What you resist, persists.

It’s taken a while to understand the meaning behind this and wrap my head around the implications of it.

Society teaches us that if there’s something you don’t like, you need to fight against it. Fight obesity; fight disease; fight war *oh the irony.*

Conversely, the Law of Attraction states that energy goes where attention flows. In a nutshell, if you’re focusing on fighting something out of existence, you are in fact bringing it into existence and it persists.

Seems fairly straight forward, right?

Over the past few weeks work has been crazy. One issue in particular is a query that needs data going back more than a decade. In an avalanche of numbers, figures, formulas and equations it’s been challenging finding a starting point, never mind a solution.

To attempt to solve this, I did what any logical human does; I went to the boss. He’s been doing this for years and rather than reinvent the wheel on my own it seemed reasonable to get his input on how to get moving on this mountain.

Simple. ‘Follow the money.’

Fast forward to today. In recent weeks I’ve rediscovered how much I enjoy cooking. The flip side is physically I haven’t been feeling great for a few months. Between the bloating and general poofiness it feels like I’ve gained 20 lbs even though the scale doesn’t seem to think so.

It’s difficult to find pleasure in cooking food from scratch when my body feels like I should be stapling my lips shut instead of feeding it anything.

With the new found interest in cooking I’ve been inhaling food shows on Netflix. Today’s choice was a documentary called ‘Fed Up.’

It addresses childhood obesity and the general dietary mayhem that makes up American culture. It’s a fascinating view; I’d recommend taking the time to watch it if you can as it definitely sheds a lot of light on obesity in general; not just from a child’s perspective.

Scarily we are sicker and fatter than ever before and it boils down to one simple fact: follow the money.

2 completely unrelated dots connected in my head; the circuit is complete and the light bulb just went on.

To solve the problem, we need to follow the money.

The tragedy is that there is no profit in health. The real money is in all the industries that feed us; advertise to us; ‘heal’ us; insure us; peddle solutions to us for all the problems that spring up around us. The weight loss industry is worth billions alone, never mind Big Pharma and the rest of it. If we all became healthy entire industries would go bankrupt.

We’re fighting obesity by dieting, exercising and ‘eating healthier’ when in reality we’ve solved nothing. The deck is not stacked in our favour. Advertising sabotages us around every corner. Health foods are laden with ingredients we don’t understand so in reality, we could be eating anything and how would we know?

With enough money scientific studies can be shushed and the studies that do make it into the mainstream are in fact funded by the industries they’re studying. Co-incidence much? Didn’t think so.

Any sensible gambler knows: if the deck is consistently stacked against you, you fold your hand and play a new game.

Remind me again why we aren’t doing that?! Probably because we have no clue that we were never meant to win the war.

One random fact that came out of the documentary made me laugh out loud at the sheer devious genius behind it.

When they ‘discovered’ that fats were responsible for heart diseases and cancers, blah blah, the industry moved to reducing fat in a bunch of stuff. One of those things was milk. Skimmed and fat-free milk became a thing and people were buying it by the tanker load.

Excellent. The fat that was extracted from the milk went where? Into cheese.

Cheese production went up by a ridiculous amount and suddenly, cheese everywhere. Burgers and cheese; pizza with more cheese; cheese-stuffed crusts; double cheese, MORE  CHEESE; the possibilities skyrocketed and America started inhaling cheese on everything while buying tankers of skimmed milk for the health benefits. KACHING!

We have been royally screwed guys. If we’re collectively going to solve excess weight in our own lives we’re going to need to go renegade and fix it ourselves.

Diets and fads aren’t going to right this ship. Following the money and realising who is profiting at your expense will change your choices at the store. If you care enough to realise you’re being scammed by every teaspoon of sugar that you eat maybe you’ll walk away from the game and make a different choice.

Sugar is more addictive than cocaine. Ever notice how vitamins and macros on nutrition labels all list % of daily allowance? Notice how sugar has no % next to it? Because if it did it would be 200+% of daily allowance on some servings and you might think twice. It’s conveniently excluded so you can go on blissfully unaware that you’re knocking another nail in your health coffin while the health/insurance/food industries are rubbing their hands in glee at some more guaranteed income on the balance sheet.

