www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDudIT93m_s

Noah and the Whale is yet another party I’m late to.  Nevertheless, I absolutely adore this song, and have been listening to it constantly over the past weeks.  It makes me want to wear cut-off denim shorts, camp on the beach with my friends, grill some burgers on a barbeque and paddle in the sea as the sun goes down.  Awesome.

What are you listening to at the moment?

I was so busy eating cheese I didn’t even realise it was the weekend again.  Go figure!  Also last week, I signed myself up to run a 10K in October, spent an inordinate number of hours on the train, enjoyed a trip to the pub with some old, old friends and bought some bunting to hang in my bedroom.

I must apologise, however (and again), for my lack of posting.  After saying I was back and ready to blog regularly, I promptly disappeared, which is more than a little bit rude.  I blame my friends: ever since I told them my relationship had ended my diary has filled up quicker than my shopping basket does when the “reduced to clear” shelf is full.  This week, I didn’t have time to pause and breathe until it was Friday night, I was so busy eating (mainly cheese) and jigsaw-ing and cinema-going.  These people are wonderful, however, and kind and funny and generous with their time and their ears and their homes.  Whenever I’ve had a dull or a sad moment, one of them has – most of the time unwittingly – done something to change it almost immediately, whether that’s been an invitation to dinner, a silly email or an “I’m baking cakes for you” text (my sister).  I don’t say it nearly enough, but I have some pretty amazing friends, family and colleagues.  Job done.

But I am still here, with my teeny tiny netbook and my wayward, incoherent thoughts, more of which will hopefully be forthcoming next week.  For now, however, because it’s Saturday and because I’ve read some awesome things on the internet recently that I wanted to share, I thought I’d resurrect my ‘something for your coffee break’ series.  Perhaps for one week only.  Make the most of it while you can…

Elise recently posted a list of some of her favourite blog posts of all time.  They were all fantastic, but this one really struck a chord with me.  It’s not going to turn out the way you thought.  I had somehow forgotten just how true those words were, and I’m so glad she reminded me of them.

10 things to do alone that are better than hanging out with that guy again.  Trust me, this is brilliant and funny and not at all self-help-y.  Go read.

My go-to blog of the moment is this one.  I’m constantly writing snippets from it on post-it notes and in my journal.  This list of 101 life lessons is so true:

“Everyone says love hurts, but that’s not true.  Loneliness hurts.  Rejection hurts.  Losing someone hurts.  Envy hurts.  Everyone gets these things confused with love; but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again.”

This post made me laugh this week.  Observations of a first time viewer.  I feel this way about many, many films (including Die Hard, most probably) but I doubt I could ever express it this well.  Via A Safe Mooring.

Adulting is a brilliant blog, full of shrewd yet sassy life advice.  This is just one example of its genius, but I’d advise reading a few to get the jist.

Finally, how to road trip solo, via the ever-awesome Yes and Yes.

This weekend my sister is visiting.  I’m envisaging carrot cake muffins and lots of talk about craft projects, books and baking.  Have a great weekend friends, I hope it’s sunny where you are.

Image above from here.

I’d been fascinated by the idea of green smoothie breakfasts for a loooong time.  It was Rachel who initially got me thinking about them, but it was a truly disgusting hangover I had several weeks back (you know, the “I’m never drinking again, DETOX, DETOX!!!” kind) that actually propelled me into doing something about it.  So one rainy Monday after work, I bought a bog-standard jug blender, some spinach and a few apples and decided to give the whole green smoothie thing a bit of a twirl.

Two months later?  Hello, convert.

Let me tell you, green smoothies = the way.  Reasonably cheap, absurdly easy to make and so unbelievably good for you you could almost indulge in guilt-free cheese and cake nobbling for the whole of the rest of the day.  My favourite smoothie consists of a handful each of spinach and kale, a splash of fresh fruit juice, half a banana and half a grated apple.  But you can also mix it up by adding different kinds of greens or other fruits.  I’ve tried both Swiss chard and romaine lettuce and I’ve also been throwing in the occasional piece of melon or handful of berries.  There’s no end to the combinations of flavour and texture you can achieve, and as long as you add enough solid fruits, or even a dollop of natural yoghurt, a green smoothie can actually keep you full until lunchtime, or at least until half ten/elevenses.

