Week 1: Bringing Fun to Food and Exercise and Realistic Expectations

The Homework this week is turning out to be harder than I thought it would be. I mean - scheduling fun and satisfying activities - how hard should that be?

Satisfying has been easy enough. I'm in 'nesting' mode at the moment - wanting to make my flat into a home, and dealing with the whole downsizing from a 2 bedroom house that a bibliophile would love, into a 1 bedroom flat that to be honest is smaller even in the rooms I do still have. So dealing with boxes of stuff, getting rid of stuff, and working on making my flat beautiful, comfortable and livable long-term  is something that I've procrastinated long enough about. And having some energy to do it - it's a happy confluence of events.

Pleasurable events - that's a whole other kettle of fish. It was easy enough on the weekend - I watched Kung Fu Panda one day, and Kung Fu Panda 2 the other. But that's been the proverbial it. It's interesting though - I play Facebook games, and I don't think of them as pleasurable. Makes me wonder why I play them at all.

There wasn't particularly a family prohibition - I have very happy memories of listening to the Goons. I love Eccles and Bluebottle. But I also have strong memories of settling down with a book and feeling like I have to hide because mum would stop me to do some housework with her. To be fair, housework was not my forte and she was always having to nag me to do it. Mum would say 'do this' and so you'd go do this, expecting that you could go do something fun afterwards. Then you'd finish it, and she'd find you and get you to do something else. And so on until the morning was gone. I'd get frustrated because I could never plan ahead for something fun. Especially when doing housework was not even a satisfying activity for me. It was just torment. And that was so for gardening as well. I hated it. Still have a 'black' thumb, although I have more enjoyment in the garden.

So yeah - Fun is hard. Thank goodness for the cats. They're not so much scheduled fun, as unscheduled mayhem. Blanche leaping around like a lunatic makes me laugh. Patting and grooming Leanne, and enjoying companionship with her makes me feel good inside. Of course, there is also lots of not so pleasant activities that go with cats - litter, anyone? But their love and fun is just awesome. And the trust that they have in me, to be honest overwhelmed me to start with.

Working on scheduling fun activities.