I've got a lot on my mind - and on my plate

...literally and in non-literal way too.

Some of you might know that I've been made redundant in February. That was a huge reality check.
I thought I fought through that rather valiantly, but now -in retrospective- I was hugely depressed by the experience. I was just never going to admit to the fact. Depression and me - we are not buddies. We don't even live on the same planet. At least that's what I used to believe. Not any more.

So there: I let my guards down, and Depression crept in disguised as my new daily routine. And that involved not giving priority to the things used to keep me going and kept me on track in my banded life. Like exercise or making good food choices.... when you drag yourself out of bed, cannot face the world and survive on a pot of Muller Rice and some Pringles a day, going out for a run and putting something healthy in your mouth is not high on the daily to-do list...

But you know what: IT'S ALL OVER!

Can I remind everyone here for the old cliché of "when one door closes another one opens"? Or my favourite one: "everything happens for a reason"? Well, them - and a reinforced effort in practising the teaching of The Secret (I'm a believer, and I was even before I knew about the concept - that's how I always lived my life) - proved their worth again: the day after I signed the final documents on my redundancy case I have been offered a much better job. And of course I took it. From 1st of May I'm the Facilities Manger of a prestigious and fairly large law firm in our area. Thankyouverymuch!

I cannot discuss the details of my redundancy case, so I'm not gonna, but let me just say this much: sometimes the biggest blessings come to us disguised as major crisis. On every aspect of life: work, personal, financial.
I've been blessed again, and Me right now would love to get into the Tardis (Dr Who's time travelling machine for my State side readers) and get back  to 3 months ago to reassure my scared, depressed, resigned self that all's going to be all right... Oh, but life IS wonderful after all!

So here is the plan: today I caught up with all my reading duties (My gosh! The things have happened in your lives I missed! Mind boggling that Life did not stop when I shut the door behind me in February...!) and putting in my comments along the way. I still have two days for collecting my still-scattered thoughts (thank you, Your Majesty, for the extended bank holiday to your 60th anniversary as Queen) and I will getting back here with them shortly.
I cannot - and will not - suggest that I put all of them in one blog entry: you would be reading that for a day or so... But I will do my best to break them down into cohesive chunks about the various areas they relate to. I will probably write them all up as drafts and can just post them one at time - will keep me going and my blog rolling until Christmas (just kidding... I meant Halloween)

Did I ever tell you that I finally went to Rome? Nooooo???
In the midst of all my depression (but in the very tail end of it, when things started looking up again) Dave and I had a lovely trip to the Eternal City. It was one of my childhood dreams, and it lived up to all my expectations! (nearly... as Dave was there, and wherever he goes... Well, what I mean is the song "Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you" was written about him. And, my darling readers, we are talking about English weather here... So it was chugging down with rain in Rome in end of April for 3 days. Never got so soaked so many times in my life!)
I will do a whole post about that trip, sprinkled with photos! It was wonderful.

Here, just a little taster for all of you, as my parting shot of the day:

O, that wasn't the general mood of the trip, I was just making a point...