Home At Last

I'm at this weird crossroads at my life at the moment and I feel solely responsible for a lot of heavy things.

Firstly, I'm due to go back to work in the next month or so and I am responsible for finding and engaging childcare for all three children - no easy feat in these parts.   Something I didn't really see clearly a year ago when we were considering  moving to a rural area, was just how it would affect our day to day living and that things such as childcare would be a lot more difficult to come by.

Me, trying to magic childcare out of my ass.

The after school club which was there when I googled last year is no longer running due to low turnout and any available childminders are either full to capacity or only have space for one child.  I kind of knew to expect these challenges and I'm working it out, but heck, it's hard.

Some things of course have completely taken me by surprise.

I never factored in how much different it was going to be living out here, and oddly, how much in love with it I was going to fall.  How spending so much time here, even though for the majority of it I am alone (and more alone than I have ever been) is kind of really good for me and how the weird little things like watching hawks out of the back window or walking in the woods with the dog just outside my front door can just, well, balance things out.

We've had a hell of a year health-wise, work-wise and, well, life-wise, and I think we have boiled everything right down to one thing.

Once we have had all of our arguments, flung out all the rubbish, heaved through the murk and the gloom, come out on the other side and spent some time walking in the light, it seems the answer is fairly obvious: nothing is as important as each other.

No career, no amount of money, no amount of things, no amount of eating out or new clothes or gadgets etc is half as important as our family's health, our family's love, our family's life and happiness together.

We all deserve to be happy.  We all deserve peace.

We all deserve to feel appreciated and loved and respected.

We all appreciate space and time and space.

We all deserve enough sleep, healthy food and warm stuff.

When we moved here, it was a huge risk.  One, because we were moving to a completely new area, changing the kids schools and having to change the entire way we live; no more jumping on the bus to wherever we needed to be, no more quickly popping out to the shops, no more having friends and family being able to easily swing by and visit us.

Everything now must be planned, measured and organised completely, and admittedly, it's taken, and is still taking, a bit of time to adjust to that.  We are so very used to having everything to hand.

After the chaos of 2015, with it's huge massive highs and it's break-neck lows, we are still kind of scrambling through things, albeit with less stressful desperation.  There's definitely a nicer pace to things and a glimmer of what is to come on the horizon, and I have to say, it looks really sweet.

It starts as you take the back road up towards our house.  We've been here for three seasons now and watched the surroundings change with each of them.  It's something really special.

Just now it's winter, and the trees are thin and bare.  The fields are cut and everything is open for you to see.

Birds of prey sit on fence posts and telegraph poles, right out in the open, their huge silhouettes strong against the shadows of the dim morning light - it really is a magnificent sight. They hunt in the field behind our house, a family of them hovering and swooping, like we have our own nature show in our kitchen window.

Horsey!

 Just yesterday while driving along I saw something stirring on the grass verge.  I rolled down the window and there in front of me, just a few feet away was a young hawk toying with it's prey. This bird was huge - a yellow beak, massive wings and huge claws. Stunning.

Take a walk through the fields and you happen upon hares which startle and zip right past you. 

The flash of a deer's white tail as it darts off through the woods is something I've come across more than once while walking the dog on a quiet afternoon.

And there's nothing at all like being present as huge flocks of Canadian Geese happen to start landing in the harvested corn fields right beside you.  All you can do is stand and watch as flock after flock locate each other and all land in a great chorus, suddenly falling completely silent as they complete their number.

It's magic, pure and simple.

I've always been a nature lover, someone who feels more at home in a natural space.

I've moved around a lot.  Been in so many different areas, so many different places; towns, city centres, suburbs, multi-storeys, flat-shares, houses.

But nothing will beat taking the road to our house.

First you hit fields.  Loads of fields. Like the opening credits to your favourite television show, they set the tone and the pace for what is to come.

The fields roll in.  Some horses.  Some sheep sometimes.  Depending on which road you take, there's highland cattle too.

You hit the first village and it's pure idyll - old drystane dykes and pillared walls,  There's history to it.  A really old phone box.  Some hand-painted signs advertising logs and hay bales for sale; and even better, you are interested in this because you know you could use these.  Or know someone who could.

Then an old bridge, more horses. A river.  A long, winding road and then, our village.  Community noticeboards with up to date information about social events, parties, services.  A village hall.  A restaurant.  The wee school.

Out of the village and up the road, past the woods, and suddenly: our house.

Our home.

Home.

