpse the person that raised us and was always there supporting us whether we deserved it or not it really is a special moment that you grab onto. It’s such a hard thing to accept her mortality; that she won’t be here forever keeping us right, or at least attempting to. We did get a couple of hours before the Parky anxiety kicked in and we got the tears and begging to not leave her and to make her feet stay still. We also had a lovely meal at The Church Mouse, Chester-le-Street for my bro bro’s meal. I love to spend time with my family…. I hope to do more of that now that my sis and Mum are moving into places that have space for guests.

Here I am with my Nan (on the right) when I was small… She always held my hand and made me feel safe when I was a kid. She also let me stay up to watch Strike It Lucky and Blind Date. She often took me to dance classes and New Years Eve was always a ridiculously hilarious games night that usually included one of us having to attempt something crazy like use a towel to make a nappy and put it on one of the players (there was only usually me and her still awake by this point so we often ended up doing some sort of ‘nappy dance’ across the living room to achieve this insane task.

Another most amazing thing that happened over the weekend is that I got to meet up with a long lost friend. I think I mentioned in a previous blog that I do a 5 minute journal morning and evening. In that journal I get a weekly challenge and a few weeks ago the challenge was to contact someone that I had been meaning to but not got round too. J was originally a friend of mine when I still lived in Durham, and our kids were in the same school. I can’t actually remember how we got chatting initially but she was someone I felt drawn too. As well as being an awesome mum of 3 lovely boys, fantabulous wife to her husband, integral part of the school board, as good a Christian as a human can manage to be (kindness is definitely her super power), she was also was a scrap-booking junkie that supplied scrap-booking supplies and supported other scrap-booking suppliers. She also seemed to have the patience to be friends with me!

Back then I was very poorly (with the unknown fibro) and heavily depressed. I was still rejecting all things faith-related but was desperately trying to find my happiness. I was still looking at “things” as the answer. I honestly don’t think I knew that my hard work would eventually pay off and the boys and I would not be stuck on benefits feeling stuck forever. J saw something in me and supported me in so many ways, much more than I deserved. I couldn’t fully appreciate her at the time because of all the reasons above.

She was clearly a blessing in my life and that was only confirmed with no shadow of a doubt (if it wasn’t already clear enough) when I contracted meningitis. I got the boys to school one day having had this piercing headache in one very precise spot and radiating out. I felt so poorly but I had to get to work. J made me take a minute to rest and then tried to convince me to go home and rest. I wouldn’t and she tried harder and didnt leave my side. Then I collapsed, and she stayed with me. I lost the next 3 days but later I found out that she had stayed with me until Nan could get to me at the hospital and she had comforted her. She had called my job and told them what the deal was and I think she also fetched the boys and helped out with school runs etc. while I was in hospital. I was not as good a friend in return. I mentally couldn’t deal with that at the time. I plan to at least try to be the good friend I should have been back then. We had a lovely catch up and now I am definitely able to be a more open friend. J if you’re reading this I really am grateful for your light in this world. I promise to always be there if you shout me and I promise to not embarrass you with again as I know this talk of how you’re such an inspirational person isn’t your comfort zone…. I very much look forward to spending more time in the future.

I actually had another really cool thing happen thanks to another inspirational friend last week but I think my laptop can’t handle anymore happy tears drip dropping over it so I will save that for next week!

Let’s keep our Inspiration alive! Love Loopy Laura xx