I have no interest in living a life of deprivation where every edible pleasure is forever stricken from my life. What I AM interested in is not feeling like a sack of poo tied with string because on paper I’m eating ‘health foods’ only to find out the damage is just being packaged differently.

My challenge to you is the next time you go to the store, shop around the edges only. The outer perimeter of the grocery stores are fresh produce, dairy, fresh meat & fresh bread. None of the packaged stuff that lives down the aisles with a shelf life that could rival the lifespan of a bowhead whale. No venturing down the aisles….. except maybe the spice aisle. *No MSG ALLOWED*

Instead of fighting weight gain and obesity maybe try pro-health. Plan A didn’t work so giving Plan B a go couldn’t hurt.

Dinner for 3

You don’t always have to be in the same place to have dinner with some mates. Today was a Skype dinner with the 2 friends in the UK. They had their dinner while I scoffed lunch 6 time zones in their past.

On the menu for me was toad-in-the-hole, mashed potato with mixed veg and gravy and a glass or 3 of Merlot.

In hindsight it’s hilarious that I actually spent money on Yorkshire pudding mix in a box when I lived in England considering there’s really nothing complicated about making it from scratch.

For those who aren’t familiar with English food, toad-in-the-hole is simply sausages cooked in puffy batter. You can make one big one or individual ones in a muffin pan, which is the option I went with today.

To make 12 individual toads, you’ll need:

24 cocktail sausages, browned off in a bit of oil

150 ml plain flour

1/2 teaspoon of mustard powder *optional

150 ml milk

3 beaten eggs

Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 450F (220C).

Brown off the cocktail sausages by putting 2 sausages into each muffin cup and drizzling with a bit of oil. Put them into the oven for about 15 mins, turning the sausages over about halfway.

While they are browning off, put all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, making a well in the middle for the eggs.

Mix the eggs in well, then slowly start adding in the milk, mixing well between additions. The batter is a bit runny so don’t panic.

Take the sausages out of the oven once they are browned and turn the oven down to 400F (200C). Pour the batter into the hot muffin pans *for the love of God, don’t burn yourself!* to about 2/3 full, covering the sausages – see below:

Baby toads before going in the oven
Baby toads before going in the oven

In the oven they go for 15 minutes. The muffin pan needs to be hot when you pour the batter in or they won’t rise properly and will end up a tad doughy. Cold batter, hot pan – those are the rules.

While they’re busy doing their thing, whip up some mashed potato and steam up some mixed veg. I mixed a teaspoon of mustard powder into the mashed potato and it was delicious!

Once the toadies come out of the oven, plate them up immediately, slather on some gravy and grub’s up!

Almost as good as a pub lunch!
Almost as good as a pub lunch!

It’s a pity people don’t cook much anymore. Life got too convenient I suppose. There’s surprising pleasure sitting down to a meal with people you care about, even if they are a million miles away, noshing on some good simple food. This really needs to happen more often.

What if everything you think you know is a lie?

It’s fascinating seeing how many of us have the same worries and insecurities. In a twisted way it’s comforting having a common denominator with complete strangers. In another way it’s tragic that so many of us are sacrificing our peace at the altar of misery and deprivation.

Maybe deprivation isn’t completely correct. Some of us sacrifice our peace at the altar of plenty. We trade our time for more money; more success; more stuff!

The tragedy of that is that money is replaceable. Time is not. If the equation worked the other way that would be perfection; trading something replaceable for something irreplaceable. That’s not how it’s working for most people.

Time is traded for more and more money to be able to get stuff to make living more comfortable. When exactly are you living? When exactly are you enjoying all the stuff you’ve accumulated when your time is thrown at acquiring more of it? ‘I’m working to provide for my family.’ That’s very noble, make no mistake.

