Hi, it’s been a while, and this blog is super long. My website host went on the fritz, so I wasn’t able to access it.
We had an incredible weekend. Sam, Milly and Zak were up to stay.
Zak and I had another grandma/grandson day on Friday. This time I decided it was best if I didn’t take him for a five mile yomp, seeing as I nearly broke the poor little thing last time I had him.
Instead I just let him decide the plan. I dressed suitably for the occasion too.
I generally find I can’t go wrong with a tracksuit. I factor in that it’s likely that there’ll be plenty of floor play, and some carrying will be involved. You can’t babysit a 3 year old and not factor it in really.
I have two hernias, they need care and consideration. I often feel like they’re a separate entity to me.
I made sure I drank plenty of fluids, this really helps with keeping the hernias from flaring up.
The more the faeces inside me can flow comfortably and freely, the more unlikely it is that I will have a flare up.
I try to avoid lifting, but like I said, that’s not really feasible with a 3 year old.
But I will limit myself, I have to remember I could cause myself further injury if I don’t tread carefully.
I left the activities program entirely up to Zak. The moment he arrived he said “I’m going to play in my jewellery shop nana”
And there you have my heart, melted into the floor. He completely and utterly melts me.
Tracksuit from Ralph Lauren.
We played indoors to start with. Working our way through the toys. As it turns out, I too have the attention span of a 3 year old, so for me it’s a delight to be flitting from one thing to the next.
I think it’s pretty clear this is most definitely within my comfort zone. I imagine my dyslexia leads me to have a short attention span, they understandably go hand in hand.
It works out very well for looking after the under 5s. It probably explains why I was such a natural nanny (the au pair variety, not the grandma type. Although now I am the grandma variety - God that was a confusing segue).
Anyway, we played with everything, and then headed out to the garden to the sandpit I made for him in the summer.
There’s only 1 person on this whole planet I’d be standing in a waterlogged sandpit with - in November, and that’s Zak.
We spent a long time out there. He had me building islands and channels and I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world - or with anyone else.
We then came in and baked Pumpkin Guts cake. I found a new recipe for it recently, and it was a delight. This one is light, airy, moist and delicious. I definitely would recommend it, if like me, you hate the wastage that comes with pumpkin carving.
I used wholemeal spelt flour and mixed spice.
And next time I think I will halve the ingredients, as I pretty much ate both of these loaves to myself.
I cannot be trusted. ;)
As Zak himself said “It’s hard work being on our own nana”.
He wasn’t wrong, I thought it might be nap time…not for him. ;)
We had a super fun evening too. Chris and I were on grandparent babysitting duty. What an utter joy.
Sam and milly got all dolled up and went off to a black tie charity do. They looked an absolute treat.
Chris and I decided to take Zak out for a pizza.
We had been at the restaurant about one minute thirty seconds before I could smell burning and then realised we’d set the menu on alight. Hahaha.
Yes, we are available to hire for babysitting duties! Hahahahaha
We put the menu fire out, had dinner and then took Zak to see the lights in the local shopping mall.
Then on to the local arcade for a play on the slots. We are a classy outfit. ;)
It’s always a brilliant idea to take a small child out, and overly stimulate them just before bed. I think it’s fairly obvious that I retired from nannying a very long time ago.
He was an absolute delight though. Three bed time stories and he was out like a light. And he slept all night too.
When he woke up he asked Sam and Milly where nana and pops were, as we had been the last thing he saw before he went to sleep.
Yep, I blubbed a bit. He’s just so bloody adorable.
On Saturday night and Sunday there was torrential rain, and guess what bright spark didn’t remember to cover the sandpit? No it wasn’t me! How dare you have so little faith in me!!…
…okay, so it was me, but you could have had a bit more belief in me!! ;)
Zak wanted to check on the sandpit, so that’s exactly what we did.
Note to self - Cover the sandpit, before it becomes a sand pond.
Top from M&S, Tabard from Jigsaw, Leggings from Next, Boots from Ralph Lauren.
