Oops

So, it's probably about time I blogged again.

So right, let me summarise the last two months, since we were on holiday, in easy to read bullet points:

• did some proofreading assignments
• did a little bit of rubbish writing
• did some good cycling - some longish distances, and one very difficult climb
• spent a lot of nice time with the boys, including doing some really good homework
• experienced single-mumming and rather liked it
• spent a lot of time procrastinating, yet again

So nothing out of the ordinary, all the usual stuff, with the added extra of cycling.  I actually haven't done as much cycling as I should have done, on account of two bad colds and a bad back.  Can't cycle with either of those.  Bit of a bummer, as I'm getting a little behind with my training.  I'm supposed to have done a 50-miler by the end of October, which is in six days.  Fortunately, I have a beautiful new trainer for use in the home - phew!  I plan to stick the kids in bed early on Saturday night and cycle my way through two or three films and get my 50 miles done that way.  I stick my bike on this thing that lifts up my back wheel, pop my front wheel on a stationary stand, whack a DVD in my laptop and off I go, cycling in my kitchen, with snacks and drinks on hand :)  I don't have to stop, can cycle on and on.  It's brilliant.  But I have only used it once so far.  Really I need to get using it, to keep my fitness up when babysitters are scarce and the weather is rubbish.  It's all very well braving the gales and the torrents, but if they just serve to get us wet and cold without becoming any fitter, then I think we may as well cycle indoors!  There's a goal in sight - albeit eight or nine months away - and I haven't got time to enjoy the scenery, I just have to get mega fit.

This is interesting, as I'm the fattest I've ever been in my life, and had never imagined that there might come a time in my fat life when I might actually feel like getting fit - never mind mega fit.  But I'm quite enjoying it, and am already fitter than I was when I did my first cycle.  I can now sustain a speed of 18mph for quite some time on the flat.  I am now only ten or twenty seconds behind Terry on the bigger hills, rather than thirty or forty as I was at the beginning of my training.  It's like Rocky!  Getting stronger... 

Ah, thought I might be tempted to go on about cycling.  Didn't really want to as I suspect that it might be quite boring to read about.  But it's going to be a big part of my life next year.  I just hope I've still got time for writing as well - I do love cycling, but I hate that it needs to take up so much time.  It's not just the cycle itself, it's the fact that you have to warm down when you get home, have a shower and then eat because you're starving afterwards.  Then you get really sleepy and don't feel like doing anything for the rest of the day or the evening.  I'm very often tired the day afterwards as well.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong though, because I thought exercise was supposed to energise one, no?  Perhaps that happens when you get much fitter.  Perhaps that will happen when I get rid of my jelly belly.

I am also now working on a different novel.  I was switching between two projects, alternately hating and loving each one.  My mum asked me to look at the one I started in January again, the one that I did for the NaNoWriMo January project.  I did look at it, and I loved it.  I'd put it aside thinking that I'd never look at it again, it had gone very bad and I thought it had no potential at all.  But when I reread the first 20-30,000 words I saw that it was good :)  There's a lot to work with, lots of possible threads to follow, lots of really good characters, already quite well drawn and easy to visualise.  I've decided to work on that for a while.  It's not like anything I've ever written - but mind you, everything I try is new because I've not been writing for all that long.  But anyway, this new project is going to be good fun, as the story's just ridiculous.  It's quite funny, quite farcical, a bit like a Carry On story, a bit like a St. Trinian's, a bit like Terry Pratchett, and a bit like Thackeray (I'm now reading some Thackeray, because I bought quite a lot of his work when we were in Alnwick - see my hub on the subject of Secondhand Book Shops) which author I love more than any, ever; he is my definite favourite.  I am now a collector, of a particular set of Thackeray's works - very beautiful they are, and possibly a little bit rare (I don't really know whether they are, but I've just done a little search about for them and could only find a couple on ebay that were in dreadful condition - mine are in beautiful condition, especially considering that they're nearly a hundred years old :) )

Well, I think that'll do.  I've no pictures to share with you, because I haven't used my camera since we were in Alnwick.  I must start taking photos again.  There are lots of things that I must start doing again, lazy so-and-so that I am.

Night.

P.S. Forgot - we have two new cats, Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy; surprising how many people don't know where those names come from.  My girls :)  They're gorgeous.  I have no photos of them, because my phone camera is rubbish and the cats won't keep still enough, and Bellatrix is completely black which seems to make her invisible on photos.