BUT. Your partner cannot cuddle a credit card. Your children can’t make a cheque book laugh. Your friends can’t have a beer and share laughs with your piggy bank. YOU are necessary to complete those transactions.

Relationships go down the drain; marriages end and your partner makes off with half of your stuff when what they probably really wanted was you. Friendships are traded for success because who has time to maintain those when you’re working 80 hours a week for your 6 figure salary?

Then there are those who sacrifice their peace at the altar of deprivation. Every little pleasure is regretted and penalties must be paid. Finding pleasure in a tasty morsel is repaid with hours of self-loathing and self-abuse to ‘work it off.’ Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order. We already know that.

There needs to be a balance. Sure, if you just ate 87 doughnuts, 14 boxes of cookies, 2 buckets of chicken and a partridge in a pear tree, then ok; you need to reel that in. To hate and punish yourself for finding pleasure in a hot chocolate with marshmallows, or a rich slice of something delicious makes no bloody sense at all.

What if…. What if Judgement Day isn’t an accounting of your sins and failings but rather an accounting of every happiness and pleasure that you’ve thrown away with both hands? If you had to stand before your God of choice and the question was: Why did you deny yourself the pleasures I created for you? Do you have anything close to a decent response to that question? I’m going to go with no.

There’s no excuse that’s valid. Between climbing the success ladder striving for perfection (which is already impossible to achieve anyway) and piling on the self-loathing, we’re still reminded about all the sins we commit on a regular basis; so eternity isn’t looking good either.

Well here’s a nugget of useless information for you: The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Hebrew word ‘syn’ which was a term used in archery. It means ‘to miss the mark.’ So not eternal damnation, merely an error.

It would be interesting to know how many lives would have been lived differently if that nugget of information had been taught instead. Just a thought…

One bite at a time

The Shepherd’s pie was delicious. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me to take a picture of it because I was distracted with spending time with my friend so I promise to make it again soon and give you the recipe and pictures.

Lately I’ve been finding comfort in cooking up recipes from home. It’s kind of ironic given I’ve never really felt at home in the places I’ve lived. I’m either arriving, unpacking, packing or leaving. Maybe that’s what life is. Flavours from all the places you’ve been mashed up into something that makes you feel happy.

Each place I’ve been has contributed something to the tapestry of my life; some bright colours and other things are the snagged stitches that drive me crazy.

Emigrating is no small task by any stretch of the imagination. There’s a seemingly endless list of things to think about and lately it’s been overwhelming me. The fact that this has all happened before on 2 separate occasions is irrelevant. Each time is a new set of circumstances and a new destination so it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.

The same major variables are present: job, accommodation, visas, tying up loose ends where you are now and figuring out how to navigate the challenges of the new destination. The big things are a given. You know your circle of friends, job, home and surroundings are going to change so when they do it’s hardly a surprise.

It’s the little things that end up sinking your boat. Simple things like not knowing where to go to buy a saucepan or where the nearest pharmacy is in relation to where you are. New road signs and the fact that a brinjal is called an aubergine in one place and an eggplant somewhere else.

There’s a very vivid memory of sitting on a pavement in Islington in London having a wobbly with my bestie because all we wanted was a bloody frying pan and couldn’t find one for love or money because we had NO clue on which stores sold them.

Not knowing how a simple ingredient is packaged. At home it came in an orange box. Is it now in a can, a packet, a box?! What is the brand name? Stupid little things like wanting to buy a loaf of bread only to be confronted with an entire aisle of options when previously your options were white/brown/sliced/unsliced.

Now it’s suddenly white/wheat/rye/multi-grain/gluten-free/wholemeal/round/square/sliced/unsliced/sesame-seed/poppy seed/pita pockets/round buns/long buns/ciabatta buns/croissants/muffins/87 types of bagels and your brain shuts down because all you want is a goddamn loaf of bread.

Things…….

One bite at a time. As my boss in SA frequently told us: we’re going to eat this elephant one bite at a time.

The man made a lot of sense.

This morning’s elephant was reading about the UK holding a referendum on June 23rd about whether or not to stay in the EU. The result of that referendum will have long lasting consequences, the least of which will be immigration.

