rain and visitors

Its been crazy busy around here lately, so much so that I am even behind on my Key West Citizen column obsession.
My cousin came to stay, that's a somewhat loose term in some ways as he was here, then he went to PEI, then he came back. He was fun, we laughed, ate too much horribly bad for you food, discovered Big Stop breakfasts and saw an array of weather. It went from hot enough to consider shorts (1 day) to cold enough to huddle around a firepit in hat and gloves and wonder where Spring had disappeared to.

On the day he went back home, #1 FIL arrived and has been here since. Its great to have him here but the weather has been atrocious! Its overcast, grey and raining, but not cold - thank God!
So,,, we haven't had a visit like last time, we haven't set foot near a beach or even really into Halifax. Its so annoying. But we have been to Montanas!

I mean that you could argue that its only May, but this time last year we had the pool up and running and had been in it. This year, its still waiting to be fixed so its full of ugly brown freezing cold water and I cant imagine wanting to dip one toe in it, even if it wasn't so hideous.

I am also still in Insomnia land, I have been awake since 3am, its now 5.32am, I gave up around 4 and came down, logged onto work and did some tax.... hmmmmmmmmmm
Now I am considering some snack (cousin Paul would refer to it as snackage) options. PB on toast is looking remarkably tempting at 5.32am. Thank God I have today off work.
I plan a 10km bike ride - IF its not raining - and then its the annual school picnic, not sure what happens there in the likely event of rain.

standstill

I seem to be at a standstill in so many ways, a plateau maybe.

Running - I cant get past 5km. I cant run as often as I would like,  I seem to be losing my mojo for it slightly, so of course I am not improving. I ran 5km today and it was fine, perhaps I should have pushed to see if I could go further and see what happened. I still get that buzz out of the last lap at the Sportsplex, that rush as I practically sprint around the track.

Weather - its cold still, whats with that? Maybe thats half my problem, summer is still elusive, I simply cant see myself at the beach here in NS, like ever again!

Work - I am working too hard, too many hours and I cant seem to get on top of my work load. The only plus point is that its interesting. I am learning a lot about technical things and people, how they behave, how I behave in return. How I should behave. I spend a lot of time thinking that I should have handled something differently.

Spring cleaning - I am working too many hours and hence the spring cleaning is behind, we have still only managed two rooms - two main rooms admittedly - the whole basement and the living room but at this rate by the time we manage more we will have to do these again.

So - really I need to up my game. I have mud hero in a month and a half and I havent managed to build my strength anymore, I need to get to the gym!

Insomnia is hateful

So last night I woke at 2am (my most favourite time to be wide awake) and then couldnt get back to sleep till 4.30am (standard stuff) so this evening I went to bed at 9.15pm as was feeling so incredibly shattered. How fabulous, I thought prematurely, as here I am at 12.44am and I havent managed a wink of sleep AT ALL.

I am SO horribly busy at work right now that frankly I need to be asleep but of course I cant go to sleep. I can see my planned 6am run with Duke disappearing into the ether as thats the time I will be dragging myself out of bed instead of bouncing out all bright eyed and bushy-tailed as I had envisaged.
I had such plans of an endorphin inducing early run followed by a scrumptious healthy breakfast that I need to be awake to make.

I can foresee a horrible day at work tomorrow where I will struggle to get half of what I need to do, done. I have even thought of logging onto work now and doing some but the server will be slow and half of what I need to do it, is sitting on my desk and actually I am tired....(my eyes hurt!) also, once I start that, I wont get ANY sleep as my brain will sleep into stressy worry mode and that will be it for tonights sleep - game over.

So... in an attempt to break out of the lying in bed and trying to sleep while obsessively thinking of what I have to do at work, mixed up with panic that I am still awake and therefore stuffed for tomorrow, I am sitting downstairs in the dark staring at this computer screen and thinking - how is it that we turn to a laptop in such times....

I am also on FB whilst writing this complaining to my lovely friend down in Arkansas that I am awake and all the reasons why. She has just suggested rubbing my feet together to make me sleepy. I am hopeful that will work some magic, so I will log off here and go back to bed and see if it works. Fingers crossed.

reading and cleaning

I like to read and  I read a lot. In the last few years I have found myself sticking to the same authors and often the same books. Books are expensive to buy and for a while new ones only came to me from charity shops or when I had a flight to catch. It became a part of the whole flying experience to buy a book at a sometimes ridiculous price from the bookstore in Gatwicks airside terminal.

