Category: Challenge

Decisions And Choices

Decision, Choice of route

Which way?

A very good evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru. Today, I want to talk to you about making DECISIONS and CHOICES, something that we all have to do at some point in life. DECISIONS can range from the mundane, such as ‘Do I want jam on my toast this morning?’ to the very IMPORTANT such as ‘Do I want this top in a yellow or a green stripe?’ (although I am trying to wean myself off stripes after realising that 6 out of 7 tops on my washing line the other day were striped).
I was recently faced with several (well, two, to be precise) situations which involved making DECISIONS, situations which I thought I would share with you, my dear followers, so that you know what you might encounter should you find yourself in similar positions.
You decide to go into town to purchase some new underwear and you visit a well-known supplier of such items – let’s use the initials M&S, just as an example, although other purveyors of such items are available, but these tend to be more ‘unreliable’ (for want of a better word) or well beyond one’s budget. And this is where the first DECISIONS have to be made. You find yourself presented with a bewildering array of CHOICES: ‘Balcony’, ‘Plunge’, ‘More Cleavage’, ‘Uplift’, ‘Padded’, ‘Wired’, ‘NonWired’, ‘Minimiser’, ‘Sport'(unlikely for the LSG) or a mixture – at this point you feel like shouting ‘I just want a BRA!’ Almost any combination is possible! There was one which was described as an ‘Uplift Runway’, which sounded more like something where you might expect to find a Boeing 747 rather than female appendages. (Boys, don’t think I am

aeroplane Boeing 747

aeroplane Boeing 747

excluding you – as you know, the LSG is fully inclusive, so feel free to learn from this experience, either personally or for a ‘significant other’.) Of course, having found a perfectly acceptable style which is not going to squeeze you into a shape resembling a cross between Katie Price and Kim Kardashian, you are now faced with a CHOICE of colours, but by this time you just want a coffee and you grab the nearest white one (because the flesh-coloured ones are slightly creepy) and pay.
And this is where the next DECISION comes in:
Where to have a coffee? The LSG is fond of independent cafes rather than the chains which don’t pay their taxes and are sometimes too pretentious for their own good, but your need for some refreshment overcomes your principles and you head for a nearby café which shall remain anonymous but whose name begins with C and ends in A. After reading the ‘menu’, you ask if they have ‘an ordinary decaff coffee’, which leads to the first set of raised eyebrows – ‘ORDINARY?’ is almost written in the pained expression on the barista’s face.
‘Medium or large?’
‘Do you do small?’
Again, the raised eyebrows, and the barista (he’s a bloody waiter when all’s said and done) pointedly searches for a small cup.
‘Full or skimmed milk?’

cup of coffee with milk being poured

coffee

Wearily) ‘Do you have semi-skimmed?’
More raised eyebrows, then, seeing the growing frustration on your face: ‘I can do half and half.’
You finally get your coffee – which costs almost as much as your newly-purchased bra – and seat yourself in the furthest reaches of this establishment, well away from the possibility of contact with any other human being. The LSG may wish to help others live a fuller and more enjoyable life, but there are times when even she feels the weight of this responsibility falling heavily on her shoulders and needs to withdraw from the hubbub of daily life. (I would have gone to the pub, but they weren’t open at that hour.)

Enjoy the long Bank Holiday weekend, dear devotees! May the rain fall elsewhere other than on you!

The Mosquito Curtain, Cats and Exercise

beer in fridge

beer in fridge

A very good and sweltering evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru! It’s so hot, I have been forced to get a cold Peroni from the fridge – purely to hold against my forehead to help me cool down, you understand.
Tonight’s post is one I am sure you can all relate to – how to leave the back door open without every fly in the neighbourhood coming in to have a party around the cats’ food dishes (substitute ‘dog’ or ‘child’ if you prefer). (Small pause to hold cold bottle against forehead.); so this evening’s advice is HOW TO PUT UP A MOSQUITO CURTAIN and GET MORE EXERCISE at the same time:
1. Purchase a mosquito net curtain from your nearest garden centre (although you can probably find them in Poundland at far less than I paid!).

mosquito net

Mosquito net

2. Once at home, remove the curtain from the box and study the instructions carefully, which are in pictures only – words could not do it justice! It says on the box ‘No tools required’, but what do you find in the very first picture? – a dodgy-looking cartoon character holding a long ruler and pencil against the top of the door frame. In my world, a long ruler is classed as a TOOL! Ignore this particular diagram.
3. Place the two halves of the curtain on the floor, as shown in the diagram, so that the magnets which hold the halves together are lined up. So far, so good.

