What small steps are you going to do today towards your future goals?
Small steps everyday!
Love to you all x
Small Steps
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Tag Archives: dpchallenge
You Are Enough ❤️
Set it as a reminder on your phone!
Write it in your mirror!
Put it in your fridge!
Remind yourself….
You are enough
Love to you all x
The Ness, Devon, England
Took the hairy boy for a walk on the beach yesterday. Just beautiful!!
I’m very lucky that I live in a very lovely part of my country, Devon. This is Ness beach, which is in Shaldon near Teignmouth. The pictures where taken on the beach and then I walked along the coastal path, and looked down on the beach.
I love going to the beach just to clear my head. I often go in-between night shifts because I struggle the most, physically and mentally when I’m on night shifts. To be blunt it just fucks my body up!! But I’ve become aware of that now, I began to recognise the pattern so I put plans in place to support me during those times. I think that’s the key really when you having a low time…
- Recognising your patterns of moods…. When do they happen? What’s triggered it? Maybe keep a mood diary for a couple mouths so you can build up a picture.
- Plan for those times. Do nice things that make you happy such as listen to music, take a walk, hot bath, watch your favourite programme. Be kind to yourself
- Except that it is going to happen, and that’s ok. You are prepared, it’s normal, and it won’t last.
As soon as I excepted the fact that when I do a run of night shifts I’m going to feel tired, I’m going to feel low, I’m probably going to cry, I just felt better and did not stress myself out worrying why I was feeling like this.
Hope this helps.
Love to you all x
Surrey Sunset
Changing skies.
Like an oil painting isn’t it.
As the sun sets the colours change.
I feel there’s a book title in there somewhere!!
Change/choices/challenges/….
It’s amazing isn’t it that when you look at a picture what pops up in your head.
My beautiful dearest friend sent me these pictures of her walk the other evening.
Love to you x
Throwback Thursday 02/22/13 – WPC: Forward
As I have had this blog for a few years now, i thought it would be nice to revisit some old blog posts!
I posted this when I was still teaching, which profession I left 4 years ago now, and to be honest at times I miss. I miss the kids, the creativity, the fun. To be fair I can’t promise I won’t go back to it in some way in the future……
I wonder what these are up to now? Happy I hope….
The reason I chose this picture for this weeks challenge, is this picture was taken while on my last school trip with last years year six class. And I felt this picture was very poignant because these two boys had been best friends all the way from nursery, all the way though ups and downs of their primary life, both of them being sometimes a little challenging in their behaviour but just boys stuff, one of them having what I call ‘the swagger’ they where both lovely boys with great senses of humours, I loved them them to bits like they where my own. We had been though laughter, dressing up in dresses, hitting me accidentally with a cricket ball, cheeky comments and tears together.
I think this picture matches the theme ‘forward’ well, because here for just this moment they are both looking out to the lake, knowing that soon their lives will be changing and moving forward to separate secondary schools and this friendship will change. It does make me shed a tear.
Love to you all x
Wordless Wednesday – Warmth
I feel we all need a bit of warmth, sunshine, glow and radiance on this cold, wet, windy January morning!
Love to you all x
What do you need more of in your life?
Good question…
At this moment, whilst I’m sat at work, watching the seconds to the end of my short break, and before I face another persons personal drama, as I hear the rain splashing on the toad outside, and the rattles from the building as the wind picks up again…
Sun… yes the warm, comforting, glow of the sun…. yes that will do right now!
Love to you all x
WPC – Face
Thats a grumpy face!
This is the face of my Granddaughter when she has just been woken up!
Naughty Nana!
WPC – Earth, Brief Encounter
Doing the job I am doing at the moment definitely puts everything into prospective.
We are here on this earth for a brief moment, one minute we are here the next we are gone, how ever you think of it, what your beliefs are, take this small window of life, grab it, squeeze the hell out of it, sometimes the journey is a struggle, thats ok because it doesn’t last forever.
You don’t take your ‘things’ with you, you don’t take your money, that is all insignificant in the end.
You do leave behind the way you have made people feel, the way you have treated people, the kindness you shown, the care you have taken, the words that you have said, the laughter you have started, the tears you have shed, the memories you have created.
