List #32: The things I wish I could tell the teenage me

List #31: The good things I have done this week

From looking at Ema's list, I think this was meant to be the good things I've done for others this week. Ah well, my list of good things is about things that have been good for me.  Let's call it self-care instead of selfishness!

1. Filled my house with fresh flowers.

2. Read the new issue of Bust magazine.

3. Welcomed a friend from the Netherlands to stay for a few days.

4. Finally seen Boyhood... and coincidentally sat on the same row as an old friend I haven't seen for about a year.

5. Bought some very cool feminist zines in Amsterdam.

6. Watched an amazing thunderstorm in Copenhagen.

7. Sunk into my own bed with relief and thankfulness after six nights away.

8. Made plans to visit my mum.

9. Got my Bloglovin list down from 149 unread posts to only 15.

10. Sat in my sunny backyard to read: seven days into August and I've read six books.  Not bad, eh?

List #30: The things I would like to be remembered for

List #28: My goals for the future

Mmm, this prompt was one is a tad similar to list #13: The things I want to do before I die, although I've tried not to repeat myself too much.  Isn't it funny, when it comes time to make lists like this, how contradictory some of the items are?  Not sure how I'll manage both #9 - 'Be debt free' AND #1 - 'Work less'!  But I can try...

List #26: My life essentials

1. Books.  A house without books is not a home.

2. My boy.  I never want to be the person who's all, "I can't live without my partner," but he's made my life so much better that although I can live without him, I'd really rather not.

3. Sunshine.  And if it's accompanied by warm weather, so much the better.

4. Fresh flowers around the house (which sounds an indulgence, but Aldi are brilliant for flowers on a budget and their lilies last for ages).

5. Time with my family and friends.

6. My cosy bed.  Even better if the alarm's not going off and I can lie in.

7. A large glass of white wine after work on a Friday.  Or a cold pint of cider on a Saturday afternoon.

8. Hugs (especially from my niece).

9. Music.  Current favourites include Tennis, Beach House, Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear: lovely summery harmonies.

10. My iPhone.  Sad, I know, but who could say it's not become an essential?

List #24: The things I'm currently excited about

List #23: My summer to-do list

List # 21: My favourite blogs

 

You might have noticed that I'm not sticking precisely to the #52lists schedule.  Some of the topics I just can't get excited about, and some seem repetitive, so I've got to the point where I'm cherry-picking the ones I want to use and forgetting about the rest.  But I was really excited by this week's prompt, as I've been wanting to give some blog love for a while now.  The 'Blogs I love' tab at the top of the page lists my absolute all-time favourites (amazing to think that I've now met at least half of those inspiring women), so this is my chance to mention some other discoveries of mine.

Nerdy Feminist for razor sharp feminist critiques of the media, especially good on issues around fat acceptance.

A Blog About A Nova for cool links, book reviews, and more.

Eeep I'm A Blogger for lifestyle stuff, with a particular focus in feminism.

Gingerella and Siobhan Claude Van Damme for music, books and random ramblings.

What Hannah Read for book reviews and links.  I recently did a two-view review with Hannah, of Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl.

Lily Doughball for Bristol-based adventures.

Using My Loaf for swoon-worthy mid-century modern interior.

I've just discovered her blog, but I love Miss West End Girl's style and am sure I'll be a long time reader.

I'm always looking for new blogs to follow, so I'd love to hear your recommendations. 

List #19: The things I will do today

1. Wake up with my alarm at 6.20am.  Hit snooze four or five times until I'm almost certain to be late.
2. Hastily wash, get dressed and run out of the door to my (lovely new!) car to drive to work.
3. Eat breakfast and drink a cuppa at my desk, while planning lessons for the day.
4. Teach three Year 9 lessons: two GCSE Controlled Assessment preps for top and bottom set English, and one PSHECE lesson on drugs and alcohol (I always enjoy starting a lesson by saying, "Today we'll be doing drugs").
5. Eat lunch at my desk while finishing my Year 7 marking.
6. Have a mentoring meeting with the PGCE student who's completing his school placement with us.
7. More marking and planning.  I'm currently in the throes of arranging a large event at school, which takes a lot of time and energy.
8. Rush to the hairdressers for my appointment; finally a chance to sit and relax with some trashy magazines and a cup of tea.
9. Home via Tesco.  The Boy is out tonight so it's my chance to cook something non-vegan.
10. Shower, PJs on, One Born Every Minute or Location on the TV (T won't watch them, so I wait until he's out to indulge), and relax before an early night.

