Happiness is being thankful and lots of bloggy linky love

I know that is not Thursday but I am still super thankful and really don't want to keep it in for another week so here I am. Aside from that confessions go live on a Monday so I have being late to the party well and truly under control. Well apart from the fact that the weekend is quite here yet but I am still ready to rewind if you will.

I had this brilliant idea last week to do the double up for thanks, only it never quite panned out. What with Halloween discos and a hundred odd gingerbreads waiting to be made I was a little under the pump. This was then followed by the emoest I have been in like forever. It was far from pretty.

Thankfully though that is all now behind me as I return to my normal happy self. Well as normal as I ever am.

When I saw Kirsty's prompt this week for I must confess was 5 things that make you happy I instantly wanted to sit down and start writing. After the emo week that was last week consciously thinking of happy things was just what I needed.

Apparently fifty loads of washing also needed to be seen to. As did the dishes and the floors and the...

Needless to say writing was the last thing I was actually going to do. I did momentarily think of just linking in this old post. Which isn't actually all that old but does sum up very nicely ways I can find happiness, as does this one. But since for me happiness and thankfulness seem to go hand in hand I wanted to see if I could come up with something new and tie them both together.

This week happiness was brought to me in the form of some beautiful thoughtful comments from fellow bloggers and readers. For that I am beyond thankful.

In fact a lot of my thanks and happiness revolves around the art of blogging and wonderful bloggers.

Blogging itself makes me happy, I am thankful to have found this medium and being able to be a part of the blogosphere. Every time someone reads a post, leaves a comment or shares something from the blog I am filled with both happiness and thanks.

So to all the lovely bloggers and readers who took the time to check on me and my happiness I say thank you.

Joining in with all these lovely ladies

I must confess that I am a little late with things I know about being thankful.

It has been so long since I stopped to think about being thankful, on a Thursday or otherwise, that I am almost not sure how exactly to get started. The fact that the grumps from Tuesday are still hanging in the air doesn't exactly help.

Nothing makes me smile more than yellow
Well, almost nothing.

Or at least they were when I sat down on Thursday to write this post. Now that it is Sunday, the grumps as such may have dissipated but my writing time has not increased. Well at least not until now it hasn't. And naturally now that I have the time do you think I can actually think of something coherent to write? Of course not.

*avoids writing more by foraging through fridge, finds left over dip and some dry crackers. Score! Then wonders why she is avoiding writing when it is all she has wanted to do for DAYS now*

When Thursday had passed without me making the time to be thankful I was adamant that I would make up for it on Friday with a double whammy and know about being thankful. Perfect right?

Well if it weren't for it being the most busiest school holiday break I have ever encountered. I can not believe all the people and things we have managed to cram into one short week.

I know that the highlight of said week involves seven children, five buses and an adventure filled day all over town.

There was a time when I dreamed of seven children. It seemed like the perfect number. With seven children and two parents you had a family of nine. Which meant back yard games (think cricket, footy, soccer etc) could have four on each side and a ref to keep all teams playing fair. What better reason for a large family do you need?

I know that I am super thankful we have been able to have such a wonderful time in this short week. There has been special chocolate shop visits, a trip to the movies and a little shopping spree as well. All little things we don't normally do which naturally makes doing them all that much extra special.

I know that am blessed to know the people that I do. For far to many reasons than what I can share here. The love and support displayed below made me smile the whole day through.

Post by A Parenting Life.

I must confess that when I thought about this super brilliant idea of knowing what I was thankful for there was such more more that I wanted to say.

On the upside though, despite being days behind with my knowing and thanking I am a day early with my confessing!

If you know something you want to confess to or give thanks for join in, the buttons below will take you straight there!