What are YOU leaving behind on this Earth? x
Wordless Wednesday – Happy
I’m a happy boy because I passed my Kennel Club Gold Award x
WPC – Dance
There’s rhythm and motion all around us…
Jete…
My boy on the beach a couple of days ago, see the joy in his face! x
Wordless Wednesday – Daisy
This is ‘Daisy the cow’ we brought her at the weekend with some magic beans! x
WPC – One Love
One Love, friendship
Looking back at my past blog posts I have used this picture three times. I love this picture because to me this represents the bond two friends have.
I took this picture a few years ago on a school trip to the local park. These boys where the classes little loveable rebels. I knew them from the day they started in nursery to the day they left in year six. They had been friends from that time in nursery and it had lasted all the way. They had their ups and downs, fall outs, but they always had that bond.
I’m so glad I caught this moment they had together that day, it just looked so peaceful, an unspoken conversation, closeness, understanding. x
Wordless Wednesday – Flow
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WPC – Harmony
Harmony…Tricky, can mean a million things to millions of people. To me it is how things complement each other, how things belong together to make one whole, the whole picture of how sky, sea and earth together together make our world, and each picture we take of the sky, sea and earth will look completely different but are only made up of those three elements.
This picture was taken one summers evening, whilst I was sitting on a wall eating fish and chips, at Teignmouth, Devon, England. x
WPC – State Of Mind
Interpret this how you wish….
Spiralling out of control?…
Cluttered mind?…
Trapped?…
Light at the end of the tunnel?…
I don’t know, you tell me x
Emergency Survival Kit
Believe it not, what you see above is everything I carry with me on every shift. I like to have it all with me, most of it in my pockets, it makes me feel human, heres the low down…
- Reading glasses – It would be no good if I couldn’t read the addresses I am going to, the meds the patient is on, see the microscopic things in wounds, read my phone, etc.
- Sunglasses – Well for a start they make me look cool driving the ambo.
- Pens – For the writing on gloves, taping screen, and searching drug addicts pockets.
- Gloves – For general touching of everything and everybody, sometimes necessary to double glove.
- Scissors – These mothers cut through anything.
- Hand sanitiser – Can be also applied right up the forearms after visiting sticky carpet houses.
- Hand moisturiser – Which is needed after washing your hands a hundred times, and stripping your hands of any natural oils.
- Paracetamol – For the aches and pains after humping the tenth bigger framed person down five flights of stairs, because no large people get ill on the ground floor.
- Base makeup – So I don’t end up looking iller than the people I am seeing after a twelve hour shift.
- Chewing gum – To add to the coolness, and make my breath smell better at 3am.
- Mints – Just incase the gum hasn’t worked.
- Notebook – To be honest most of what is in there is spellings, these medical words are tricky fellas to spell you know.
- Lip balm – To stop my lips from cracking and falling off at -5 at a roadside of a vomiting teenager.
- Eye measuring thingy – Sorry don’t know the proper name, its also good for seeing small head wounds and key code pads.
- Eye drops – By 4am my eyeballs feel like they are going to drop out of my head, and my contacts are pieces of grit scrapping the membrane off my eyes.
- Eye spray – It wakes me up for a long 6 hour transfer.
- Nursey looking watch – This would help me count breaths and heart beats if only I could see the second hand…. refer to number 1
- My personalised stethoscope – This makes me feel doctorish, adds credibility that I might know what I am talking about, but it always helps if you have it turned to the right side, which on occasions I have had a slight panic thinking a person has no heart beat, even though they are sat up breathing and talking to me.
I hope you have found a slight bit of interest in what your local emergency person carries in those big green pockets. Keep safe x
Selfie Sunday
This selfie sums up how I have been feeling today! Washed out, full of cold, tired…..pop up shop love, I think I’m dyin’ x
WPC – Seasons
I thought I would post a picture for each season,
As you see above Winter, this picture was taken on my old iPhone when in the rare occasion we actually got snow here, the last time being 2010. We went on a snow walk to the woods, very atmospheric!
Following the cold dark Winters is Spring, this picture represents Spring well here for me, because I live in the countryside the farmers plant the maze and then cover it with plastic which leaves an effect around us like we are surrounded in sparkly water.
Then of cause my favourite time Summer, this is me doing exactly what I want to be doing all the time, say no more you get the picture!
Then Autumn, or how some of you call it Fall, I love the colours at this time of year. The seasons just keep going round and round regardless, moving and changing. One thing you can be assured of. x
WPC – Life Imitates Art
This is a tad abstract but in this piece of art I see the face of my handsome dog!