So I would rotate my books and still get enjoyment from books that I read over and over.... and then Kindle came into my life.........

Since March I have read about 7 new books, 5 of those were by new authors, I have discovered the Kindle store where I can download a book for as little as $2 from the comfort of wherever I happen to be - tucked up in bed, on the couch etc, once I have indulged in a free sample which will give me at least the first chapter, often more to try before you buy. I have even contemplated buying a book I already have as its on a deal and means I dont have to move to find it.

Which leads me to believe that standing in a bookstore and reading a chapter of a book that I havent yet decided to purchase, is in fact, ok and I can stop feeling so guilty.

But now.. the reading fests maybe coming to an end, along with the catching up of Revenge online as its suddenly almost summer. I think that means Spring but hey this is turning into a rather summer like Spring. And the timing was great because we are up to date with Revenge and snuggling in watching TV in the evening is something I am happy to say goodbye to soon, for the season anyway.

Last weekend we embarked on Spring cleaning. It was good, tiring and necessary. My cousin whos driving from Toronto laden with English Choc is now in Moncton and will be here tonight. He flew into Toronto and hired a VW Beetle of all things. Apparently hes impressed with the car.

We need to add replacing a pool liner to our spring cleaning and the mosaic one that I have coveted since we arrived here is now on order. Its a pain in the butt that it will take 2.5 weeks to arrive but its only May, we can wait.

We are planning a Cape Cod trip now for June when mum is here, I cant wait. I love the researching side of a new trip and this ones been on my bucket list since I saw Jaws... and so found us in Chapters on Saturday afternoon browsing the travel section. There was a great book there called Road Trip USA, and I thought that although Kindle is my new friend, you cant beat a real book for stuff like this....

update

I have been very lapse in the last two weeks in updating this, I seem to have lost my Blogging mojo but its come back a bit so I thought Id get in here quick and do an update

Lilys Birthday
So last weekend Lily turned 6, she had a princess party which really meant we had a lot of little girls dressed up and making a lot of noise in the house. She had some great presents and it was an all round fabulous and tiring day.

Pool and Spring cleaning
We decided to open the pool early this year which was actually very fortunate as when the cover was removed it became quickly obvious that the pool liner had come to the end of its useful life, its split everywhere.... so now that means we need to buy a new one and get it installed. I actually dont mind this as it gives us a chance to pick a fabulous mosaic style one and Paul can install it himself - cue we save ourselves $1000!
(yes a thousand bucks! thats a huge saving!)

Yesterday we spent the whole day cleaning, the WHOLE DAY! There was dust on top of dust. Given that the heats making a return the fire is now off for the season and we washed, cleaned, mopped and hoovered endlessly yesterday getting rid of all the winter dirt. It feels good but it was a whole Saturday.
Afterwards I got out on my bike for a 10k circuit - I simply had to!

Visitors
Our Brit visitor season has started again ( I love this!), my cousin is currently over the Atlantic on a flight Toronto bound, he will then pick up a car and will prob descend on us tomorrow evening. That is cool, I havent seen him for over two years. When he leaves mid-month he will be replaced by the number one Father In Law for a week. Then my mum arrives for 3 weeks in early June. Our guest suite will be full and that makes my day.

Peepers
The Peepers are well and truly out along with the damn mosquitos and the warmer weather. We have some great temps forecast for this week - 23C being one of them and it shows, the grass is green, plants are shooting up (not in the drug related way!) and the leaves are returning,. I have a feeling that the humidity is not far behind - woot!

Trips
We may take advantage of mum being here and go on a short trip - I have my eyes on Marthas Vineyard., Its a roadtrip which is great and its on my bucket list. I want to see "Amity" and "Amity Sound" and the waters where "you are gonna need a bigger boat"

Random
While I was poking through some pics to upload I came across these:
Me and Dukie in the morning (looking our best!) and my birthday

and the way the kids all seem to hang out with their DS's- on the stairs and with the dog!