Sweet, sweet heck, I'm home at last.

There's so much to do here, so much work to be done.  There are whole rooms waiting to be purged and completely rebuilt from the bottom up; this is no mere decorating job!

We will have to work very hard at this.

But,oh my goodness, I am home.

Since we started living here, I can feel my new life creeping in around me, filling up the gaps in whatever was missing.

As I begin to settle and put down roots (and I honestly never ever thought I would ever get to - what a treat) I begin to see the way things are going to be, and it's weird; it's strange to feel so comfortable and suddenly so relaxed.

No wondering where we might be next year, no feelings of unease.  For the first time in such a very long time I can think further ahead than the next year.  Everything we own has been in hibernation, waiting for the day it can come out and be - we've almost forgotten how to use these things.  It takes time to get comfortable with pictures and where things should go; people take years to work out the best way to do things.  We've had to work it out temporarily in other people's homes for so long now, we've forgotten that we are allowed to use our  own stuff.  Everything has been very much make-do, that we've fallen into that mode even now.

It's so nice to remember suddenly that we don't have to make do.  We can use our stuff and make homes for them. We can throw away the stuff we don't need, the stuff we've been holding on to just in case we get a house with or without something and use what we have and what we want.  We can start to make grooves in our lives.

The most travelled Xmas tree in the whole world! Pretty sure it should hold a record! It's going to be really surprised when it keeps coming out in the same house!

As maternity leave ends and I have to try and work out where I want to be - work or home - the pull towards home is so strong.  I've waited so long for this.

My passion for work has always been strong; I love to work.  I love to feel useful.

But I am so aware now of how much work fills up family time.  And now I have more family for my time.

So, here I go.  Building my new life.  Working it out, cutting my teeth. Shaping now and the future, and my childrens' future. Making decisions.  Weighing the balance.

I'm nervous.  I'm not historically good at making decisions.  I have a tendency to think that things are a great idea and then realise with a huge whack that it really, really wasn't.  I live and I learn (thankfully). I grow.  Don't we all?

It feels like I should have a lot at stake, but it also feels like I don't.  After all, I'm now where I always wanted to be. Have my priorities changed? I'm so unsure.

I don't have a magic crystal ball.  I have no idea where I'm going to be work-wise this time next year.

But, oh my days, I am going to be here.  In my home, whatever happens.

You have no idea what difference that makes to my mindset. 17 house moves in and I'm home.

Here goes.

Change

I've talked a little bit about how things have changed so much for us all in the past year, but I've never gone into any detail.  One, because I'm genuinely so tired and time-poor that I just can't fathom how to, and two, because, well, nobody really cares that much, do they?

This time last year, we had no idea that this one even existed!

Life is life is life, and everybody always has their own thing going on which is more important to them, and that's cool by me.

How did this guy get big enough for school?

How in the heck did we end up here?  It's amazing!

I'm  huge believer in change and the ability it has to surprise you out of nowhere.  And I can definitely stand testimony to the fact that things can change incomprehensibly: what might seem crazy one year, can be your reality the next.

I can't imagine not knowing this little guy!

It is important to keep an open mind and embrace change.

My life, our lives, are so completely different to the way that they were this time last year and I guess it's still blowing my mind a little bit.

We've changed cars, lost a family member and gained two, moved house, struggled with ill health, changed schools, and poor Dave has changed jobs 4 times, all in the space of a year.  Yet, if you'd at me down last year and said that any of this was going to happen, let alone all of it, I'd have laughed in your face.

Where will we be this time next year?

I'm almost too scared to ask!

If you'd have told me that I'd have a view like this on my doorstep, I'd never have believed you!

Beginnings and Endings

How time flies - these guys grow too fast!

Today, my family is on the cusp of change.

Dave starts a new job on Monday, and while we have all lived quite happily with his regular 9 - 5 job, he works in the care sector, of which 9 - 5 jobs are thin on the ground.

However, like anyone who has to embrace change in order to progress, he has made the decision to move on and to absorb whatever the impact might be in order to improve.

Not an easy decision at all.

To leave his comfort zone, to leave a job that fits well around our family life, that doesn't eat into family time or see him spend any due amount of time away from the kids, in pursuit of something which may or may not work out to be a better fit, is a tough call.

What if it doesn't work out?

What if we never see each other?

What if we end up working opposite shift patterns?

What if it's not as challenging as he hopes it will be?

What if he's left something good, for something not so good?

What if?

What if?

What if?