List #17: The things I am grateful for

1. If my uber-single, I-don't-need-a-man-or-woman-in-my-life-to-be-happy former self could hear this, they would cringe, but the thing I am most grateful for is The Boy.  We never fail to have fun together, even if all we're doing is the weekly shop.  He calms me when I'm manic and anxious, he makes me snort with laughter, he challenges me and pushes me to be the best I can be.  Because of him, anything seems possible.  I really do count my lucky stars every single morning when I wake up next to him.

2. To my old boss, for fighting to get me the job I now have and love.

3. My lovely house.

4. School holidays.

5. Being close to my family (emotionally if not geographically).

6. My excellent body image, which has been a hard won battle.

7. My mother, for instilling in me a love of books.

8. To whoever invented the following: Earl Grey tea, Aspall cider, honey & pistachio halva, pizza.

9. Having a stable income which affords me the important things in life (see #8).

10. The good health of those close to me.

My goals for 2014: progress

Back in January, the first list of 52 lists was to outline my goals for the year. Now that we're a quarter of the way through the year (eek!  How the hell did that happen?!), I thought it would be a good opportunity to review my progress so far.  And I was pleasantly surprised when I took a look back and realised that I am doing pretty well...

1. Don't worry, be happy. This was my big goal for 2014, and I'm not doing terribly well so far! Two weeks of illness have left me too readily focusing on pain, medication and misery.
Progress: This was always going to be a hard one - partly because it's so abstract, and partly because it's just not in my nature to not worry!  I haven't done all that well so far, partly because my health has been pretty terrible (although it has improved over the past few weeks). Having The Boy around full-time definitely helps me to relax, though.

2. Streamline my email inbox, unsubscribing from the marketing emails that I never read.
Progress: An easily achievable one this, I think I did it straight after making my list.

3. Speak to my tattoo artist about the two new tattoos I've been planning for years.
Progress: Done!  My appointment is booked for April 23rd and I am very excited already.

4. Write in my new Q&A A Day journal every night before bed.
Progress: I sometimes forget for a night or two and have to catch up on a couple of days worth of entries, but I'm completely up to date at the moment and really enjoying having a quiet moment at the end of each day to reflect on the questions.

5. Save up to buy a DSLR or bridge camera and learn how to use it!
Progress: I bought a Nikon bridge camera a couple of weeks ago and have spent the intervening time playing around with it.  I'm really excited at the prospect of having a decent camera (although now I can't blame my tools for the fact my photos are rubbish!) 

6. Take more pictures of myself and The Boy, especially together. It's sad how few photos we have of our time together.
Progress: A strip of photobooth photos from Manchester apart, I haven't managed this yet.

7. Have a proper sit down to look at my finances: my mortgage, credit cards and savings accounts all need to be working for me, so I can save for some big trips in 2015 (family reunion in Canada AND my cousin's wedding in South Africa).
Progress: As much as I hate dealing with finances, I feel a lot better for having sorted all of mine out.  AND I've actually started saving every month, which is a good feeling.

8. Be better about what I eat. It's frustrating to come up against dietary restrictions when I come from a very fat-positive background of, "I can eat what the hell I want!" But I have to be honest with myself: getting my IBS and related conditions under control is so much more important than eating cheeseburgers as a quasi-political statement.
Progress: I'm a lot stricter about what I eat - no more pretending that the cream cake won't make me so sick I'll want to cry - and living with a vegan means I'm eating really good, healthy food most nights.

9. Empty the under-stairs cupboard, which is reaching critical levels of fullness. 
Progress: Completed at February half term - and it wasn't nearly as terrible as I thought it would be. 

