Keris Stainton

Give It Update

Well, negative self-talk month wasn't entirely successful, as expected. See, the thing is, it's so ingrained that I often don't even notice I'm doing it or when I have done it. Occasionally, if my mind went off on a negative rant, I'd catch on and then a simple "Shut it!" usually stopped it in its tracks. Until the next time. I suppose the only thing to do is to try and become aware of it ... but the chatter in my head is so constant ... anyway, that's another post. So I tried. I probably mostly failed. But I'm going to keep at it all the same.

Now, let's see what April has in store ... ooh, crap, newspapers. Well, I've read two sections of the Observer today (Business and Review), but I'll not bother with the rest. I don't think this is going to be hugely difficult for me. Well, hang on, maybe a bit harder than I think. I generally don't read the news portion of newspapers (which David never tires of mocking me about) and that's what I imagine I'm supposed to be giving up since I know that the news has a negative and stressful effect. I know this because I pitched an article about it and no-one was interested ... oh hang on, someone was, but now that I think about it, I haven't seen that magazine for a long time and it's probably gone bust. Anyway. Um, yeah, so missing out on actual news won't trouble me, but I do hate to miss out on information (and gossip).

Of course, I'll let you know how I get on.

Give It Up-date! and Flylady

Well February's shopping-free month went well. Even in the few days since March began I've noticed I'm stopping and thinking before buying something and then feeling pretty good when I realise I'm allowed! This is certainly an improvement on just buying without thinking and long may it continue.

As for March ... well, I'm stuck. According to the book, March is for giving up ... elevators. But I rarely go anywhere and when I do there's rarely an elevator involved. I need to substitute it with something, but most of my bad habits are covered in coming months!

What I would like to give up is negative self-talk. I want to replace every 'your jeans are falling down because your stomach's so fat' with a 'your jeans are falling down because no bastard company can make a decent pair of friggin' jeans!' or, you know, something less aggressive, but a) I have no idea how to go about doing this (replacing the self talk, I mean, not the jeans) and b) it's difficult to quantify.

I guess I'll just have to try and be aware of it and let you know how I get on with it ... wish me luck. Sigh.

While I'm on the subject of change - big thanks to Natasha for recommending Flylady. The first thing she tells you to do is "shine your sink", in other words, before you go to bed at night, clean the kitchen sink. Now - and this might shock you - I'm pretty lazy. I generally don't do the dinner dishes until the following morning and then, because I don't have much time in the morning, the odd pan hangs around most of the day, the breakfast and lunch dishes get added to the pile and, basically, there is just always a load of dirty dishes in the kitchen waiting for me to get around to washing them. Last night, to enable me to shiny my sink, I washed all the dishes.

Which brings us to the sink. Our sink is cream and made of this porous crap that basically absorbs everything so it's always tea- and coffee-stained. The drainer, made of the same crap, gets that pinky stain that you get on the grouting in the shower. It's an unholy pain in the arse. Not today, today it's gleamy and shiny and ... beige. It'll never be cream again so that's a mega improvement.

So this morning I got up and instead of being faced with a pile of dishes and a scummy sink which made me feel like a lazy loser, I was faced with no dishes and a shiny sink, which made me feel proud. Yes, proud. Which is a much better way to start the day. Sad, I know, but that's a fact. So thanks, Natasha and thanks, Flylady! (I'll let you know how I get on with the rest of the Flylady instructions. So far I'm a bit freaked by about 20 emails in the last 12 hours and the instruction to wear "lace-up shoes" but I'm keeping an open mind!)

Give It Up-date!

Just realised I haven't updated you on my non-shopping month. Well, the first week wasn't hard since I didn't have any money. I kept a record anyway:

Sunday - nothing
Monday - Bread and milk - £1.75; bus fare to preschool £1.00; eggs 89p; Ripple 44p (no, not exactly essential, but essential to me and giving up chocolate is for another month).
Tuesday - never left the house!
Wednesday - £33 Tesco. All food, no magazines, sadly.
Thursday - 90p postage; £1.25 cherry tomatoes
Friday - £1 bus to preschool
Saturday - £8 something in Smiths on O magazine (for Diane), Look! magazine for me (I know, not essential, but it was only 80p and I can’t resist a magazine’s first issue so let’s call it research, okay?), a birthday card for my auntie, a Ripple for me and a packet of Buttons for H

Total for the week £48.23 and most of it on food, so that’s okay, surely!

