Day 29

My inner sports hero (very inner, and doesn't make an appearance often, especially not while playing sport) is dreamily imagining the cheering fans at this point, as I metaphorically run past puffing, yelling to me "Keep going, Meg, you're almost half way! You can do it! Run, Meg!".

My inner couch potato is chewing a Mars bar, channel flipping right past me on the screen, and saying "Big deal. 'Nother thirty one days to go yet. What else is on?"

My inner narcissist is telling them both to shut up because nobody cares about their opinions, anyway.

My inner peace-maker is shushing everyone.

The discipline is being tested this evening because today I picked up a book, that I have been waiting aaaages to read, from the bookshop in town. I ordered it from America (yep - you can still do that through an actual bookshop and not have to pay with a credit card, who knew?) not long after it came out over there, and it's here at last. I've been sweetly torturing myself by doing every housework job imaginable while leaving it sitting on the kitchen counter, from which vantage point it is beckoning me to get into bed and nom nom nom it all up. I even washed out the lunch boxes ready for tomorrow.

Part of my reasoning is wanting to delay the inevitable moment when I will have read the book, after which it will no longer be something to look forward to. The other part is that this particular book is written by someone I quite admire - for all the wrong reasons - and I don't want to feel inferior once I start reading.

I've been reading this blog, called Enjoying the Small Things, for a couple of years now (the fact that that bit is in a different colour means it's a link and if you click it you can go straight to the blog in question - heads up for the noobs) and the blogger has written a book. If you've not ever come across Kelle Hampton before, basically her story is that her blog became a Really Big Deal after she posted a quite raw and honest account of the day her daughter, who has Down Syndrome, was born, and it pretty much went viral. It's possibly one of the more profound things I've read in my life.

Since then she has become a kind of accidental activist for families of kids with special needs, but her blog is kind of more than that. It's a call to embrace life in whatever form it comes to you, and to appreciate the beauty in every moment. It must kind of help you to 'see the beauty in every moment' when you are six foot tall, drop dead stunning even in your pjs, and can take great photos of your kids forty times a day with your eyes closed because you're a pro photographer. When you bake, and shop, and hand paint things and never spend seven straight hours cleaning up your house because you let it go for two days... But, I digress. Enjoy The Small Things, she does.

I get the spirit of what she is doing, and I can try really hard not to hate her just because she takes amazing pics. It makes me stop and consider what the point of all this disciplinationing is, if not to create the breathing space I need to be able to 'Enjoy the Small Things' more.

And now that the chores are done - book time :)

M xx