The runaway best thing about green smoothies, however, is that they don’t have to taste like vegetables unless you want them to.  Seriously, I am not particularly enamoured by the thought of drinking liquid spinach in the morning if it actually tastes like liquid spinach.  I am, however, perfectly amenable to drinking liquid spinach if it tastes like a tropical rainforest.  And you’d be amazed at the transformative powers of a splash of pineapple juice and some grated apple – if you drank it blindfolded I swear you’d never guess it was actually a deep, luscious shade of grass.  

After a couple of months worth of green starts, I am rapidly reaching the stage where my morning smoothie is almost as important to me as my morning coffee.  Now that’s got to be progress.

Do you drink green smoothies?  Any recipe ideas to share?

Image above from here.

Running. Seriously this time. After a year’s procrastination, I finally started the Couch to 5K programme which you can download as an app if you belong to the fancy phone brigade, and which you can read about here if you aren’t.

My traditional bugbear when it comes to running is that it always seems to take such a long time. There’s the getting changed, the actual running itself, the showering afterwards… for an activity I’ve never particularly enjoyed doing, it’s always seemed like a bit of a hassle. But if this isn’t the time for things to change, I don’t know when will be. So running it is. Three times a week (gently, with lots of walking breaks and little self-admonition). To assist me in achieving ‘the goal’ which, given my novice level and multiple resolutions to practice the art of being kind to myself, I’ve set at achieving a loping 5K by the end of four weeks, I’ve roped a friend into doing it with me. There’s always safety (and, obviously, the threat of public shame) in numbers.

Eating. Salty mackerel and tuna fish cakes, even saltier parsley pesto (made by my own fair hand – well, I pressed the buttons on the blender) with gnocchi, bruschetta soaked in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, crispy focaccia bread with four kinds of cheese, oven-warm scones with butter and jam, tangy lemon sorbet… I’ve decided, as a rule of thumb, to give excessive alcohol consumption a wide berth while my feelings are all up in the air. A glass of wine (maybe two) is totally acceptable, but I have a horrible feeling that raucous gin guzzling will only really lead to tears, despair and a horrible hangover the following day which, in my current state of feeling, I can’t be bothered having to deal with.

I’m pleased to report, however, that no such restrictions operate in relation to food. In fact, I happen to think that the better I can please my taste buds the better I can please my soul (which is why, this evening, my friends and I met at a particular pub purely because of the quality of its curly fries. The fact that it does a good quiz on a Monday was a secondary consideration. What?!).

Also last week, I bought a gold miniskirt from H&M. I’ve no idea why, but it’s shiny and funky and it looks a bit like tin foil. Do I need another reason? I also upgraded my phone, cried and then laughed over this video about being alone, finished this book, resolved to think less about the future, made poached eggs for the first time, sat down with the Sunday papers and a full coffee pot, watched Clueless, started a new crochet project, enjoyed Sunday afternoon cake at my favourite place ever and decided to start keeping a journal.

What about you?

PS, thank you to everyone who left a comment on, or sent me an email in relation to, my last post. It genuinely does mean a lot to me to know that you guys are there, silently cheering me on from your various corners of the country and, in some cases, the world. While life is undoubtedly going to continue to be hard for a while, I am not for a second allowing myself to forget how much harder it would be if all of the amazing people I know – whether offline or on – were suddenly not there any more. So thank you, so very much.

Image above from here.

So the thing that happened that I wrote about rather cryptically here (for which, apologies) is that I became single again.  I say “again”, but I might as well have written “for the first time”.  With the exception of two very short months in 2008, neither of which I can remember with any great clarity (which I’m sure has at least something to do with alcohol), I have been in either one of two relationships since I was 16.  And before 16, are you really ever single?  My guess is not.  I for one was just a kid.