Should the UK leave the EU, there’s a possibility Scotland will vote again on whether or not to be independent. That’s a whole other set of consequences.

Needless to say my brain started melting contemplating how this will affect my plan to relocate. After having a complete wobbly about it, it boiled down to one bite at a time.

What can I do today to make progress on my goal? Pick up the phone and call our UK office and simply ask if there’s an option to take a job from one office and work it remotely from where I want to be.

I should hear back in a few days. However small your step, just take it. Pick one small thing you can do and do it. Yes, it’s going to be uncomfortable and yes, it may give you an answer you don’t want but until you do it, the not knowing will steal your peace. To make an informed decision, you need information. Get it. Seriously. Find the information you need even if it’s not what you want to hear because until you know, there’s exactly nothing you can do to make progress.

Pick a direction and take a step that way. Promise me. One small step. That’s all we need to do today. Tomorrow we’ll take another one and eventually we’ll find the way.

 

We’re oxtailing it today

Today’s menu is a spin on a traditional British oxtail soup. My spin is I’m turning into a stew instead.

Oxtail is one of those things that pops up in my grocery store every now and then. It’s sort of a ‘your luck on the day’ situation and when it’s there, I buy a pile of it!

The idea of oxtail soup appealed so it was off to Google to find a recipe and I came across one I fancied. The only problem is halfway through the recipe it calls for discarding the veg. That doesn’t appeal. I quite enjoy smooth soups but much prefer chunky bits so with a bit of rejigging, I’m hoping this will be a stew instead.

First off put a knob of butter into a biggish saucepan and brown off roughly 1 kg (2 lbs.) oxtail in the melted butter.

Remove from the pot and put aside. To the same saucepan, add:

2 large carrots, chopped

1 large onion, halved with 4 cloves pressed into it.

1 small turnip, roughly chopped

1 large leek, chopped

1 bay leaf (I used 2 small ones)

Salt & pepper to taste and for good measure, I tossed in a few whole peppercorns.

Sweat off the veg in the saucepan then put into a slow cooker. Top the veg with the browned oxtail pieces, add a cup of beef stock and a cup of red wine. I used a Pinot Noir but I’ll leave the choice up to you.

Toss in a few sprigs of fresh thyme for some extra flavour.

Slow cooker loaded up and ready to go
Slow cooker loaded up and ready to go

If you’re doing this on the stove top, you might need to add a bit more stock. Slow cookers tend to make more liquid as the food cooks so take care not to overdo it on the initial liquid amount.

Cook on low for 7-8 hours until the oxtail is fall-off-the-bone tender.

For the last 30 mins, remove a cup or so of the liquid from the slow cooker and mix in a tablespoon of gravy granules. Return this to the slow cooker and switch to high. This will thicken up the liquid to make gravy.

South Africans love rice so serving a stew on rice is not unusual. It turns out it’s unusual for everyone else so I sometimes opt to serve it on mashed potato because let’s be honest, thick stewy gravy on mashed potato is heaven on a plate. Tonight rice won the toss and it was GOOD!

That meat was so tender - worth waiting 8 hours for it!
That meat was so tender – worth waiting 8 hours for it!

Or you could just serve it with green veg, whatever floats your boat.

The plan tomorrow is a traditional Shepherd’s Pie with a salad. I have a friend coming over for lunch so a bit of home cooked comfort food should take the edge off the fact the weather is headed back into the freezer after 2 days of bliss.

 

 

Shortbread… because you know you want to!

Here’s a recipe for shortbread that I got from a friend in South Africa many moons ago. Her dad is Scottish so this was their go-to recipe for shortbread. Thank you Jeannie for passing this on, I’ve loved every bite over the years!

I made a batch over the weekend and have inhaled every last biscuit on that plate. No, I didn’t share. Don’t be ridiculous.

Scottish Shortbread

Ingredients:

120g (4 oz) plain flour

60g (2 oz) cornflour/cornstarch

60g (2 oz) caster sugar/baker’s sugar

120g (4 oz) salted butter (don’t use margarine, for the love of God I beg you!)

