Monthly Archives: May 2016
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Day 16 of Project Happiness – Kindness
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Status
- Meditate for 2 minutes –
- Write about something positive for 20 minutes –
- 5 random acts of kindness per week – 0/5
- Take 3 x 30 minute walks per week – 2/3
- Unnecessary items bought today – 0
- Total car miles saved – 30
A non-de-script day today. The most positive thing being dinner with the family, and then a lovely walk with Mr EN after dinner. After a day full of persistent rain, it was actually a very nice evening, with a gorgeous pink sunset to admire as we went.
I’ve been a bit bothered by the lack of any random acts of kindess to report, so had a bit of a google, and the first thing I found was this wonderful site; https://www.randomactsofkindness.org/ It has a wealth of great resources, but one of the best for me is their calendar, which has one random act of kindness per day. It is a bit late now for me to carry out todays’; ‘Take time to visit with a family member you don’t often see’, but I’m definitely up for tomorrow’s; “Compliment a friend” 🙂 Having read through some of the suggestions, I realise that actually I’ve been doing quite a few of these without realising it. I will be checking in with it regularly from now on for ideas on what to do.
The website also has some great quotes, one of my favourites is this ;
“When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be.”
Thomas S. Monson
I think this is incredibly important to realise, especially with children. If you keep telling people your child is shy, that is what your child will be. It took me a while to realise this, but it’s made such a difference to our lives.
Vegan diet – Almost a success!
- Breakfast – Toast with vegan spread and Marmite
- Snack – Banana
- Lunch – Sarnies with veggie spread (which reminded me forcibly of cat food) and lettuce
- Snack – Vegan banana cup cake
- Dinner – Veggie sausage, mash (I assume with normal milk, Mr EN made it and I was too tired to ask/protest) and beans.
Managed to stick to water whilst in different office too, so all drinks vegan too.
EN
Day 15 of Project Happiness – Sleep!
Status
- Meditate for 2 minutes –
- Write about something positive for 20 minutes –
- 5 random acts of kindness per week – 0/5 😦
- Take 3 x 30 minute walks per week – 1/3
- Unnecessary items bought today – 0
- Total car miles saved – 30
I am definitely operating on my reserves atm. There has definitely not been enough sleeping happening lately, due to just the amount of stuff I have been trying to fit in one day. Therefore, this will be brief.
My positives for today have been :
Vegan Banana and walnut Muffins (from yesterday nights’ bake off session)
Turned out goooood!
Very bready, but to be expected given my flour mix. Am definitely going to try them again, will use normal wholewheat flour next time instead of the bread flour, and will do more with walnuts next time (only did a few this time as mini EN isn’t keen) as I think they really finish them off nicely. They are just fantastic with a cup of tea, and I love the indulgent dark chocolate pieces in them. Definitely a keeper recipe 🙂
A wonderful dinner cooked by Mr EN. I really do owe him atm.
The children doing well in their GCSE’s so far. Fingers crossed!
A positive health check
Had a health check done by Lloyds pharmacy for my life insurance points. They confirmed I am a non-smoker, I have low blood sugar levels (is that to be expected given I try to avoid fructose?), low blood pressure, low BMI (18), but high cholesterol. We discussed diet and she thought trying to move towards a vegan diet would help with the cholesterol, as I did have rather a penchant for cheese before, and would indulge at least once a day, used butter every single day, and used cream in LOTS of my cooking. Their computer suggested I might consider trying to accumulate more muscle mass to help with putting on weight, but as I’m already fairly well off in that department for a female of my stature, just through being active with horses and karate. I don’t think I’ll be taking their advice, lest I turn into something like this!
(Attempted) vegan diet today :
- Breakfast – Baked beans on homemade vegan bread, vegan spread/.
- Snack – Banana and grapes.
- Lunch – Eggplant soba noodles from Eat like you give a f*ck
- Snack – Vegan banana and walnut cupcake
- Snack #3 – Bread and butter
- Dinner – Pasta with salmon, chilli pesto, spinach, and sun dried tomatos with french bread and vegan spread. Heavenly.
April 3rd month in a row to break global temperature records.
