Soooooo…Where Did January Go?!

January is a funny month.

People are generally skint and miserable after the excitement of Christmas and there tend to be more bugs flying around than you can shake a stick at.

In some ways January seems to have lasted around 50 days already, but in other ways it’s nipped past pretty sharpishly. So this post will be a fascinating, high-speed run through of what’s happened in the past few weeks.

I can’t promise a thrill-fest, but I can promise destroyed kitchens, excessive DIY and a touch of the flu. If that doesn’t make you want to read on I don’t know what will…

The Birthday

As those of you who actually know me will have spotted, I turned 40 on Christmas Eve. Of course this monumental landmark was somewhat overshadowed by Christmas, but it did still happen and I am now officially in my 40s.

The concept of turning 40 was the thing I used when I turned 30 to cheer myself up that at least I had another 10 years before I was as ancient as being 40. But now it’s here and I’ve finally reached the age that I’ve looked since my late 20s!

I decided to have a party to celebrate, but given the whole Christmas thing, I went for a mid January date to officially commiserate the passing of my youth.

The Flu

It was a really good night (ignoring the fact I inexplicably bought enough buffet food to cater for the whole of Reading), but symbolically the next day I went down with flu and spent a few days in bed recovering!

I wasn’t the only one of course, as Sarah plus at least 5 of our friends and family were also taken down in their prime, rewarded with an achey, feverish, asthmary, coughing pit of misery and despair. Lucky we had that flu jab really…

The Kitchen

Having survived turning 40 and the flu, the next adventure was ripping our old kitchen out and digging up the floor tiles. Along with wrestling a crocodile, running a marathon and watching an omnibus of Topsy & Tim, gutting a kitchen was definitely on my list of the bottom 5 tasks I’d want to be doing whilst recovering from the flu.

But with help from my parents, who were also feeling rather grotty, the kitchen was no longer. Except for the oven and dishwasher of course. We’re not animals.

Today the new kitchen arrived in all its boxed glory. All we need now is for the electrician to come out to do the myriad of electrical things that need doing before we can install the kitchen. And judging by how busy our electrician tends to be we could still be using our utility room come my 41st birthday.

It is quite exciting though to know we’re nearly there after 2 years of work.

In Joshua-land he’s loving the whole experience. The thrill of jumping between bits of random underlay on the kitchen floor. Hiding in / on / behind boxes full of appliances and cabinets. Repeatedly opening the random, tiny door on the front of our new fridge-freezer.

Rubbing himself up against any patch of dust / exposed brickwork. The usual.

He usually gets a bit emosh about things changing but this time he’s completely sold on the idea that we’ll be able to fit more of his yoghurts and cheese in the new fridge and cook more dinners for him in the new ovens.

I think it’s safe to say that life is much more straightforward at age 4 than it is at age 40…