10. Read 52 books. I'd initially wanted to aim for 100, but one a week seems like a more realistic goal. I managed 70 last year, so I'm hoping to smash this goal!
Progress: 31 books read so far, so I think 100 is starting to look easily achievable.

List #15: The five tunes that kickstart my soul

That lifting feeling, when it seems as if my entire soul is as light as a feather and I can't wipe the smile off my face, is largely brought on by the combination of music and circumstance.  All I need to feel perfectly happy is the perfect tune + sunshine + good company (sometimes just my own).  So today, list number 15 is a playlist of songs that have kickstarted my soul.  None of them are necessarily my favourite or most cherished songs, but I love to listen to them because they remind me so strongly of those moments when I heard them and everything felt brilliant.

1. After a massive thunderstorm the night before, the sun is shining and we're sitting on the grass at Latitude festival.  I have a pint of cold cider in my hand, I have my friends around me, school broke up a few days ago and the entire summer holiday stretches ahead of me like a promise.  The Mummers are on stage, and when they launch into their lovely, fairground-tinged This Is Heaven (Glow) all I can think is, "Yes, this is heaven."

2. It's a gloriously sunny Saturday morning in spring, and I'm walking into Leicester, on my way to a second date with a guy I've met online.  Lone Wolf  by Eels shuffles onto my iPod and my spirits lift.  Instead of the usual pre-date nerves, I'm singing along with gusto (internally, at least.  I'm not quite that mad that I'd walk along singing aloud).  The choice of song seemed fateful, somehow: a reminder that I was a lone wolf and I liked it that way.  Internet guy was not the one for me, I already suspected, but hearing this song made it feel ok that he wasn't.  I stayed single - a lone wolf - for years and I'm glad I did, because when I met The Boy I was ready for him.

3. I'm standing on a street corner in Portland, Oregon.  My brother and I have spent the day apart - me in an extremely rewarding trawl through the vintage and book stores, Richard with a cultural day at the museum - and I'm waiting for him to come and meet me so we can go to the pub.  The sun is shining, I'm in the best city I've ever visited, and when Fleet Foxes' Grown Ocean starts playing on my iPod, I experience one of those perfect moments, when everything comes together to lift my spirit and put a huge grin on my face.

4. Grizzly Bear are absolutely incredible live, and when I saw them play in Nottingham a couple of years ago their final song, While You Wait For The Others, was one of the most perfect gig moments I've ever experienced, beautiful harmonies washing over me in waves of sound.

5. I didn't 'get' Sigue Ros until I went to Iceland, where suddenly their music made perfect sense.  Se Lest reminds me of watching the eerie, volcanic, strangely beautiful Icelandic countryside pass by the window of the bus.

List #14: The things I want to do before I die

 First image source here, second here

Have you seen the Before I Die walls?  Established by artist Candy Chang, it's now a global art project with over 450 walls in countries around the world.  Asked to write, draw or scrawl on the wall, passersby come up with responses ranging from the mundane to the fantastical.  The combined effect of all of those hopes and dreams is awe-inspiring.

When it came time to make my own list, I found it difficult to write.  Like everyone, I have things I'd like to achieve, but those change as my life changes.  Ask me ten years ago, and I'd probably have said I wanted to have children; now, at 35, it's become clear to me that I'm quite happy never being a mum.  But, after much thought, I did manage to come up with a few ideas, all dreams that I have had for years.  One of the things I love very much about The Boy is that he makes my goals feel achievable rather than pie-in-the-sky.  He encourages me to believe in myself and we talk often about how to make both our dreams come true.  So I have every hope that, with him by my side, I will manage to achieve these...

1. Visit every continent: I'm three down and three to go.
2. See the Northern Lights.  It was disappointing, but not surprising, to miss them when I visited Iceland in 2011. 
3. Study for an MA in Gender Studies.
4. Do something useful in my working life.  I feel that the job I do now is useful and productive, I feel that I am contributing in some small way, and even if I leave teaching I know it's important that whatever career I choose, it serves a larger purpose.
5. Watch more sunrises.

