Sometimes a day seems to be nothing but problems. This one, in December 2015 had more than its fair share and most of them came in the form of a certain entertainer. Add worrying about what to put on my Christmas list, the threat of snow and a hamper full of goodies I was desperately trying not to eat and you have a busy day.
5 December 2012
Last night Commando asked me to make a Christmas present list, you know the thing, Dear Santa… I am so useless at thinking of presents for me. An hour later, having been thinking and Googling like mad, all I came up with was a potato ricer. Commando says he won’t buy that because it’s not a present for me it’s for the house, even though I’m the only one who’d use it. Does this mean I’m a woman who has everything? If you gave me a big bag of money and sent me round town I’m sure I’d find loads of stuff to spend it on but nothing I could ask for as a present.
Worrying about what to ask for kept me awake. In the middle of the night, I got up to go to the loo and was almost blinded by a bright light coming through the little hall window. It wasn’t an alien invasion, just the house up the road. They’ve put up their Christmas lights with, amongst other things, a ladder of lights with a flashing Santa climbing up them. As we live on the flight path only about four miles from the airport I’d think it could be a bit confusing for pilots, I’m pretty sure you can see it from space. Their electricity bill is going to be a shocker come January. Our decorations are all nice and safe in the attic and won’t be coming out for some time yet, even then there are no outside lights of any description.
When I got up it was freezing. There is snow in the south but luckily it’s missed Southampton so far. I knew all those clouds were bad news yesterday though. Back in the summer Go Outdoors had Yak Trax on sale and I almost bought some but Commando said, “you don’t need them now, it’s summer.” so I didn’t. Kind of wishing I had now. Still, I could ask for some for Christmas but, typically, they don’t have any now it’s actually cold and I need them.
By the time I left for work the frost had more or less thawed thank goodness, but it was still very cold. Even with the floppy eared hat the cold wind was burning my cheeks. Despite this I decided to walk right up into town and then through the parks today in an effort to find a forty five minute route that didn’t involve walking round and round the office and have my colleagues thinking the last of my marbles had finally departed. All was going well until I stopped to take a photo of the brave little rhododendron still blooming despite the cold. When I switched on the iPhone camera I accidentally turned off the WalkJogRun instead of pausing it and I wasn’t sure exactly how long I’d been walking at that point. I switched it back on but of course it started from zero again so I had to guess at my time. Luckily, when I got into the lift and totalled up both walks it came to just under forty five minutes so I wasn’t too far adrift.
The other day I spoke too soon when I said at least the ‘famous actress’ would be out of my hair once she was on board the ship. As soon as I got to my desk I was being asked to sort out ‘famous actress’ problems. Firstly it was the bar allowance. Entertainers get a bar allowance during their time on board but their guests don’t, she had told the purser her sister also had an allowance and he didn’t know what to do. At least that was easily sorted with an email and a copy of her contract. Then the queries over her programme started. The cruise director was in a flap, I had no paperwork because she’d never sent it to me despite several requests (what a surprise) and Arabella wasn’t in the office. Grrrr.
In the spirit of getting rid of the goodies before I ate them I dished out the rest of the biscuits and the fudge from my hamper this morning. I offered them round the office then put the remainder in the kitchen for people to help themselves. This worked quite well until I went out to make a cup of coffee and, I don’t know how it happened, I ended up with a piece of fudge in my hand. Obviously it didn’t stay in my hand very long but boy was it tasty fudge.
At lunch time I went for a walk to clear my head of visions of throttling the blasted actress. There was no plan, I just started walking. I was wandering around the bottom end of town fairly aimlessly when I saw a shop with a sign that snapped me out of my bad mood instantly, Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries. What a shame it was closed or I might have been tempted to go inside and ask for a miracle right about then, possibly in the form of a mountain of fire on the head of a certain actress.
Back in the office I went through the massive pile of things I had to sort out with Arabella trying to get them in order of importance for tomorrow when she’s due back in the office. Experience told me we wouldn’t get through half of it so I wanted to make sure the really urgent stuff was on the top. Then I started going through my in tray to make sure everything was up to date. Arabella is like a whirlwind when she hits the office so I know I’m not going to have time to look at it later. When my phone rang I was half expecting to hear the ‘famous actress’ on the other end but it was actually Arabella. She’d made it home last night, gone straight to bed and had only just woken up. She sounded exhausted. Typically all her plans have been put into disarray by an urgent meeting tomorrow in London so she won’t be coming in. She’s also a bit worried about getting there because thick snow has fallen overnight where she lives. So tomorrow I’m going to be having my day off and I’m working on Friday so we can go through things over the phone and hopefully get the worst of it sorted out.
At least we did manage to go over a few of the more urgent things, one of them being the ‘famous actress’s’ missing programme. Arabella thought she had a draft of what they discussed last January when she was first booked but she wasn’t sure where. I knew for sure I’d not seen it but promised to go through all the files just in case it was in the office and get back to her if I found it. In the meantime she was going to search her home office. The next two hours saw me searching through every file in the cabinet and every folder on my desk, twice. Nothing. When I called her back to tell her she’d obviously been doing the same thing at her end and had also drawn a blank. The only thing for it was for her to speak to the cruise director on the ship and try to sort it out but, because of time time difference, it would have to wait a few hours.
After that I went to make another cup of coffee and managed to eat two more bits of fudge while I waited for the kettle to boil. That is what you call stress eating folks. That’s also one hundred and three calories more or less. I have to own up and say for the last two days I haven’t logged any food or exercise apart from that fudge. I have no idea how many calories I’ve eaten or earned and it feels quite strange not knowing. It’s not that I’ve decided to stop logging for good, I haven’t, I’ve just been really busy and, by the time I thought about it it was late and I was tired. On Monday and Tuesday I’m pretty sure I did OK, especially yesterday when I did a lot of walking and not a lot of eating. Today might be a different story though. It will be interesting to see what the scales make of my impromptu experiment in Intuitive Eating. One of these days I’m going to stop logging for good, at least I hope so, so this is a good test.
The next call I got was Commando to say he was going to be out and about and would come and pick up my hamper. That was one less thing to worry about at least although it wasn’t easy getting it down in the lift and even harder to get it out of the revolving doors. There was a point when I thought I was stuck and I had visions of the man on reception having to call the fire brigade. That really would have given everyone something to talk about. It was blooming freezing outside waiting for him too. Now my lovely hamper is sitting in the gym waiting for me to find a place for it to live. Most of the really naughty goodies from inside have gone, shared out at work, and apart from three pieces of fudge I didn’t have any of them which has to be a result. It really is a nice box but I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with it. Oh well, that’s one problem I don’t mind having.
Some days certainly do seem to have more issues than smooth patches! I hear you. Now I’m going to have to get over wanting to have fudge after seeing that word in your title hehe 🙂
Sorry about that 🙁