A look back over 2010

And so 2010 is drawing to a close. It has been a year of change for me - some changes expected and anticipated (buying a new house and redecorating it) and others a bit more unexpected (needing to buy a new car, having to move in a new direction career-wise after unexpectedly being made redundant just before Christmas). It has also been the first year without my dad and so there have been some tough moments when I have missed him so much. With all the change from this past year, I suspect the beginning of 2011 may be challenging!

Clearing out the junk

Having our own house means that it is now time for Michael and me to clear out the stuff we still have stored elsewhere. We've been spending a morning filling a van with all the stuff I had stored in my sister's loft. I'm quite shocked that there is enough there to require a van to remove it. A quick glance at the contents leaves me wondering just why I wanted to keep some of it in the first place. Old A level textbooks, notes from schooldays right through to university, empty boxes for old computer equipment - so much junk!

Billy Elliot

One of our Christmas presents this year was tickets to see Billy Elliot. I have to admit it wasn’t quite as good as I was expecting given the quality of the film. There were some memorable songs but it lacked depth (maybe I was expecting too much from a musical?) and Mrs Wilkinson’s accent was a bizarre combination of Australian and Geordie and something that wasn’t really either. The dancing was superb though – my favourite moment was when Billy and his older self danced together which was amazingly good. Overall I’d give it eight out of ten – definitely worth seeing.

Backstage annual reunion

Michael and I were both involved in the backstage society when we were at university together and over the last few years, it has become a bit of a tradition to have an annual post-Christmas catch-up at a local Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet. Whilst we see some of our friends from the backstage society regularly, there are a few that we only ever seem to catch up with at this time, so we really look forward to going along and catching up with everyone there. Not to mention all the yummy food which we end up eating far too much of!

Past baggage

Back home again after visiting family for Christmas. Lovely as it is to spend lots of time with the family, it is also nice to be back in our own home again. Now that we’ve got a house, both our families have decided that it is high time we remove all our belongings from various lofts. Which means that we’ve not just travelling back with Christmas presents, we’re taking a lot more stuff home. I think most of it is going to end up going to the charity shop but in the meantime, its back to being surrounded by boxes!

Vegging out in front of the TV

After all the excitement and busyness of Christmas Day itself, Boxing Day tends to provide a chance to completely relax and veg out in front of the TV. There’s no pressure on Boxing Day, no expectation that everything is going to be perfect. Just a chance to switch off for the day and wind down. There’s an unwritten rule in my family that the TV stays switched off for the whole of Christmas Day as it about focusing on people not on what’s on the TV. To be honest, I’ve never really wanted to watch TV on Christmas Day though.

A family Christmas

I love spending Christmas with my family. Even though there is a bit of an empty space now that Dad is no longer here to spend Christmas with us (although we did take a trip to the churchyard to spend a few moments thinking of him there). Dad always loved Christmas so much – family was very important to him and he loved watching the children opening their presents and getting excited about everything. Being able to see Christmas through a child’s eyes again is just one of the many reasons why I love being with my family at this time.

Pre-Christmas catch-ups

I have quite a large family and I always try to make the effort to see as much of my family as possible in the run-up to Christmas. Fortunately all my siblings live within about 40 minutes drive of my mum’s house which means that it is usually possible to go and visit them all on the same day. What makes life much easier though is when half of them decide to descend on my mum’s house on Christmas Eve – which means less time spent travelling about to see people and more time actually being able to see them – perfect!

Where to spend Christmas

The decision about whose family to spend Christmas with has always been fairly straightforward. As I was on-call two Christmases out of three, I couldn’t travel too far away (particularly as I always had babies due) so those Christmases were always spent with Michael’s family who live near to us. If I was on holiday, we spent Christmas with my family – which is what we’re doing this year. Of course, now that I’m about to become self-employed, I can choose whether I’m on-call at Christmas and where to spend it. Maybe next year we’ll just stay in our own house.

Preparing for the festive season

The festive season has felt very busy this year. I’ve been running around trying to get the house in order so that we could finally start inviting friends over, making Christmas cards (seemed like a good idea before I realised I needed to make 160 of them – although am glad I did it now that they’re done!), making Christmas presents. Most of these are things I do every year, but on top of it I’ve also been trying to sort out work for the new year which has made things a little more stressful than they would have been otherwise.