List #13: My spring to-do list

1. Buy a new car and sell my old, breaking down one.

2. Book the appointment for my next tattoo - done yesterday!

3. Buy a new camera.

4. Book flights and trains for our European adventure this summer (this is shaping up to be an expensive spring!)

5. Weed the garden and get it ready for summer with some new bedding plants and pots.

6. Start making practice cakes ahead of my friend's wedding.

7. Frame some of the many pictures currently stored in the spare room.

8. Have another 'Week of Making'.

9. Buy new kitchen worktops and flooring and get them fitted.

10. Catch up on the hideously huge piles of marking at work.

List #12: What's beside my bed

A fortuitous coincidence, this list, as only last week I undertook a makeover of the area next to my bed.  Inspired by Lisa of Mathilde heart Manech's recent overhaul of her bedside table, I decided I'd had enough of the tatty old table and the fact it had become a dumping ground for all manner of rubbish - old receipts, fistfuls of medication due to my recent ill health, toiletries that would have been better off in the bathroom.

My new, improved bedside area (I just moved the much nicer table from the spare room into our room and then tidied away/threw away most of the excess 'stuff'') is cleaner, tidier and makes that dark corner of the bedroom feel so much more spacious and light, and features:

1. Table lamp from Homebase
2. Homemade book hearts in a frame (what do you mean, you'd expect me to have a photograph of The Boy?  Books are my first love, it's only right they should have pride of place)
3. A glass of water
4. Burt's Bees honey & almond hand cream
5. Alarm clock
6. Q&A a day diary
7. Books I'm currently reading (I've just finished the two pictured, their place now taken by The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey)
8. Kindle & iPad
9. Stack of craft books and magazines for browsing
10. And on a floating bookshelf above the table: stack of half-read books and a wooden letter J

List #11: The things I want to make

Image from Oh Gosh

1. This bunting quilt. It's been on my to-make list since I first saw it on Em's blog last May. If anyone of my acquaintance (in possession of a small person or not) would like one as a gift, let me know. I think it would give me the impetus to actually get started if I was making it for someone.

2. Plans for the future.  It's difficult at the moment because, with The Boy finishing his PhD in 18 months time, we have no idea where he will find work once it's completed.  So at the moment there are just lots of hopes and dreams* but no real plans or decisions.

3. Some practice cakes before I embark making my friends' three tier wedding cake this summer.

4. Travel bookings for the summer.  We're hoping to have a train-based adventure: Eurostar to Amsterdam and a couple of days there, followed by a weekend seeing friends in Nijmegen (where The Boy used to live), and finally an overnight train to Copenhagen for a few days exploring Denmark.

5. Pancakes, as we didn't manage to make them last Tuesday (due to being in the pub, ahem).

* Hopes - to both find jobs either in the North of England so we can move to Hebden Bridge, or in the Netherlands.  Dreams - for him to get a job that is so fabulously well-paid that I can afford to go back to university and study for a Masters.

List #10: The ways I could love myself more

1. Be better at taking time to heal.  A five day migraine over the weekend made me realise that sometimes, the only thing that will help with the chronic pain I'm suffering at the moment is cancelling all plans and staying in bed for a day.

2. Listen to the compliments people give me rather than focusing on the negative.

3. Start taking more regular exercise.  Finding time in my day for a walk or a visit to the gym is not always easy, but I know it would help with my current health issues.

4. Spend less time messing about on the internet and more time doing truly enriching things, like reading or baking or sewing.

5. Leave my work at school rather than bringing home the stress of things that have bothered me over the course of a teaching day.

List #9: My best qualities

This was hard.  For everything I thought of (for example, "I'm intelligent") there was a little voice in my head going, "You're not as clever as other people always assume."  It would have been much easier to write about my worst qualities, but isn't that always the way?

1. My dress sense.  I feel like in the past six or seven years I've really figured out what suits me and what I like, and found my own style niche.