I must confess to being an awful friend

Possibly not what everyone is willing to admit to knowing about, but there you have it, today I must confess that I feel I am an awful friend. Perhaps even terrible. Not all the times, just every now and then. Though likely to be more now and less then.
I am probably not the worst friend you could ever have, though I have rarely  (if ever?) made it to the best friend status either. I am pretty sure that I fit into the good friend box, possibly even great at times. It's just that like the girl curl, when it's bad it's horrid. Which I guess at times might outweigh the rest.

Image from here

I have this friend. Actually I should maybe say I had this friend, because right now I am not sure if we really are still the friends we were. Which is pretty much what has brought me here today. Sometimes things seem clearer to me once I have written them out. (editor's note this has taken some pretty intense writing in order to get out as well, just in case you are wondering and sadly I am not sure yet whether I am any clearer. On the upside though I do have multiple draft posts on various aspects of friendship to slowly work my way through)
I met this friend, lets call her Franny, when Lovely was about four and a half. Franny's son went to the same pre school and since she was also pregnant we were kind of drawn together I guess. Actually our kids had gone to a 3 year old kindy together as well but I was way too shy to talk to her then. Instead I just kept asking the universe to bring us together in the hope that one day we could be friends.
Anyways fast forward seven years and by some amazing act we are actually friends and up until recently I thoughts quite close ones. The two eldest kids don't spend so much time together now, due to their age and the whole boy girl thing I guess. Though after an hour or two the ice has melted and you can see them enjoying each other's company immensely. The youngest children (of which there are four, two mine, two hers) get along like houses on fire. They are as thick as thieves and any other bonding euphemism that you want to use.
Only in the last few months I have done wrong by Franny. Well apparently more wrong than she can handle. Or prepared to put up with or something or other.
I know I am far from perfect. I run late, never know what I am doing, am almost impossible to make plans with unless it is the last minute and I have a tendency to ramble on and on and on.
Franny has a heart of gold. Franny never speaks ill of any one and has not mean bone in her body. Franny who is never late and always does everything she says she will.
It all started at the end of the school holidays. Lovely returned from her time with her other family and all I wanted to do was escape out bush and pretend that no one else existed. Which is exactly what we did and I loved every minute of it. In fact I think we all did. 

Only Franny thought it would have been nice if I asked her to come. And she is probably right it would have been nice for her. Possibly not so much for me though as it would have been an extra five people I would have had to consider at one point or another and that was the last thing I wanted. 

I could hear the hurt in her voice when she rang as we were already in our way. I felt terribly selfish and incredibly awful but I still couldn't bring myself to invite her along. 

Since then times have been more than strained. Particularly after the debacle at the local show that saw me decide to go with someone else and bumping into Franny at every stand we stopped at for the first hour. It all pretty much revolves around me being a terrible planner and not knowing what I am doing till beyond the last minute.
For the first month after the excluding camping trip I made an effort to call Franny once a week. Given that aside from Mr Awesome she is one of the few people I have known for longer than five minutes, the thought of her being cross or upset with me made me feel terrible. Knowing that I had hurt her as much as I did, whether I meant to or not greatly trouble me. Not knowing how to make amends only made me feel worse.
So I played on as if nothing happened. I mean she never really told me how hurt she was, I just assumed from the tone in her voice during our conversation and began the internal beating from there.
Last week Zany asked if I still spoke to Franny and would we please be able to see them again soon. I bumbled her off without any real answer. The thought of it all made my stomach turn.
Then in the week Franny called. She was in the neighbourhood but I didn't invite her in. Mr A was home from work, still coming to terms with his grandmother's passing. I was already feeling quite drained from whatever the day had so far handed me. I simply couldn't handle even the thought of a face to face conversation. Let alone one with someone I still expected to be reeling in pain from my actions (not that I am prone to over exaggeration or anything).
She then asked if maybe I might have time to catch up on the weekend. Under pressure I couldn't answer. I didn't want to commit and then not be able to make. At that stage there were no plans for the funeral or memorial or whatever. Aside from that I can rarely agree to make plans for the weekend on Tuesday.
Naturally my inability to answer caused angst for Franny and she was promptly reminded why it had been so long since we have seen each other.
As my stomach flipped and my heart pounded so hard I thought it was going to break through my chest, I called Franny and asked if it would be alright to visit on Saturday. The surprise in her voice once again confirmed the pain I had previously inflicted. My inability to commit to a time and I could feel her anger begin to simmer.
The better part of the morning was then spent in tears as I came to terms with the fact she has every right to be angry with me. Accepting that you have wronged someone, even with the best of selfish intentions for your own well being, is no Christmas party.