In the afternoon we headed to Costco to get a few bits and bobs, and so too did the world and his wife. I have never seen it so busy and I have completely put myself off ever going again.
On the way down there Zak asked if there would be slots, so you can see what a great influence we have been on him. Hahahahah
Anyway Costco was a living hell. I would actually prefer to go to the cinema than go back there.
I picked up some lovely DKNY pyjamas, I was standing holding them and a woman came up to me and said “I need them, can I have those?”
I had no idea what she meant to start with. I was so taken aback when I realised she wanted the pyjamas that I was standing holding, clearly wanting.
“Errrrr, no, I’m buying them”
“But I need them” said crazy Costco lady.
At this point I was ready to run screaming from the store. But I stood my ground and politely explained that that’s not how shops work.
Soooooo bloody weird.
We then joined the queue to buy said pyjamas, amongst other things. The queue went all the way to the back of the warehouse, it was insane.
Anyway I was standing in the queue alone, Chris had popped over to the massage chairs with Zak, and Sam had disappeared off in pursuit of Guylain Sea Shells, in an industrial size box, when the woman in the queue in front of me, turned round, picked up a jumper out of my trolley, that I was buying for Chris, I take him to all the best clothes shop - but that is beside the point, and said “That’s nice, how much is it?”
What the actual **** is going on? It’s like the Wild West in there. Frontier land has nothing on the socially unacceptable boundaries of these shoppers!
I was glad to get out of there, and now I never want to return. The worst part is it was my idea to go there to start with.
Milly was selling her homewares at a craft market in Brentwood, and I suggested we drive down and combine a visit to Costco, and the craft fair.
Another note to self - Avoid Costco, you simply don’t need giant versions of things you can get in any supermarket. They do do the best Christmas decorations though, so watch this space. :)
The third note to self of the weekend was when I thought I’d been incredibly clever by leaving my Halloween decorations up for Zak’s benefit.
…Yeah, three year olds don’t necessarily get the fun nuances from Halloween tablescapes.
In fact, I’d go as far to say they are pretty much terrified and traumatised by them!
Luckily my delightful insomnia woke me from a very restless slumber, ridiculously early, so I decided to tidy away scary Halloween before he woke up. And then made a far less scary, but no less attractive scape.
We live and learn. :)
*********
Just quickly, Ostique, the stoma innovation company I was invited to be a brand ambassador for, have launched a new product, and they released some more of the photos from the photoshoot I went to in August, as part of their launch.
At this point you’d be forgiven for wondering if I’m ever dressed. And the answer is, yes, occasionally. ;)
I love the new Sk.ns stoma bag covers from Ostique. They feel so luxurious. Which makes them feel exciting and desirable (that may sound like a sales pitch, I did not get paid for my modelling, but I love the team there and happy to help them sell something I believe in, plus I got some nice photos out of it too).
I have never been bothered to wear stoma covers before now. But I’m buying some of these for my holiday next year.
I’m not embarrassed by my stoma in any way. But I do feel far more comfortable and confident with the new Sk.ns cover on.
Notice how comfortable and natural I look whilst ‘modelling’…
…could I breathe in more if I tried!?! I’ve even tried to breathe my legs in!! Which I think is something that I’ll trademark for me now. :)
******
And then we come to something very exciting. Chris and I were very kindly and incredibly generously treated to a night in a one bedroom suite - with butler - at The Savoy Hotel in London, by friends.
So we decided to make a longer stay of it and booked the night before too (in a cheaper room at The Savoy).
What a treat. A two night, three day stay in London. A Midweek weekend if you will.
We booked ourselves an afternoon tea in the Savoy for the first day too. Just to make a very special stay, even more special.
Dress from Zara, Boots from LK Bennett, Bag from Dior.
By the way, if anyone is wondering what benefits there are to being on the right HRT combination - my answer is simple. I finally feel like me again, after 12 years on the wrong dose I finally feel alive, rejuvenated in fact.
I've had a few questions about my HRT.
I was on 1 tablet a day for 11 and a half years (having lost my ovaries to the bowel cancer treatment)
The one tablet didn't do much, and 1 felt empty, incomplete and lost.