Retrospect aside, change is a good thing.  Scary, but necessary.  We are no strangers to change; indeed, having moved house 6 times in the last 6 years, we are more than used to adapting to ever-developing situations.

We've dealt with a lot over the years. We ourselves have constantly adapted to survive, and have gotten quite good at knowing what works.

I don't know if it's getting any easier though.

I always think about things deeply as they end.  There are so many thing in life that we never get to say goodbye to - so when you realise that you might be doing something for the last time, I suppose it makes it more poignant. More reflective.

If I know I'm going to be doing something for the very last time, I try to say goodbye to it, no matter how insignificant it seems at the time.

It's so easy to just live your life and to have everything whipped out from under your feet very suddenly, without even being aware that it's happening.

  One day you are stressed, tired and hoping that your child will just go to sleep.  You've both been up since 5a.m and as a result the day has dragged, a grumpy child and mama in tow.  You put him to bed and he begs to hear that song that he loves as he goes to sleep - he wants you to sing it.  It's the last thing you want to do - you just want to shut off and forget the world. You begrudgingly, half-assedly sing it, angry with him for dragging out bed time when you have so many things to do with what little energy you have left.

One day you realise, that you haven't sung that song for two years - it's been so long since your baby asked you to sing him to sleep.  You never even noticed it happening.  You try to think back to the last time you sang that song, his favourite song to him.  You can't remember - you are sure you sang it with love and joy; you loved singing him to sleep...

It's always so easy to acknowledge beginnings with trepidation, hesitation, worry.  It's normal to be anxious as you spread out into the unknown, not knowing where it's going to take you. It is more difficult to acknowledge and notice the little endings - harder even to say to yourself 'this is the last time'. Don't be scared of endings - they are simply the start of another new journey.

It is good to acknowledge change when you can, and to embrace the beginnings and endings when you can.

Today i am aware of change.  I am aware of the impact it has on us all, and I am trying to hold on to the smaller changes within our lives, which although are in no way seismic, do happen sometimes without us realising it. Who knows where we will all be at this time next year? It's all very exciting.

You never know when it's going to be the last time.  But you can always try to make it a good time.

I never thought I'd say this, but...

Tom and I (and bump)'s fancy photo-shoot

About 4 years ago, when I was pregnant with Ethan and Thomas was only about 18 months old, I responded to a journalist's request on a parenting forum.  She wanted to speak to mothers under the age of 25 who had children and chose to stay at home with them rather than return to the workplace.  She wanted to examine the 'Rise of Generation Y' and why young, smart women would choose to be at home instead of pursuing a career.

It was an awesome experience - I was flown down to London for the day and given a swish makeover and a fancy photo-shoot, before appearing with some other young, hip mothers on the cover of  The Times Magazine.

The request kind of hit home for me - here I was, 18 months into my post-graduate year with a baby on my hip and another on the way, and a career wasn't so much an option for me as a closed door.

Hiding my bump (kinda) under my gown!

I felt like I'd had no other option than to be at home with my kids.  Having graduated with my undergraduate degree while six months pregnant, I was well aware that any career pathways were closed to me until future notice.  Dave was still finishing university himself, and all the job experience I'd had, albeit a lot, had amounted to cleaning tables, pulling pints and changing bed linen.

Dave finally graduates and I'm not pregnant for a change! Hooray!

This, coupled with and MA in English wasn't really going to cut it in the real world.  Recession had just bitten and the country was flooded with thousands of people who had just lost their jobs and had 20 years of experience and training under their belts.

Any job interviews I'd had always amounted to the same end question; 'what do you plan to do with the children while you work?'
And I had no idea what my answer to that question was.

Perhaps, somewhat foolishly, we had started our family a lot earlier than we should have.  In fact, in hindsight, it really wasn't a great idea.  It was daft.  And we were crazy.  But, like anything we do, we made it work.

Tom and I do some reading!

After making some degree of peace with what I'll always believe to be the female sacrifice, I'd recently committed myself to being a full-time mummy.

If I couldn't afford to pay someone else to look after my child while I worked, then I would do it myself, and I'd make a damn good job of it too.

I would love to say I felt like this, like, any of the time...

Trying to make peace with the fact that I had to stay at home with my kids through getting pregnant at a stupid time in my life was the reason that I answered that journo call.  I needed to justify to myself and the naysayers what I was doing.