Since then I've bought myself some perfume (DKNY Be Delicious) and a magazine (InStyle), both of which because I forgot I wasn't supposed to be shopping, but other than that it's been essentials all the way.

Funnily enough, it hasn't been a problem. I do need some new jeans, but that can wait (it's waited this long) and it's actually kind of freeing since I have a problem with spending money anyway and now I can't so I avoid the guilt. It's the same as how I feel about food (although I'm getting over that, thanks to the Food Philosophy) and the reason the Diet From Hell (raw fruit and veg only for a week*) worked so well.

*It was an exclusion diet to try and establish what was causing my arthritis.

Give It Up!

I probably should've done this on Wednesday, but I didn't have time.

I completely my alcohol-free month happily and without a single slip-up. To be fair, it was probably a lot easier because I didn't go out much - a couple of times with David and a couple of times with friends - but I was surprised at how little I missed it.

I celebrated on Thursday night with a glass of Bailey's and got a bit carried away - it was practically a half pint. I woke up a couple of times during the night regretting it, so that's not going to be a regular occurrence ...

So for February I have to give up shopping. This doesn't worry me since I've barely bought anything since I gave up work. Seriously. David would probably disagree (a knee-jerk reaction as much as anything else), but apart from magazines, David is much more of a shopper than me. I can't stand clothes shopping (for some of the reasons explained here) and I suffer so much from buyer's remorse, I generally have it before I even get to the till and end up putting the item back on the shelf.

It also shouldn't be a problem since I am the skintest I have been for a long time. The problem with freelancing is who knows when you'll get paid, so even though January was the busiest month I've ever had, I've got literally about 60p in the bank. As and when I do get paid though, the rules will be that I can only buy essentials this month. And not essentials like, 'Ooh, Kylie and Olivier have really split up this time, I have to buy Heat!' No, real essentials. Like, um, food. And, er, I can't think of anything else ... I'll let you know how I get on.

Give It Up! Alcohol - week 3

I didn't bother updating on my progress last week, because there wasn't much to report - I'd continued to be disinterested in alcohol. But on Monday night me and D went out for dinner and, for the first time, I felt a bit put out not to be able to have a glass of wine. D wasn't bothered though, saying, "Great, you can drive!" and ordering himself a pint. Thinking of Kate's recommendation, I requested a ginger beer (I can never remember the difference between ginger ale and ginger beer; is there one?). The barman asked if I wanted a pint and I, laughing, said, "Oh, no!" So he gave me a tiny wine glass. I would've felt a bit hard done by had it had wine in it, let alone a soft drink, but whatever. Live and learn.

Then later in the week a couple of traumatic things happened (haven't yet decided whether to blog about them or not, but don't worry, all's okay now) that made me really, really, want a glass of Bailey's, but I didn't have one and that was fine too.

I must admit, I am looking forward to 1st February though ...

Give It Up! Alcohol - week 1

So the first alcohol-free week is over. How did it go? Fine, actually. I only usually drink red wine at home but, of course, David bought me two giant bottles of Bailey’s for Christmas and I love Bailey’s.

I tried to stop drinking red wine early last year, for the reasons I outlined at the time. It never actually tastes as good as I think it’s going to and it gets me drunk and makes me hate myself. And I don’t like hating myself. So there was half a bottle of red left and I poured it away (once I’d recovered from my New Year hangover, of course).

I’ve only been tempted by the Bailey’s once and that was just before the Green Wing Special. I thought, ‘Ooh, I’ll have a nice glass of Bailey’s’ and then I thought, ‘Oh no, I can’t.’ And that was it.

Having read the relevant chapter of Mary Carlomagno’s book, she’s out all the time and not drinking when you’re out is really hard, I know. I have no plans to go out at all during January (yeah, I know I’m sad) so it should be a breeze. We’ll see.

52 Books Project - The Reckoning*!

*To be said in a movie trailer voiceover-type voice.

Well, I've been and gone and done it! I can't believe it's over. This year really has flown by ... I know, I'm showing my age. And I didn't manage to finish Mindy Klasky (funny that, left with two books by women named Mindy at the end of the year!).

So - The Reckoning! First of all, how did I get on with my "must-read" list for 2006?

