So, I know this post is a little late, but cest la vie. Welcome to my life. When I shared these 'totally achievable goals' with my friends, half the responses were positive (along the lines of 'great goals, girl, and totally achievable!') and half were... not ('are you trying to run yourself into the ground? Make "do nothing except grow a baby" your goal!'). I fall somewhere in between...
So. Ten goals. Going through it, I think I've acheived 7.5 out of 10 for my entirely achievable goals. Not a total fail. The next list will surely involve a few more points that incorporate the word 'relax'...
* * *
1. Work on my novel every day. Enough said.
Instead, I began my intensive German classes half way through January. And unless I want a novel that is full of simple sentences, horrific spelling mistakes and third-grader-vocabulary, I simply can't write literature and learn German intensively simultaneously. So I did my best, and that's okay. My novel was worked on a lot at the start of the month, and a little at the end, though it was consistently swirling around in there, composting.
2. Go for walks around Horgen. We are still new to this little village, and I haven't explored it enough. I want to discover the little nooks and crannies, the secret little waterfall in the forest I've heard about, find cute little shops here and there.
This simply did not happen. My totally legitimate excuses? 1. I began to suffer from increasingly severe pelvic and back pain that made it very difficult and painful to walk, and I was instructed to keep this to a minimum; 2. It was bloody cold. Like COLD. The kind of cold that perhaps only after a few years of living here I will begin to acclimatise to. I will save this village wandering for when it is a teeny bit warmer (say, over minus ten degrees). We did go for a lovely little frozen wander when me missed the train on Sunday... a blessing in disguise, despite the almost frostbite.
3. Eat healthily. I know that 'healthy eating' is often in the eye of the beholder, but for me, it means eating 2 fruit and 5 veg every day, eating a wholesome breakfast, and not snacking on junk. Hopefully this will also result in me gaining weight in a healthy manner.
I feel like I did pretty good here. I have been making healthy dinners, keeping my veggie intake at its usual high, and having yoghurt and fruit-laden bircher muesli for breakfasts. I am now also in the habit of always bringing a little container of nuts, seeds and dried fruit with me for throughout-the-day grazing, which means that my lunches and dinners are much more reasonably sized, as I am not entirely famished anymore! Okay, what am I saying. I am famished. All the time. Also having things like veggie sticks with tzatziki as snacks... I'm (mostly) being balanced and healthy about it. Still gaining stacks of weight though...
4. Read Hypnobirthing and do a little yoga every second day, depending on how my pelvis holds up.
Yes, I've been reading hypnobirthing, and I have been keeping up my yoga, but only once a week, as my doctor and chiro are saying this isn't the best for me right now. I'm using it for strengthening, rather than flexibility (which I have too much of) and opening (which I have already well and truly achieved)
5. Contact Horgan Seespital and organise to meet with a midwife for a tour of the hospital at some point.
Organised, not completed. But that's what I wanted!
6. Keep track of finances. Pay the medical bills and write up a spreadsheet to keep track of all this. Keep track of how much I'm spending on groceries, and alter it where need be!
Done and done! Big ticks there!
7. Unpack the spare room. This is difficult because we have nowhere to PUT stuff yet, until our things from Australia arrive (probably around the end of Feb), but I can make the first move and get it organised.
This is done, but not by me -- by my amazing husband instead. Physical effort and I are not friends right now.
8. Research baby items and decide what we need to buy, and where and how we will get it. I already know some of this, but not enough. We've talked about a lot of it, but we need to make some concrete decisions.
Feeling a lot more comfortable about this. Second-hand awesome pram is bought. Second-hand gorgeous furniture is bought. Second-hand everything else is in the process of being bought. New things, fun things, are still to come. :)
9. Get properly stuck into my German when my intensive lessons kick in half way through this month. Do my homework, study, write up vocab lists and grammar charts and stick them on the fridge.
Done! Loving my German at the moment (really? Did I actually say that?) and am really movitated. Did pretty well with my end of level test (36 out of 40, screwing up a couple of really difficult grammar questions and just reading one wrong - dagnabbit! And was the only one to get top top marks for my pronunciation - yippee!) and have now begun level 4.
10. Use dinner-time twice a week to speak to my lovely husband in German. He's so much more advanced for me, so I shouldn't ask too many questions and let him babble away too - make it good practice for him AND me. Also, try to get the guts to speak German more with our German friends, and don't be so afraid of ridicule.
Speaking German over dinner twice a week? Ha. No. This isn't happening. We are talking about complicated things at the moment... making big decisions, etc. So that doesn't really lend itself to German practice! We are writing emails and text messages and chatting often in German though (when did 'chatting' become the signifier only for 'webchat', and not for nattering over a cup of tea? Sad...). I am speaking German a LOT more though, with my friends and in public, and am not getting ridiculed at all! I'm sure that is often due to the loveliness of the friends I am attempting to speak with. My confidence is on the rise!
* * *