The postpartum depression I experienced after having Thomas had been grueling and borne, in retrospect, out of doing just the thing that I had just committed to doing; being the domestic home-body who stayed at home changing bums and washing clothes, while my loving husband and father of said sprog enjoyed adult company in an intellectually stimulating environment while making his own money.

Can you tell I'm still bitter about it?

What I told that journalist about what I wanted to do in the end was true; I did want the best for my children. And in their formative years, yes, I did want to be there in person.  I knew how damn important it is for children to have their mother around in the very early years.

In having no job, indeed, I was very lucky that I had that as an option and didn't have to return to the workplace within months.

But what I did instead actually nearly killed me.

Me doing my mummy thang

Anne Perkins for the Guardian today reported on Lily Allen's return to work after she proclaimed so passionately that she wanted to retire from her own successful career in order to care for her kids.

Lily took to the headlines to announce it all - so sure that she was about to fade into the distance with two wee babies slung on her back.  Domestic bliss called and she ran into it's open arms.

Lily doing her mummy thang too

But now she's back, back to work and back to doing what she does best; saying it as it is.

Speaking to Hello magazine she said:

“I didn’t get ... I mean, I’m not bored by my children. Actually, I am, you know, the oldest one has only just started talking now. So it was really hard because you’re spending all day, every day, with two human beings that can’t communicate back to you.  And for someone like me, when my whole existence is about communicating and response and reaction, it was quite frustrating. I felt like I needed to get out and do something else with my time.”

Now I am not a massive Lily fan - I certainly don't agree with everything she says.  In fact, when she announced that she would love nothing better than to stay at home all day and look after her kids and her man, I laughed hysterically a wee bit.  And then I cried.  And then I laughed a bit more.

Have you got enough time for this?

By the time she said she was taking to the hills with her babes in her arms, I had been there, I had done that and I was clawing my own way back out of it.

That statement that she gave Hello magazine is the most sensible thing I have heard her say in years.

It's exactly how I felt as a mother of two small children at home.

There were great times, of course.  We had long days in the house playing games and making cakes and going to the park.  We spent days in our pyjamas when one of us was ill, we had long days in the garden and we had days where we watched a lot  of T.V.

I loved my time at home with the kids, in the main, but the truth of the matter is, I was just not cut out to be a stay-at-home mum.

Terrible two-some!

And whatever decision I thought I'd made by having it printed in a national magazine, complete with photos for all of my friends and family to see, just didn't stick.

I'm not ashamed (now) to say, I seriously struggled as a mum of two under 3.

I was not one of those mothers who took everything in their stride and got on with things, I really, seriously wanted to be out at work, out at university doing a Masters, out of the house to do anything.  My brain felt underused and I felt trapped. 

I know it was crazy postpartum me talking, but I genuinely thought that it was the end of my life.  I couldn't forsee a different time where it wouldn't be this way.

There were days when the four walls just closed in, closer and closer, suffocating me alongside two screaming, relentless children, who took everything from me, even when I had nothing left to give.

In fact, I probably would have loved to have been someone in the same position as Lily Allen, because unlike her, I didn't have the option of slipping back into an already-made career when the going got tough.

Lily with her fancy Silvercross pram - I had a Silvercross too, but not as nice as this one!

I'd stupidly gone about it the hard way, and I felt ashamed and useless and unwanted.  I felt judged.  While my peers had gone and re-trained and found new niches in the world, I was the only one who'd gone down the domestic route.

The world for new mothers, especially those younger mothers whose communities don't exist in the same way as they did for our own mothers ten years ago, or even older mothers now who have their own community and support systems formed through years of work, is tough.

In fact, it is tough for every woman in her very own way.

We are bombarded with information from the moment we find out we are pregnant.

We need to eat the right things, wear the most fashionable clothes, buy the latest baby gadgets and then, out of nowhere, there's this whole uber-cool 1950's housewife thing where we are supposed to be smart and ready with the home-cooked meals three times a day and also know all about early years care and development.

Everyone is happy to tell us what do and what we should be doing.  And very good at pointing out when we don't get it right.

Society is very good at judging mothers, but not so good at giving them a leg up, as Anne Perkins so rightly observes:

'But the value of the first months and the importance of the role of the parent-with-care – yes, that is still mostly the mother – is only one of a whole load of messages that bombard them. It is not even the loudest nor bossiest in the post-partum environment. When women have to launch protests in order to assert the right to breastfeed in public, it is crashingly obvious that ours is a society that values neither babies nor parenthood. Boarding school-educated politicians talk about the importance of parenting and make policy that treats every adult as a taxpaying economic unit. Or a scrounger. They threaten a law criminalising emotional neglect, but fail to provide the education and support to stop it happening.'