Day 14 of Project Happiness -Baking
Status
- Meditate for 2 minutes –
- Write about something positive for 20 minutes –
- 5 random acts of kindness per week – 0/5
- Take 3 x 30 minute walks per week – 1/3
- Unnecessary items bought today – 0
- Total car miles saved – 30 (10 today)
A lovely day again today. Very pleased to be out on the bike – in shorts no less! Great easy ride in, and then headed back to the yard after work for youngest EN to have a ride on the pony, and I did some clicker training with my mare who is still lame. She loves having something fun to do like this, and it’s great watching her match her movements to mine, following me around the school. I read somewhere that activities like this can be a form of mindfulness in itself, because it’s so all encompassing. I certainly find it during riding, but today working with her and understanding what she was making of it all I found the same thing. The half hour passed in a flash 🙂
I have worked on my ikigai after my last post, and think I have it sussed. Although climate change is a really important issue to me, this is definitely what gets me up in the morning.
Tonight has been busy with various child related activities, but I am currently sat here writing this, waiting for my vegan banana muffins to rise. I’m very intrigued to see how these turn out as the ingredients are fairly straight forwards. However, I will definitely have to be more prepared in future as they take 1hr45m to prove(!) I’m pretty knackered as it is, so I hope I stay awake for long enough!
Of course, I had to make a few changes. I used dextrose instead of organic cane sugar, and used 3 tablespoons of rice malt syrup instead of brown sugar. Being in the UK I also have no idea what pastry flour is. So instead I’ve used 2 tablespoons of cornflour, 3/4 cup of wholewheat bread flour, and 3/4 cup self raising flour. I’ve noticed that they state a teaspoon of baking powder, but I can’t find anywhere in the recipe where it’s used. Therefore, unfortunately my cakes don’t have any in. Fingers crossed they turn out well, otherwise mini EN is going to be very disappointed as she loves the usual banana muffins I make and looked rather dubious at the thought of vegan ones!
Vegan diet today :
- Breakfast – Homemade vegan bread, vegan spread, marmite.
- Snack – Slice of bread and butter
- Lunch – Eggplant soba noodles from Eat like you give a f*ck
- Snack – Flapjack
- Dinner – Fish, chips, beans.
EN
Day 13 of Project Happiness – Ikigai
Status
- Meditate for 2 minutes –
- Write about something positive for 20 minutes –
- 5 random acts of kindness per week – 2/5
- Take 3 x 30 minute walks per week – 0/3
- Unnecessary items bought today – 0
- Total car miles saved – 20
Very interesting day today. Fortunately after a night of trying various inventive ways to get Mr EN to stop snoring, I did get a bit of a lie in. Then it was straight down the yard to wash and polish the pony so he looked beautiful for his visitors. The little girl with cancer was a bit too scared of him (he is very big in comparison to a poorly 4 year old!) so didn’t ride on him, but a family member with cerebral palsy also came along, and she was very pleased to be able to have a ride on him 🙂
I also took eldest EN sprog for a driving lesson. I have to stay with her during the lesson, so took the opportunity to read some more of The Happiness Equation. That was definitely time well spent. It had some really interesting observations on why it is a good idea to keep working, and why retirement is bad. One quote which particularly resonated with me was as follows :
Never retire. Your brain needs exercise or it will atrophy”
James Watson. Nobel laureate.
It states that retirement is a relatively new concept, invented by the Germans, and 65 was just an arbitrary age, picked because it was very close to the expected age of death. It has however persisted though the ages, and been adopted throughout the world. It makes some interesting points re the cost of supporting people to do nothing for the last what can now be 16 years if you take the average UK age of death which is 81, as opposed to the 2 or 3 anticipated when the plan was originally put in place. With the populations rate increasing consistently the cost burden of this must be weighty.
In October I will be visiting Japan for a couple of weeks to study karate, Japanese Sword, and do some sight seeing. I will also be visiting Okinawa for some extra karate study, so I was particularly interested in the book’s mention of this country, and the fact that they don’t have a concept of retirement, so much so that they don’t even have a word for it. It is a well known fact that the Okinawa people are long lived, according to the author Neil Pasricha, they live 7 years longer than Americans, and “have the longest disability free life expectancy on Earth.” Some put this down to their diet (Purple Sweet Potatos!) but Pasricha suggests that it is more their outlook on life, and how they live their life which is the cause.
One thing which he picks up on is the Ikigai (pronounced Icky Guy). He explains that it means “the reason you wake up in the morning”, “the thing that drives you the most”. He goes on to explain that he has adopted this mantra for himself and his wife, having an “Ikigai card” which they keep on their bedside table. This seems like a pretty cool idea to me, so I thought I’d do one also. I will post it later once I’ve refined it.
