Then it was September 30th...

So that month didn't exist, did it?

Rather like our Carribean month in June, we have had very little time this month to do normal life and therefore very little time to tackle this month's challenge of food with a name. It has been a great month with an extremely whirlwind eight day trip round the country visiting almost every first and second degree relative we have plus a few third degree, plus a few distant, never met before but got on like a house on fire relatives! We have also just returned from our church weekend away in Scarborough. It wasn't what many people were expecting it to be like but I hope and pray that the impact made will last far beyond the doors of Green Gables.

So, back to the point. Food with a title. It was fun, really fun and quite silly in places. There wasn't much of it but we went out on a high today with Boats. Not only food with a name but also would have scored points under presentation month, African month (ahem, it had cous cous in it...) and base ingredient month (which we haven't done yet but have discussed a lot). Boats is made up of sailing and rowing boats, the former being half a jacket potato with a rolled up piece of bacon skewered to the top as a sail, the latter being stuffed peppers with carrot baton oars. Fun times! And no complaint about any element fom the kids cos I called it Boats. Win. Win. Win.

Next month is five ingredient month. We have a couple of hours left to thrash out the rules precisely but basically any main meal will only contain five ingredients (but, for example, a stock cube would be an ingredient not all its component parts. That is for base ingredient month...). I am also aiming for olive oil, salt, pepper and possibly balsamic vinegar to not count as ingredients... I am aiming to do it as a "full challenge" i.e. every single evening meal. Wish me luck! (And possibly a back subscription to Good Food magazine...)

There's a Hole in my Bucket

I am aware I may not always sound it, and many times it takes me by surprise when I realise it, but I am intrinsically an optimist. However, I have noticed recently that when I get to feeling particularly low or volatile, I have a tendency to look only at things that are missing, the holes in my bucket, rather than my more usual approach of looking at all the many wonderful ways I could plug the holes.

One of the holes I have dwelt on a lot in the past is not having a sister. I had one once upon a time, before I was born, but she died when only six weeks old. No one ever really knew her, and certainly not me, but at times I become extremely despondent over her loss and over what life would be like, if only I had this unknown sister.

Another hole is of course the anxiety/IBS/endo combo. In this case, there are of course some fairly real concerns, but the bit that counts as my "hole" is that nagging feeling of what life would be like if I never got nervous about leaving the house. Imagine all the things I could do if I didn't always have to know where my next "convenience" was...

Recently, however, I have had a big old smack round the head about one of my most common holes. It is, quite frankly, a ridiculous hole and I am a little ashamed to admit it, especially to some of you that I know are reading this. This hole is the lack of a life long best friend, the one I met on the first day of school, we were each others bridesmaids, we talk on the phone at least once a week even though we now live in different parts of the country etc etc etc.

I am sorry for all the times I have felt jealous and insecure about your other friends and wondered which one is your best friend. I am sorry that I have wasted time imagining a relationship so utterly secure as to be impossible.

I don't fall into this hole very often anymore but it is the kind of one that sneaks up when I am getting a grip on the anxiety but it still needs somewhere to leak out. I was aware it was trying to gain some traction recently. And then came the smack round the head.

In the space of about two hours the other week, I had texts from about five different people, all of whom I value highly, all of whom are very busy. They all took the time to text and say their parts of the following:

How are you?

I miss you.

You did that really well.

I love you.

What can I pray about for you?

How did X that you were worried about go?

What a wake up call, and what an unbelievably blessed and lucky person I am because they aren't the only five people who would say those things to me. Thank you. I love you too. And I promise I am going to plug that hole in my bucket as soon as it appears next time. I am going to plug it with your names.

Being Busy

As I mentioned a post or two back, it turned out that doing nothing I found stressful was really bad for the anxiety and we threw around a few ideas of why this might be and what could be done about it. One of the ideas was that I was simply a little bored of mind.

Since writing that, I haven't really had time to stop and think about how to challenge my mind, or indeed anything else. It has seemed to be the case that I have been less anxious also.

The big thing that has occurred has been just the start of term, the start of pre-school, the start of all our regular fixtures like the mum's cell group that I "run" (I use inverted commas because the three other members of the group really do their fair share of running it too, I just get to claim that it is me...), swimming lessons for G&E and so on. These are the kinds of things that make me busy but don't necessarily challenge my brain (other than cell group (oh by the way, in case you are not jargon-tastic, a cell group is not a terrorist organisation in this case, it is a bunch of Christians meeting together to study the bible, pray and challenge each other. In our case, we also laugh A Lot and eat plenty of cake.)).

I have, on the side, however, picked up a couple of these more brain challenging things, occasionally by accident. I have led, or helped to lead, a couple of services at church. The first was a last minute offer to lead an evening prayer service. It was a little stressful at the time simply because leading a service that you have been to once before and is of a fundamentally quiet and reflective style is very hard to judge whether people are engaged or bored to tears. Those closed eyes and relaxed faces could mean one of two things...fervent prayer or blissful sleep! However, I did enjoy it thoroughly and had a lot of positive feedback afterwards. The second service was the dreaded, horrifying All Age service. I think we put together a good service. I think it went well. I think those who were there enjoyed it and hopefully learnt something from it. I hated it. At the time it was ok but I went into bit of a state of shock afterwards and crawled off into a cave to recover. It was tough going. I am still trying to work out which kind of tough going - the kind where you should keep going and stick at it or the kind where you should know your limits and make a graceful exit. I fear it is the former!

The final challenge to my brain has come in the form of E's impending second birthday. I decided a while ago that I would write her a story for her birthday, the hope being that I shall continue to write stories for both children for each birthday for as long as they want. But let's not get ahead of ourselves!

The thing about a story for a second birthday is that it has to be illustrated, not much way round that with a two year old! I can write stories but I can't draw for toffee. And yet, here I sit, while writing this, spraying pages of drawings with fixative so that they don't smudge the opposite page and considering the drawings still remaining and attaching the words and...! And feeling pretty darn chuffed. I still can't draw but I have drawn enough to get the point across. Why the heck I decided to include a horse in the story I will never know (thank goodness there are words there too so people will know it is a horse...). It has filled my evenings this week, along with a bit of party preparation and it has been a very good challenge. Of course, as soon as I finish it, I need to start on G's story...

Breakfast Month

Breakfast month was good. The kids were a little unconvinced and largely stuck to their cereals of choice but A is very pleased with his new found love of porridge (in August. No doubt he will be sick of it before winter arrives...). We had less exciting blow out breakfasts than hoped but still found a number of nice new things so a win I would say. Except that now my health is such that I am eating rice cakes for breakfast. Yum. With a glass of water. Goody.

Anyway, A felt we needed to go a bit silly this month. September's theme is...titled food! To which I said  "eh?" (And I am not quite sure I get it yet but I will try to explain...)

To "score points" this month, I must make a dish with a name. But the name can't be "sticky chicken" or "roast dinner" as they are simply descriptive. Beef Wellington would count. Spaghetti Bolognese would get half marks (as would any other regionally named dish.)

So far I have scored points with "leftovers" (I thought this would be too descriptive but it seemed to tickle A) and last night's self-named Thai-nese Tickle (griddled trout with Thai sticky rice and stir fried ribbon veg, the ribbony bit being the tickle in my mind...). I need to do some research and look in some different cookbooks as most of the recipes I use tend to have very descriptive names.

(By the way, I am aware I have mentioned strict budget month to quite a few people. We have ultimately decided not to do that as a challenge month but just as something ongoing. I may or may not blog about our findings. But this week I am doing food shopping on a budget that has been chopped by a third. So far, so simple, but the weekend will tell what it is really like.)