Last year I decided to embark on finding something better.
I'm now on;
Mirena coil
Evorel 100 patches
Testosterone gel
Intrarosa pessary
The key is, we are all different. Some people don't need anything and that’s fantastic!!…and some of us need loads of help, and that’s okay too.
He’s my favourite person to eat afternoon carbs with.
Who doesn’t love copious amounts of sandwiches and bottomless tea. I have decaf tea, as I can’t tolerate caffeine, and plenty of Gaviscon because, let’s face it, who can tolerate that much food.
We headed out for a stroll around Covent Garden. We needed to stretch our legs and try and walk off an incredibly delicious but heavy carb session.
(The restaurant above, Clos Maggiore. has been voted most romantic many times. As we were passing we decided to see if they had any availability for lunch the following day, and to our surprise they did!).
We joined the tourists and took in the sights.
We came back from our walk. I re-changed into my other boots, I’ve got the whole “from day to night” extravaganza down perfectly.
We didn’t fancy any dinner as we were both still full from lunch, and here begins my first mistake.
By bedtime I was having an absolute mare.
As I said, we had a large afternoon tea at 1pm, and neither of us then were hungry at dinner time, but really we should have thought ahead.
I got into bed, and realised I was now super hungry, I tossed and turned for ages.
It wasn’t going down too well with my room mate. ;)
I literally couldn’t sleep. By this point I was rolling round like I was being wrestled by an alligator in a death roll.
My restlessness then woke Chris up fully. Bearing in mind he was fast asleep seconds ago, he agreed to room service for a snack. All I really wanted was a couple of digestive biscuit to tide me over. (I think they’re called Graham Crackers in America).
Well the Savoy don’t have any, nor do they have any biscuits that aren’t covered in chocolate. I can’t have chocolate in its solid form as it gives me gut ache, so I ordered a hot chocolate drink, which gives me a little grumbly tum, but nothing like actual choc does.
And Chris ordered - a club sandwich, fries and a latte…not bad for someone who was perfectly happily asleep only minutes earlier.
This was 1am.
Food eaten, I tucked into a little triangle of Chris’s sandwich, minus the bacon, I then had my hot chocolate, and tried to get to sleep. Well, it wasn’t happening, I think I missed the window of opportunity.
I finally managed to drop off about 3am. I’m not sure if it was a wasted night in a hotel, or a better investment, as I got to see the room more than those who sleep soundly.
It was a shit show of a night.
(We’ve got a lot of stress on again as a family right now. We’ve all been plunged backwards into living in fear of what could be round the corner. It really doesn’t do much for you. I feel in a constant state of high alert.
It would be nice if we could just have some calm, placid, peaceful times ahead. At this point I’m begging the universe for it. Hopefully things will be fine. We just have to get through the wait).
We are however, a family that knows how to make the most of life. Really appreciating it in every moment. Squeezing the pips out of every good day you get. We are fortunately/unfortunately well practiced at it. It’s like our family’s superpower!
So while we wait, yet again, we live.
This trip to London was already fantastic. But on Wednesday day time, we made the most of our very late check out on our first room.
We headed to the hotel pool. We’ve stayed here a few times, but we’ve never been to the pool before so this was super exciting.
I’m not the biggest fan of swimming, but it’s definitely do-able with a stoma. So I thought I’d make the most of being here and enjoy the facilities on offer.
It’s not a massive pool but I did have the entire thing to myself so it was fantastic.
Swim complete, I’m nothing if not efficient. It wasn’t the longest swim, but as I’d only had about 2 hours sleep I was impressed I managed any.
Then it was back to the room to get ready for lunch at Clos Maggiore, just across the road to the hotel.
I bought this dress a few weeks ago in Michael Kors, I knew I’d need a balconet bra to wear with it due to the bra showing when wearing a normal one.
Well I put the dress on and my boobs in the balconet bra promptly fell out the cut out hole, which as you can imagine is less than ideal and not the look I was hoping for.
I had a bit of a panic to be honest, I wanted to wear it but it was unacceptable with my boobs fully out.