The other theme which stood out to me, was the concept of enough, which again is spoken about a lot in “Your money or your life”. A quote which Pasricha used is from Alice’s Adventure is Wonderland which I love!
I love how he illustrates how lucky we are to be where we are today; on the only planet which is capable of sustaining life, in a multitude of galaxy’s, each of which contains hundreds of thousands of stars. And if you’re reading this, then you are probably one of the wealthiest people in the world. An excerpt from the book;
The average world income is five thousand dollars. Are you higher than that? Then you’re in the top 50%. And if you’re higher than fifty thousand dollars you’re in the top 0.5%. Do you need more than 99.5% of people alive? You either have the money to buy this book or you have the time to read it. Either way, you have it good!
You already have more than almost everybody on the planet.
On your very worst days, you have to push your negative thoughts. You have to take a step back. You have to remember the lottery.
Because you’ve already won.
-Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation
Now if that’s not a positive thought for the day I don’t know what is. It certainly clarifies a lot for me.
I’m now off to get ready for bed so I’m ready for my day of work tomorrow. It’s not work that I plan to be doing for the rest of my life. But it is interesting, stimulating, fits round my current family priorities, and helps me with my current goals. I still have my plan to pay off my mortgage and become financially independent. But I have no plan to retire. Instead I have dreams of all of the things I want to do when I have the time. I will be able to choose my work, and do it on my terms. Which ties in nicely with the observations regarding work fulfilment in “Your money or your life”.
EN
Day 12 of Project Happiness – Super Saturday!
Status
- Meditate for 2 minutes –
- Write about something positive for 20 minutes –
- 5 random acts of kindness per week – 2/5
- Take 3 x 30 minute walks per week – 0/3
- Unnecessary items bought today – 0
- Total car miles saved – 20
Happiness is :
- 2 hours of karate, including some sparring, some bo work and a run through of the katas. Awesome way to spend a Saturday morning!
- An afternoon in the garden planting. Some of it I think isn’t likely to grow as I’ a bit late with it due to just being so crazy busy, but thought it worth a try. Also relocated my (plastic) greenhouse to a better location which I’m hoping will help. Today I’ve sown :
- Peas (2 varieties)
- Tomatos (3 varieties)
- Cabbages
- Cauliflower
- Spinnach
- Sweet Peppers
- Jalepeno Peppers
- Hot peppers
- More mint
- Carrots
- Celery
- Being bought flowers by my gorgeous middle EN sprog, “just because” 🙂 🙂 🙂
- Going for a drink in the sun with my EN on the way to doing the ponies.
- Family games night.
What a super day. Even being punched very hard in the nose by a blackbelt (luckily with gloves on) who doesn’t understand the concept of taking turns, and whacking myself in the knee with the bo, hasn’t taken the shine off of it.
With regards to the walking, although I haven’t *been* on any specific 30 minute walks, it’s rare that I do under 10,000 steps a day, so generally do around 5 miles or so on a normal day. However, I do want to get out on some more walks with Mr EN.
Vegan diet was a mixed bunch today :
- Breakfast – scrambled eggs (made with soy milk) on toast. Eggs just seem healthy, especially as these come from a local farm where they roam freely. I can’t seem to make myself feel bad eating them but I am certainly eating a LOT less now.
- Lunch – Freekah salad, totally vegan, with some jalepeno bread
- Snack – crisps and a alcohol free beer whilst gardening 🙂
- Dinner – Veggie chilli, jalepeno and cheddar bread 😦 with vegan spread, followed by melon and pineapple for pudding.
EN – very happy 🙂
Day 11 of Project Happiness – Swallow!
- Meditate for 2 minutes –
- Write about something positive for 20 minutes –
- 5 random acts of kindness per week – 2/5
- Take 3 x 30 minute walks per week – 0/3
- Unnecessary items bought today – 0
- Total car miles saved – 20 (10 today)
Today’s positive had me beaming from ear to ear. I had gone to fetch the pony from the field, and she was quite a long way down, looking rather unenthusiastically at my arrival. We started trudging back up the field towards the yard, and were immediately joined by a small flock, about 10 birds, of what I thought were swifts, but now having checked the RSPB site I think are swallows; swooping and diving all around us.
