So I haven't updated in four months (you're not even a little bit surprised, are you?), and my apologies for that, but I will tell you why in a little bit.
So we're in the in-between Christmas and New Year period, and I always find it a bit befuddling as an adult. When we were young we'd be on holiday so there wasn't all this hassle about who in the office in getting what holidays, is there enough cover, "...but they got Christmas off last year" bonanza. Also I find myself in a great quandry with regards to food. Purely because I can't eat any more! I've been stuffed with various selection box chocolates, crisps, cakes, pork roast, turkey, three kinds of potatoes, and on and on and on. How is any person meant to cope?! Although I will take this moment to gloat over having lost 3 lbs over the festive season, but we shall see if all the merriment has caught up with me when I get weighed next week ;-)
In Denmark and Norway we call the in-between bit "romjul", and in the modern Scandi languages "rom" means.. well.. it can mean space (as in a living space, the space between two objects, etc, not "Space... the Final Frontier", astronaut space) or rum. As in the booze made from sugar. I was always a bit confused about what either had to do with anything Christmassy or Yule-y (Space Christmas? Rum Christmas? What's going on?), but when I looked it up I was educated. Well, possibly educated, as the entry is from Wikipedia, but it seems legimate enough! Apparently the word stems from an Old Norse term which means "days that aren't quite as holy" or "half holy". The Christmas traditions in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in particular are quite fascinating as they are a cool blend of various traditions, including an Italian-Catholic one of St Lucia Day on the 13th of December!
And now on TV we get all the various Countdown style shows. Best/Worst Songs, Couples, Breakups, Get Togethers, Events, Fashion, bla bla bla. While I do enjoy the occasional re-cap of cool things past, I get annoyed when they get to events that happened a couple of days before. I know it's the end of the year, but that just literally just happened, I haven't had time to miss it yet! I also feel weird coming in to a new year as suddenly things that happened a few days ago happened "last year", and I get confused. It will take me until March or April 2014 for me to accept that "last Christmas" was Christmas 2013, and not Christmas 2012, hehe. Anyway, before we move on, a shot of THIS year's Christmas tree:
This year's beast was a Scottish Fraser Fir, and it was also slightly crooked, but we loved it anyway! I'm not a massive fan of artificial lights, mostly because it seems like too much hassle, so I opted for illuminating the room via other means, hehe.
Similar to the End-of-Year Countdowns are the Annual Letter to Tell Everyone How We've Been. There is a lot of hate against those letters, but I rather like them. In an ever globalised world it's nice to get a letter that sums up a person or a family's hightlights of the year. It makes a change from just "liking" each others Facebooks statuses and sending each other Candy Crush requests (don't get me wrong, I like to "like" AND candy crush, request all you want! ^.^). My 2013 has been good, and hopefully the blog posts up untill now have reflected that! In August, shortly after my last post, a huge thing happened in my life, a milestone for a contemporary couple, Man of the House (MotH) and I bought our first house together! And subsequently discovered the costs of new flooring, and just how shattered a body can get after painting a whole room three times. I still get weird moments when I'm walking from one room to the next where I think "this is MINE, I can do what I want, I could... I could.. graffiti the hallway! If I wanted to, which I don't, but still. MINE!" - And let me tell you, after a LIFETIME so far of renting... being able to swing a hammer without having to worry about a landlord getting miffed is amazing.
Later, in November, some of my best friends came to visit me, all at once! I have known these girls for 9 - 10 years and even though I don't get to see them as much as I'd like, I have a great time every time I *do* see them.
I also got to catch up with some of my family earlier this year in June, which was also lovely. This is the hard part about being a supposedly "international" person. A lot of people think that maybe my type is selfish, or we don't *want* to be close to our families. While it is true that I maybe don't want us all to live on the same street, I genuinely do wish there was a way for us to be closer, geographically. But life doesn't always work that way so I try the best that I can to visit. It doesn't help that my parents + brothers and the rest of my family are living in two different countries either! Hehe.
