A simple new year's resolution

My new year’s resolution is to keep things simple. 

Does this mean the end of the lengthy, meandering blog post for Om in Mom? Possibly. We shall see.

The other day I did this fabulous exercise by Barrie Davenport, which is a kind of all-round audit of every area of your life. I came up with the same few things that I want to focus on this year. I want more calm in my life, more time outdoors with the people I love and more present-moment focus (whether I’m working, writing or just hanging out).

Following Leo Babauta’s advice on changing habits, I will work on one area at a time and I’ll start small. So, for the month of January I’m going to try and meditate every day for 5 minutes. The great thing about meditation is that it has huge knock-on effects in other areas of your life. It’s the law of least effort. All you do is sit. And watch. And things really start to take off. I’ll be back at the end of the month to let you know how it goes. 

I’ll sign off with a picture of our New Year’s Day hike, on this misty morning here in Palencia. The New Year's Day hike is a tradition I've tried to keep up every year since my teenage days with the venture scouts. Not the coolest thing to admit to, I know, but believe me it’s a great way to start the year. Happy 2012 everyone!

Born on Christmas Day

My brother Marcus was born forty years ago on Christmas Day. Special birthday, right? Well, not really. I’m sure the first couple of birthday-Christmases were all very special, but I made my entrance into the world 19 months later and our other brother a couple of years after that, and pretty soon Marcus’s birthday became a bit of a half-hour job, somewhere between opening Santa’s presents first thing in the morning and the under-the-tree family presents later on. Awwwww.

Before you get the violins out, I should point out that my mum made sure that Marcus had a half-birthday party every year on the 25th June. My protests that I wanted a half-birthday party fell on deaf ears, by the way. (Possibly something to do with being born in July, but I put it down to favouritism, myself.)

Birthdays have always been a bit hit-and-miss in our family since we all flew the nest. We’ve all lived in different parts of the country (continent/world), so depending on when we got together you either got a present or you didn’t. Sometimes we’d play catch up, sometimes not. No big deal. I have a suspicion that our slapdash approach meant that the same people were always getting diddled each year. A few years ago we decided to stop the presents completely, other than for the kids. My mum, however, still gives presents, my sis-in-law always sends cards and I might phone if you’re lucky. Oops. So it looks like there’s still some diddling going on. Sorry about that, folks.

Anyway, I digress. After forty years of interrupting our Christmas celebrations to rush through Marcus’s birthday presents (“Hurry uuuup!”), we decided to do something different this year, proving it’s never too late to change.

We clubbed together to get the present, and bought a beautiful Canadian canoe. My younger bro Piers, who’s a bit of a Bear Grylls (although I don’t think he’s ever drunk his own you-know-what) came up with a brilliant plan: a day trip canoeing on Christmas Eve. He picked a route not too far from my parents’ house, where we could paddle down the canal, hop across a field and cruise back down the river. Lovely.

Here are the more interested members pouring over the map, while others show a more laissez-faire attitude to the planning process.

We have a hot drink and a bite to eat by the water's edge before we set off. 

Here’s Marcus and his family about to have their first paddle. 

And this is my mum showing us all that being not-quite-70 does not make you too old to get in a canoe.

Much "row, row,  row-ing your boat" later, here are the two canoes (Piers has one too) going under the canal bridge.

We all agreed it was a fantastic day out and it’s a new birthday-Christmas tradition we hope to keep up for many years to come. Beats stuffing your face and falling asleep on the sofa -although no doubt there'll be some of that more traditional activity going on too. Happy birthday-Christmas, big bro! 

And now it’s on to the turkey…


(The observant reader will notice my blog is approximately one week behind for most posts. This is something I aim to improve on in the New Year!)

The great Spanish "puente"

Have you heard of the great Spanish invention, the "puente"? Unlike bank holidays in the UK, which are usually moved to the nearest Monday, here in Spain holidays fall when they fall and if it's a weekend then bad luck, but if it's a Tuesday you can take the Monday off work and make a nice "bridge" (puente) between the weekend and the holiday. Well, Tuesday and Thursday were holidays last week, so we had ourselves a big ole mama aqueduct.

We decided to go away with my sister-in-law and her family to the Picos de Europa, the mountains of Cantabria, one of Spain's hidden treasures. We stayed in a cottage in the picturesque village of Tudes. It's a working village -the cows and sheep are herded right past your window daily, and chickens roam freely through the streets.

