For the last few weeks, I’ve been saying that I can’t wait for 2014 to end because it has been the worst year. I take that all back.
While it has been a difficult year, after looking back, it has been a year filled with amazing things: I went home to Manila twice; with my Abba’s amazing recovery, I have seen what I believe is a miracle; I am so very thankful for the support of family and friends (especially the friends I have made here), because your faith, optimism and positivity (and the occasional “it’s okay to go and cry”) has buoyed us and carried us through the difficult months; and I even managed to get myself on TV (for a total of 2 nanoseconds!)!
I am thankful for all the lessons I learned in 2014. Because while it has been challenging, I learned a lot about myself, my faith has grown, my Abba is much, much better, my family is stronger together and we know that we truly love each other and I have learned that I am made of sterner stuff after all. I know that I am truly, truly blessed.
I can’t wait to find out what 2015 will bring! 🙂
Happy New Year everyone! May you all be so very, very blessed! 🙂
P.S. Here’s a quick-fire list of my blogging goals for 2014: blog more, bake more so I can blog more, cook more so I can blog more, take more photos and post them on the blog…yes, the goal is to blog more!!!
I’ve been telling myself that I need to blog more often, more regularly. That I need to add more content to my blog.
I have this amazing knack of biting off more than I can chew on a regular basis because I have this (almost masochistic) need to push myself and stretch my boundaries. There are days when I am exhilarated by the challenges I put myself through (I was probably a circus animal of some sort in a previous life because I seem to enjoy jumping through hoops of various heights and sizes); but there are days when I just get completely overwhelmed and I wonder why I started the whole exercise! I usually bang my head of a figurative wall and ask myself what I was thinking!
But blogging is important to me, and I really miss blogging regularly (sometimes mindlessly, and let me tell you, my verbal diarrhea is sometimes not the most pleasant!). I’ve been moaning that I haven’t been blogging much. So, in the interest of developing my writing (an erstwhile goal), I am challenging myself to do BOTHBlogging 101 and Photo 101. I wanted to join NaBloPoMo but I was afraid I’d miss the prompts! I have, yet again, challenged myself to do the impossible. A blog entry AND a photo post every day for a month! Ha! But, come to think of it, I already do Fat Mum Slim‘s photo a day challenge and manage to post a photo a day on Instagram most days. This is just doing that, on a far bigger scale. I spend so much time online anyway that I think it’s just spending a bit more time on my WordPress tab than being nosy on Facebook and reading posts on Twitter (also a “being nosy” exercise).
The dressings have come off today. Well, I took them off today. I took off the dressing and cleaned off the caked blood.
I won’t post a photo of the wound and the stitches because that would be slightly morbid and very macabre. But the wound site looks good. It looks like it’s healing well and there seems to be, knock on wood, no signs of infection.
And now I am going to attempt something I have no way of knowing whether or not I can accomplish: ironing and all the work that goes with it (getting the iron out of the cupboard is going to be a particular challenge!).
I have stopped taking pain killers for the hand and although there is pain still, at least, the pain isn’t masked by pain killers now. So in effect, it is now “real” pain.
I’m typing as normally as I can today to sort of acclimatise my hand to the kind of thing I’ll be subjecting it to soon. I find that there is pain when I use my pinky, ring and index finger (so yes, mostly all my fingers!). The pain is mostly in the area where the surgery was done. It is my goal today to get an appointment with the doctor so the hand can be looked at and I can reassure myself that I won’t be doing it any damage by going back to work a week after the surgery.
One of the lovely ladies at work has very kindly (and in a way that only a mum can) told me to stay put for the entire time that I’ve been signed off because I mustn’t do my hand any undue damage. I do realise though that I need to be patient with myself and that I need to give myself time to heal properly.
That being said, though, I am determined to go back to work this week. Being left alone with just daytime TV and my thoughts can, sometimes, not be very good!
I love flowers! Every time I walk past a flower stall, I walk away with a smile. Flowers are the best cheer me uppers ever.
I got flowers today from my colleagues at work. I feel very appreciated and the flowers have cheered me up a lot. I have been wandering around the flat like a lost soul with a thumping headache and a very sore, very painful hand. Getting the flowers helped and am smiling again 🙂
I had the carpal tunnel decompression surgery yesterday. I had the procedure done on my right hand over two years ago and it’s helped the symptoms on that hand. I am hopeful that the symptoms on my left hand are helped by the surgery as well.
I am desperate to get my hand back up to working properly so I am attempting to use it as normally as I would have. Everything is sore and movement is slow. But I suppose that is to be expected! I do get frustrated because I don’t remember my right hand being this sore when I had it done then! I think what I keep forgetting is that the procedure was only done yesterday! Duh!
My mantra today? One day at a time and slowly but surely!
Out of the blue over a month ago, I got asked if I wanted to be on the pilot of the after show of what is quite possibly my favourite TV show to date: the Great British Bake Off (silent scream – yes it still affects me that way!). For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Great British Bake Off (GBBO), which is now in its fifth season, is a reality TV show competition for bakers. There are 12 bakers and each week they have a theme and they bake a signature bake, a technical bake and a show stopper and each week someone is awarded star baker and someone bakes their last bake. At the end of 12 weeks (and 36 bakes) you have the winner of the Great British Bake Off. I credit GBBO for the resurgence in my drive to bake better.