Little Women - read it, was disappointed;
Emma - nope;
Making Babies - nope;
The Virgin Suicides - tried; it was too sad;
A Room With a View - nope;
Madeleine's World - yes; loved it (again);
Monkey Business - yes; didn't like it;
We Need To Talk About Kevin - hated it; couldn't finish it;
A Confederacy of Dunces - started it ... will go back to it;
King of Cannes - read it, loved it.

Hmm. Not very well. That is a pretty poor showing, but it's partly because, in the second half of the year, I had to prioritise books I could review for Trashionista (excuses, excuses). I'll try and read them this year (or decide not to bother ...).

Diane kindly asked me the following questions and they just about sum it up, don't they? (I was only planning to work out the total books and the total Meg Cabots, but no, don't worry, that's fine, I'll go through the whole bloody list again ... and what's the betting the numbers don't add up?)

How many (adult) novels? 60

My favourite was Marian Keyes's Anybody Out There and I also loved Andrea Levy's Small Island, Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos and Stupid and Contagious by Caprice Crane.

How many YA? 26

And my favourite (non-Meg) was probably The Boy Book by E Lockhart. Ooh, or Fly on the Wall by E Lockhart.

How many non-fic? 34

102 Minutes was the best non-fiction book I read this last year.

How many Meg? 8

I think my favourite was the most recent - Princess Diaries: After Eight, but I loved Avalon High too.

Plus children's books (not including repeated readings of Monkey Puzzle and Is It Bedtime, Wibbly Pig?) - 2 (First Term at Malory Towers and Clarice Bean Don't Look Now)

How many, basically? 129!

(I'm not entirely confident that's right since I got 126 the first time I counted, but you know, it's somewhere in that region.)

How many (of the above) have you reviewed? 57

How many have you hated?

I don't think I hated any. But then there were 18 unfinished books - I haven't got time to keep reading a book I'm really not enjoying.

What have you learned?

... That I'm still excited about books. Each time I'd finish a book, I'd have this moment of disappointment that it was over, quickly followed by a flicker of excitement that now I could go and choose another book to read! You'd think I'd have got used to that after 30-odd years of reading, but no.

... That I can't be trusted with a library card. I don't know what the total fines for the year would be - and I don't want to know - but my last (and final) fine was (David, cover your eyes) £15. It doesn't bother me as much as fines from, say, banks (sorry, I mean "admin charges") because I choose to see it as a donation to the library, but I'm too disorganised to cope with library membership. I've finally had to accept it.

Would you recommend it?

I'm not sure. This is what I said when I started:

... it's a good way to give myself a break from work. I find that when I start working, I can't stop and not only do I need (and deserve) a break, I need to read. So this way I'll have an excuse to stop writing and read.

But once I started reviewing for Trashionista, I made reading work too. While on the one hand that's been fantastic - free books! free books! - and what could be better than reading (free!) books for money?! But on the other, it's meant that I'm never really not working ... yeah, yeah, the heart bleeds, I know.

Apart from that, it's been a bit of extra pressure - must read more books! - but I've always been a bit like that anyway. You know because ... so many books, so little time!

And, as it turned out, 52 books wasn't that much of a challenge, so ... I don't know.

Are you happy with that (crappy) answer? But I'd love to hear how you'd get on with it, Diane. Is it too late to challenge you to do it in 2007? :)

Tell us about your next project, Keris...

Oh, alright then! Much as last year's project was inspired by/ripped off Sara Nelson's book, this year's will be inspired by/ripped off this one:

Would it be possible to live without the designer coffee, the Kate Spade bags, the technology that were a part of my everyday existence? Could stripping away some of those items and habits make me appreciate what I have? I created a plan. Each month for one year, I would choose one of my favorite things and give it up, cold turkey, for one month. This would become my year to live better with less.

Like most people, Mary Carlomagno was stressed out, overscheduled, and tripping over the clutter of her days -- until she decided to take control and simplify her life. Each month she renounced one thing: alcohol, shopping, elevators, newspapers, cell phones, dining out, television, taxis, coffee, cursing, chocolate, and multitasking. During the course of the year, Mary took stock of her life, discovered what was really important, and gained a deeper appreciation for the world around her.

I'll have to make a few substitutions - giving up elevators wouldn't have much effect on me since I rarely leave the house - but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. January's - alcohol - is certainly one of my favourite things (or it was until this morning), so we're off!