I'm glad to say that now I know that there is light at the end of the tunnel.  Now I can see possibility and finally, a pretty bright future ahead for myself intellectually.

Me and Ethan having a laugh at home recently - I'm a lot happier with a work/home balance!

Out of the fug of day-to-day childcare grind I can see how easily confused I was - I knew that this was the best for my kids, but I struggled with the fact that I was intellectually bored and that no amount of creative or clever parenting was going to cure it.  

I'm so much happier now, and this reflects on my ability to parent.

There's a difference between being so emotionally and physically exhausted and feeling the burn after mental stimulation, that looking after small children doesn't quite touch.  I hadn't quite worked out what I was going to be, and I think I lost a part of that along the way.

It's taken a long time to work out how I feel.

When I did that interview for that article I was so sure that that was how my life was going to go; that I was this new generation of super mum who didn't care about 'having it all'.  That we were the women who had gone the full circle and got to the point where we didn't need a career to make us happy.

Well, I don't need a career. But I really did need a lot more support when my children were young to stay in the home to provide them with what they needed.  To make me feel valued.  And I did need more validation for my choices.  Where that should have come from will remain arbitrary.  I do however think that there should be more general, properly funded, community support for new mums that smacks them in the face and helps them out more.

And I really want to thank Lily for saying it how it is for so many of us who are scared to state what we feel.

I'm very glad that I gave those years to my children.

I am equally glad not be in the same place now.

Rebooting my life. Or trying to.

I hate diets.

I see other people going on diets all the time - in fact I don't think I know one lady just now who genuinely doesn't monitor what she eats.

Maybe it's an age thing, but even I have started to think about what I'm eating, how much I'm eating, and even more frightening, the effect it all has on my body.

For the first time in my whole life I feel unfit.  I feel fat.  I feel unhealthy.

I drink waaay too much caffeinated diet drink, I eat so much chocolate and don't even get me started on my crisps intake.

My energy levels are down, I'm eating mainly white carbohydrates for that quick sugary energy high and my fruit and veg intake is at an all time low.  I've started to use wine like a carrot on a stick to get to the end of my day, just to get through it.

But that's life with kids, right?  I should be tired, shouldn't I?  Everyone else has the same problem with time and energy and the need for fast food fixes, don't they?

I see all those internet memes about wine all the time.  Everyone 'likes' them because it's true, right?

We're all waiting until the kids doze off sweetly (or in my case arse around until they finally give up an hour after I put them to bed) before tucking into our favourite bottle of Cabernet, aren't we?

At least that's the impression I get.

So yesterday, when Ethan was actually playing with Lego on his own for once, I sneaked through to the living room with my 'treat' to myself.  It's something I do occasionally, when I get peace to, and yes, it's something that I do on those rare times when I'm home alone. 

Today for example, the first thing I did when I came home after a particularly stressful morning and school run was to grab a bag of Ready-Salted and a (albeit small) Toffee Cheesecake pot with a can of Diet Coke and consume.  And I feel better.

Yesterday was no different; all was quiet on the Western Front, so I grabbed a Diet Coke and a bag of crisps and I sat on my butt and watched grown-up T.V.

Uninterrupted.

For HALF AN HOUR.

It was awesome.  I opened the bag of crisps, cracked open the can of coke and put Netflix on.  Oh yes, I was choosing for myself! Very exciting!

Now I'm always hyper-aware that the peace I'm getting is probably only going to last as long as it takes to wolf down that bag of crisps, so I always do it quickly and I usually choose something to watch that doesn't require much attention.

So when I picked the docu-film Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead it was kind of a half-hearted, ironic choice.  I mean, after all, here I was, stuffing my face unhealthily, the way I do at least once a day.  I didn't think it would have any relevance to me.  I mean, I am still in relatively good shape.  I can still chase the kids down the street and I'm still climbing playground equipment at the park.  Yes, I have put on a bit of weight but I'm not that fat, I'm not sick and as far as I know, the grim reaper ain't got me on his list yet.

Joe Cross, the guy who made this film about his journey rebooting his life and another man he picks up along the way, Phil Staples, who we literally see become half the man he used to be, both seem like a seriously nice guys.  Usually I watch these things with half an eye on the screen, but Joe's warmth and Australian good-humour made the film inviting and engaging and Phil's story and transformation is inspiring.