Sieve the flour, cornflour & caster sugar together.

Add the butter and mix in with your fingers to make a dough. The longer the better.

When you’ve got a smooth dough, sprinkle some cornflour onto a work surface and roll out to roughly ¼ inch (6-7mm) thick.

Shape as you please, and lay onto a lightly greased baking sheet. Don’t position them too close together as they do rise a bit.

Bake @ 350F/180C for 15 mins.

***Please note, there is a VERY fine line between done and overdone when making shortbread***

The darker brown ones are overdone (I rolled them too thinly.) You're looking for slightly darker yellow but NOT brown
The darker brown ones are overdone (I rolled them too thinly.) You’re looking for slightly darker yellow but NOT brown

It will turn a slightly deeper yellow and slightly risen when it’s done. Brown = overdone.

Start monitoring from about 10 mins onwards. Bear in mind, if you roll the dough too thinly, the cooking time will need to be reduced or the shortbread will burn. Don’t make the mistake I did of putting thinly rolled and thickly rolled biscuits on the same baking tray. That’s asking for trouble.

Allow to cool slightly before removing from the baking tray or they will break.

**As a random side note: one thing I’ve come across over the years are  people who flat out refuse to share a recipe. Yes, this is a personal choice but seriously, the greatest compliment you can get is someone asking for your recipe.

Anyone who wants a recipe of mine is welcome to it. It’s makes me smile knowing I’m ‘at’ their dinner table every time they make it. Life is meant to be delicious and if someone thinks your food is worthy of repeating, then that’s saying something. Be nice.

 

Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

That’s not a new concept in my life but the bathtub epiphany that went with it certainly is.

Over the past few weeks homesickness has cranked up a few levels and I’m barely classified as a functional human being. Depression; frustration; emptiness; longing. The yearning to go back to Scotland has all but wiped out my will to live.

The question is: will landing at Edinburgh airport suddenly change my life?

In some ways it will. The scenery will be completely different; the culture will be worlds apart and there will be new language challenges to conquer. However, I will be the same person. I will not magically be different. The same likes and dislikes will make the journey with me and things that get on my wick here will probably do the same there.

There’s no magic button that ejects all my bullshit at airport security leaving me to walk through the scanner as a baggage-free person.

So who exactly is this mythical being I hope to be when I go ‘home’? The bigger question is, why am I not her now?

The woman who took the trip in November took herself to breakfast and lunch and indulged in little pleasures. She wandered around solo soaking up the history and culture of new cities; (and by new, I mean older than America); she wasn’t afraid to be alone in a strange and unfamiliar place.

So why am I not able to do those things here? The architecture in Edinburgh was breathtaking but then again, Chicago is very architectural in more modern ways. The food experiences were incredible in Scotland. Chicago is equally diverse when it comes to food. There’s everything from Ukrainian to Lebanese and anything in between. The Taste of Chicago is downright delicious! I’ve eaten my way through that more than once.

Buckingham Fountain, Chicago
Buckingham Fountain, Chicago
The Old (Scott Monument, Edinburgh)
The Old (Scott Monument, Edinburgh)
The New (Chicago Skyline)
The New (Chicago Skyline)

Museums and art galore in Edinburgh. What about Chicago? Art Institutes and museums aplenty and a pile of experiences to cater to any taste. What’s the difference? Why did it fit there yet doesn’t fit here? Is this purely a mental block I’ve set for myself borne out of a need to be difficult?

My morning commute starts on Route 66 in downtown Chicago. I walk past iconic buildings twice a day, 5 days a week; sometimes stopping to appreciate them; mostly walking at speeds reserved for escaping a burning building, silently cursing slower moving pedestrians.

When you move to a new place, everything is exciting and beautiful but then it becomes just another castle on the corner after 6 months.

If I refuse to get out and appreciate the culture and art around me here, it’s a fair assessment that once the novelty wears off I might fall into the same slump there, pacing around my self-made prison plotting an escape again.

