A year ago today I left the UK for an adventure of a lifetime. Can someone please tell me where has this year gone?
It has literally FLOWN by.
I woke up this morning and felt grumpy knowing that this time last year I was at an airport, aren’t airports just the best? I love them because the rules of normal society just don’t apply, anything is acceptable, eat pizza and drink beer at 7 am, buy some sunglasses – treat yo self, are you wearing pants… who EVEN knows. Naturally, this AM I smarted at how many clothes I was wearing, how pale I was and the general Tuesdayness of Tuesday (I promise this isn’t going to be a whole blog of me whinging about London).
Travelling gave me time to think
Not going to lie to you, travelling for the first 6 months of this year was the best experience of my life and I learnt things that I never would have learnt without experiencing them first hand. In between eye rolling my way to the station this morning and heaving a sigh of contempt at Jenny and Joe who were having a full domestic on the train over how rude his mum was to her last night (who.. even.. cares).. I did however allow some headspace for all the things that have happened in the latter part of this year that I’d have missed out on, had I decided to skip forward to another country instead of hitting pause and returning home.
The highlights
Highlights including: FAMILY REUNIONS, picking up my gorgeous engagement ring, 5 months living with two of our absolute best friends, fake Christmas (in March) to make up for the one we missed, 2 (soon to be 3) gorgeous weddings, an amazing new job that allows me to write, Dem starting up his own company, Cyprus, a hair colour change (anyone that knows me well knows this is a biggie for me after 14 years of being blonde) a new house, being asked to be bridesmaid for my cousin oh and unless you’ve fallen off the face of the earth you will probably have heard that WE GOT A PUPPPYYYYYY
We decided to pick her up the day that we moved into our new place, ya sure 6,100,058 boxes, no furniture, a mattress on the floor and a 3 month old puppy that you could literally lose in the box maze posing as a living room.. what could go wrong?
I’ve actually been super lucky as Dem can not only take her to work every day but is also a master trainer extraordinaire, who literally has managed to train Bear to dance in a month and a half. The dynamo of dog training. He’s bad cop, I’m obvs good cop, he does stuff like eye drops and baths, whereas I throw myself wholeheartedly into over-enthusiastic games of fetch that result in a red wine stained carpet and buy her bumble bee outfits..
Now getting a puppy is not for the faint hearted. Oh sure you think it’s all cuddles, cute Instas, and sweet little outfits? Whereas in reality, it’s standing in a dressing gown in the rain with your hair in a towel turban while your ball of fluff, instead of going to the toilet, runs away while you’re forced to run bare foot after her in a vain attempt to capture her fluffy ass. Joy.
She has been an amazing addition to our little duo and has fitted in amazingly well, I literally didn’t know it was possible to love an animal that much., genuinely cannot compute that some people “aren’t dog people”. We really stuck to our guns about not letting her on the bed (approx 1 day) and keeping her to one section of our new sofa (approx 5 mins) and have learnt that not all dogs come with an inbuilt interest in fetch, cue youtube vids, a whole host of treats and lots of human fetch.
The Christmas cheer has begun
So don’t get me wrong, although looking at my bank balance is enough to make me want to have an accident at work that wasn’t my fault, this year has been pretty special and the thought of having Christmas at home with the family is literally filling me with all of the festive cheer (well as much as is socially acceptable in September).