Tea and Coffee and Cake

Day Sixty One.

Spent the day NOT thinking about smoking! Horray! And if I DID find myself thinking about it, I made sure I distracted myself. It's not being too much of a problem.

Our tenant and good friend Christian moved out yesterday, so we now have the house to ourselves. Our plan is to up the gear in terms of getting the house ready for market, but first we needed to reclaim the space a bit, and make it our own again. I had been itching for some time to sort out the wooden shelves on top of the work-surface, and today I was able to clean and organise them. Before:


The shelves house the teas and coffees, as well as the bread and cakes (!) - and are conveniently located next to the kettle and toaster. After:


I've got this idea though, whereby I'd like to start putting out some of the jars we need to use up - and the top shelf would be ideal. Realistically though, are we really going to go to the shelf first (to see if we want to use anything up) before going to the cupboard to get the specific thing we have in mind to eat? I'm not sure. I might try it, even if it doesn't work, it might at least remind Phil of some of the contents of the darker corners of the cupboards...

Properly Stopping Smoking

Day Sixty.

The CBT book didn't work for me, mostly because it relied upon you smoking at least twenty fags a day, and reducing that number by half or two-thirds on each consecutive day. I was smoking about three rollies daily, and managed to double that to six on that first day as the book kept on insisting that I smoked whenever I wanted to. So if (for example) you smoke six cigarettes on day one, four on day two, three on day three, two on the fourth day and one on the fifth, you've really had hardly any chance to learn the first programme, let alone the second and third, etc.! So I ended up feeling rather like I was going through the motions, but without really achieving anything. After the third day it tailed off, and I carried on smoking about three rollies a day.

Well, I've given up many times before, as I explained in that earlier post, so I spoke with Phil and we agreed Monday 1st Feb - today - would be the day we would both just stopped smoking.

So that's what we've done. It's easier for me, I'm sure, as I'm used to NOT smoking most of the day, whereas Phil starts as soon as he wakes up and has his last cigarette just before going to sleep. The day passed fairly smoothly with no major upsets. We're planning on having a very early night. The longer you sleep, the quicker time passes. We'll be over it before you know it.

:)

Quitting with CBT: Day 1

Day Forty Two.

This is my first day following the cognitive behavioral techniques (or CBT) developed to help smokers to stop smoking. The book I borrowed from the library is hopefully going to help me to train myself to get over the nicotine addiction, as well as the many "smoking habits" that a smoker develops.

Though I've given up (and obviously restarted!) many times since I began smoking daily (when I was about fifteen or sixteen years old), I've never tried this method before. Deciding to give up at 'the right time' has worked for me (under my own steam), as has getting ill... The Allan Carr 'Easy Way to Stop Smoking' was really good (you can get the book for 1p on Amazon!), its main point being that nicotine withdrawal symptoms are barely existent (otherwise how could a smoker sleep for a full night without needing a fix?) - Carr believes that the reason why giving up is so hard is because we feel deprived.

This CBT method is completely different. On the first day you are told to put an elastic band around your cigarette packet (so that you cannot smoke 'automatically'), and you are encouraged to smoke whenever you feel like smoking (because holding out makes the cigarette feel like more of a reward when you do finally smoke it, and the method is to train yourself not to see smoking as a reward), but whenever you do smoke, you must recite the following 'program' as you do so:

Smoking this cigarette is giving me NO SATISFACTION.
This is an UNPLEASANT experience.
Smoking actually makes me feel ROTTEN.
I am losing the DESIRE to smoke.

This is easy to remember as the acronym NURD, ha ha. As you say these things to yourself, you must think about just how unpleasant it is, and what parts of your body are potentially being damaged by the smoke and toxins.

Oh, and you must keep track of how many cigarettes you smoke over the day, noting the time, and starting to think about possible 'triggers' for each one.

I smoked six three-quarter size rollies (with filters) over the day. It felt weird to be telling myself how disgusting it was even though I wanted each one... It took all the pleasure away, ha ha. Or did it just help me to realise that there really is no pleasure in smoking? Ah...

I also learned from the book that nicotine releases a tiny amount of dopamine in the brain. We like dopamine. It feels good. So every time you smoke, you are rewarded with this little hit of dopamine. Weird, eh? I can see now why it's so bloody addictive.

I shall be keeping you posted.
But now I must go and smoke a fag.

Just kidding :)

Beautiful Books

Day Thirty Seven.

Inspired by my trip to the library to sort out the floppy disks, I decided to go back and have a look at the books (and get warm, ha!). I know I have a lot of (as yet) unread secondhand books in my bookcase. I know that. But it's still nice to think about borrowing the special hard-backed library ones! Think I might have a book fetish...