Let me be the first to admit that this is not a highly original dilemma.  People become single all the time.  Every day.  But I will also say that regardless of that well-known truth, it is pretty gosh darn weird when it happens to you.  When the person you are closest to in the whole world disappears from your life, just like that.  When, whether it’s through your own doing or not, you are all of a sudden faced with the prospect of no longer being part of a couple.  To tell the truth, for the whole of the first week I wandered around feeling like someone had cut my left arm off without telling me.  Off balance, out of kilter, with no idea where the thing I was missing had gone, or how I was to go about adjusting to life without it.

But life itself has a way of doing these things.  A way of shaking us up, often when we need it the most.  So for all it might hurt sometimes, and for all I have caught myself wishing once or twice that the whole messy thing had never happened, I am working hard on coming round to the idea that this is good, this is right, and that my universe is unfolding exactly as it was always meant to.  What the future holds I don’t know, what the past holds I don’t really want to think about.  All I know for sure right now is that in this moment, excepting all others, I actually feel OK.

Which brings me to blogging.  I had a conversation with my Mum the other night, during the course of which she told me that one of the best ways to get through bad things is to keep doing what you love, even if what you love cannot easily be severed from the bad thing itself.  The fact that you love it is enough to see you through.  This blog is one of those things for me.  It has always been mine in the sense that I write it, but its genesis, design and round the edges maintenance are heavily imbued with the influence of the person I am now trying to figure out how to live without.  And up until now, that hasn’t sat particularly well with the way I’ve been feeling.  I have been wondering if I should somehow be behaving or acting differently, whether I should work out a new way of being me to go along with my new relationship status, or whether perhaps I should shave my head, get a tattoo and abandon this little space on the internet.  Anything to put some measure of distance between myself and my pain.

But that’s silly.  I know that’s silly.  I wouldn’t suit a shaved head, I don’t want a tattoo, and the important things about my blog are the writing, the ideas and the sense of community and connection they have fostered.  And that’s all mine.

So here I am, still with hair and ready to blog again, to chat with you lovely people (and may I just say a quick but heartfelt thankyou to everyone who has sent me thoughts or well wishes over the past couple of weeks) and to share a few snippets of my life as it turns a corner.  And with the ‘do what you love’ mantra firmly in mind, I expect much of what you will read over the coming weeks and months to be related in some way to crochet, cycling, books or food.  To set me running in the right direction I ordered 15 balls of the most colourful wool I could find, I bought flowers, I piled my bedside high with fresh (or actually really rather musty) library books and I wrote a long list of post titles about positive, happy things WHICH I WILL WRITE ABOUT REGARDLESS OF HOW I ACTUALLY FEEL.

And with that, I will now officially stop talking about it.  My problems are starting to bore even me, I can’t imagine what it must be like for you lot.

Image above from here.

Life is all of a tumult right now, such that I don’t feel much like writing, or thinking about writing, or doing anything other than clinging to family and friends and waiting out the storm.  So while I attempt to rediscover my misplaced mojo, and just so you know I’m still here, let me share the lyrics to a song I absolutely love, and that speaks to me in a new way every time I listen to it.  Normal service will resume…sometime.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.

The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.  I will dispense this advice now…

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life.  The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.  Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold onto. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths.  Prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you’ll have a trust fund, maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you’re 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen…

Image above from here.

“There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I’m going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.”

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love.

Image above from here.