Christmas catch-ups

One of the best things about the run-up to Christmas is that everyone is a little more focused on trying to spend time with friends and family and whilst everyone is a little bit busier on the social front, it seems slightly easier to try and arrange time for meeting up with friends than the rest of the year when the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life seems to be more of a distraction. We have had a fabulous evening catching up with friends whom we hadn’t seen for a while (despite good intentions – life just got in the way!)

Mutual support

The last few days have been so busy with work-related things – getting together with the other midwives who want to carry on working in a similar way to how we’ve all been working for the last few years and contacting clients who are still interested in being cared for by us. I’m so glad that several of my colleagues are still going to be working with me – we can support each other whilst we’re finding our feet (one of my colleagues has been independent for a while so is very good at advising us on what we need to do).

Housewarming

Another flurry of snow over the weekend meant that quite a few friends were unable to make it to our open house/housewarming party but a few people did manage to venture out and spend time with us. It was good to be able to catch up with friends that we hadn’t seen for a while and get to know our next-door neighbours a little better. It’s been so long since we’ve been able to have an evening of inviting friends over and catching up, and so nice to finally be back in a position where we can do that again.

Incentive to unpack

The unpacking process has been rather leisurely and as a result most of the rooms in the house have had piles of boxes in the corner since the day we moved in. Planning an open house/housewarming party definitely provides a much needed incentive to either unpack the boxes or limit the number of areas where unpacked boxes are being stored. The house looks so much better as a result – most of the rooms are now free of boxes and we can shut the door on the areas where the boxes are still waiting and forget about them for a while!

Stop the world...

The events of the last couple of days have resulted in me rushing around like a headless chicken trying to do a million and one things, preparing myself for being self-employed, finding out what I need to do. And then it suddenly dawns on me that Christmas is just a week away and I start rushing around trying to get things ready for Christmas. Too many things in my head, too many tasks on my to-do list, too many balls trying to be juggled all at once. Need to slow down and find some time to relax for a bit...

Redundancy = opportunity

24 hours after being told my job has come to an end, I’ve taken the first steps towards becoming self-employed and working as an independent midwife. It’s scary and exciting all at the same time but there are a few of us that are going to go down this route and several women that we have looked after so far seem interested in having us continue to look after them so it’s a good starting point. I’m planning on registering with the staff bank at my local hospital as well so I’ve got something else as a back-up if needed.

Being a statistic

And so change has pounced and this time it takes the form of redundancy. As of the end of this month, I will be unemployed. I’ll also be unpaid – at least for a while. After having a fabulous job for five years, the lovely company I work for has gone into liquidation and I have become another entry in the unemployment statistics, as have my colleagues. I’m not sure what exactly I’m going to do now – this is one of those times when I have to trust God and pray that something will turn up – hopefully sooner rather than later.

Just when things all felt settled...

It seems that this year’s theme is ‘change’. New house, new car, moving offices, changes at work – things certainly haven’t been predictable this year. Still, I thought by this stage in the year that I was possibly done with change for this year at least and was quite looking forward to having a period of adjusting and settling in. Life, as is so often the case, seems to have other ideas. Change appears to be in the air yet again. What form it will take is as yet unclear but life may be a little topsy-turvy again for a bit.

Starting the Christmas preparations

Christmas preparations have started at last! I’ve been busy making lots of Christmas cards already (thanks to a couple of craft afternoons at church) but have at last made a start on the Christmas shopping (although remembered why I prefer to do my shopping online rather than on the high street – it was exhausting and slightly stressful!) Half of the Christmas presents have now been bought (some have now even been wrapped which makes me feel like I’m being vaguely organised) Plus the Christmas tree is up and decorated so I’m feeling a bit more ready for the festive season.

First Christingle

Another new experience – my first ever Christingle service. I remember doing a Nativity play at church when I was in infant school but I think it was just part of a normal carol service rather than a Christingle service. Michael went to several as a child but our church hasn’t had one for some years and whilst I’ve seen photos of my nieces at their Christingle services, the whole significance of the lighted candle stuck in an orange was completely lost on me. It was a lovely service – so nice to see the little ones at church being really involved.

Sixth wedding of the year

It’s been another busy year for weddings –we’ve now been to six in total this year. Today’s wedding was the final one for 2010 (unless we get a very last minute invite to another one between now and New Year!) – Michael’s university friends Emma and James finally got married – they’ve been together even longer than we have! It was a lovely day – both Emma and James were clearly very happy to be finally tying the knot and Michael and I thoroughly enjoyed the ceilidh in the evening – it was a new dance experience for us and we had great fun.