Joe tells his story candidly, we see what his body is like at the start and we hear all about his auto-immune condition which caused him to be on hard steroid medication for life. 

There's some really cool animations to explain all the science - y stuff, and some really interesting social commentary too. Granted it is based mainly in the USA, but with the diet I've been on recently, I felt it was very relevant to me too.

Joe changes his life by drinking just juice made out of fruit and vegetables, and eating nothing but fruit, veg, nuts and beans for 60 days.  The reactions he meets from his friends and family are that they all think he is crazy, but they do have some admiration for him; after all, the man is a self-made millionaire, so his ideas certainly carry some 'weight' (geddit?)  But he loses over 6 stone in the process, his blood work shows a very healthy change to his system, and by the end of the film, we discover that he has attained his goal of eradicating his need for any medication.  He has changed his life.

Phil Staples, when we meet him, is a truck driver.  He has been eating on the road for 8 years and his diet mainly consisted of fried foods found at truck stops.  He gives Joe a call in a moment of desperation, and Joe wings it over the pond from Australia, juicer in hand, to help him start a ten-day juice diet.  Phil finds it hard at first, but his motivation never waivers, and he perseveres after the initial ten days, extending his reboot even further, losing half of his body weight in the process.  It's amazing to see the change in Phil and the change he makes to his whole life; he even changes his job so he can stay more active.  I really found myself rooting for him.

Soon, I was hooked.  I paused it half an hour in and watched the rest while Ethan was at nursery in the afternoon. This time, no crisps!

Last night, when I went to the supermarket for the packed-lunches food, I wandered up the book-aisle and there it was, the book of the film that I'd just watched that very afternoon.  Unlike me - as I said, I hate diets - I bought that damned book, and I took it home and I sat down and read it.

I really had thought that this film had been just one of those faddy docu-films that Netflix seem to harbour, but it's taken off enough that Joe Cross is making a fine business out of it, and helping loads of people to boot. I made Dave watch it again at night.  He agreed with me; it was a very interesting concept.

We both agreed that yes, our diets are atrocious at the moment.  Yes, we both crave processed, refined foods.  And yes, our energy-levels, our skin, our mental attitudes all probably suffer because of it.

Part of the idea of a reboot is that you are:

• Rebooting your taste-buds.  You fight them on their cravings and re-introduce them to the taste of fresh fruit and veg so then that is what they begin to crave.
• You flood your body with micro-nutrients.  These are essential nutrients that can only be found in fresh fruit and veg.  This flushes out your system so you can begin a healthy balanced diet.
• You set your own goals - try it for 3, 10, 15, or even 30 days and see how you get on.  What I loved was Joe states that there's no way to fail - even if you just manage 3 days then that's still 3 days that you gave your body that you wouldn't have otherwise.
• You have to start changing the way you see food.  One helpful thing I saw in the book was that you don't think 'I need food', you think 'I need energy' and that helps you assess what kind of energy you need better.  eg; and apple gives you slow long-term energy, whereas a packet of crisps gives you a short burst of energy followed by a low.
• It's not supposed to be about losing weight; it's about re-assessing and changing the way you approach food and exercise.

It's going cheap on Amazon! Free plug for Joe!  Lucky boy!

The book is fab - it's written in Joe's easy-going manner, but with complete facts and relevance.  Everything you need to give this a go is in the book - apart from the juicer of course - but he even goes as far as to help you with that too, in a section about how to choose the right one for you.  there's recipes, a substitutes list for any veg you don't like/can't get a hold of and a full run-down of what to but for all the different plans.  It's not heavy-going and you can easily skip to the different sections which are relevant to you.

I've been on his site this morning www.rebootwithjoe.com and there seems to be lovely community to go with it all.

At the end of the day, Joe is businessman with a lot of savvy.  He knows a success when he has one, and I am usually very skeptical of such things, but I really do think I am going to give this one a go.

This afternoon I am going to try to find me a reasonable-priced juicer (the one he's plugging, although very nice and obviously awesome is well out of my price-range)  and take the plunge.  I'm going to find time to plan a three day juice diet initially, following the book and if I feel fine after that, I'm going to continue it into ten days.

I guess sometimes you just need to find the right thing to inspire you, and this has done it for me.  So here goes!

If anyone else has been following the Reboot Juice plan, or has completed one I'd love to hear from you.  I've sincerely never heard of it until yesterday, and I'd really love to see how practical or feasible it is for a mum to two small boys and no time!

I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.