Can you see it? x
Selfie Sunday
I have had a week off on annual leave, (well except Wednesday I went in as a favour!) And I have been doing lots of dog walks in the wind and rain.
The first picture I went for the Arabian nights look trudging through the desert, except it was so cold on my delicate little face I needed to cover it. The second look is the Men in Black look, dressed in a alien rubber protection from acid slime suit.
WPC – Time
Wordless Wednesday – NeeNaa NeeNaa
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Vibrant Nature
My Second entry to this weeks challenge, the beauty of nature. I am sure I have many more pictures if I delve deep enough into the photo archives, but here are a tiny few that I could grab quickly. Again I don’t think I can take credit for taking these pictures, my OH is the clever one with the lens, I just benefit from them as material for this blog. x
Optimistic Smile
Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push, a smile, a world of optimism and hope, a ‘you can do it’ when things are tough.
My smiling bear picture was taken on one of my visits to Dartmoor zoo in Devon, England.
WPC – Optimistic
I am optimistic that one day soon I shall be again be supping a cold lager, looking over the sea, on a warm summers evening! x
WPC – Alphabet Mark Deux
Again these pictures were taken on the same school trip, it was to enhance their creative writing, it is called the Ted Hughes trail. He is a local famous poet.
WPC – Alphabet
Ancestors, hold on to your wigs…
I don’t normally join in the daily post but this one caught my attention.
If one of your late ancestors were to come back from the dead and join you for dinner, what things about your family would this person find the most shocking?
The list would be endless to make my ancestors run out screaming with horror at the world they had come into and the family it now was!
My personal list would go something like this, try and explain half of this to time traveling stranger… divorce, gay marriage, grandchildren out of wedlock, working a ‘mans’ job, family darkness, to name but a few!
Of cause for me and to most of you nothing about this is shocking because all of this has become the norm now, times change, things move on, people develop. I wonder what it will be like for my family future?
Its one thing I have never been interested in is finding out about pass ghosts, they belong in the pass, I bet they weren’t that innocent either! x
WPC Take 2 – Weight(less)
After looking through other blogs on their response to ‘weight(less)’ I had a look through some of my old pictures and found these. I thought they fitted well. The dragonfly one above I would love to take credit for but my better half took that one, it is such a beautiful picture. I love the detail on the wings.
This spider web was outside my classroom one morning, to be fair the web looks a bit laden down by the dew. I can never get the sparkle in the pictures that I see in real life, which is always disappointing.
Again my better half took this one. Wouldn’t you just love to be flying high as free as a bird.
WPC – Weight(less)
Weightless
In mind,
Free from worry,
Solitude,
Peace,
Wash away,
Time.
(this picture was taken of me at sunset in the Maldives)
Indulgence
This is how my new year started, looking after the drunk and injured on New Year’s Eve night, from my temporary emergency treatment area in a old, cold church, where when the clock struck midnight the patient I was with realised it was midnight and proceeded to hug and kiss me.
Once home in the morning, a few hours sleep, still feeling like I had a hangover because I was so tired, I packed, caught a flight to my new year retreat after working all Christmas, I end up here…. Just a tad nicer I think, don’t you!
Champagne was waiting in our room! Breakfast followed by ice skating, spa treatments, wine cellar tour, swimming, eating, drinking and sleeping! Don’t mind if I do!
A small part of feels a bit guilty knowing at this very moment my colleagues will be working very hard to keep you all safe and well. But be rest assured I am writing this on the plane journey home and I will be soon back to it, to start all over again!
Cheers, happy new year! X
Weekly Photo Challenge – Now
Hello WordPress world!
Haven’t been here for a long time, have been learning a new career, I have gone from dancer, to teacher, now I am training to be a paramedic! (don’t get excited it is going to take a while) I know I must be mad starting all over again, but it is never to late while I have breath in my body!
This picture just sums up what my life is like at the moment, unpredictable, I have gone from the routine of schools to the world of shift work, I have worked all over christmas for the first time, which I must admit i quite enjoyed!
I took this picture at Sandygate rugby stadium were I had be sent to on my shift on boxing day to cover the players just incase any of them needed a trip to hospital! I have never been to a rugby match before, I had the privilege of coming through the tunnel with the players and sitting pitch side able to be in the centre of all the action, luckily my services were not required.
i just don’t know where my day is going at the moment, one minute I am fighting off a drunk, helping a child, picking up someone off the floor, holding someone in their last moments, stopping a foot from falling off, wiping body fluids off my shoes, then I end up at a sports event!
