Getting My Mojo Back

Good Day Everyone,

I hope you've all had a great start to 2016. I am pleased to say that I am finally starting to feel like myself again. In fact, I feel like I'm getting my mojo back :o).

The last couple of months of 2015 were very difficult. My arthritis flared up severely and there were days where I felt like I couldn't carry on living with the excruciating pain I was experiencing. In addition, both my scalp and body psoriasis were also flaring and I was suffering from more migraines than usual, all whilst living in what felt like a building site! The despair that I felt at the end of 2015 was reminiscent of the despair I felt back at the end of 2011, when I made the difficult decision to give up my career so that I could work on my health full time. I felt like I was living under a dark grey cloud surrounded by a thick fog - I couldn't see where I was going, there was no shining light in the distance, and I could feel myself heading into a downward spiral of depression. If you've read my previous blog post (read here), you'll know that I slowly but surely started to take positive steps to move forward during the last few days of 2015.

Juicing again :o)

Over the past few weeks I have continued to make good progress with small positive changes to my daily life. I am now in a place where I'm starting to feel happy about my life again. My health is starting to improve and whilst I am still struggling with my arthritic shoulder, I have seen small improvements. I feel like I now have a better understanding of what I need to do to help my shoulder get better and accepting that it is going to be a long slow battle is easing my frustration.

Having a fully functioning kitchen has been a huge contributor to me getting my mojo back. I always feel better when I have greater control over what I eat, as I know from experience that what I eat greatly affects my arthritis. Living in a caravan for six months with a restrictive kitchen meant that we were eating foods that didn't take long to cook as the cooker wasn't particularly powerful, and foods that were convenient to store as we had a very small refrigerator. Basically, we lived of a lot of processed carbs like pasta and bread. We were eating some fruit and vegetables, but it wasn't as much as we would typically eat, and there were a few too many treats. My hubby is a sugar junkie and would often snack on chocolates and biscuits, whilst I relapsed on my crisp addiction (although to be fair, I think I was comfort eating as I was unhappy with my whole living in a caravan situation). Whilst hubby would burn of the calories from his vice due to all the physical work he was doing, I on the other hand, developed a rather rounded midsection due to my sedentary lifestyle ;o). However, all that is now changing. We have a fully equipped kitchen and a dining table with chairs, which means that we actually have something to sit on, other than our bed, and that has made the world of difference.

 Below are some of the steps that I have taken over the past few weeks that have resulted in me getting my mojo back;

• Exercising daily: I have made a conscious effort to get back into the routine of exercising daily. Exercising really helps with my arthritic pain and joint stiffness which in turn helps my mobility. Some days I will go for a brisk 40min sea front walk, other days I'll hula hoop or do yoga based stretching exercises at home if I'm too tired for a walk or if it's raining (which it has been a lot!).
• Baths: One of the side effects of suffering from chronic pain is insomnia so I am trying really hard to take regular bath soaks in the evenings to help me sleep better and help with my joint pain.
• Bedtime: To help with my insomnia, I am trying to go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning, even on weekends, so that I can condition my body and mind into a sleep routine.
• Food: Now that we have a functioning kitchen, I am cooking from scratch and we are eating healthy, nutritious food again which makes me incredibly happy, oh and there are no crisps in the house! Breakfast toast is now replaced with smoothie bowls and we juice most days so I get a good chunk of anti-inflammatory ginger into my overly inflamed body.
• Cooking in bulk: Because I never know how bad my body is going to be from one day to the next, I have started to cook in bulk. I will often cook enough food to last us for two days and if it's freezable I will make enough so that a couple of batches can go in the freezer. This way there is healthy home cooked food in the fridge / freezer so that we don't resort to ready meals / takeaways. Plus, it means I don't have to cook every single day, meaning I can use that energy to write blog posts like this one :o).
• Medication application: To deal with my flaring scalp psoriasis I have resorted back to a routine of applying my scalp medication daily (read more here). This means having to wash my hair every single day which is an incredibly exhausting task when you suffer from chronic fatigue and exhaustion, but I am seeing such great improvements that it's keeping me motivated to continue. Hopefully, soon my hair will no longer look like someone has emptied a snow globe on it and I can temper the medication application down to just a couple of times a week. I am also doing the same with my body psoriasis.
• Drinking more: To help with my migraines I am making a conscious effort to drink more water. Aside from food / scent triggers, I know that being dehydrated can cause me to experience more migraines and lets just say that having to use a caravan toilet for six months wasn't the greatest incentive to drink more!
• Silence: This is slightly more on the meditative side but I am consciously taking time out of my day to simply be in silence. I sit without the radio or laptop on (we have no television and you can find out why here) and just listen. It is incredibly calming. Being surrounded by trees and public gardens mean we get a lot of birds around our house, especially at the back and sometimes I just stand and listen to / watch them. We also have squirrels at the back of our house and they are always fun to watch.
• Acceptance: I am actively accepting the things that I cannot change and learning to let go of the negative emotions they cause me to feel. One half of our house still looks like a building site and walking through it used to really upset me. The other half, whilst it's progressed significantly, it still isn't finished and not having a single room that is finished really grated on me, but no more. I have accepted that this house renovation is taking a lot longer than we ever anticipated and being upset about it doesn't actually change the situation. There's no point in wasting valuable energy in being upset. I just have to ride it out whilst appreciating all the things that are working, like the kitchen and having a regular toilet and bath. I am also accepting that getting my health back on track is going to be a long journey, but at least I am moving in the right direction now. 

