Carina's comment on my post from a year ago made me think about just how much things have moved on since April 2011.
Mr H has been through various forestry interviews and possible new houses/flats to move to, and then ended up moving home so actually it was a good thing none of them were successful. Although it didn't feel it at the time when he turned down a really nice house just in case he got the job in a different district! And his new job is brilliant... will it last? who knows, but as he said tonight "we'll make hay while the sun shines". If it goes belly up in a year's time, none of this will have been wasted, just like the forestry time hasn't been wasted. I know that our parallel life, if Mr H hadn't said about 5 years ago 'I want to go to college and learn forestry and give up upholstery', would not have been nearly as rewarding as our life is now.
***
In the last couple of weeks I have gone on a normality spree. Maybe it was the orthopaedic expert looking at me as if I was making up the pain in my leg, or maybe it was talking boats and sailing with a friend (that sounds odd, given that I talk boats all day, but this was related to pleasure not work!), but I seem to have switched gears.
Mr H and I having taken out the Heron dinghy three or so weeks ago, on Easter Sunday I took the Topaz 'Purpletrator' out:
It wasn't as comfortable, as there was very little wind so I spent most of the half hour scrunched up in the bottom of the boat, and hurting when I had to move! But, I went out and survived and will go out again this weekend.
I also spent an evening on Friday with a bunch of old sailing friends who were doing a regatta in Cowes, and felt rather envious of them because I wished that it was me going out on the water with them the next day. That is the first time really that I've missed sailing with them, it's the camaraderie and fun of being part of a crew as much as the sailing itself. I think that I should aim to be out yachting in 2013!
Today I put myself back on the sailing club duty roster, although with some conditions. So I'm back on the roster for driving a safety boat (but with a crew who is also qualified to drive so we can swap places), but staying off tractor driving duty for now (for launching the safety RIBs). Mainly because doing both involves a lot of running around by the time I have launched and recovered three boats. And I've said that I'll train as an assistant race officer as long as it's ashore, since doing it on the races that start out in the Solent involves clambering on and off an old lifeboat to/from a RIB, probably in a bit of sea - it's rare that the Solent is flat!
There is a training day for race officers and assistants at the end of May, but I'll miss it as I have an OU tutorial that day; but the sailing secretary and I agreed that since I know all the basics he's just going to throw me in the deep end, so that will be fun.
Oh and last on my list (but certainly not least) for this month of getting back to normal is going to be a week in the Lake District, hill walking and cycling amongst other things. That will be really interesting to see how much the beautiful view distracts me from how much things hurt!
And now I must get on with some studying, I have a review to write of 'Protecting Scotland's Communities - Fair, Fast and Flexible Justice', which my tutor said was very boring, but naturally I found it interesting because I'm strange like that...