Anyway, I went to get my lipstick from my bag, (when in doubt just add lippy. This particular lipstick is magnetic as it has interchangeable accessories with it) I picked up the lipstick from my bag and attached to it were two small black safety pins! No idea how they got there but I desperately needed them and I was so relieved and grateful to the universe for coming through.
The food at Clos is fantastic. The ambiance is wonderful. I’d really recommend a visit. And in the day time they do a very reasonably priced set menu. So for a special occasion it’s really a great idea.
We had such a lovely lunch. We got chatting to a National Geographic wildlife photographer (as you do), and were delighted to discover he runs trips to India to see the tigers and Brazil to see panthers, so one day I might be blogging from one of those choices. What a dream that would be.
Anyway, lunch finished, we headed back to the hotel for our special, special night. But before that I decided to plan ahead and popped to Tesco express and bought a pack of digestive biscuits, just in case we didn’t fancy dinner later (who am I kidding?) - to preempt the midnight hungers.
The suite was magnificent, truly beautiful. I’ve never stayed in such a lavishly expensive room, so I’m beyond grateful to our friends for the gift.
The room comes with a 24 hour butler. What would us commonors need a butler for? Well, long story short, I’ll give you the edited highlights, because in real life it went on for many hours.
As we left our luggage in our old room we asked at the reception if it could be moved over to the new room when the time came, which they said yes, of course, absolutely no problem.
So off we go out, and let them know there’s 3 bags and my coat to go over.
When we checked into the new room, our 3 bags arrived, but no coat.
…?….
Anyway, it took our wonderful butler, Barbara, a fair while to track it down, and for some unknown reason, it had been sent for dry cleaning.
Well, I was a bit confused because it’s only about 2 months old, and definitely didn’t need cleaning. I was panicking at this point, fearing that somehow something must have got spilled on it for it to need urgent dry cleaning.
Anyway, it turns out that someone in the Savoy requested their coat to be dry cleaned, but it certainly wasn’t me.
I was delighted to have a freshly, but unnecessarily clean coat, of course the counter to that is, someone didn’t get their mucky coat cleaned.
Sucks to be them at this point. You win some you lose some. :)
Our night was fantastic, and there was absolutely no point to going out for dinner, when we had the best view of London from our living room and bedroom. Besides, I’d taken my bra off at this point, so that pretty much decided the course of the evening - Bra off is definitely a full stop to going back out.
So we ordered in and what a treat that was.
We woke to the most beautiful view, of our capital beautiful city, and then did absolutely feck all all day…And it was heaven.
They gave us the latest check out we’ve ever had in any hotel ever too! 5pm check out!? Heaven.
We breakfasted as we had dined the night before, watching London go by from our room.
We read, and lazed, and recharged.
Then later in the early evening we went to the new Gordon Ramsay restaurant at the Savoy, The River.
It’s good, it’s really really good. The food is great. The service is immaculate. Another one I’d highly recommended. And the handy thing is Gordon probably isn’t there much so it’s not like he’s going to come charging out the kitchen screaming obscenities at you! Hahaha
Cardigan, trousers & boots from Ralph Lauren, Top from M&S
As ever with every blog I write I want to show a few basic things.
Can you dress well with a colostomy?
Yes! You absolutely can, if you choose to. You can look as good as anyone unbagged that’s for absolute sure.
Can you feel good with a stoma?
This one is trickier to answer. For me? Yes! I definitely do. In fact as weird and as perverse as this may seem to you I feel better than I ever did, because in a weird way, my stoma makes me different. Yep, I said it was weird. But different isn’t a bad thing in my book.
Firstly I survived the surgery so kudos for that. And I’m not just a run of the mill 49 year old grandma…I’m a bionic one!
Understandably, not everyone with a stoma feels this way. But if you do happen to as well, good for you! Celebrate your uniqueness, as un-requested and as unwanted as a stoma was in your life plan, rejoice in being different.
What makes you different - makes you beautiful
If you have survived bowel surgery you are pretty incredible! And a bit magical too. :)
Our time away came to a close and we headed home Thursday night after a wonderful weekday holiday, as refreshed as if we’d been away a week.