Health wise it's been a bit turbulent, for myself and family members. While I won't divulge family details here, I'm not so shy about myself. I've had high blood pressure for years and this year I finally decided to take the bull by the horns and start taking my medication properly. High blood pressure is weird because you don't feel it (at least I don't). There's no noticable difference between taking the pills and not taking the pills (apart from when using a blood pressure monitor, obviously), so if you're like me and are fed up of tablets, it's all too easy to just.. forget.. for a long time... But no more. Apart from actually taking my pills, I have also lost about 39 lbs since September, which is around 17 kg. I'm somewhere between ⅓ and ½ of the way to an initial target weight, but every kilo helps, hell even a half kilo helps.
While I was at the Doctor's getting slightly scolded for being bad, he showed me the results of some blood tests I had had taken the week before. They showed low iron, which made him order another test, which came back positive, which resulted in me having a camera shoved down my throat. I had two choices: Get a numbing throat spray or sedation, which will drug you in to forgetful co-operation. I chose the throat spray, who needs sedation, eh? For the love of Sonny Jesus, choose sedation! The throat spray made me feel as if my throat was tightening and I couldn't breathe (even though I could), and they don't tell you that numbing your throat is not the same as telling your Gag Reflex to stop working. It works just fine, and was ever so unhappy at this camera tube getting in the way. So I lay there on my side, biting down on a plastic gag, crying, gagging, a total slave to uncontrollable reflexes my body has used since the dawn of time to survive. I felt VERY sorry for myself and would not go for another unless my life depended on it. The end result? I have Coeliac's Disease. "Oh Goody" I thought, "another thing to add to my list!". In brief, Coeliac's Disease is an scarily common ailment which causes the body to attack and damage the stomach lining and villi of the small intestines when a person eats anything containing gluten. So, no more cakes, breads, pizzas, etc. It's not an allergy or intolerance, but an auto-immune disease which can lead to malabsorbtion related ailments such as low iron and osteoporosis. Apparently I have a mild form, but there was still sign of damage done already. I've joined the Coeliac UK organisation and will be going gluten free as of 1 January 2014. It does make me worry though. This is the 2nd auto-immune disease I've had in my life, and I'm being tested for a third around March 2014. Does my body really hate itself that much? Clearly I need to sit down with myself and have a talk about how I'm actually ok! :-)
Ugh, what a downer Miss Sophie, lighten up! :-)
Yes, indeed! I am genuinely looking forward to 2014, to all the old and all the new. To the birthdays and anniversaries and babies and Easter and Summer and Halloween and right back up to Christmas. I am looking forward to planting stuff in MY garden (yes, I have a garden, yes I'm going to join the grow-your-own brigade, yes it's going to be messy!), to making this house my own one shelf at a time, seeing my friends and family, all that good stuff.
One of the things MotH and I did recently was visit the new Hydro venue which has just been built in Glasgow. They hosted a Fantasia - Live in Concert Event, featuring clips from Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 with a musical accompaniment by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. Anyone who knows me even a little will know how excited I am about Fantasia, so I *had* to see this. MotH purchased tickets for us as a present to me, which was very kind. I managed to get one shot on my phone during the intermission:
Music has always hit me right in the most tender parts of my brain and feelings, tears welled forward for some songs, other times I was grinning like a mad person sharing a really happy memory with an old friend. For some songs I was so excited I had to claw MotH in the knee to stop from bouncing on my chair like a small child. But for more familiar pieces I found myself looking at the conductor. I think conductors are awesome (musical conductors more than train conductors, really), I love how they love the music, and if I could live my life over, THAT is the job I would want.
I... might have to go watch Fantasia again... So... Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu and so on. I hope everyone has had a nice holiday time and that you have a lovely New Year's Eve. I will be back in 2014 with more stories, I am sure! :-)