2. The ease with which I laugh (which more often than not turns into a cackle or a snort).

3. My adventurous spirit.

4. My independence and ability to spend time alone.

5. My taste in interiors.  I think I have a good eye for putting a room together.

6. My enthusiasm when I'm passionate about something.

List #8: The things that are good about my town

I ended up in Leicester by accident.  Or, to be more precise, I ended up in Leicester because I did sod all work during my A Levels.  My first choice university was Manchester (selected on the basis that every great band played there when they toured).  Leicester was my safety net, my second option.  A city I'd visited twice for open days and hadn't minded the look of.  A city which (at the time) still had a few good venues and therefore featured regularly enough in the NME gig guide for my liking. 

And then I got my grades, and they weren't good, and Manchester University wouldn't take me but the University of Leicester would (that right there should have been a warning sign: I ended up hating my degree here).  And so, at the end of September 1996, we packed up my parents cars and drove down the M1 from Bradford to Leicester, and to my great shame it is here I have pretty much stayed ever since.

Weird, really, because most people who know me would characterise me as being pretty adventurous and open to new experiences.  Just not, it turns out, new places to live (although I have moved sixteen times in my seventeen years in Leicester, so...).

And it's not that I actively dislike Leicester.  That's kind of the problem, really.  It's hard to leave somewhere so comfortable, somewhere that fits me like a boring/cosy/secure/dull* jumper.

All of which is a needlessly long introduction to my list!  And a weird way to introduce the things I love about Leicester, which - although not exactly legion - do very much exist.  I wrote a '10 things to love about Leicester' post last August, which focused more on actual places, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much and, this time around, will talk about the more ephemeral stuff...

1. My familiarity with the place.  The fact that, walking or driving or cycling, I know my way from A to B via X, Y and Z without even thinking.

2. The brilliant bars here.  I may be biased, but I'm convinced that Leicester has cooler, nicer places to drink than many bigger cities.  My favourites are all super chill and indie without being hipster.  If you're visiting Leicester, check out Firebug, The Orange Tree and The Lansdowne as your first ports of call.

3. The ease with which you can get great vegetarian and vegan food here, which is linked in large part to number 4...

4. ... The multi-culturalism of Leicester. 

5. Walking in Bradgate Park - a huge deer park, with actual hills (rare in Leicester), on the outskirts of the city - on a clear, sunny winter's day.

6. The fact that Leicester is a small place - it can feel like everyone under a certain age knows everyone else, by face if not by name.

7. Being called "m'duck" by random shopkeepers.

8. Visiting the amazing independent cinema/digital arts centre, Phoenix Arts.  I never used to go to see films until they reopened the Phoenix in a great new location, complete with cool cafe and bar.  Now we go at least twice a month to see everything from blockbusters like Gravity to more indie fare such as Inside Llewyn Davis. 

9. Having other bloggers nearby: in the past two weeks I have met two whole internet people IRL!  What is coming over me?  The Girl wrote a great post about our day together in Leicester, and then last night I met up with B from Make, Do & Spend at my book group, which was super cool.

* Delete as appropriate to my mood

List #7: My to-do list

The prompt for this week's list was: what's on your to do list at the moment?  Now, I love a to-do list and always use them to keep myself organised.  My trick for a successful to-do list?  Always include at least one thing you have already done, so you can tick it off straight away!  This week, however, I have achieved precisely nothing from my list thus far...

1. Finish my online application to a new 0% balance transfer credit card; it's my top tip for managing existing debt (just don't be tempted to add new spending to it!);
2. Write some long-overdue letters to friends and relations;
3. Get in touch with my old head of department to arrange for him & his wife to come round to dinner;
4. Start tackling the chaos that is the under stairs cupboard;
5. Take my books back to the library;
6. Pack my bags for a weekend at my mum's;
7. Take some photographs for blogposts;
8. Send off my car insurance documents and my remortgage application.
9. Investigate the possible leak above my front room, and if necessary find a plumber to look at it.
10. Tackle at least some of my overdue marking before we break up for half term tomorrow.

Why are to-do lists always so blooming boring?  Sometimes being a grown-up sucks.