and its only the first week

For lent, as a family, we chose to give up meat and chocolate.

It is 40 days and 40 nights of fasting.

We try and do lent most years and usually last the period. This year we chose to do it as a family.

And it is hard.

For now chocolate is the easier of the two.  But avoiding meat is a real challenge. It's only a few days in and I can't seem to think of recipes without bacon bits in, or chose a sandwich without ham on, or chose a stir fry lunch without chicken in. Meat is just simply everywhere.

We are also trying to avoid just cooking a usual meal without the meat in, as this is somehow noticeable. We are trying to thus cook vegetarian, using vegetarian recipes. Leaving out the meat just does not work.

Cooking vegeterian recipes requires time and patience.  Shifting food patterns takes time.

And the worst moment of the week was this morning at breakfast in a hotel. The choice of a full cooked english breakfast with my favourite bacon and sausages OR toast!

The toast it was :-(

How many days to go.......................

Ski hills and BBQ's

Every nation has its own little habits.  Things that they only do and that they think are absolutely normal. It often takes a foreigner to notice and point out, that this activitiy or tradition is unusual.

I experienced one such cultural norm last week and I have to confess, I adored it.  At first it seemed such a strange thing to do, but then again it's actually not, when you understand and experience it. 

The tradition I am referring to, is that of Norwegians to have a charcoal BBQ on a mountain during the lunch break of a a ski day.  

This is how it looked like. In the morning we would pack up the coal, the matches, the flasks of hot drinks and the all important (moose or reindeer) sausages. We would then take the gondola up the mountain, ski half way down, leave the rucksacks by the designated BBQ drums and ski away. Around noon, we would ski by the place again, and get the charcoals burning.  Some of us would then do one more run, and by the time we came by again, the sausages were ready to go on.  We would then enjoy a wonderful hot lunch of lovely grilled sausages, in the sunshine, with no queuing and no overpriced average food.  What a sensation!

Many people were doing it and it just looked terribly normal.

I loved it. And we did it multiple times.

I am not sure this would take off anywhere else and why should it? This is their tradition. Norwegian and wonderful.  

Sausage anyone?

So what did change?

Following my recent blog, about a celebrity alopecian saying the disease didn't change her, I received a few questions from you, asking what alopecia changed in me.

It's interesting as I knew this disease had changed me, but to actually articulate this, it took a while.

Here is what I believe it changed.

It changed the way I saw myself. Before alopecia, I had beautiful, thick, long, dark hair. Many people complimented me on my hair and I would have said it was my best feature. Once it was gone, I went through a form of identity crisis. Who was I without hair? Was I anything without hair? What was my best attribute now? Can someone without hair be beautiful?

Many such questions went through my head, every day new questions came into my head, many remaining unanswered.

Over time, I decided if hair is no longer defining me, what is? What can?

One of the first things I learned, and I belief had to learn, was how to wear make up. I needed to fill in the gaps where eyelashes had once been, I needed to distract attention from my hair (or lack of it) to my eyes. I chose to re discover my eyes. I learned to use colour differently. Purple and green tops, always bring comments about the beauty of my eyes. Before alopecia, no one commented on my eyes, now they do.

I also learned that my figure mattered, I was always blessed with not being overweight, but with a bit of focus and a lot of effort, I managed to create a figure that I had never had before and quite frankly never desired to have before.

Basically I found new things to become my attributes and to help me understand that I could still find beauty with my new world.

Finally and most importantly, alopecia opened me up. Not instantly, but over the last few years, it has begun teaching me about myself, my vulnerabilities and what talking about them can change. Not just for myself but for other people. 

Alopecia has allowed me to access other people in a new way, and I believe a more meaningful way. Do I wish I had never had alopecia? Absolutely. Would I trade the new me for the old one?

Never. 

Hardship brings gifts, you just sometimes have to look for them and wait a while.

Too much specialness

I do like a bit of luxury, a bit of pampering and a bit of special treatment. But when does it get too much?

Well it just did. It's a ridiculous example, but I felt embarrassed.

I am a frequent flier, and as such this builds up a certain card status, eg gold, silver, bronze. With these "status" levels you get certain benefits, which I really do enjoy and often take advantage of. For example you can get access to airport lounges, queue skipping at security, extra luggage allowances and even luggage transported free of charge to your nearest train station. I love all of this.

However today I was on a flight to Oslo with my family, and just before take off, the air stewardess came over and offered all of us a complementary bottle of water. It's the smallest of gestures, yet I was quite embarrasses to be called out amongst others. What was everyone around us thinking?

We all gratefully took the water, but I shrunk a few centimeters deeper into my seat.

So what embarrasses you?

Do you get this over specialness?

Was this gesture really necessary?

Yes I appreciated the water, but do they believe customers enjoy feeling treated differently?  Actually maybe they do and this was just my silly thing.




Thoughts anyone?

Drilling and other nasty noises

There are certain sounds out there, that when you do hear them, your heart stops.

Adrenalin flies through your body and for a split second you are in a total panic.

Do you know what those sounds are?

What is the worst sound for you to hear?

Screeching car brakes
Nails scratching down a blackboard
Glass smashing

There are many.

One that I despise, is one I heard this morning.

