Not long now...

Gosh, it's been a while since I made an update here. I very much appreciated the various helpful comments and conversations about lay readership and vocation after my last post. There are avenues I intend to pursue once I'm back from honeymoon, but like almost everything else non-wedding related in my life, it's pretty much shelved until then.

Last weekend I went away for my pre-wedding party, aka stag do without all the oogy connotations that term invokes. It was organised with loving care and characteristic eptitude by my wonderful best people themidnightgirl and robert_jones. Along with leonato, emperor, atreic, cm, cuddlyviking and bunnypip, we stayed in a charming and only slightly eccentric cottage in Aysgarth, a village in the Yorkshire Dales. We were slightly unlucky with the weather, managing to pick the weekend of torrential rain immediately following a heatwave, which put a mild crimp in our plans for a long walk, but after a pub lunch on the Saturday we grabbed the couple of hours of only mild drizzle to go and see the extraordinarily beautiful Aysgarth Falls, and some of the more foolhardy amongst us even went for a swim in one of the pools. That evening we had a glorious feast, along similar lines to Easter, with everyone cooking a course - all were delicious, but emperor won the spectacle competition, because when you cook his "Apples in a Lake of Fire" recipe for nine people, you get a lot of fire :)

On Sunday we went to Mass in the nearby town of Leyburn, which was charming and welcoming, and whilst I felt a slight pang of missing hjdoom's baptism, which was happening half way across the country, it was good to be worshipping at the same time and sending prayers of welcome. We stayed for coffee afterwards and chatted to people, which is a thing I find difficult, but I was quite proud of myself for managing to engage with someone who seemed pretty shy, and after a few slightly faltering starts he came out of his shell a bit and told me about his rather fascinating years volunteering for an organisation, Mercy Ships, who deliver free healthcare to some of the poorest countries in the world.

Whilst we were at church the atheists had been hard at work preparing a delicious brunch, which we then followed with a readthrough of "An Ideal Husband". Much like the "A Woman of No Importance" we did for my birthday, the good thing about readthroughs at parties where one is the guest of honour is that you get to play the Oscar Wilde insert, which is of course tremendous fun, especially when it includes kissing atreic! And inbetween all this activity there was still plenty of time for lots of sitting in the hot tub, enjoying the company of some of my most beloved and wonderful friends.

After such a lovely weekend getting up at Ugh o'clock in the morning to catch a train was a bit challenging, but significantly ameliorated by the fact that said train was taking me to Northampton to attend Mass with hjdoom. I'm not even going to try and find words for what it meant to share communion with him. After Mass we went for a gentle walk to and around a nearby park, talking long about life and faith and many other things. A little later vyvyan joined us and we went out for dinner, before I took my leave back to Huddersfield.

This weekend has unsurprisingly been full of wedding preparations. We had the final fitting of our wedding outfits and they were perfect and I can't wait for everyone to see us. We're going to look so stunning. So stunning. We also went through everything that's left on the to-do list, and it although there's a fair amount to do, I actually feel as though we're pretty much entirely on top of it, which is a weird feeling. I keep expecting it to get stressful, but so far it hasn't really. I'm just really excited and happy.

July Goals Update

Goals. January February March April June


Meta
I'm basically back on top of the meta things. I spent a while feeling like my to-doist list was getting somewhat out of hand, but now it's back under control again. More importantly, I've realised how to prevent that happening again (Basically I need to kick things I'm not going to get done into the future rather than letting them sit in 'overdue' because I'm kidding myself that they're going to get done that day.) On another meta note, these regular reviews of my goals are starting to give me a better sense of what's realisitic and what's not, and make it clear to me that I'm still spreading myself too thin and therefore doing lots of things a bit half-heartedly. To some extent that's a factor of who I am - I've got too many interests to ever focus too narrowly, but I'm increasingly realising that I might benefit from trying to do things consecutively rather than concurrently. As such, I think I'm going to switch from having a list of annual goals to having a longlist of lifetime goals, and then breaking it down into quarters rather than years, with each quarter having just one or two main foci for growth and development, plus some background maintenance things. Obviously I'm not going to be able to give this the thought it needs until after the wedding, so I shall carry on as I am for the next couple of months, but aim to switch over for the final quarter of 2019.

Finances
So after letting my May and June spending get completely out of control I did some more analysis of my spending and was slightly surprised to find that dining wasn't nearly as much of a driver as I was expecting it to be. ( Read more... )