My Wonderful. Part 2.

Well here we are little you, we’re on part two as to why you are wonderful.

They say that in life you’ll meet people who change you for good – to me, you’re one of those people. I’m not sure where you’ve summoned this strength from over the last few weeks but it’s incredible. You’ve not only kept yourself going but you’ve been there for your family too and that’ll always amaze me. Not because I didn’t think you could have done it, but because what you’ve been going through is frankly shit. It’s not fair. I really do think that was the worst night of my life and without a shadow of a doubt yours too, but even through that you managed to care for others ahead of yourself. You’ve been incredible, without you people would not have moved on the way they have. I know you want to fix things and believe me without your knowledge, your kindness and your fantastic support, people wouldn’t have progressed as far as they have. You’re irreplaceable.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to imagine how this all must feel for you, so all I can hope for is that I have and will always be able to help you in some way.

That night you found courage that I don’t even think you knew you had, but you did babe – you really can do anything. I think your determination to keep things going has proved that through and through. The thing is though, courage isn’t about not crying and being manly, it’s about letting your feelings show, your thoughts be known and opening up to and admiting to how you feel.

It’s so okay to say that you’re scared and you’re sad and I think your ability to be strong and sensitive is extraordinary.

I have no doubt that I will be the luckiest woman alive to get to have you by my side forever. I also couldn’t wish for a better Dad to our children – you’ll be incredible. If they’re anything like you, the world will be so lucky. They’ll have the best person they could wish for to learn from and to be there by their side.

Every day you amaze me, your kindness, your strength, your good heart, your warmth, your selflessness, your humour and your good spirit to make others happy are just a few of your amazing qualities.

I love how important family is to you. Writing this has shown me just how much I really do adore everything about you. I’m so excited and honoured to share my life with you. It’ll be an absolute dream to make more memories with you. Whenever I see, hear or do anything interesting all I want to do is share it with you – are you like that? I want you to feel what I feel and vice verca.

I’m well aware of how cliche I sound right now but you really do make me feel whole. Without you I’d be half the person I could be (and that’s not even due to slimming world!) Over the last few years you’ve given me so much confidence and for that I’m so grateful. I know you aren’t feeling all that confident now, but I’m going to do my best to show you how remarkable you are. Just look at how far you’ve come and how much you’ve achieved. Not just in these last few weeks but the last few years. I am so proud of you.

I hope this helps you because to me you really are, without a doubt, wonderful.

I love you.

X

My Wonderful. Part 1.

You’re incredible.

Just thinking of your face makes me smile. It makes me feel this sense of warmth and being totally complete – and the truth is, now I’ve been lucky enough to get to know what it feels like to have you in my life, I couldn’t possibly even imagine living mine without you.

Thank you for filling my life with so much happiness. You teach me lessons about how happy someone can make me every day.  You teach me how I can be a better person, because for you I want to be the best person I can be.

I feel like this whole thing is going to be a whole cheesy, cliche mess, but I want to try anyway. I’d like to try and explain to you how much I admire you. Like I said, this is going to be a bit tricky because I genuinely mean it and so I want it to sound sincere.

So let’s start with when we first met. How can someone show such confidence and make someone feel so comfortable at the same time. Though don’t get me wrong…I had a million nervous wees that night before you picked me up and made a fool of myself countless times didn’t I. All I could think was, why on earth would someone like you want to date someone like me? I actually did even think initially that maybe it was for a bit of a joke or because you were bored or something.

And then it happened…I realised just what a good person you are. Often people can be nice, but you’re so much more than that. You’re deep down, a good and decent person. It’s the quality that I love most about you. You have such a kind heart. That lovely kind heart is what has gotten you onto the path you’re on, studying to care for other people. Though I also need to quickly mention that I fell in love with those perfect, dark brown eyes of yours (I don’t think I need to even mention my love for that jaw of yours do I?)

When we first met you weren’t really sure what you wanted to do and where you wanted to go and now look at you. I am so incredibly proud of you. You’ve worked so hard to be the best you can be and not just for your self-satisfaction but also so that you can give people the best help. That’s so commendable. I love your ability to see the good in people and situations. I don’t have a single doubt that you’re going to be the best at what you do. You instantly come across as kind, open and non-judgemental and that’s what makes people feel so free to open up to you.

