- It’s March already. MARCH. The year is one-sixth over and today was the first time I managed to try a new recipe. (Clearly, although I am not fool enough to take on the #52recipes challenge this year, I can’t quite shake the idea that I should be doing it. It lives on inside my head as a measure of how well I am coping, or not, with general life stuff.) I have started really looking forward to April, when I figured I’d be either unemployed or in a new job with shorter hours, since my contract only runs to end of March. And man, even a short period of unemployment sounds pretty great right now.
Then my contract got extended two months. - I mean, yay! Two more months to find a job and a house! That’s not terrible!
*sob*
No, it’s not terrible, but it is a bit ironic that I was informed of the extension on the exact day I woke up thinking about how this job makes me feel constantly wrongfooted and insecure – nobody’s fault and objectively I’m doing fine, it’s all in my head, but ugh. It’s really not the place for me. And then two more months! UGH. - OH WELL. Davos was nice! As a holiday, it was a bit shit (what with having to spend a lot of time sitting around waiting to hear if I was needed at work), but as a working week, it was fantastic (what with being able to take extended breaks for long walks in the snow, or even actual skiing). The worst part of the work was also the funniest: sitting in the bathroom with my laptop at midnight because there was nowhere else to work in the tiny holiday flat without disturbing people who needed to sleep. And because the task I’d been asked to do at 5pm wasn’t actually ready for me until 10pm. And, oh yes, after I (and my colleague) spent three hours on it, we were told “oh thanks but you know we probably won’t accept any of these edits at this stage”. So that was rewarding.
- But I did get onto skis, twice! And it was interesting, because firstly, I stood at the top of the practice slope – the same practice slope I have been returning to periodically over the past 11 years; I learned to ski there and then got pregnant and had no ski time whatsoever for ages – and did not feel at all terrified. This is amazing! Even at the end of last year’s ski break, I still felt deeply uncomfortable up there! So I got very excited and thought I was finally ready to get OFF the baby slopes again (for the first time in 11 years) and the next day, I went all the way up to the top with Armin.
And then it WAS terrifying. Which is silly! The slopes up there are not actually harder than the practice slopes. They’re just… up there. And I felt completely stressed out.
I made it down, and it was fine, but it wasn’t really fun. I’m far too conscious of not having the strength or balance or control to really feel confident on skis, and I’m not sure I ever will. Might be that I’m just never that much of a skier. Might be that Armin will have to go exploring the mountains with the kids, not with me. They’re already better company than me I think. Claudia’s happy on the red slopes, Max not quite there yet, but he’s very confident and controlled (in the little kid snowplough style) on the big blue slopes way up there. I’m thinking it might be okay for me to spend a holiday skiing a little bit and knitting a lot. Or maybe cross-country skiing is more my sport. Cross-country skiing looks completely bloody gorgeous and not at all terrifying. - The other big surprise of the holiday shouldn’t be a surprise, but it always is: the kids are growing so much easier and each successive holiday is so much more fun than the last. Even taking a walk up the Schatzalp – not a long walk, but really steep, and the kids are not walking fans – went really well. It’s a miracle! Funny how you can know and understand and believe that kids grow up and grow out of their difficult phases, and yet it’s completely astonishing when you actually see the evidence.
Woolly thoughts (and fuzzy logic)
Sometimes I sits and knits, and sometimes I just sits.
Woolly thoughts (and fuzzy logic) 