I’ve been busy with work for the past couple of days, so not had time to post (though I’ve managed to read at least some of the posts). I’ve had a lot of work to do, and we had storms a couple of days ago that ripped out the fence along the left side of our garden! Fortunately we get on well with our neighbours, but the whole thing is going to have to be replaced We’ll split the cost 50/50 with next door, and hopefully the contractor can do it in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime the cat has suddenly had his horizons opened up, with the sudden doubling of his garden! He is disabled (he has a condition called cerebellar hypoplasia, often known as wonky legs, which means he can’t jump very high – useful as he can’t reach anything on the kitchen worktops! – and he can’t climb, so he’s safe in our fully fenced/walled back garden, and we don’t let him out of the front. But before anyone goes “ah…poor thing!” he is far from needing those “Ah’s”, He rushes about like a bat out of hell, flies down stairs so fast he nearly goes head over heels (or should that be heels over head?) and drives us mad in the early hours of the morning, prodding and poking to wake us up so he can express the full strength of his affection. Lovely, but not at 4.00am!
However, to the positives!
1) Despite having upped my cals to about 1000 a day I’ve lost almost another two pounds so now down to just over 10 st 12lb.
2) My hair loss I think has finally started to slow – I hesitate to say it’s stopped, but the handfuls are no longer coming away every time I run my fingers through it! Maybe the extra calories are starting to make a difference!
To Marie, firstly, what are you eating more of, to up the fibre but not the carbs? I am trying to keep my net carbs to not more than 30 (though they sometimes go a little above this, but 50 has been the max). It always seems to me that the highest fibre things are pulses…but they’re also high carb, so any advice on this would be welcome.
In answer to your question about turning a hobby into a business, yes, it does sometimes become tedious. I make some things that are very popular, and let out a groan when I need to make yet another batch of them! I could of course not make them any more, but the point of a business is also to pay the bills, so I knuckle down and get them done – doing a large enough batch to put off the re-making for a reasonable amount of time!! But then there are the interesting things too. I recently had a client who is re-creating the Great British Bake Off tent in miniature, so I made a whole batch of pastel coloured workstations – three different colours, and some left handed, some right, plus (for those familiar with the set) the unit along the back with the big illuminated arched window. I am about to start work for another client on a large commercial kitchen set for a model of a French boarding school! It can be very rewarding working on some of the more unusual projects, collaborating with a client – getting inside their head to understand what they are trying to achieve, and enabling them to do it.
I’m glad that everyone seems able to find some positives at the start of this New Year – long may that continue for all of us!
Liz