You’re the kindest, sweetest person I know. I want you to be as happy as you can possibly be and the thought of you not being that makes me feel such hurt. Just the sheer thought of causing you any hurt at all makes me feel such pain – all I want is for you to be happy and so that’s all I will ever try and do – I promise I will only ever make you happy.

You deserve the world and I want to give you everything. You’ve been through such bullshit and that’s it’s just not fair. I’ve named this chapter part 1, that’s because I can’t really fit my admiration of you into this one – I’ll save that for the next one.

So for now, I love you with all my heart, every little bit of me is yours and it always will be.

Speak to you soon,

x

 

 

 

 

Daily Prompt: Murmuration: Que Online Dictionary

Have you ever heard of the daily prompt? We get a word and we reply with our interpretation of that word. Nice.

Today is my first go. The word? Murmuration. Great start – I haven’t the foggiest of what it means, but thanks to technology these days, we’re only a type and page refresh away of being a secret genius.

(The funny note here to add to is that spell check keeps wanting me to change it to menstruation. No dear – I know I usually sigh at the thought of you, but today that’s quite amusing).

So, murmuraion, my word for the day, actually means the action of murmuring. OH! Well I wish you’d said, that’s all far clearer to me now.

Actually, upon further Google inspection it’s also a flock of Starlings. Not sure if you’ve ever been luck enough to witness one of these DR (dear reader remember? Think back to my other posts), but they are a thing of beauty.

I’m not going to go all David Attenborough on you and explain why, because the truth is I don’t know why they do this, but I can tell you it’s a true thing of simple beauty. A sky dance where they work in perfect unison. If you can do one thing today, take 2 minutes to clear your head and take a watch.

On a more amusing and childish note – I wonder if they ever fly into each other? Like, “God Susan, you’re all over the place today!”

“Ohh I know Julie, my head’s just not in it”

And as always,

Lots of love – I’m off in true Piece of Cake style to make those cupcakes off the Tesco adverts, wish me luck eh!

x

p.s. I know the bird in my image is a pigeon, but… I like it.

Daily Prompt: Murmuration

Nesting: Part II

Last time we had a chat we spoke about nesting. The process of ‘arranging your surroundings to make you feel secure and comfortable’. Basically, I feel ready for and want my own home.

As I mentioned, I’ve been feeling this way for a while and before Christmas I ended up coming to blows with my Mum over it. But broken things can be fixed – I’ve found a few ways to help me cope with it and I want to share them with you DR.

If you’re ready for your own home and you’re not sure where ot start, here’s some tips that have worked for me:

• Open a save to buy ISA. This is a great government bank account which is pretty great because 1. once you put money in to save, you can’t take it out again – bingo, no more dipping into your savings. 2. the government give you 25% of your savings e.g. save £12k and they make it up to £15k – woohoo!
• Start having a think about where you want to live and check out apps like Zoopla and Right Move, that will give you an idea about how much deposit you’ll need to save up (usually 10% of the cost of the house if you’re buying with someone else) and what sort of thing you can expect to afford, e.g. 1 bed flat, 2 bed terrace etc.
• Check out the Halifax mortgage calculator, that’ll give you an idea of how much you’ll be able to borrow and then you can work out how long that’s going to take you.
• Set yourself realistic expectations. Buying a house is a huge investment, I know we expect things instantly nowadays – but this isn’t one! Saving up for your first home is a big deal and it’s going to take some time. So be patient and be realistic, if you can’t save £500 a month – don’t. Save what you can afford, but be strict on yourself – if you’re commiting to save £200 a month do it, if you don’t it’s only going to take you longer to reach that goal.
• Now for the fun one: I don’t know about you DR, but I hate that when I see something nice for my home (in the future) I can’t buy it, because fact is: I don’t have my own home yet. So, I’ve started doing something that they used to do in ye olden days apparently: an ‘Under the bed box’

‘Under the Bed Box’

First I bough myself a nice underbed storage box – this grey canvas Habitat one set me back £15 from Argos. I then started filling it with things that I’d love to put in our new home.

