July 2015

Apart from NOT ENOUGH SUN, and an ill Alex, July has been mostly lovely. And it might well be that all the ongoing rain is karma aimed at me for getting horribly sunburnt on that one lovely weekend in early July. I apparently can't be trusted in sunshine despite having 27 years of experience of being pale and ginger. Anyway...

This dress is so good. Ridiculous. Good. And it has pockets which is just so wonderful because not enough women’s clothes have pockets. If you see me wearing this dress you can basically assume I'm in a great mood.

Bizarre montage of the day in which I watched loads of tennis, hung out with mum and dad, went to the Samaritans volunteering open morning, walked over 10 miles, got horribly sunburnt, took care of lump the dog and ate loads of amazing food.

This was a great weekend. As well as all the previous day's stuff, I was staying at my friends Alex and Stina’s beautiful flat looking after their lovely dog Lump. I’m so dog broody.

So I bought myself a Fitbit. Because I basically love gamifying my life and am sadly coming to acknowledge that I probably need to eat a bit less and move around a bit more. And you know what? It’s been GREAT. I’ve lost SOME POUNDS, and I’m feeling much better about myself in general — physically and mentally. I’ve not gone super crazy… I’m hitting around 12,000 steps a day, and I’m still eating everything I want to eat, just a bit less.

I did briefly get obsessed with striding about the place though. I’ve stopped thinking about it quite so much at this point!

Got a great new bra. Decided this was a bit much though.

David came to stay. He’s one of my favourites. This drawing looks nothing like him. He drew this one of me which is BRILLIANT, because he's a drawing wizard.

I’m still pretty obsessed with za’atar. Learnt how to make za’atar manakish, za’atar topped flatbreads. They were delicious.

Alex hangover is now on day #14. Turns out it’s more of a lurgy than a hangover and Alex is MISERABLE.

By day #4 it had evolved into an upset tummy. I immediately got a sympathy upset tummy, because my body is terrible at functioning like a functional human body. But I don’t think I’ve actually got the lurgy.

My work are putting together a team for the 10k run next April. For a very brief moment, in a moment of fitbit motivated over-confidence I considered joining them. 10k isn’t really that far? So I tried to do a 10k (walking, not running) and was on track to do it within an hour and a half, but then I got blisters. OH DEAR.

Justin’s pre-birthday gathering was pretty magic.

Here’s the most horrific drawing of Alex ever, but it captures the general mood of lurgy induced misery.

I’m still dancing and can FINALLY (mostly) do a pas de bouree. WATCH ME WATCH ME WATCH ME

The day before Justin’s actual birthday I created a custom Justin cake and it turned out pretty amazing.

And then on Justin’s actual birthday we ordered an obscene amount of chip shop chips to celebrate. Possibly too many chips.

Tomorrow I'm off to North Wales (where I grew up) for the first time in around 4 years, for a BFF's wedding. Feels kind of weird to be going back after so long! I will try and draw some interesting things while I'm there.