POST-CHRISTMAS BLUES?

It's the Christmas aftermath... I'm feeling very flat, after all the excitement.

On the horizon: a bloody good house-clean (boring) and catching up with all the washing (also boring - although I wonder how can just 2 people create so much dirty clothing?).


My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance. Anon.

At least I don't do ironing any more unless I absolutely have to (I have finally stopped feeling guilty about it). There's nothing much on telly except repeats of the Christmas shows I already watched.

It's unfortunate that my guilty conscience means I have to clean house again (within an inch of its life) to welcome in the New Year, or bad luck will follow - as I did it all on Christmas Eve (for the same reason). Guilt, the legacy of good parenting, means I get to do this twice over the holiday season, and then again as soon as it looks like Spring. I don't mean the general, keep-up-with-it, you-don't-want-to-live-in-a-dump stuff... I mean the inside-the-cupboards & the tidy-up-the-underwear-drawer stuff & the floors (including behind the cooker) stuff. BORING - but necessary for an inner quiet life. I swear my conscience is noisier than Jiminy Cricket in the Pinocchio cartoon.

This is now the time to think about New Year's Resolutions.

I wonder if I should make just one - NOT to make any! This is the time for all those unrealistic ones: lose a ton of weight, exercise, moisturise regularly, really get the hang of Photoshop etc etc.

I pretty much keep up with the moisturising (I'm convinced my face will fall off if I don't). I walk to the bus stop and back (about half a mile) and carry lots of heavy shopping - so that's the exercise taken care of!

Tape transfer of magazine page







Lose the weight? Hmmm... it's not the losing, it's the keeping it off that is the hard bit. Dieters have a record of 95% recidivism; it's been proved. All I know is that I have lost and regained the same stone (14lb) over and over - and that every time I put it on, it came with the new friends it made (another 7-10lb) which always went on in flab! So now that one stone has been joined by several others, and that's all I'm admitting to!

So I may give that one a miss, although my doctor has made threatening noises about cholesterol... So MAYBE this will be the year I'll pick myself up and try to behave foodwise again (the trouble with losing weight is that you have to BELIEVE... but I don't anymore) and maybe I'll start dyeing my hair again (although the grey means I get given seats on the bus).

I'll confess all later.