You don’t need to rush to fill this up, or even try, but if you see something you love, you can actually buy it now! Yay! Frustration squashed and when you do get to buy that lovely home, you’ll have some things to put in it (and let’s face it, once you spent all that money on a house and fees you won’t have much left to fill it with!)

A few of the things I’ve put in there:

Warm and cosy candle

Some cute buckets from the BBC good food show

Mason cash bowls and measuring cups

Tin Budapest print

A cute Next candle (one of many lovely ones I was given for Christmas) some distressed tin buckets/vases from the BBC Good Food Show (I thought they’d be cute for herbs on a kitchen window shelf or something!), some Mason Cash mixing bowls and measuring cups and last but not least… Red Head (the BF) and I bought this cute retro metal print from our trip in Budapest. So, you can buy souvenirs for your home from trips together, start collecting things to capture your memories along the way.

As lovely as it will be, moving out is also going to be tough, so surround yourself with things that will make you feel happy and secure.

If you’re reading this DR and have a bed box of your own, I’d absolutely love to see it.

Speak soon,

lots of love

Little POC

x

My 1 Second Everyday.

So, it was the start of the year – you just have to do something new right DR?

Well, there was no use in me committing to a new diet etc. not with a few days away with friends in my schedule. Instead I took to a new app, after all, there always is an app for that isn’t there.

1 Second every day is simply recording a one second clip of something that happened that day. It can be something to represent the activity or someone/thing that made you smile. Then, by the end of the year you have a  pretty cool 6 minute video of your life.

The idea is that it encourages you to make a point of taking that time to appreciate the small things, even in a day when you’re seemingly doing nothing.

It’s really easy to use – you can only use clips taken from that day though. It’s pretty clever in that it can recognise the date you shot the clip or took the photo, it won’t let you put in an entry for the Saturday that you took on the Sunday. That means you have to remember to shoot something – it does send you notifications each day but if you’re anything like me you’ll just tell the notification to bugger off, carry on with what you’re doing and forget.

But…we’re now 71 days into 2017 (I know – how on earth did that happen?) and I’ve only missed a few days. Admittedly a few of my entries have been of my sleeping cat, but hey – she made me smile that day.

So DR, head over to your app store and start capturing. Appreciate your wonderful every day.

God I sound like the IKEA ad.

Lots of love

x

 

Nesting.

Apparently there’s a name for how I’ve been feeling/acting over the last few months – ‘nesting’

No surprise there though really right? Everything seems to have a diagnosis or a term now, but in this instance I find it quite comforting. Knowing that actually, it’s pretty normal and many people out there are probably feeling the same thing – maybe even you DR (dear reader remember).

It’s defined as “the tendency to arrange one’s immediate surroundings to create a place where one feels secure, comfortable or in control.

In short, at the tender age of 23, I am bursting to have my own home.

Just to clear it up straight away, I love my parents to pieces, they are wonderful and my home is nice.

But the truth is, it doesn’t feel like my home any more. It’s begun to feel as though I am now living in my parents home, but I don’t have a home of my own to go back to.

My feeling this way has been the source of some conflict at home, particularly with my Mum, so I’ve done a lot of thinking about it and maybe you can relate?

I’ve reached a point where almost everything frustrates me, the mess (I’m not a clean freak, but it’s not my mess – so it’s annoying), the excessive volumes of ‘stuff’ (who needs 6 sets of dinner plates in a house of 3 people? That’s 36 plates people) the bizarre choice of cushion colour and the inability to buy my own home ‘stuff’ that I love, because I just have no where to put it.

As hard as I try to not let it effect me, inevitably after a while it does build up and I turn into a little yappy terrier. Then, being the smushy person I am, I then feel heavy waves of guilt for being snappy.

I remember thinking just a couple of years ago. “God, how on earth do people ever feel ready to move out, to ‘fly the nest’ and make that move to leave their childhood, family home?”  I truthfully never thought I would reach a feeling where I feel ready to make that move. Don’t get me wrong, the day I do it, there will be floods of tears, but they’ll be happy and sad. I’ll be wretched to end that era, to know I won’t live with my lovely parents again and I’ll feel guilty for leaving them. But, I’ll also be so happy and proud to have reached that point – excited to start the new chapter of my life with my Ginge (the boyfriend is redhead).