Don’t get me wrong, Scotland is my soul home and I’ll go back if it kills me. Before I do, there’s some internal work I need to take care of. The only way this is going to work is if I am able to live the ‘Scottish’ life I envision NOW, not save it for some future destination and time. I don’t get a new me when I clear customs so I’d best get her out of storage soon or it will all have been for naught.

Chicago fog...
Chicago fog…
Scottish fog...
Scottish fog…

Food, glorious food!

What better way to spend a bank holiday than making yummy food smells?

Today’s menu is Cauliflower and Bacon Soup. The soup is dead simple and takes less than an hour end to end.

You’ll need:

1 small cauliflower, chopped into florets.

2 medium potatoes, chopped.

1 large onion, chopped.

8 rashers bacon

2.5 cups (600 ml) vegetable stock

1 cup milk (250ml)

Salt and pepper to taste.

Extra bacon to garnish *optional*

A few simple goodies can make magic!
A few simple goodies can make magic!

Gently fry bacon and onion in a saucepan big enough to hold all the ingredients. The bacon fat will melt and make fat to fry the onions so no need to add oil.

Once the onion is translucent, toss in the potato, cauliflower, stock and milk and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the cauliflower is tender.

Pop in a blender and liquidise. Season to taste. I have a heavy hand when it comes to pepper. If you use salty bacon please taste before adding more salt. It’s impossible to unsalt a dish.

Fry up a few extra rashers of bacon to sprinkle on top as a garnish and serve with hot buttered toast. Delicious!

Cauliflower and bacon soup with hot buttered toast
Cauliflower and bacon soup with hot buttered toast

Depending on your concept of portion size, this recipe makes 4 generous portions of soup or 6 normal people portions.

You’re welcome.

I’ve known all along

Written ramblings have been my thing for years. Whenever life gets overwhelming or there’s just something in my head that needs sorting it inevitably comes out on paper and gets filed away with all the previous ramblings.

I stumbled across one written on 16 April 2012. Around that time I was struggling with depression and had finally grown the balls to walk away from someone who had drained a decade and some change of my life. The relationship had ended 6 years before that but we’d ‘stayed friends’, which was the dumbest thing to do because the closure never came.

The hope was moving stateside would close that chapter for the last time by being geographically inaccessible. Yeah, that didn’t work either. After finally deciding to cut all ties the depression kicked in in Technicolor and the ramblings began. This is an short extract from then:

There have been places on earth where the peace has been all encompassing and instant.  It’s like my soul has returned to where it came from, like I’d reached a destination I’d been searching for since the beginning of time. Home.  My soul found its home; that home is no longer where I am.  A piece of myself has been ripped away and I don’t know how to get it back.  It’s just gone.  Having found my home, it was as if, after a million life times, I could finally just exist in a state of rest; like there was no longer any need to struggle; no need to continue searching; I was found.  For a reason I cannot fathom, I’m no longer in that place.  The struggle and search has begun again, the rest is over.  The inner peace has passed; I’m back on the road to somewhere I can’t find.  You must be wondering why I can’t just go back, I wish it were that simple. 

My soul felt complete in Scotland.  There’s something about that land, the desolation of the Highlands, the snow on the mountains, the open spaces, the dark waters of the Lochs, the music, the energy, it speaks to my soul like nothing ever has before or since.  My soul feels as old as that land, like I was born with it a million years ago; that we came into existence at the same time; our energy is the same.  In the cold beauty of the Highlands, it feels like I could walk into the mountains and never be lost.  I could be nowhere and home at the same time.  My soul lives in those lakes and mountains.  I don’t know how, I don’t know why, I just know that I have been drawn to that place since birth.  I’ve never understood, but it was like an inevitable journey that I couldn’t escape. 

Against all odds and obstacles that I put in my own way, I found my way there.  Home.  To arrive at a place you’ve never seen, never experienced, and to feel in your core that you know every inch of it, that you’ve never been away, is something I cannot describe.  Peace that cannot be put into words.  For that moment, all is right with the world, nothing else makes sense.