One unintended consequence of just how fast this year is going is that I hadn’t taken a trip home to visit my family since the Christmas holidays.  So this weekend, with it being Easter and all, I packed a train picnic, a stack of library books and some thermals to wear at Aberdeen train station (the coldest place on earth, in my opinion)…

My family lives in a tiny village on Scotland’s north-east coast.  We moved there when I was 10.  At the time, I was devasted and it took me months to accept that my parents weren’t upping sticks from our previous life just to make mine difficult (they really weren’t!).  Over the years, however, I’ve come to appreciate growing up in a small town miles from “anywhere” as one of the biggest blessings in my life.  My friends and I had boundless freedom compared to some kids growing up in the city, and because we couldn’t just hop on a bus and go to the cinema without serious advance planning, we had to fashion our own entertainment from what was available to us.  So we rode our bikes, we played tennis, we camped in each others’ back gardens and we built huts out of twigs.  These days, when I visit, I can’t swing my overnight bag without a wave of childhood memories flooding my field of vision.  And while 2012 finds me a bona fide city girl, there’s definitely still a lot of small town love in my heart.

But that’s enough of a ramble down memory lane for a Monday morning!  Here’s some of what I got up to this weekend:

• Baking an “oh my but that’s sweet” mint aero traybake with my sister on Friday.  After seeing Zoe’s recipe the other day the thought of white chocolate slathered upon minty green fondant filling layered upon chunky, biscuity base just would not leave my head.  The result?  There’s none left for me to photograph.  My Dad took to calling it Death by Chocolate, which I would say is pretty accurate.  Cut into very, very small squares unless you’re up for an impromptu trip to the moon.
• Playing with four of the tiniest kittens I’ve ever seen (and consequently pondering getting a cat of my own, only to quickly conclude that I’m in no way responsible enough).  But seriously, these little guys were adorable.  They had tiny fluffy heads and the cutest splashes of black, white and ginger marking.  I could have cooed over them all day.
• Reading Wuthering Heights on two long train journeys.  I’ve tried to think of a reasonably eloquent way to describe this book but I can’t.  All I will say is that THIS is how love should be written.  Authors of trashy chick lit should please take note.
• Walking along the beach (above) in the wind and the rain.  The beach at home is one of my favourite places in the world, and it’s particularly special when the weather is bleak and there’s no one else around.  It kind of feels like it’s all mine then.
• Crocheting like a crazy M-F-er.  Remember the wool I wrote about here?  I’ve almost completed its transformation into a blanket.  I had so many wide open windows of time to make it grow over the weekend and my but it’s satisfying to see your own handiwork expand before your very eyes!  My Mum is a die-hard crochet fan these days as well, and we sat for hours this weekend “projecting” together.  Lots of fun.
• Mountain biking around some cliffs with my Dad and brother.  I thought my thirst for cycling was already unquenchable.  It seems not.  This was the most exhilirating fun I’ve had perhaps even since I did this (which I still feel sick looking back at).

What have you been doing this Easter?

Images of Cullen above from Flickr – here and here.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFN1-uqt2WA

Someone reminded me of this the other day and I’ve been laughing over it ever since.  I think it’s the nonplussed ”Well, duh!” look on her face when she explains why all the ass-kicking is necessary.

Hope you’ve all had satisfying Saturdays!  I’ve been playing with some three week-old kittens (and having to fight the urge to shove one in my satchel) and speeding across an empty, windswept beach on my brother’s mountain bike in the fading light.  Now for a post-exertion mug of tea and some crochet.  Perfect.

When I was broke and studying last year I found a plethora of different ways to make a little cash on the side in order to furnish my many addictions (coffee, hummus, second-hand china, coral pink carnations).  I wrote about them here.  One of the things I did was to take part in paid psychology experiments.  The nature and complexity of these oscillated wildly.  One week I’d be playing video games, the next I’d be learning an alien language, the next I’d be wearing a metal headbrace and having the movements of my eyes recorded. 

By and large, this sort of stuff was a lot of fun.  The tasks were entertaining, the people were nice and you could sometimes make a fiver for 20 minutes of playing with children’s toys. 

That said, there was one particular type of experiment that I really, really hated:

Any questionnaire requiring a yes or no answer  

 I know!  It sounds hilariously easy, doesn’t it?  You are presented with a series of questions, you pick answers, you go home, right?  WRONG!  My experience of these types of quiz was always: Rebecca is presented with a series of questions, Rebecca faffs around endlessly debating with herself over the answer, Rebecca ends up taking two hours to complete what should be achievable in fifteen minutes, Rebecca completely wastes the time she could have spent in the coffee shop reading. 