It is a feeling I have gotten quite accustomed to of late. You see I have this other friend who has a best friend who asked me to suggest some names of beauty salons for a facial massage voucher for our mutual friend's birthday. Do you think I could manage it?

I could come up with a whole range of pathetic excuses but at the end of the day I am sure the real reason lays behind my forgetfulness.

How do you rate yourself as a friend?

I must confess I think I failed my challenge

A little over a week ago I started a squat and crunch challenge. It was organised by one of the few people from high school, that thanks to the wonders of Facebook I am still in contact with. Mind you she is all kinds of amazing, we were housemates for a while so maybe even without Facebook our paths would have crossed once again. But I am starting to digress.

Back in June this same wonderful lady hosted a thirty day squat challenge. Which was awesome. I had never been much of a squatter prior to the challenge but I was a quick convert. By the end of the month we were up to three hundred squats. I may not have got to the last two days in the month but I did manage to get to the target a few days later. I can't recall what excuse I had at the time, maybe we went camping or something but I am sure I have a totally valid reason for not making it on time.

Photo thanks to Tallia22

When the challenge was over I felt a little lost.

For some crazy bizaro reason, without the knowledge that twenty odd women would be squatting along with me via some virtual group I just stopped squatting. Just like that. After spending a whole month squeezing squats into my daily routine at the most random intervals I suddenly stopped. Which really took me by surprised.

I had thought that after doing something for a month it would have become ingrained in my daily pattern. But alas no, that was not the case.

Thankfully (well for me anyway) I wasn't alone. A few of the other ladies in the group were experiencing the same let down as I. Apparently there had been something about us all doing it together that kept us, you know, all actually doing it.

Now I suppose there was nothing stopping us from chatting amongst ourselves and agreeing to still do however many squats a day. But we didn't. Instead we whinged about how much we *missed* our squat challenge. Go us. (or not)

After a week or two of this incessant whinging my dear friend informed us that in the next week or two she would set up a crunch and plank challenge. The excitement was unbelievable. And the wait began.

What actually seemed more like a month finally passed and day one of the challenge was upon us.

I was so keen to get started and make a difference to this slightly flabby and non muscular body of mine that I decided to throw some squats in for good measure. Nothing like being committed and over enthusiastic now is there?

The initial few days I breezed through. The idea is to start small and then build up as the month goes along. This way your body is gaining strength as you go and each day you get to push yourself a little bit harder. There are rest days thrown in as well to give your muscles a chance to heal as they stretch and expand.

I am currently sitting on day 3 of the challenge. It was a rest day.

You see with the squats I could do them whenever I felt like it.

Standing outside the kids room as they went to sleep. Easy to pump out some squats.

About to jump in the shower. Perfect squatting time.

Waiting for children to (do anything). Do some squats.

If for some reason I got to bed time and hadn't squatted, well I could just do them before I climbed into bed.

Fitting in squats was easy. Fitting in crunches is not so easy.

To crunch you need a space large enough to lay down. You also need to not have eaten any time in the last few hours. Crunches on a full tummy are not fun. At all.

Are you seeing all the excuses I am thinking of making?

Well the excuses stop today.

The goals for today are 70 second plank, 50 reverse crunches and 50 ordinary crunches.

I want to scream kill me now but I am not going to because I want to be strong and muscly more so. Wish me luck.