Husband and I had a chat. We both feel like we're in a rut. It's a typical mid-life crisis thing, we're close to the race ending. Just 2.5 years left to pay son's school fees and then we can calm down a bit. It's close enough we're thinking about it - but far enough away that it feels like it's out of reach.
It's important to clarify - we're not in a rut with each other (well certainly this is what we said, and it's 100% true as far as I'm concerned - hopefully for husband too), just in a rut with life.
Before Christmas I stopped the weekly visits from friends every Saturday. This was killing me. I didn't stop it completely - I just shifted it to once a month. I'm already seeing the benefit of this.
My first free Saturday I wandered up to the garden centre and had my free cup of coffee from my membership. I know this is very middle aged - but I am middle aged so I'm allowed to. It wasn't exciting, but it was nice to just sit on my own and not be cooking for 6 people. Something small, but different.
Then on Sunday I got an email from my favourite restaurant introducing their new menu and inviting their regulars to come and eat for 50% off. This was an offer too good to refuse. The restaurant is called The Gingerman - it's in Brighton. It's been my favourite for years. People try to encourage us to go to other restaurants, but we always end up back here.
Anyway, the offer was for Wednesday and Thursday night, so I booked for the Wednesday. Husband and I got all dressed up and went out for our first actual date alone in about 16 years. We had a really wonderful evening.
During the meal our conversation was about small things we could do to make a difference. Eating out at posh restaurants all the time is not financially viable or good for our waistlines! We'd make Wednesdays a regular date night (in fact I'm not sure we did agree that - I'll suggest it).
Now normally I'd pad out the entire post about our yummy meal, but guess what - there's more....
I took Thursday and Friday off to decompress after Christmas and have some 'me' time now son was back at school. Always a great idea because I can be completely selfish (joy).
I had this idea before Christmas of painting a fox as a present for son - a fox is his favourite animal. Then I remembered I have literally no artistic skill. So I bought a painting by numbers kit. On opening it I thought 'crikey - I thought this was supposed to be simple.' I promptly put it back in the box and ignored it until after Christmas - which is now!
So I sat down with my reading glasses on for literally the whole of Thursday and Friday. I'm chuffed with the end result, but the fact it's painting by numbers means I feel no pride. So never again
On Saturday was the local village pantomime. This is always amazing - way better than professional ones I've been to. We met up with some friends and sat down to a rip roaring 2 hours full of belly laughs, bawdy humour and shouting things out randomly.
I absolutely adore pantomime. I wish they did them all year round - I'd happily go at least once a quarter. In fact if pantomime was a full time job I'd ever consider going back to acting. What a joyful existence that would be.
And then on Sunday there was more. Husband and I got our arses moving and went down to a local coffee shop in the afternoon and played 'our' version of Gin Rummy. That is, I play Gin Rummy on an app all the time, but I've no idea if it's the official rules or not. But we played with real cards, drank coffee and ended up having a really lovely time.
Now obviously if I try to hold down a full time job, plus being a parent, plus trying to keep my house together this level of 'stuff' over a week is going to bring me to my knees.
What husband and I agreed was that things wouldn't need to be big all the time, in fact if we started small we could build on things as we got used to doing stuff. We have an old coffee pot that we're filling with ideas, so when we can't think of what to do we can just grab something from the jar and 'do it'.
Comments
Post a Comment