The Ends are in Sight.

Six weeks on and another trip to the hairdresser. The wonderful Fran, my stylist, managed to cut most of the remaining dyed hair off and with just a small amount left on the front, we both agree that my next cut will reveal my natural colour in all it’s unmasked glory. 

Here we go -embracing the grey.

During the first Lockdown, just like most of the women in the country, I bemoaned the closing of the hair salons, wondered when it would be safe enough for them to reopen and thought about how I could hide the steadily emerging line of white/silver that denoted my natural hair line. I liberally coated my emerging greys with touch up powder or spray…..and then spent my days, disliking the sticky texture and itchy sensation, these products created.

The best laid plans and all that!

Spot the difference!

So following on from my last post, my sore ankle didn’t stay very sore for very long. In fact by the Sunday, it was feeling sufficiently pain free for me to embark on the first of my timed walks.

 

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that a couch potato is not going to turn into an 11k steps per day, every day, for three months, athlete over night and, let’s be brutally honest, any attempt to prove otherwise will not be pretty and will probably result in a trip to hospital in the back of an ambulance, under blue lights, attached to a heart monitor!

No! Although completing the One Million Steps Challenge is my end goal, I will need to be reasonably fit before I start the challenge, if I am to stand any chance of succeeding.

White Hair and Walking Boots: Finding Me!

December 2019

I’ve spent most of the last year slowly peeling off the layers of the person I had become over the previous 17 years. As the year progressed more and more of the old me began to surface: my sense of humour, my self-confidence and my utter belief that, you know what, I deserve to be surrounded by caring people who appreciate me for who I am, warts and all, and accept me without qualifying their acceptance.

It’s been a while and there have been some changes!

It’s been a trying and strange year for everyone on the planet with virtually the entire human population having to adjust to what has become known as ‘the new normal’. But even before Lockdown started way back in March, there had been dramatic but needed changes in the lives of myself and the Mudlets: Mud and I have parted company and I no longer live at Mudville!

Little Mudlets’ Pickled Gherkins

From seed to jar

Fifty percent of the inhabitants of Mudville, love pickled Gherkins, myself and Little Mudlet, and so when she spotted a packet of Gherkin seeds at the garden centre, a few months ago, and realised we could produce our own pickles, Little Mudler asked if we could grow some.

Busy busy in the Garden

The Rhubarb got out of hand and took up a lot of space.

It seemed as though it would never be warm enough to start planting things out in the garden, or indeed for me to want to stir my aging, aching bones, but finally, the weather started to show some signs of warming up and over the last couple of weekends I have made a start at getting things planted.

Little Mudlets Garden

Neat and tidy: yoghurt tubs make ideal bear traps.

Following on from the success of her older sister last year, Little Mudlet asked if she could have a section of garden this year and so a couple of months ago, I paced out two equal areas at one end of my longest bed, marked the boundary of each with house bricks, and let the girls choose which bit they wanted.

Who’s been eating the Vine Weevil Grubs?

Ants are amazing creatures to watch!

It was with sinking heart that Mud realised that our lovely ornamental plants were once again under attack by Vine Weevils! The back end of last week, he had noticed that some of our beautiful plants were looking more than a little sick and, with last years carnage fresh in his mind, he literally began delving into the mystery – or rather the compost of the affected plants.