White Cat

Charlie

4. Spend the next ten minutes removing a cat from one half of the curtain – Malcolm seems to think this is a new game which involves wrapping himself inside the curtain.
5. Carefully place Velcro strips (supplied) around the outer edges of the two halves. It’s all going swimmingly!
6. Spend another ten minutes unsticking your fingers from the sticky bit of the Velcro strips when you removed the backing tape in order to stick them to the curtains.
7. Carefully carry the curtains to the back door and position them with great precision (who needs a long ruler?? Ha!). ‘Grand Designs’, eat your heart out!
8. Spend a further ten minutes unsticking your fingers from the sticky bits of the Velcro strips

black cat

Molly

when you remove the other bits of backing tape in order to stick the curtain halves to the wall.
9. Stand back and admire your handiwork and spend ten minutes showing the cats how the

curtains pull apart easily for them to go in and out. They learn quickly – providing you are actually holding the curtains apart.
10. Leave the back door open, secure in the knowledge that there will be no more flies in your kitchen and go and do something else (I find Microsoft Solitaire Daily Challenge passes the time nicely).
11. Go back half an hour later to see if there are any flies in the kitchen and you are delighted to find that there is NOT A SINGLE ONE! However – there’s always a ‘however’, isn’t there? – you will find that you now have three cats sitting outside in a straight line staring disconsolately at the beautifully placed MOSQUITO NET, unable to work out how to get back in the house!
So where does MORE EXERCISE come in? Well, you now have to traipse back and forth to the kitchen several times a day, opening and closing the curtains to allow the cats to go in and out.

Enjoy the rest of your evening! I’m off to find another cold bottle for my forehead!

Beating Challenges

walking into the crocodile's mouth

Challenge

Good afternoon from the Lifestyle Support Guru! Today I have some VERY USEFUL ADVICE on BEATING CHALLENGES, having myself beaten several this morning, so this ADVICE is very current! Here are the challenges I have taken on and beaten, in no particular order of importance or occurrence:
1. For this CHALLENGE you will need one keyboard and one cat. The cat will be one that likes walking all over the keyboard while you are trying to do some very important work (for example, trying to beat today’s Microsoft Daily Solitaire Challenge). The CHALLENGE is to remove the keyboard and place it on your lap BEFORE the cat can walk all over the keys and turn on/off various functions (which you don’t understand anyway, but that’s not the point). You will, of course, be extremely uncomfortable trying to use the keyboard on your lap, but you will also feel extremely satisfied because you have BEATEN THE CHALLENGE!
2. This next CHALLENGE also requires a cat, but a chair instead of a keyboard. The cat will have ensconced itself on the chair in your bedroom while you are having a shower (or any other domestic task that requires you to be out of the bedroom) and will have left you a small space on which to sit and dry your hair. Do not just pick up and remove the cat – this is cheating! You must sit (uncomfortably) on the small space and carry on as normal until the cat decides that she has had enough of being squashed and gets up and leaves. You have BEATEN THE CHALLENGE!
3. This particular CHALLENGE is one that I really enjoy – frightening siblings, preferably at least

disaster

disaster

once a week! There are several methods of doing this, but the easiest is, by far, the posting of horror stories about dreadful things that can happen to you in the summer.
a) One of your siblings lives in almost constant terror of disasters happening (for example, you can guarantee that, if you are flying somewhere on holiday, some sort of disaster will take place in or near your destination – volcanoes erupting, civil war, all the sorts of things that happen in Benidorm on a regular basis). Today I managed to terrify this sibling by posting a story about out-of-date sunscreen, and I posted a similar story about ticks the other day. I should imagine she is, even as I type, cowering behind locked doors with all the curtains closed to ward off the sun, grandchildren dressed in biohazard suits, so that she doesn’t have to use sunscreen on them or go out in the garden where ticks might be lurking in all sorts of places, waiting to jump up and attack!

blood pressure monitor

blood pressure monitoring

b) Another sibling works for a large company whose initials might or might not be BP. This CHALLENGE only works if you have recently had your BLOOD PRESSURE checked, which I had this morning. I texted him afterwards, saying ‘BP down quite a lot’, which I thought was a perfectly harmless piece of good news but, apparently, it sent him rushing to check BP’s shares, thinking there’d been a sudden slump in the market and that he was going to become POOR! Laughed a lot at that!
c) Unfortunately, I have less success with the other two siblings because I have yet to find out anything of which they might be scared!
So there you are – BEATING A CHALLENGE can be immensely satisfying and set you up for the rest of the day. Now all I have to do is CHALLENGE myself to get the hoover out, but that’s the most terrifying CHALLENGE of all! Have a lovely afternoon!