Everyone should experience that profound belonging at least once in their lives.  It’s not a grey area.  Once you have felt it, you will know.  It will hit you with the force of a bolt of lightning and shake your core in a way you’ve never known. That moment becomes the dividing line of what came before and what comes after. 

Sometimes life requires nothing less than an empty-handed leap of faith into the void.  Deep breath, close your eyes, say a prayer and step over the edge.  Someone will be there to catch you.

A pic I took in 2005 on my 2nd trip to Scotland. Roses in the snow

Reading that with the benefit of 4 years worth of hindsight I realise I’ve known all along. Earlier today there was a cloud of doubt about whether moving across the Atlantic again is the right thing to do.

Yes. It is.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony – Thomas Merton

The quest for order continues. After the compulsory cup of morning coffee, it was time to tackle the remaining zones of chaos in my apartment.

The kitchen and bathroom already had their turn; today it was the closet, bedroom and living room.

You have to be slightly ruthless to tackle a closet, make no mistake about that. If you’re tired of standing in front of a rack of clothing every morning with the sentence ‘I have nothing to wear.’ on your lips, then trust me, it’s time. You need to man up and get in there!

After countless mornings of staring at a pile of clothes and hating all of them, I decided to pull out everything that I don’t wear on a regular basis. By regular I mean at least once in a 2 week period at a push.

Everything that’s a tad snug or doesn’t fit quite right, it needs to be moved out of the way. I’m not talking about tossing it, I mean move it out of the way. Half my closet ended up on my bed this morning. The shirts missing a button that I can’t be arsed to sew back on; the tops that pull a bit over the boobage; the skirts that make me feel poofy; the pants that pinch in the wrong places. All of it. On the bed. In a pile.

DSCN7303

All that remained were things that I feel comfortable in; things that accentuate the bits that look good; jewelry that I wear on a consistent basis; shoes that are comfortable.

I have a small storage room outside my apartment where I store stuff like luggage and things. The stockpile of clothing went into a suitcase. There were a few items I’ll never wear again and they went into a separate pile to go to Goodwill. Don’t feel that you need to keep what doesn’t suit you. People change. Your moods change. What worked once doesn’t have to work for eternity. Allow yourself to move on from your previous fashion choices even if they were expensive at the time.

Once that was done it was time to hit the pile of magazines neatly stacked on the shelves. I went through a phase where I subscribed to everything; food, wine, travel, you name it.

If I haven’t found time to look through the stockpile of recipe books I own, what makes me think I’ll magically make time to page through the 36 magazines on the shelf? They have to go.

The decision to move has been made, although the final decision lies with a random stranger in a visa office somewhere. In the meantime it doesn’t hurt to prepare for the eventuality of it. Will I ship this stuff across the Atlantic? No. Well then, there’s the answer.

When the kitchen fell victim to my cleaning spree last week I found a pile of stuff that is barely used. They went into a box this morning. A full box of kitchen stuff packed away, leaving me some much needed space to work with.

The art supplies that have been on the counter tops have found a home on the closet shelf where all the excess clothing used to live. Seriously, 16 white pillow cases. SIXTEEN! WHY?

There’s nothing a decent cup of coffee, an iron will and a few battle anthems off YouTube can’t fix. Find a playlist compilation you can live with, put the kettle on and tackle the chaos head on. The shift in energy is palpable when order is restored.

Order is one of the ingredients for happiness according to Thomas Merton. The man made a lot of sense.

Here’s Saturday’s installment of the Rose Street saga:

Saturday on Rose Street, Edinburgh
Saturday on Rose Street, Edinburgh

The fridge is stockpiled with the ingredients of another Scottish meal so that’s the plan for tomorrow.

It also turns out the secret Cornish pasty recipe that I thought was buried with my Nana is actually stored in my mom’s head. She passed on the magic over Skype this afternoon and tomorrow I’m going to try it out. With a bit of motherly advice and some divine intervention from beyond, I reckon I have this under control.