You can walk out of the cottage and straight up the mountain path with spectacular views all around you in every direction. You'd never think you were in Spain -it's just like Switzerland, with cows grazing in the lush green hills and craggy snow-topped peaks in the background. My Swiss-loving friends are going to lynch me now, because my photos really don't do it justice...

We walked to an abandoned village, not far from Tudes. Here's a picture of the tiny church. Of course we had to give the bell a ring.

My youngest and I ended up lagging behind the others. Not-quite-three-year-old legs don't walk so fast, you see. We took our time getting home and had a photo shoot along the way. I took a few pictures of him...

And he took a very fetching one of me!

It was a fantastic trip. I've not disconnected so well in ages. And the best thing about the December puente is that it comes just as the festive season begins, so it's like a pre-Christmas-holiday holiday. Man, I love Spain!

Longest time-out ever

For a while, things were relatively easy around here. I even started to think I might need a change of blog theme. And that's of course when it hits you -bam! And you're back on the slippery slope down to the deepest depths of feral toddler (and mummy) behaviour. In short, there have been far too many time-outs and shouty moments in our household of late. And this is the story of my youngest son's longest time-out ever.

Rewind a few days, we are at my in-laws' house for the weekend. I am in the bedroom and the sounds of a bit of a "ruckus" come floating up from the kitchen. The next thing I hear is Alejandro marching our youngest son up the stairs and shutting him in the bedroom opposite for a time-out. (I don't like time-outs, but they do help all parties calm down and get some thinking time...)

The only problem is that there is a lock on the inside of the bedroom door. And yes, you guessed it -my curious not quite 3 year old gives it a try. So when we go to get him out, we can't. My mother-in-law goes into panic mode and my 4 year old bursts into tears, crying hysterically as if he's seen his little brother get abducted by aliens or worse. "Mi hermano! My brother!!" he wails over and over again, changing languages depending on who is nearby to listen.

On the other side of the door, my youngest son remains pretty unfazed by all of this. He lies down on the floor by the door and plays "I can see you!" for a while. I try to talk him through the "this is how you unlock the door" process, but although he seems to be giving it a go, his little fingers can't quite manage to turn it back.

Meanwhile, out in the garden, my parents-in-law and my partner get a long ladder and prop it up against the balcony of the bedroom. My mother-in-law climbs up the ladder and over the railings onto the balcony, but the bedroom window and door to the balcony are firmly shut. Dang.

Alejandro and his dad come inside with a whole array of scary-looking tools that they're intending to open the door with -there's a giant crow bar, a radial saw, screwdrivers and a heavy hammer. They remove the doorhandle, dismantle the doorframe, and make small cuts in the wood, but it's a sturdy oak door and it ain't budging. An alarming smell of burning pervades after the use of the radial saw, bringing with it a cloud of thick smoke and a fresh round of hysterics from my eldest son. And I'm starting to panic now as well.

My mother-in-law is keeping my youngest entertained through the window, by telling stories and drawing smiley faces in the condensation on the glass. It's foggy and wintery out there on the balcony and she hasn't got a coat.

My attention is divided between calming my eldest son's fears ("We're never going to go home to Madrid"!?!) and liaising between the break-the-door-down team and my mother-in-law out on the balcony, making sure my youngest son (who I can't see, but she can) is far away from any demolition activity (which I can see, but she can't).

It takes well over an hour for my partner and his dad to get into the room. Those doors are made of solid oak. They are beautiful doors that have been there as long as the house my father-in-law built when my partner was a boy. Well, they were beautiful. Now, Alejandro's old bedroom door looks like this...

(And that's my first photo insertion. Woo hoo! Going all high tech here...)

Oh well. At least it was only the door that got hurt. In the end it was a simple hammer-a-hole-through job that did the trick.

My son was happily crayoning away at the table when the rescue mission finally met with success. He couldn't work out what all the fuss was about.

Needless to say, we'll be choosing our time-out locations more carefully next time...

A trip to a previous life (or "my meandering career")

I had a glimpse of my previous life last week. Ten years ago, when I first came to Madrid, I was working for a big company in business development. I knew all the ridiculous business management buzz words and could play bullsh*t bingo with the best of them. The job was all I'd thought I wanted –international travel, British Airways gold card, posh hotels, corporate credit card, you name it... All the trappings of the corporate life. But there was something missing. It wasn't really me.

