Moving closer to ‘normal’.

The last couple of weeks have been great, I almost feel normal again!

I have accepted that I have to pace myself and make sure that I don’t expect too much from myself… staying true to the motto “under promise and over deliver”.

This acceptance means that I feel much more satisfied with what I have achieved even when it is much less than I’d really like. Being content, as you all know, makes everything seem more positive.

As does catching up with friends.

Last week I got most of my IT issues sorted out and managed to catch up with a couple of work friends whilst doing my first couple of half days working from home. A couple of times, when random emails were dropping into my mail box I felt a little out of control and had a flutter of panic but generally it felt good to be getting back into things.

This week I caught the train up to Chesterfield to spend a few days with Mum and Richie. It’s just the fourth time I have been away from home (and Phil) in almost a year. I can’t really believe that I used to be away every other week. I had a really lovely time and I was glad to get home and see Phil and the boys again. Despite booking myself on a different train from the one I told everyone I was travelling on (I really can’t explain that!) the travel was relatively stress free and straightforward.

As well as spending time with Mum and Richie, I managed to catch up with several of my Derbyshire based friends. We lived just outside Matlock for about 13 years before relocating to Norfolk and don’t get to catch up with our friends as often as we’d like so to be able to spend some quality time with some of my old friends was brilliant. I lived in Derbyshire from my early twenties to mid thirties so as you can imagine, we have some great (read great as funny, sad, happy, embarrassing, exciting…) memories together. As always, conversation flowed easily and as most of them read my blog, we didn’t spend too much time talking about me and the current situation which was lovely ?. The weather was also beautiful, frosty sunny mornings in the Derbyshire hills are just one of the most beautiful things to behold.

I thought you might like to see a few of the pictures I took.

Talk to you soon

Lots of love Mand xxx