The rule of work to be done versus time available

Having finally settled down from the office move and worked through the overflowing pile of stuff in my in-tray I thought I could spend the day leisurely working through all the little things that aren’t quite so urgent but need to be done at some point. It doesn’t seem to matter how small the pile of work in my in-tray is though, somehow it seems to magically multiply to take longer than the time I’d planned to spend at the office. Even when I plan to work late. Looks like the little things will have to wait a bit longer...

Salsa party

This year’s work Christmas party was at a salsa bar which seemed like a great idea – Mexican food (turkey and bacon fajitas made a nice change from the usual roast turkey) and a dance class thrown in. I’d done a little bit of salsa before so Michael and I opted for the improvers class which was a little bit too difficult but we just about managed. Overall, it was a fairly nice evening although I could have done without a couple of sweaty, over-sexed and quite frankly unattractive men trying to force their attentions on me on the dance floor.

One year on...

It was a year ago today that my lovely dad sadly passed away. A year has gone by, but I still miss him every day and wish that I could see him again, give him a big hug and tell him how much I love him. What would I give to be able to spend another Christmas with him, listening to his stories about his childhood and days in the Navy? I was so blessed to have had such a wonderful person to be my dad for 30 years – love and miss you this much twice around, Dad.

Start of the party season

The Christmas party season has now officially started – we were out for our church Christmas meal this evening (Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet which is my favourite – I can eat a lot of Chinese if I’m given the opportunity!) and have a couple more Christmas meals coming up over the next week or so. I love the round of parties and meals that happen at this time of year – it’s nice to have a fairly full social calendar (although not too full – also nice to have time out to prepare for the festive season) and spend time with lots of different people.

Getting a new car

It’s now been confirmed that my car will be written off as the damage is too extensive to be worth attempting to repair. Michael has been busy researching cars to help decide what car I should be getting next (not that there’s a great deal of choice when you’re after a small, five-door automatic, not too old and not too expensive) and fortunately we have already managed to find a suitable replacement – a little Renault Clio which we’ll hopefully be getting on Saturday. In the meantime, I’ve been driving a Toyota Prius hire car which feels enormous after my Corsa!

Junior Church Christmas play

I’ve been rehearsing a play with my Junior Church group over the past few weeks which will be shown at the carol service. Unfortunately, none of my group are sure if they can be at the carol service so we’ve videoed today’s performance and will show the video instead. It’s probably just as well as they were ad-libbing a lot (including one rather rude word which slipped out and will have to be edited out so as not to offend certain members of our congregation!) It’s been a fun experience directing the play – now just need to edit the video.

A little bit overwhelmed by it all...

With Christmas approaching (and Christmas shopping still not started) I’m beginning to feel a little overwhelmed by everything. The house is still full of boxes – Michael has to keep reminding me that it has improved since doing a charity shop/tip run – and I’m having moments of wondering whether we will be surrounded by them forever. Which of course, we won’t, but the frustration of not quite knowing where some things are is getting to me at times. As well as all of this, I need to start looking for a new car as mine is about to be written off.

Emerging from the chaos

Having moved house as well as office recently means that I’ve spent quite a lot of time and energy just trying to emerge from the chaos of it all. Fortunately things are beginning to settle down at both locations. The boxes are slowly being unpacked (still quite a lot left though!) and it’s now reached the stage where there is space to move around and I can generally find most things that I need and so start being a bit more productive again. I think it may be some time before things have completely returned to some kind of normality!

Snow pretty...

The snowfall here has not been particularly heavy – most people I know living elsewhere in the country have had quite a lot of snow whereas here there is just a thin layer covering the ground. It still makes me feel less inclined to go out – Saturday’s accident has made me quite nervous about the prospect of having to drive anywhere – sitting inside, snug and warm and looking at how pretty the snow is outside seems to be the best way to enjoy it at the moment! Fortunately I had a day off today so didn’t need to go anywhere anyway.

Countdown to Christmas

So here we are in December already and Christmas is rapidly approaching. Moving house and decorating and writing and everything else that has been happening in my life has meant that I’m feeling quite disorganised this year and haven’t even started the Christmas shopping yet. Still, there are a few shopping days left so I’m not going to panic yet. The approach to Christmas brings back a lot of sad memories for me as it has been almost a year since I lost my wonderful dad and even the snow can’t overcome that to get me in a festive mood.