I picked out quite a variety:
Delia Smith's Vegetarian Collection - I am hoping that this will inspire me to cook some lovely meals, as the photos alone start the saliva flowing. Most of the dishes in the book look more exciting than my cheesy cauliflower bake (see my recent blog post)!

Overcoming Your Smoking Habit: A self-help guide using Cognitive Behavioral Techniques - yes, I must admit that I'm struggling a little despite my earlier success...

Earth Grids: The Secret Patterns of Gaia's Sacred Sites - sometimes my curiosity leads to interesting google searches, but often the results can be quite far-out and without enough evidence for the scientist in my head. So I thought I might get more backed-up evidence from a 'proper' book. Hmm, maybe I'm old-fashioned...

The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us - we're hoping to keep bees when we settle in at the smallholding, and I've always been fascinated by the creatures. This book is bound to inform and inspire.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, author of 'The Tipping Point' - described by the author as "a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good." I started reading a borrowed copy when I was in the States this summer, and although I only made it to page 40 before I had to return it, I found myself learning a great deal from this work. I can only assume that there will be many more gems in the remaining 245 pages!

There's something motivating about having a deadline by which to read one or more books, it begins to feel like a personal secret mission. I'm excited and itching to start reading, so without further ado...

I'm off! :)

A Most Difficult Goodbye

Day Thirty Three.

When my parents were getting ready to move from their Pembrokeshire farm to the smallholding, Phil and I helped them to get everything out of their attic. We helped them to go through the boxes - some of them had not been unpacked for over twenty years! - and sorted the items into four big piles: to keep, to sell on eBay, to take to the charity shop, and: to bin. Amongst the glassware, old suitcases, framed prints and wedding photos there was a big, bulging, green bin bag full of teddies. You may well laugh, but seeing their little faces after so long filled me with dread - because I knew it would be wrong to hang on to them, but getting rid of them would leave me feeling guilty forever! Why? What could possibly make a thirty-two year old stall when it came to throwing away the things of childhood?

OK, I'll tell you why. My brother and I never had the view that teddies were just cuddly, fluffy things which were a comfort before you went to sleep. No. We made an entire Teddies World. We had a Newsagents (a specially altered cardboard box) which sold the newspapers we wrote in tiny handwriting, a Video Store (a two storied cardboard box, as I recall, with accommodation above the shop) which rented out the many "videos" we created (like cartoons) in frames on strips of paper, which were pulled through a "video-player" (a small cardboard screen which showed one frame at a time... There was a School, and everyone had their own handmade exercise books, a Bank (Big Ted was the manager - funny that!) with "real" coins and notes. Some of the naughty teddies smoked, and I remember going through the process by adding red felt tip to the end (when it was being "lit"), then cutting about millimetre off at a time as the "cigarette" was smoked down to the filter. Each time you cut a bit off, you had to add the red pen again, to show it was still burning.

We played out many, many scenarios with the teddies; homelessness, scandals at school, running a successful businesses, struggling with debt, dealing with crooked politicians, amongst many others. So you see, the teddies really were a big part of my childhood, they were our closest friends, and throwing them away would be the greatest betrayal...

Despite this, I thought I'd better bite the bullet and at least take them out of the bag to have a look at who was in there, and to see what condition they were in. I lined them up, and found myself greeting each of them by name. They looked... well-loved. Some had ears or arms missing, others had holes with the stuffing poking out. Some actually looked OK. I decided I would have to be quick. Choosing the least characterful first, I started putting them gently back into the bag, and that's how I was left with the ten threadbare favourites, the ones who were the main characters in all of the teddy episodes, if you like.

Here are a few of them, posing for their picture in the sun:


The others will go to the nice people at the Dog Shop, I'll let them decide what to do with them.

A Day Without Nicotine

Day Twenty Nine.

Wow, what a beautiful start to the new year!
Phil and I went for a long walk along the river and up the back road to the Centre for Alternative Technology, a route we've not taken for a good while. It was sunny on the way there, but very chilly, and the distant hills were dusted with snow.

At CAT, we visited the bookshop and admired the pond (Phil reckons we should be able to have one of a similar size on the smallholding), then went to the restaurant for hot drinks. I had a delicious hot chocolate, thick with creamy milk and topped with grated chocolate, mmm! :)

As we meandered back down the track towards the road, giant fluffy flakes of snow started to come down all around us, whitening the ground within a matter of minutes. It was magical.

Today I succeeded in not smoking. Yes, I'm quitting AGAIN! And on the first day of the new year, it's a well-timed cliché. So I'm seeing this as a de-cluttering mission of sorts, as well as a "something I've been wanting to do for a long time" item. Let's see how it goes, shall we? I'm feeling positive. :)