the first month of the new year

*that is the face of someone with a bowl of sultanas in front of him and full cheeks.Anything for a photo....

It seems as though it is already February and yet its clearly not. I find that everything comes to a halt during the summer school holidays and I am at once torn between wishing the boys were back at school so I could find my rythmn, and wishing we had months of this day floating to tinker and picnic and have my babies not really as grown up as they are when they return to school in a higher grade.

In January 2009 I sat in my sisters bed in Clapham and wrote my wishlist for that new year bursting with excitiement and promise. I repeated this in 2010, 2011 and 2012. 2009 and 2010 came very close to realising a dream only to have the rug yanked at the very last moment. Late 2011 it happened again but this time to my husband. Most of 2011 was spent waiting for that disaster to dissipate. I think 2012 I went a little easy on myself because we had a new baby and all I really wished for were baby giggles, watching our now three boys smitten with each other and the day when I would be able to wear a dress and a normal bra again.

This year I am going to make changes. Not the changes  I wrote down that morning years ago because life twirls and leaps and sometimes you simply cannot hold on to your plan. If I'd stuck to my plan that morning and managed to bring it all to life, I'd have published my books that still sit here waiting. I would be selling my art toys successfully, be the worlds best mother to my boys, in a passionate marriage, have mastered all types of cooking, have an incredible garden full of vegetables and chickens and rambling flower beds. I would be able to salsa with the best of them, I'd be teaching yoga, we would have a fantastic home and we would travel regularly following my husband around the globe for work and fun.

Sounds ludicrous. Admittedly since I wrote that list some of those things could have happened, but none of them were achievable alone and other things happen all the time so focus gets scrambled. Also I like to knit until one in the moring not micro manage our lives.

SO. 2013 I have some hopes rather than plans. I will endeavor to make them happen but if they dont it won't knock me down. We have a house, we have healthy beautiful children, we dont know anyone who is ill and the world isnt going anywhere just yet. 

There will be a major change to this blog. In title and appearance and some content. It will be reflecting a project I started long ago and by putting it out there, I will be forced to bring it to life. I am going to limit my time on the internet because it is the greatest dissolver of my time I know (that will be hard because I love the internet).

I am going to plan our meals several nights a week to take the pressure off and I'm going to declutter the roof storage.  The roof declutter is in part because I had a spectacular nightmare about it falling down on our heads. Yet it was empty. I am tempted to google the meaning of that but I refuse to because I will be there for hours and possibly scare myself into a corner after diagnosis.

I am not going to let myself get flusterd by tornado type personalities and I am going to try and loosen up my one strike and youre out relationship wall because, unless its a real doozy, I havent got the head space to be dissapointed and hurt. Duck feathers.

Simple. Its actually not going to be simple but is a short list so it feels doable and thats half the battle.

And we have embraced the green smoothie brigade. Any way that I can get more energy I'm doing.

I hope you have a really wonderful year and your list is short and achievable.

We dont have to move mountains just because its a new year. We just have to nudge them.

xxxxx Clare