January 2019 is no more. Welcome February. I’m recalibrating the New Year to start again. The days are getting longer, albeit colder, people are drinking again and my 25th wedding anniversary in Tenerife is just a few weeks away. And hopefully I can put the stress of the last couple of weeks behind me.

So an update. After a week and a half of failing to speak to anyone in the co-op about redemption of my father-in-law’s funeral plan I hit the nuclear button. Twitter. Immediately they were over me like a rash with the information I needed. We can now move forward. Social media does have its uses.
My assessor for the course I’m doing was able to open my recording by using Chrome instead of Internet Explorer. Technology can be so frustrating. 

So things were little brighter until something happened to a family member which was devastating for them and left me shocked and tearful. It is not for me to recount the event but I may be able to do in a future blog. All I can say is that social media can be evil.

But not everything has been bleak.

I went on a spa day at the start of the week with my school friends to continue our 60th celebrations. Except that the hotel did not have a spa. They blamed misrepresentation by Travel Zoo. So a little bizarre to have a spa day without a spa. They did have a treatment centre so we were still able to have the massages and facials that we booked. And we did have a lovely day. Drinking coffee and chatting, eating lunch and chatting, drinking wine and chatting and finally a cream tea. And chatting. Plus due to the negotiation skills of my friend, Christine, we got our money back which went straight into the coffers for our next celebration.

I then went straight to dinner with a couple of midwives that I use to work with. One I hadn’t seen for over twenty years. It was amazing. We laughed so much mostly about the things we got up to as midwives thirty years ago. They were very good times.

So has the experience of the last two weeks had any impact on my health and fitness.

It is important to note that whilst my eating and drinking was a bit chaotic my training remained fairly stable. It is now a non-negotiable part of my life. And, of course, it does have a positive impact on stress.

I have lost weight. Not much. But my body fat percentage has gone up. And I can see where the fat has accumulated. And the callipers backed me up. The stress hormone cortisol has yet further delayed the attainment of washboard abs. And I have a beach body to get ready for my 25th wedding anniversary so I need to get my stress levels under control.

Finally, I did speak to my personal trainer about the standards that my gym has introduced. Unfortunately for her, and before I got round to mentioning the standards,  I chose to have a meltdown just as she was applying the calipers to my body fat. The events of the last two weeks had caught up with me. But one long chat later I was feeling far more positive. She believes I can reach the gold standard. She is either completely deluded or after being my trainer for five years she understands more than me  what I’m capable of. I’m hoping for the latter. And you never know. I may one day be a British Champion like my brother.

So things are a little brighter. I’m hoping that normal service is being resumed.