Time To Speak

[sayathing]

Here are my Cayley diagrams for half turns on the Pocket cube produced with Gephi. The first shows each quarter turn as a straight line. In the second I coloured each little whole turn “loop” with the colour of the face’s loop. The left face was green, the upper was yellow and the front orange. It looks a bit amateurish, and I didn’t bother with getting the right layering of lines but baby needed more attention.

[sayathing]

12 weeks ish left

On Sunday I realised I have 12 full weeks left of maternity leave.

This is shocking! I feel like I’ve just got into it! I have nothing to show for it either. Obviously that’s a lie - I have a happy healthy beautiful 9 month old baby boy to show for it - but I really thought I’d have done something else useful-but-fun in this year. Like, brain useful-but-fun. I haven’t even read a whole book, unless you count baby books, and I don’t. I’m still reading (I use the term loosely) the same book I was reading the week I gave birth. I had hoped I’d come up with a new wonderful app that everyone would download so that I could leave my job, or come up with something insightful and mathematically marvellous about the Rubik’s cube that would lead to me doing a phd and so leave my job, or get accepted onto a paid teacher training placement so that I. Could. Leave. My. Job.

Anyway, none of that happened. And so I will return to my job in just under 12 weeks. So I set myself a challenge that I immediately failed of spending 1 hour per working day doing something just for me. Monday didn’t work out because Facebook and bbc news and WhatsApp. Tuesday I managed to turn on my laptop and load up visual studio only to find that my licence had lapsed due to inactivity and my internet connection was not good enough to sort it out. So that’s 2 days gone. And this evening I’ve realised there are 4 bank holidays before my return date, so I won’t get those hours because we will probably be doing something outdoorsy as a family. So my 60 fun hours is already down to 54.

Tomorrow I have to be out of the house having fun with other mummies and their babies. I might have wine. Wednesday is my favourite day of the week. Maybe I should just write off Wednesday for useful-but-fun days...

Ok so the potential hours of useful-but-fun hours just dropped from 60 to 42. Whoops. I’m sure I can do something useful in 42 hours. Rubik’s cube I’m coming to get you!

[sayathing]

Pescatarian by 40

I’m 35 and 5 months on Sunday (big day!) and while it might not seem like a big challenge, #pesciby40 seems like a completely achievable goal. That is why I’m making it a thing for me. I have often fallen short when it comes to meeting my own challenges outside of work, so I need to do this.

My journey to #pesciby40 so far:

I’ve stopped buying meat in the supermarket for just my husband and I to eat at home. I still buy meat as part of baby pouches and if we have visitors we will cook meat for them but my husband and I don’t cook it for ourselves. We do eat meat in restaurants and if we buy lunch to go, it might have meat in it. We don’t ask for veggie options for weddings or on aeroplanes. I feel that until I can say that I am fully pescatarian I could never ask a friend to change their menu plan because of me.

Mini challenge for the week:

I’m going out for lunch today and there’s a veggie meal on the menu that has an optional bacon add on. Can I resist? Should I resist? I had it last time and it was delish! Is it more important to get myself to stop eating bacon or stop wanting bacon? I’d say the latter. I think this challenge is going to be more about changing my mentality towards eating meat than about taking away joy. So actually this week’s challenge is to ask myself how I really feel when I’m eating meat.