It is the sound of the tools in a dentists room starting up. Drilling is the worst but in fact any of the tools are pretty awful. The swishing, zishing, whirring noise somehow just gets under my skin and into my bones. It's a terrible feeling. A visceral reaction. As my mum would say, it puts my teeth on edge. No pun intended.

This morning I had to sit through nearly an hour of these noises and I wouldn't mind, but it wasn't even for me.

Luckily my daughter tolerated them all perfectly well, but for me, it was a yacky experience. It all gets better one the first two seconds are over, but somehow I can't relax until we leave the room.

What's your worst sound? Do tell....

It does matter!

Heather is a rugby union player who has represented England in a number of World Cups since 2009. She was part of England’s World Cup winning team in 2014. The team won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award for ‘Team of the Year’. Prior to her international rugby success, Heather also represented Great Britain in the bobsleigh. Pretty cool resume eh!

Heather also has alopecia.

She tells her story on a the alopecia UK website
http://www.alopeciaonline.org.uk/HeatherFisher.asp

But let me tell you why I wanted to share her story with you.

She says in one section that "it doesn’t matter whether I have hair or not. It doesn’t change who I am."

Whilst I agree with her statement, I disagree with the first part. Having alopecia does matter. Having no hair does matter. Alopecia does change who you are.

In theory having alopecia doesn't change what you can achieve, but you know what, it has the potential to get in the way - big time. Heather clearly is a strong woman who has been very successful and she will serve as a great role model an inspiration.

Alopecia did not get in her way.

But I am sure it has gotten in others way and is still a torment to many.

Alopecia does change you. Not necessarily for the worse, but any change impacts you and as such you emerge a slighltly different person.

So in short, alopecia matters.

Job swap - with rules

We were joking about the fact that we could do each others jobs for the day. We were even hypothesising that no one would actually notice. Yes we all perform different roles, in different companys, but at a certain level, we felt the decisions became more common sense and business decisions, rather than specific functional ones.

So we asserted that job swap for a day was completely possible

Together we covered the areas of Finance, Engineering and Human Resources. A little different in nature I do believe.

We then started mulling over the potential rules of the game, as there are of course risks. No one wanted to put their company in danger, nor their personal reputation in questions, so we came up with some ground rules.

Here is where we landed:

1. On that day the only task we need to perform is email.
2. The emails would all be captured in draft form
3. Before sending the actual owner of the job could read all the emails, but could only change 3.
4. We would supply a list of people to call to gain information, up to max 5 names
5. We would all sit round the same table and work virtually together

And with that we felt comfortable to change jobs for the day.

Now did we do it?

No of course not. This was just a coversation over a few beers. But I reckon it would work?

Do you?

Anyone tried anything like this before?

Could be fun.

The beauty of karma

We were having a lovely snowy day. Sledging, relaxing and lots of snow. We have a super tradition of coming to a particular place for my husbands birthday. Lots of adults and lots of kids.

It is a friendly place with great food and a great soul. We stay overnight and are left to help ourselves to drink from the bar, in the understanding that we make note of our consumption. It really has become an annual event and one we look forward to immensely. 

So as said we were having a wonderful day. 

Now one point of note, which is relevant to the story, is the layout of the restaurant. It's really a mountain chalet and with wooden tables made out of solid wood. Central to the room is a stove with tiles which is the heart and heat of the room. And next to this is a fabulous square table which sits easily 10. We always sit here and enjoy the dynamics the table offers. 

This particular evening this table had been taken over by two young men, seeming locals. Nice enough as they seemed, they were on OUR table, I mean the cheek of it. My friends and I were commenting on the fact that we needed to find a strategy to oust them out of OUR space. We decided after our fun ideas, just to let them be. 

Thank goodness we did. We ended up being very thankful to them. 

As over the next hour, the youngest amongst us managed to cut open her chin on the bathroom floor.  We were quickly deciding on our options.  The obvious one being driving to a hospital going to A&E and waiting for the usual time, which could be hours. 

On hearing this, the two boys at the table, quickly heard their call to action and called their friend the local Doctor, who agreed to open his Doctors practice, late on Saturday night, to help out this little girl. Wow. How wonderful!

They were so kind and most of all helpful, that we felt a kind of remorse for all our wicked ideas to get rid of them earlier. 

Karma my friend said. 

So as my friends head on down the snowy path to the local Doctor, I thank the universe for the karma that itsent us!

Good luck little family ;-)

And by the way they are still sitting there! But we will let them. 

Compliments

What is your favorite compliment?
Think about it. What is it, that someone says to you, that makes you feel like a million dollars?

Have a think.

Here are some thoughts……….



You look like you have lost weight.

Your eyes are lovely today

Nice dress

Great hair style, really suits you

That was an amazing presentation

Great parking, that was a small space

Such a good story

Great joke, you are so funny

Your handwriting is lovely

Your children have great manners

You cooked a great meal

Such an amazing cake

You have a lovely home

Nice car

Your artwork is sensational

Beautiful garden

Your coffee is the best

You inspire me

You are a great listener

These are some of the ones you told me when I asked you.

One I personally like is when people say, "gosh  you haven't changed".

Don't know why, but it always warms me to hear it. And makes me proud. Is that weird? Shouldn't I have changed over the last 30 years???

Either way, that one's mine.  What is yours?