So it's been a while.

So. It’s been a while! So long, in fact, that I have been wondering whether I know how to do this anymore. That nagging notion has been putting me off from coming back here for too long. So I’m just going to jump back in like I did when I started. 

Boy, oh boy, has a bit happened since I last stopped by here. I remember just before I started what was about to be a new job editing Women’s Agenda I decided to give myself a month’s grace period from blogging. I knew my plate was going to be full and figured I’d need to reserve whatever energy I had for work and home. Ha! A month! 

Full doesn’t begin to describe it. It really was the most hectic, rewarding, difficult, thrilling, supercharged experience on all fronts. The work itself was an absolute blast and I loved every moment but it was addictive and consuming. It was only when I stepped back from the role earlier this year that I really appreciated just how “on” I’d been. About two weeks after stepping back I started to wonder how I had done it. Not in a smug gosh-i-am-a-bit-special way but in a brutally honest way. (HOW DID THAT HAPPEN???) I still don’t really know.

Home life was equally consuming but markedly more chaotic than work. There was far too little sleep for far too long and frankly living on no sleep for too long is no way to live. Just ask our neighbours. Despite my job being busy in comparison to Mr G’s working life I may as well have been on holidays. (Albeit, a pretty average holiday.)

So it’s been full on but we seem to be emerging from the haze. I know that because there was a time, not that long ago, where I didn’t have the mental space to even think about this blog’s existence. Lately, though, I’ve found myself thinking about it often and even composing posts in my head. Perhaps, dear readers, there is a sliver of space for me to keep an online diary again. Therapy!

To bring you vaguely back up to speed with the NABM household, this is where we’re at. Our little misses are more entertaining and – dare I say it – easier than they’ve ever been. Miss I is now 4 and would run the house if we let her. Possibly better than we do. She is one of the funniest people I have ever met and I sort of wish I could bottle her up in this age forever.  

Miss L is 20 months and delicious. She has an uncanny sense of humour; she laughs out loud at the exact moment a punch line is delivered. Even when she’s a room away from the conversation and the conversation is at least several levels beyond her comprehension. She laughs out loud at the exact moment everyone else does.

She is also the most determined person I have ever met. She makes Miss I, who you might recall we had pegged as a potential terrorist leader, look positively flexible. Miss L’s will power can – and occasionally does – crush us. Fortunately that’s happening less and less.  

In other news, I have unfortunately become acquainted with the world of chronic pain. I wish that bit was a joke. You might recall, if you cast your mind back, a particularly disastrous urban outing in which I was trying to put together a photo frame for Mr G’s birthday.  One detail which I left out at the time, probably because there were so many disastrous details to relay, was that I fell down a flight of stairs after my friend had taken the photos of the girls and I. Fortunately I wasn’t carrying Miss L or Miss I so neither of the girls were hurt. But I was. And it seems I still am. 

A few months later I started having some trouble with one of my hips and I assumed it was pregnancy or child-birth related. The pain become worse and more frequent and tinkering around the edges did very little.  I had forgotten about the fall until the beginning of this year (that’s correct 12 whole months later) by which point the pain had become debilitating and constant. An x-ray showed I had a small fracture in my pelvis. (NB I will never ever arrange a photo frame for anyone’s birthday. Ever again. Obviously.) Unfortunately there is no quick fix so I am still in the midst of trying to get myself out of pain and back into full mobility.  Until this chapter I had been blissfully unaware of the cruel world of chronic pain. Take me back to that blissful place!!

In other genuinely great news we have moved. INTO A HOUSE. A proper grown-up house. With bedrooms and a living room and a laundry and a clothes line and a backyard. Without any scary neighbours! Can you even imagine? We’ve only been here a month but it’s already made my year.

So that’s an update from this corner of the world wide web. What is happening in your world? On a side note I am really really thinking about getting a Thermomix. Do you have one? Tell me why I need it*. 

*More accurately please tell Mr G why our household needs it. I am already convinced.