Take care! x
WPC – Nighttime
Here is my OHs star trail they took ages ago! This is definitely a nighttime picture!
The Prodigal Returns!
I’m back!….have you missed me?… don’t answer that! What a few months I have had, it goes a bit like this….
After 10 years in the same school, after lots of uming and arring I decided to hand in my notice to persue new adventures, can’t let the grass grow and all that, it was a big emotional wrench, because I loved my teaching job, and had established myself well in the school but what didn’t help was on the day I handed my notice in, I returned home to find out that my landlord had given me notice on my home which I had been living in for 13 years, I had brought my children up in that house, been through a lot of ups and downs there, so losing my job and home in one day was a little bit too much. I was more gutted about the house because that was out of my control and I lived in such a beautiful place. So I spent my summer holidays sorting and packing up my worldly goods, which after so many years it took some sorting, making decisions like, do we take the boys primary school exercises books or not, I let them make that decision!
After fours trailer loads to the tip later we moved. but within all of this I didn’t have a job, because I left without another job to go to, luckily within two days of leaving my last job I was offered a position at a special school, something new for me, but also something I am very excited about I managed to get on to a holding pool to train as a paramedic, something I have always wanted to do, but have never gone for because it was never the right time, but now it is, so two jobs at once, not bad.
I feel very proud of myself because I am a routine, comfort zone kinda girl, so leaving a teaching job with no job, with just blind faith was a big step for me.
This weekend has been the first weekend I have had to chill for long time, I used to also teach at weekends, but part of my change I also gave all that up too, that I had been doing for 18 years, it is strange having a two day weekend, but I could get used to it.
As you can see I haven’t had a lot of time to think about blogging but I am hoping to get back into the flow of things again.
Ok, back to the photo challenge, this was taken at night, so I thought I might get way with it! It also describes for me how this last two months have been, a bit swirly! X
Weekly Photo Challenge – Between
I know I have posted this picture before, but I think it represents the word ‘between’ well.
This picture was taken on a school trip I took the year 6s on. And this is two boys having a moment together. I find this a poignant picture, because these are boys were best friends all the way through primary school, I had seen their relationship have it’s ups and downs. The sad thing is that these boys went to separate secondary school, so I’m not sure if they still have contact. X
Weekly Photo Challenge – Extra, Extra
Well this is unlike me, submitting a late entry to a challenge! The OCD in me pains me that I’m not posting this on the day it came out, but life just got in the way, how very dare it! With the weather here in good old England is actually being sunny and warm for a change, I have been doing outdoor activities, like climbing trees, balancing from tree top to tree top, zip wiring… And think I’m joking but no I was doing all of that on Sunday! I’m just sorry I have no photo evidence of it, but it wasn’t a pretty sight!
I think that this photo is ok for this weeks theme. This was taken one morning on one of my many dog walks, going into the field we go into every morning. This spiders web was telling us… Keep out, you can’t come in here! Unfortunately the sparkle is not as good in the photograph as it could be, but you get the idea! X
Weekly Photo Challenge – Room To Breath
In this week’s photo challenge, share your take on the idea of room — it could be an actual room in your house, a favorite gallery in your local museum, a cubicle at work. You could also take this challenge in a more abstract direction, and show us where you feel like you have room — or lack it.Weekly Photo Challenge
This is more on the abstract side. This is a place where I feel I have ‘room’ to breath, even though looking at it from the outside in, it looks enclosed, over powering.
But inside as you can see I am happy! X
Weekly Photo Challenge – Split Second Story
As I don’t live in the hustle and bustle of a busy town or city, this picture is as hectic as it gets around here.
The split second story we have here is, if you look closely in the sky is a double rainbow. This picture was taken under the pressure of trying to keep a big dog under control from lunging at the cows, he doesn’t like cows, which is a bit of a shame considering we see them every day, I noticed there was a double rainbow so I quickly got my camera out to catch it, but it never comes out as good as it looks like in real life. But never mind! I always find them one of natures little miracles! X
Weekly Photo Challenge – Twist
This picture was taken by OH when we were just playing around with their new camera at the time.
Small Steps 