Alison Golden

27 Ways to Live With Your Non-Paleo Spouse

You’ve read the books, commented on the success stories, learned to eat a salad or soup for lunch.

You’ve lost a few pounds and are working on cooking from scratch.

But as you study your latest new recipe, your spouse comes in.

He walks to towards you with a smile on his face and you can tell he’s about to announce something big.

He holds up his catch, triumphant, a grin splitting his face in two.

Cock of the walk.

And he plonks his haul on the countertop.

You look at it, your heart sinks and you wonder how to burst his bubble gently.

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The Zen of Timelessness – The Lesson

This is a follow-up post to my earlier tale of my first day without a car, computer, clocks or caffeine. I talk about the lessons I learned over the five days and what from my experience I’ve carried forward so far.

Over the week, I blasted through my to-do list. I had completed all the physical, moving around activities by Thursday lunchtime.

I was faced with only sit-down administrative work.

And I just didn’t want to do it.

All week, I’d wanted to move. Slowly but steadily. Nothing rushed or strenuous. Just steady, gentle motion.

Accomplishing this, managing that.

I didn’t work to exhaustion like I often do. No need to take breaks, as in, ‘Phew, I need a sit down.’

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The Zen of Timelessness – The Experience

“Zero Technology: the final frontier. This is the voyage of Alison Golden.

Her four-day mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no woman has gone before…”

It’s true. I did. It was weird. It was bizarre.

I lived in a parallel universe from those around me for over four days.

No clocks, no cars, no computers, no caffeine.

Instead, candles and cats and…calefaction. (That’s a posh word for ‘heat’ I looked up in a thesaurus. An online thesaurus.)

I’m writing this three days after my technology-free existence came to an end and I doubt I’ve absorbed many of the lessons yet.

They will reveal themselves to me over time but while I wait…

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The Zen of Timelessness

Next week I’m going to be alone, at home, for four and a half days.

That’s 108 hours or 6,480 minutes.

It’s even 388,800 seconds.

But I hope I’m not going to be counting.

I haven’t been home alone for more than a few hours for, ooooh pinch me, 11 years?

Not since I was pregnant while my husband was away on a business trip and I had to take my 32-weeks-with-twins pregnant self to the hospital and park in the tiniest parking space you ever saw.

(I got a round of applause from three bystanding men.)

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2011 Goals Review – Did You? Or Didn’t You?

Bum. Mer.

I took a look at my 2011 goals for this blog.

I consider myself a goal achiever.

Heck, I used to be in sales, closely monitoring my monthly actuals against targets, balancing incoming orders against my quarterly goals.

I would chat up my accounts, sweet talk the sales order entry clerk, all the while finessing the system so I earned all my commission, bonus prizes and any vacation that was up for grabs.

But you know what?

I missed most of my goals for this blog in 2011.

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Harry Potter Eats Christmas Pudding

Oh yes, he does!

Oh no, he doesn’t!

Oh yes, he does!

Oh, never mind.

(If you don’t get that, just move along…)

At the weekend, I was helping make Christmas puddings, sometimes known as plum pudding.

I gathered the ingredients, washed up and tried, rather unsuccessfully as usual, to control two 11 year-olds who were way too excited that their very own school operations officer had come along to show them how to do it.

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