Now in my defence, I did spend five years at law school being programmed to believe that there’s rarely a black or white answer to anything.  There’s also my chronic inability to choose anything, ever.  Nevertheless, these were not happy occasions, and the upshot now is that I’m deeply, deeply reluctant to participate in any kind of form filling exercise that doesn’t come with a handy “other, please give details”-type box where I can vent with abandon about the imprecision of the question and the abundance of variables poised to push my answer in all directions.  Nevertheless, when a colleague forwarded the Myers Briggs personality type indicator to me the other day, curiosity, as well as a shamefully secret love of {cough} horoscopes, prevailed. 
 
The way Myers Briggs works is that you provide yes/no or true/false answers to a series of questions or propositions.  The result is a four-letter code, destined to reveal to you, through the immeasurably powerful medium of the unpronounceable acronym, what your personality is all about.  And as much as I feel I should object in principle to the idea that anyone, anywhere, is capable of being summed up using only four words, it’s actually kind of fun to have a go.
 
My result?  INFJ.  Introverted, iNtuitive, feeling and judging.  That’s right, I’m secretly judging you from within the comfort of my shell, wrapped in a cashmere shawl as I write this.  But working out the acronym isn’t the fun part.  The fun part is Googling your result afterwards and reading all the stuff it throws up about your new-found personality.  What was surprising about this for me, after I’d got over the torment of actually taking the quiz, was just how accurate some of the things I read were.  The highlights, you say?
 
1.  “Can be hard to get to know, since they tend not to share their innermost thoughts or their powerful emotional reactions except with their loved ones”.  Despite the great length at which I write about my own life on this blog, I’m a compulsive asker of questions in person.  This can be fatal when I find myself in conversation with someone who loves nothing more than to talk about themselves (and can we just pause for a moment to appreciate JUST HOW MANY people there are like this in the world?).  The frequent result of these interactions is that I walk away knowing everything and the kitchen sink about my partner, and they walk away knowing absolutely nothing about me.  Depending on how self-aware they are, this could be either a good or a bad thing from their perspective.  It’s definitely a bad thing from mine.  I need to learn to be more open with the details of my life, and to fight my corner just a little when confronted with self-absorption.
 
2.  “Although they are happy working at jobs (such as writing) that require solitude and close attention, [INFJs] do quite well with individuals or groups of people, provided that the personal interactions are not superficial, and that they find some quiet, private time every now and then to recharge their batteries.”  Uh, hello?  I have (gracefully, gently) ended friendships because the interactions have been too superficial.  I get anxious if I have to spend anything more than a weekend in the constant company of other people without opportunity to escape into a book or any activity that doesn’t require me to talk.  I love to write!
 
3.  “INFJs place great importance on having things orderly and systematic in their outer world. They put a lot of energy into identifying the best system for getting things done, and constantly define and re-define the priorities in their lives.” What can I say, other than this is me in all my list-making, systems-adoring, geek your heart out over stationery glory.  Love. 

4.  “Friends or colleagues who have known them for years may find sides emerging which come as a surprise.”  I guess it stands to reason that someone who doesn’t talk about herself much will, when eventually prompted, reveal a few surprises.  Lots of people in my day to day life have no idea that I write this blog, for example.  And I’ve often wondered why it is that I don’t talk about it more.  Am I ashamed of it?  No.  Is it embarrassing?  Not unduly.  Do I not want people to see?  Hello, it’s on the internet! 

My overall assessment of my Myers Briggs result is that there’s at least some meaning behind the fact that I spend so much time asking questions, or that I sometimes avoid people I know in the street, or that I can’t bear to have a social engagement lined up for every night in a given week because it means I can never be alone.  I’m an introvert, guys, and I’m actually fairly proud to admit it.  Who knew?!

Image above from here.