Well, I had my big escape plan in place so I could put up with the fish-out-of-water feeling because I knew it was only temporary. I aimed to stay in Madrid for a couple of years to improve my Spanish, then do postgraduate studies in Hispanic literature (my first love), go back to the UK and teach at a university if possible or college/school otherwise.

Ha! Life got in the way of that plan, just a tad... I never made it home and I never taught Spanish lit, but I did begin to spend my days doing what I love –all things language-related. 

I started off on track with my plan, doing postgrad studies at Salamanca University. If you've never been to Salamanca, put it on your things-to-do-before-I-die list. The whole city is steeped in history and culture. Many of the great names in Spanish philosophy and literature studied and/or worked there. History seeps through the metre-thick walls of the ancient buildings. Plus it's simply stunning. The beauty of the baroque façades sends your heart leaping into your mouth at every corner you turn. There’s theatre in the streets, poetry readings and conferences with visiting writers. It's a book lover’s heaven and literature comes alive there.

After my student days (re-visited –again, but that's another story!) I taught at a university in the south of Spain, so I can tick that off my life plan too. I worked in the English department, not the Spanish one, but it was a great experience. I was only there for a couple of years, and although I enjoyed the job, it was long enough for me to realize that a career in higher education wasn't for me either. (Narrowing it down here, we'll get there eventually!)

During that time I fell pregnant with my first son, and I found out that my teaching contract at the uni was disguised as a scholarship, (a money-saving tactic that is common in Spanish universities) so I had to become a freelancer to pay my own social security to be covered for routine check-ups in the (normally universal) Spanish health system. It was annoying at the time, but it's worked out wonderfully and I've not looked back. That was five years ago and I've been working as a freelancer ever since –translating and proofreading and, more recently, writing English-teaching materials for companies here in Madrid.

Lengthy background history there, I really must get better at summarizing… Now let’s skip to last week when I stood in for my friend, Sarah, as a trainer on a HR course in English for a big financial corporation here in Spain. It wasn’t exactly on my life plan but, since the opportunity popped up, I thought it would be interesting to bring my two areas of experience (business and languages) together.

So, it’s 6.40am on Thursday morning and, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I climb into the taxi to go to the company’s offices in the business district of downtown Madrid where the company bus will take us to their posh new “learning campus” in the outskirts. It feels like the olden days when I’d catch taxis like it was going out of fashion.

I arrive at the offices half an hour early due to the unpredictability of Madrid traffic and because I’m borderline obsessive-compulsive. I take a walk around the area I used to know so well. Memories come flooding back as I pass the Corte Inglés, the detested department store where I had many a nightmare shopping trip ten years ago, buying mobile phones, printers, etc. to set up the business development office for our three man team -my boss, a colleague and myself. (No procurement department here, so the honour fell to yours truly. And by the way, I really hate shopping!) I walk on, glad that chapter of my life is closed, and find a café around the corner where I have a coffee to kill some time and get my head around what I’m about to do. 

7.30am soon comes around and I get on the corporate bus. I am like an excited school kid, craning my neck as we go past many of my old haunts. There’s “Sí Señor”, the Mexican restaurant on the Paseo de la Castellana, where my colleagues and I downed many a slushy margarita in years gone by. We go right past the Real Madrid stadium and my old apartment just opposite, where I used to hang off the balcony soaking up the pre- and post-match excitement (and hoping for a glimpse of the lovely Zinedine Zidane or perhaps señor Beckham).

In my enthusiasm for revisiting my old life, I almost forget my nerves about the course I’m about to give. I’ve come straight out of Mumsville and I’m about to stand out there in front of a room full of business folk, all experts in their field. The expression “deer in the headlights” springs to mind.

It's OK, folks. I survived. Despite the knots in my stomach, the two day course went quite well. I was amused to see that, whilst the business concepts are pretty much the same as ten years ago, there are a few new management buzz words that have since appeared. Some genius has come up with the terms “onboarding” and “blended learning” since I was last in that world. Snigger snigger.