“Swallows are small birds with dark, glossy-blue backs, red throats, pale underparts and long tail streamers.” – RSPB Website
I assumed initially that they were after the insects around the horse dung, but to my surprise they stayed with us ALL the way up the field. The were swooping only a couple of inches off the ground, wheeling round then coming back at us again. They were so close I thought one was going to hit my leg on one occasion. They were really pretty up close, I had thought they were black and white, but up close in the light their feathers have an iridescent blue shine to them, absolutely gorgeous. They reminded me of a humming bird as they seemed to hover at times as they banked and changed direction. They were chirping as they went past too, so I tried chirping back at them, not sure if they noticed or not though!
Had a good cycle to and from work, despite the wind and grey weather, and eldest EN sprog had a lovely ride on the pony who looks like he’s feeling better now. She is starting up a tack cleaning venture at the yard, so has been practising taking my tack apart and putting it back together which has been amusing for me if nothing else. 🙂
Vegan venture has definitely failed for me today. Friday is pizza day in my house, and I still haven’t found a quick, easy and tasty alternative. Mr EN bought me a veggie shop one which I ate some of. Interestingly, I ran out of rice milk at work and was gasping for a cuppa so had cows milk. Ewww! I thought the first lot must have been off, but turns out it’s just me! My taste buds seem to be changing. My pizza tasted odd too!
- Breakfast – Beans on toast
- Snack – Breadsticks and hummus
- Lunch – Mixed vegetables with barley and endame beans.
- Snack – Flapjack
- Snack 3(!) – Marmite on vegan hm bread
- Dinner – Pizza 😦
EN
Day 10 of Project Happiness – A very good cause
Status :
- Meditate for 2 minutes –
- Write about something positive for 20 minutes –
- 5 random acts of kindness per week – 2/5
- Take 3 x 30 minute walks per week – 0/3
- Unnecessary items bought today – 0
- Total car miles saved – 10 (10 today)
What a simply wonderful spring/summer day! A nice breeze keeping things fresh, but the sun was out in all it’s glory, and nature was proudly showing off all the frills on her skirt. I cycled in to work today and it was glorious, I felt absurdly lucky to be fit enough to do this ride, and to be in a location that offers me such sublime scenery to enjoy en route. The lambs are getting bigger now, and the sound of them calling to each other fills the air as I cruise along. We’ve had a lot of rainfall recently which means the streams I cycle over are very full, and rather than merrily babbling along, this morning seemed like they were on a very important mission. I love how much more wildlife I discover on my bike; it’s so much quieter that the car that the animals don’t seem to mind so much, and I have rabbits nibbling away and paying me no attention as I whoosh past, and the other morning I had a red kite swoop right over my head as he came in to rest on a fence by the side of the road.
So another 10 miles I didn’t have to do in the car. Hmmm, I ought to keep a record of how many miles I save……added to the status 🙂
My act of kindness is actually one of my huge positives of today, and I am just so so pleased I can help in this way. The yard where I keep my ponies has it’s own facebook group, and a lady who’s children used to ride there posted today about her friend’s 4 year old daughter who is currently undergoing aggressive cancer treatment. Apparently all this little girl wants is to spend time with a pony and have a ride. They’d had something arranged but it had fallen through. I immediately offered them some time with my children’s pony. He’s already used every week for Riding for the Disabled Association, and is very well behaved, and he’s incredibly cute, although will be quite big for this little one. They were very pleased to find something, and so she and her cousin are coming to visit on Sunday. My eldest daughter and I are going down in the morning to give him a bath so he looks gorgeous, as the woman who arranged it is a photographer and is going to come and take some piccies of them all. How fantastic to be able to help in this way!
Vegan food has suffered today. I started off really well by making a fresh vegan loaf, by replacing the butter with olive oil. It’s actually delicious!
Unfortunately though, I always struggle with what to fill it with….and put on it.
- Breakfast – poached egg on toast
- Snack – Green smoothie
- Lunch – Tuna and mayo sarnie
- Dinner – Very unhealthy spring roll, onion rings and chips from the fish and chip shop!!
Green smoothie recipe – was ok, but too many pea shoots I think made it taste weird.
- 1 cup of kale salad (including spinach and peashoots)
- 1 banana
- 1 round of melon
- coconut milk to cover.
EN
econinjablog 