So there we have it – a mixture of frustration, guilt and a longing for my own little nest. It’s not going to happen just yet though, I have many more months of saving ahead and steps to go through. In my next chat to you DR, I think I’m going to talk about getting ready for the process of getting your own 1st home, and how to ease your feeling of ‘nesting’ while you wait.

Speak soon,

Little POC

X

My Very Second Blog Post: CONTRACEPTION.

I know DR, I know. I said no hard hitting topics, but this one has really got me.

For a few years I’ve chopped and changed and struggled a bit with getting to grips with contraception.

As much as I love a list, I can be a bit of a scatter brain – even with the best intended routine, hiding place, alarm on my phone, I would still forget to take my pill.

Que a mixed up cycle, random spotting and most importantly: no barrier to the swimmers. When I first went on the pill I blamed my weight gain on it, though as you may have guessed, I do enjoy the odd slice of cake or 10, so it may have been down to that…

Last year, I thought I better get on it and switched to have the implant put in. I chose this because I used to get serious headaches from the drop in oestrogen when on my break whilst taking the pill. If you’re considering it/about to have it done, please ignore the horror stories. Yes you will get an almighty bruise (maybe don’t get it done in the height of summer like I – you will look odd in a long sleeve top when everyone else is half naked). But a bruise is about as bad as it gets.

In my case:

The pros? You’re always covered and don’t need to keep remembering to take the little pills each day and your man doesn’t need to wear protection. (Though if you’re not in a relationship, make him – no one has time for an STI. Not that I’ve had one I’d like to add, but I imagine it’s no party).

The cons? Any desire you may have once had will vanish. I felt flat, unsexy and honestly? If we’re getting personal? Even when it was getting sexy, however turned on I was, things were a bit like the Sahara. If you know what I mean.

On more of a serious note DR, I’m pretty certain all contraceptive, be it pills or implants, have had a real effect on my mental health. I’m the daughter of two mental health professionals, so the topic has always been in the background to make me a little more aware, but not immune.

After a lot of research I’ve made the decision to come off any contraception entirely. We’re not ready for a baby so are sill keeping Durex in business. On a side note – we do anyway because I’m a sufferer of cystitis, and I tell you ladies, wearing one of those bad boys has almost stopped me getting it entirely – can I hear a hell yeah?

I passionately believe that the contraception I was taking was a real ingredient in causing me to suffer from anxiety. I reached points where I was crying for no apparent reason in the middle of a shopping centre and needing to go home. I was having to constantly do sudoku puzzles or colouring in, just to stop the thoughts from taking over my mind and then I even needed to take beta blockers, just to stop me from self-com-busting.

Since ditching the contraception (about 3 months ago now), I can honestly say I feel myself again. That’s not to say I don’t still get a little sad, worried or cranky sometimes, but at least now I know I feel that way because it’s me feeling that way – not because of the amount or type of hormones I’m taking are making me. I feel pretty free, damn relieved and I want to share that with you.

I’m not saying that it has this effect on everyone, but it may just be something to have a little think about, or a nibble if we’re staying on the cake theme eh?

Speak soon,

Little POC

x

 

My Very First Blog Post

“This is your very first post.” Okay, no pressure then.

So, dear reader, what shall we chat about today? How about, why on earth I’m writing to you? My friend started me on it – she was doing it, so like a child in the playground I copied.

I’m not a child in the playground, I’m actually 23 (and 6 months), 5″3 and a bit soft round the edges. But I like to write, I do it for a living – kind of. I’m ‘in’ marketing, an Assistant Manager don’t you know. I say that all proud as punch now because I was recently promoted, give me a few months and I’m sure the novelty will have worn off don’t worry.

I’ve been having a think about I’m going to be chatting to you about on here. What sort of theme/topics etc. etc…And the truth is DR, (dear reader not Doctor. Though if my little blog has some how made it on to some medical journal then, hello to you – keep up the good the work). Anyway as I was saying, the truth is, there is no theme, probably no hard hitting topics either, just a mixture. A rainbow cake let’s say.

Speak soon,

Little POC.

(Little piece of cake – cute eh!?)

x