Friday was spent catching up on all the things that weren’t done during the week…for both of us. For Chris it was actual work and for me it was all the washing. living the dream folks, living the dream!
:)
******
Then Saturday came, and off we went on another adventure. Somewhat of a departure to our norm.
We headed off for a hiking weekend in the Peak District…
…yes, I know what you’re thinking - oh amazing! Fantastic! How wonderful!
But you’re forgetting one thing, Chris and I aren’t made for the outdoor life! Hahaha
Okay, so this might not be what you’d wear to hike in the Peak District, but it’s what I do.
The main reason we went was to visit our friends who live there. They have two spectacular houses in the area. They’re living in their holiday rental while their main house undergoes an incredible renovation.
Both houses are spectacular. They are both dream houses.
We very much enjoy spending time with our friends and their boys. They are fantastic fun.
Jules and I headed to Leek, a gorgeous little market town near their house. For a bit of retail therapy. There’s some cracking independent, wonderfully unusual shops there!
I accidentally spent £50 on a feather duster in a gorgeous shop (didn’t think to check the price before I bought it). It’s so beautiful though, that said, I will never be able to use it for it’s actual purpose. (I know, I agree, I’m shaking my head at me too!).
Apart from the shock of my feather duster cost, we had a blast. I bought some wonderful one off pieces for the house.
Chris and Matt spent the afternoon talking about electric cars…no, seriously, they actually did. Funny things men aren’t they. That’s a 10 minute convo at most! Hahaha
;)
We had a wonderful evening. And then Sunday was the big hike. (Or technically a baby hike, a walk probably, but a hike nonetheless to us!).
It’s absolutely spectacular scenery. I was surprised to find that rather than it being one mountain range, it was actually lots of peaks sticking out of the ground in random places, which probably explains the given name of the area - The Peak District! But I have never been and never given much thought to the geography of the landscape there.
I enjoyed the walk (hike), but really, it’s not for me. I love pavements, and shops, and tea rooms. I enjoy the great outdoors in theory rather than in practice.
My absolute ideal would be to rent, or preferably buy, a house in the middle of nowhere, not another house for miles around, surrounded by incredible scenery to look at through the windows.
Where I could drive to cities and towns, get my fix and then come back to my isolated cottage and relax.
That would be the dream.
What can I tell you. I’m shallow, with an interest in the outdoors, as viewed from indoors. :)
I got into the swing of it and climbed a little peak. I feel like I got the most out of the trip. By confirming that I’m not at all outdoorsy. Although I think I knew that anyway. ;)
If you’re wondering, Chris is even less outdoorsy than me, if that seems possible. We did however enjoy the company, we absolutely love spending time with our friends, it was so good to see them. This trip was a year delayed due to snow blocking the roads last year.
I actually can’t wait to go back too. Not necessarily to go for a hike, but I do definitely want to go back to Leek and go to Matlock too, and anywhere with pavements (sidewalks) and shops.
*******
Very exciting this week. We hired a decorator to repaint the utility room we had built five years ago. It’s tiny but it has everything I need in it.
When it was built I rushed to decide the colour of the paint and chose a very ‘un me’ colour. It’s always bugged me, but I panicked, there was so much to decide on.
So it’s finally how I wanted it to start with, but just got too overwhelmed to pick it.
It’s now Neptune ~ Silver Birch, as is most of my house, which is surprisingly ridiculous I didn’t just go with that five years ago.
Anyway, it’s an absolute treat now.
And pride of place in my new broom pantry section is my very expensive - but never to be used feather duster!
I appreciate its minuscule and not particularly amazing, but it’s incredible compared to what was here when we moved in…and now in the most beautiful colour invented.
And look at that duster!! She’s a beauty!! :)
*So sorry this has been so long. Blame Square Space crashing and locking me out.
See you next week, Squarespace permitting. Keep well, stay safe. xx
Plus the feature wall that was Neptune Olive green is now the new and even more glorious Neptune Constable Green.
So happy with all the new updates. :)