GBBO was such a hit that the bigwigs at the BBC thought it was necessary to move it from BBC2 to BBC1. They also thought it would be good to raise the profile further by creating a post-show show, ala The Apprentice: You’re Fired. I thought it was an excellent idea. The more Bake Off the merrier, I say!
I had thought that that phone call was the end of it. I couldn’t do the shoot of the pilot and I thought I’d lost my chance to appear on the GBBO aftershow. But I got a call two weeks ago asking if I wanted to be part of the next episode of Extra Slice. Of course I did and of course I said yes (of course!!!)! The brief was to bring cookies and bring cookies I did! I brought Chinese almond cookies.
I so wanted to tell the world and his wife about the impending TV appearance but I had to sit on my hands and bite my tongue. Apart from everything being hush-hush and secret, I wasn’t even sure I’d get to see myself on camera. Also, it had a lot to do with the confidentiality agreement that I signed before we went down to shoot the episode. It was the closest I was going to get to the Bake Off (for the meantime!) and I was determined NOT to mess it up.
The day started off with a lot of rain and me and my curly hair! Ha! But nothing, even torrential rain (which it wasn’t really. Everything was just a little gray that Sunday), could dampen my excitement. I was going to be able to watch the next episode of my favourite TV show ever (ahead of most people) and I was going to get to see one of my favourite ladies of comedy for the very first time, in person! Jo Brand hosts An Extra Slice! Yay!
It wasn’t as if I didn’t know what TV production was like. I’d been to a few sets in my time (mostly school field trips) but I was unabashedly starstruck. Mostly because it was GBBO. It was good getting to chat to people who loved the show as much as I did and who loved baking as much as I did! Being in the ITV Studios was part of the excitement. I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t take as many photos as I could! D’oh and the accompanying face slap!
You tweet it, it’s supposed to give you free orange juice . Didn’t work though!
While it wasn’t the GBBO baking tent, it was close enough. There’s something to be said about GBBO magic. There was a massive bonus though: Lisa Faulkner and Monica Galetti were two-thirds of the celebrity trio that joined Jo Brand. I love Lisa Faulkner from when she cooked her way into winning MasterChef and while Monica Galetti scares me, she’s quite an amazing chef and I am a fan! Charlie Baker rounded of the three and let me just say that he has lost a massive amount of weight from when he danced into winning Let’s Dance for Comic Relief!
It took about 3 hours to shoot the 30-minute TV show and I got home at nearly midnight. Was I bothered? Nope. Absolutely not. The three hours were filled with a lot of aughter and amazing entertainment. The guys at Love Production do an amazing job and the finished product is amazing (especially since I saw myself on telly — all of the two nano seconds! Ha!)! The experience of waiting around for everything to start wasn’t so bad either because getting a chance to chat to people, see what their bakes were, get inspired by other people’s creativity is something you can’t buy! Even talking about the experience now makes me smile.
I hope they call me again. I want to get a chance to bake a heck of a showstopper! But if I don’t get a call back, I’ll still look back on the whole experience with a huge smile. It was amazing. VERY.
I can’t upload the video because my account needs to be upgraded before I’m able to do that (I probably should have uploaded it onto YouTube. But you can view a bit o it on my Instagram account, if you want to! Just click here.
I am thinking of a redesign of the blog. But I am slightly torn because I love how it looks at the moment. I may have to change the theme but keep the colours.
But everything right now is just a thought and everything is still on a drawing board.
It takes me ages to get ready everyday. I like to take my time with my morning ablutions. Although that being said, I think I should streamline my morning routine so that I don’t necessarily have to wake up too early in the morning. Because I think I may benefit from a few more minutes in bed!
I started thinking about my morning routine when I read Emma Gannon’s blog entry called No, I Really Did Wake Up Like This. I copied off the first few words of my comment on her blog. There are probably 3 things that I need to be sure of before I go out the door (apart from my well-planned handbag – you know, the essentials: purse, phone, keys, headphones and kindle): straightened and neat hair, a non-shiny face, and eyeliner. This is my version of low maintenance. I very rarely go out the door without making sure those three things are sorted.
But before I get to the door, before I leave my bedroom I need to have done the following: injected Byetta (I am a Type 2 Diabetic, in case you missed it – wouldn’t blame you as this blog is filled with food related posts!), drank my Gliclazide, washed my hair, blow-dried and straightened my hair, moisturised, moisturised, moisturised, put my face on (mostly the eyeliner) and spritzed on my scent of choice (it is currently Escale À Portofino by Dior). If I don’t get my morning routine done, I feel out of sorts. There’s something about starting the day the way you’ve planned it. Sometimes I wonder if I dawdle too much or if there’s a more efficient way of getting ready.
Call it bizarre but it’s my armor from a Murphy’s Law day.
You know those days when everything is okay but you feel horribly horrrible? The sun was shining and it wasn’t too hot but I woke up this morning with a head that felt like it was meant to be on an elephant, my nose was running like it was meant to be a sprinter at the Commonwealth Games and my eyes were streaming like…well, I can’t really think of an analogy for streaming.
I drank hayfever meds and I took a couple of paracetamol tablet and went out with Alan because he wanted to get mango purée because I think he wanted mango lassi today. I didn’t say anything about my head but I did mention my hayfever to him.
It has made me horribly cranky today. I think it’s safe to say I’ve been acting like a brat an entire day. But I must say, it would’ve been nice to be pampered today and spoiled rotten. But I wasn’t.