It was fun to get a glimpse of my previous life and (whilst I’m not about to nick off with my friend’s job) it’s heartening to see there’s well-paid work out there in my field. It’s tempting: the work has the potential to pay more in a couple of days than I earned in a month at the uni for what is essentially the same job, just with a few more important-sounding meaningless phrases thrown in. All I’d have to do is put on smart clothes and be prepared to spout business school speak and convince someone to employ me. Oh yeah, and I’d probably have to polish up my bullsh*t bingo skills.

Will I go down that route? I doubt it, but time will tell, I guess. I have to admit, I rather like my cushty job working from home, where my only commute in the mornings (after school and playgroup drop-offs) is from the kettle in the kitchen to my laptop in the lounge. I feel very fortunate to have been able to dip into my previous life and to go back to the freedom of working in jogpants or even pyjamas if it takes my fancy.

But can I just say hats off to all the women out there who are juggling “proper jobs” outside the home and mum duties. It just about finished me off last week. They really are two different worlds. And what a logistical operation it was to get everything in place so that my kids were fed, looked after, dropped off and picked up at all the right times. Huge thanks to Ursula yet again and Alejandro, for doing all the ferrying around, meal duties and handovers. Thanks also to Sarah, for giving me a helping hand back into the corporate world. You guys rock.

My first triathlon

Yes, that's right folks. Om in Mom is a triathlete. Well, of sorts, anyway. It was a very mini one (300m swim, 8km bike, 2-3km run –nice bit of Spanish precision there, nobody seemed to know what distance the run was, but it certainly felt looong to me!). And no, you didn't miss the post about all the training I was doing. That would be because I trained the Wing-It-Weezy way. Oh well. It should make it easier to improve on my time next year. Because I definitely will be there again next year. I'm still on a high. It was such a fantastic day.

So, it's race day at siesta time and I haul my bike onto the train, find myself a seat and sit down to prepare myself for the afternoon's race. It is time to chill out after spending the morning baking muffins, buying running shoes (I kid you not) and sorting out childcare arrangements for a meeting I have in Madrid next week (big thank you to Ursula for covering the nursery-nanny gap).

I get off the train in central Madrid and ride my bike across a bridge over the river to the Casa de Campo park, where the triathlon is to be held. It feels wonderful to cycle along the shady avenues of downtown Madrid. I'd like to do this more often, I think to myself, as I take in the sights –royal palace, cathedral, cable cars, etc.

The event site in Casa de Campo has a festival atmosphere, except that instead of beer and live music the stalls have officials who check your ID card and give you a brown envelope with your swimming hat, running/biking number and a few freebies thrown in. I am all fingers and thumbs as I attempt to thread my number onto the elastic I bought for the occasion. I didn't realize that it was supposed to be thick elastic so the number won't flop about too much. Oh well. Spot the newbie.

Nerves are high before the race. I'm relieved to find my friend Stacey, who seems calm and prepared in comparison to my flustering. Our other friend Meredith arrived earlier and promptly got a puncture, so she is making a mad dash home to swap it for her husband's tyre, none of us having a repair kit to hand. The girl starting next to me has forgotten her helmet, and her boyfriend is rushing back home to pick it up for her. These are hairy moments, all adding to the nerves, but when the final call comes over the loud speakers both Meredith and my race companion slip into place just in time. Phew! They will get to participate after all.

We walk across a blue carpeted area to the lake where the swim will be. It's marked out by four gigantic orange buoys. I wonder to myself why they need to be so huge –surely normal-sized buoys would do the job? The race starts in three stages, at one minute intervals. We are the pink hats –the last ones to start. I wish I'd paid attention to the orange hats' start a minute ago. I am waiting for some Spanish version of "On your marks... Get set... Go!" But no. They cut straight to the klaxon –guess that was the "go" part. That'd be Om in Mom still standing on the blocks then...

I dive off the blocks into the lake, mere miliseconds after my companions. The water is cold, but there's not really time to think about that. There are swimmers thrashing about all over the place, and I've got to remember to keep the buoys on my left at all times. Now I know why they are so huge –it's virtually impossible to see where you're supposed to be going. This ain't no straight laned swimming pool. My goggles fill up with greenish water and I swallow a mouthful too. It tastes of weeds. I make a mental note to do the rest of the swim with my mouth shut.

I'm starting to think I should have trained for this. The swim is supposed to be my best of the three sports, and it's only 300m. But it's the longest 300m I've ever swum. I even resort to breaststroke a few times, can't believe I'm being such a granny but it really is quite a struggle. I pull myself out of the water at the end and run with leaden legs to the transition area.

OK, bike next. This is definitely my worst leg, but at least there's no more lakewater to swallow. I pull my helmet on first, chuck on socks, trainers and my floppy elastic number, grab my bike and off I go. If I hadn't seen my partner take the kid seat off my bike a few hours ago, I'd swear there's a giant toddler (or perhaps a sumo wrestler) on the back as I huff and puff my way up the first hill. I marvel at how many women are overtaking me. It's like I'm going in slow motion –backwards.

I spend the whole of the bike section surreally watching myself get further and further towards the back of the race. There's just one woman who seems to be as slow as me. She's faster going up the hills, but I am reckless on the downhill bits and keep catching back up with her.

As we pull into the transition area once more, I hear a little voice shout "Mummy!" and I spot my boys waving to me from the sidelines. Yay! They made it! This cheers me up no end (although I seem to be fighting back the tears –hold it together woman, not a good time to get emotional). I make a huge effort to look like I've got loads of energy left as I whizz past them, all smiles and waves.

In the transition area I jump off my bike, hook it on the stand, change my bike helmet for a baseball cap and turn my race number around to my front for the run, as per triathlon regulations. I start my run and I swear I've never felt less like running in my life. I wonder if I'm going to have to walk some of the way. Not now though, because I'm passing my boys again. Keep going Om in Mom, it's only 2-3km! (Never mind that the only running I've done in the last five years is when I've been late for the bus, the train or my goddaughter's christening...)

It turns out that the running course is a linear route along a road: 1-1.5km out, 1-1.5km back. It's horribly disheartening to see the elite triathletes coming into the finish when you're only just starting out. Maybe I'm a defeatist, but I find this really hard mentally, until I see Meredith ahead of me on her way back just past the halfway mark. This helps me to keep going and soon enough it's me who's on the home stretch shouting some "whoop whoop, nearly half way!" type comment to Stacey, who's not far behind.

The run gets easier towards the end. It may even be slightly downhill. As I pass my boys for the last time, I manage to pull out some more fake energy to show them how hardcore their mum is. By some minor miracle I have just enough strength left for a cheeky sprint to the finish line. Woohoo! What a feeling of elation. Meredith greets me with a nice sweaty hug –she finished just ahead of me. We turn around to cheer Stacey into the finish line and we're done. All that remains is to take a photo for posterity Facebook and drink a free can of Aquarius. Marvellous.

And that was my first triathlon experience. Almost no training whatsoever, brand new running shoes, bought the same day, and I don't know what other triathlon preparation rules may have been broken along the way. Thankfully I lived to tell the tale, with no blisters or injuries (but it's not big or clever, you know). What an incredible day though. I will definitely be back for more next year. Who's going to join me? You never know, I might even try training next time...

The end of summer

"Bye bye pool!" we find ourselves saying today, as the men begin to put the fence up around our swimming pool and pull on the blue tarpaulin. It's a sad moment that folks in southern Spain don't experience. In Murcia, where we used to live, you could swim all year round. (Theoretically anyway. After living there for a year, we went native and declared it way too chilly to swim in winter).

Anyway, I digress. What rhymes with "bye bye pool"?

"Hello school" right?

You'd think. But no. My 4 year old, who's been fit as a fiddle all summer, suddenly developed tonsils the size of golf balls and a fever last night. So we've been hanging out at home today, just the three of us, on what was supposed to be my eldest's first day back at school. Sometimes I have to wonder about his timing.

Oh well. Time to reflect on summer's end. I love the unhurriedness of long summer days. I love the creativity it seems to induce in children that are left alone to just be. I love the crazy things my boys have been up to with their cousins, both here and in the UK - running around barefoot, building a house for a slug (named Jeff), constructing dens and tents, catching frogs, and chasing lizards and butterflies and footballs... Happy days.

But September brings with it a new beginning and a feeling of excitement too. I remember going to bed with anticipation the night before the first day back at school, looking forward to seeing my friends again, wondering which teachers I'd have and being uncoolly excited by blank exercise books and new pencils.

I'm not sure my 4 year old feels the same way. But anyway, who's complaining that our summer holidays just got extended by a day or two?

Um... Me.