Over the years that I've lived with Arthur (aka arthritis), I've been forced to learn (and accept) that things are just going to go at a much, much slower pace for me, compared to others. Having a mind that is fully functional, but a body that is not, causes a great deal of internal conflict and frustration. I have so many ideas of blog posts that I want to write, content that I'd like to create for my YouTube channel and photographs that I want to take, but alas I barely have enough energy to shower and cook most days. My life now is so different to before Arthur invaded my body. I often reminisce of when I used to have a career that led me to travel the world (well Europe and the US), work crazy hours and always be on the go socially. My world has shrunk so much, as has my identity, but nonetheless, I have learnt to treasure the days when I can cook and shower for I have experienced days when I haven't even been able to do that. Having an attitude of gratitude (and acceptance) is definitely key in learning to be happy whilst being chronically ill.


Love Sheen xxx

Why Today Had To Be Different

Good Day Everyone,

It sure has been a while since I sat down to write a blog post. The past few weeks have been incredibly tough, primarily on the health front, although the house renovation has been another source of stress, and therefore a contributory factor to the aforementioned. I'll do a separate blog post updating you on the house soon as a lot has happened, and not always in a good way!

Coming back to the health issues, I've been firing or rather flaring, from all cylinders. I've been experiencing more migraine attacks than usual, and my body and scalp psoriasis has been going crazy. On top of this, my arthritis has flared up quite badly and I've been struggling with severe shoulder pain, as well as intense fatigue and exhaustion, despite doing very little physically. Things got really bad a couple of weeks ago and after several days of wallowing in teary self pity of "Why? Why is this happening to me?" I realised that I actually knew the answer to why, but more importantly, I took the mental step of acknowledging that no-one could put this right other than me (even though I already knew this too). You see, the thing with chronic illnesses is that you are battling those illnesses every single day, in fact it's every single minute of every single hour of every single day. The battle is continuous - there are no breaks, and it is absolutely relentless! With hindsight and some reflection (after all what else was I going to do when I'm in bed day after day), I can now see that I simply got tired of battling. I had no more fight left in me. I had surrendered, not only to the disease demons, but also to the temptations around me, which I fight on a daily basis.

So with the realisation and acknowledgement that I, and only I, had the power to change things, I...  started to change things ;o). Initially, the changes were all in my head as my body physically wasn't well enough to do anything, but over the last few days, I have started to turn those mental changes into physical action. They started of small, like me taking over juicing duties from hubby or being well enough to accompany him on a supermarket shop, but hey a step in the right direction is a step in the right direction, no matter how small, and slowly I'm moving on to bigger achievements.

Having been stuck in a bit of a negativity rut towards the end of this year, I didn't want to start 2016 on a negative note, no matter how bad my health maybe. And this is why I woke up today after a relatively decent night's sleep with a view that today had to be different. It just had to. I didn't want today, the last day of 2015, to be like the past few weeks. The same mundane routine. There had to be something new and there had to be some sense of achievement, no matter how small.

So the first thing I did was to check the weather forecast as it has been raining almost every single day this month and seeing that rain wasn't forecasted for a couple of hours, I suggested a sea front walk to hubby. We used to do these walks most mornings in Japan and found them to be very therapeutic mentally, as well as physically. Despite living next to the sea we haven't actually done many sea walks as hubby starts to work on the house as soon as he is up in the mornings. There was something very inspiring and awakening about today's walk- I started to feel like a weight was being lifted off my shoulders as I took in the crisp morning air and marveled at nature's beauty. The walk turned into a little breakfast stop off, and hubby and I used this rare quality time (we've had a great quantity of time together these past few months but it hasn't been of good quality) to reflect upon 2015, and discuss what we would both like to get out of 2016. Walking back we did get caught in the rain but it was worth it.

Once back home I took my first ever bath in our new bath tub to help my sore joints and whilst it only made them feel a little better and only for a short period of time, I think bath soaks will start to help the more often I do them. After my soak I made our daily juice and then set to work on doing some cooking. We very recently got to a stage where we have a fully functioning kitchen and yesterday hubby got our dining table and chairs out. This has made such a huge difference to the quality of our lives. So even though I was feeling quite tired physically, I decided to push ahead using my mental energy which was buzzing after the walk and bath, to be productive in the kitchen. I made fish pie, for the first time ever. I even made my own butter and parsley sauce, and it tasted great (even if I do say so myself ;o)). I made a batch of them so some can go in the freezer, and I'll be taking a few to my mum's this weekend as she's recovering from knee surgery (cue good daughter points lol).

I did a few more things that I won't bore you with but suffice to say, as I sit here typing this at 10.30pm on new year's eve, that today has been different to all the other days I've had lately. I have felt positive and got a real sense of achievement with today. Even though tonight is a quiet night for us, I feel excited, inspired and ready for 2016 to be a year of positive change for hubby and I. And on that note I shall leave you. All that remains for me to say is, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading this and all the support you have given me, and I hope 2016 is a fabulous year for you and your loved ones :o).

Happy New Year Everyone! 

Love Sheen xxx

Singapore Vlog Part 2: CBD & Orchard Road

Good Day Everyone,

Today I share with you the second vlog from our stopover in Singapore. On this particular day hubby had work meetings and so I headed into Singapore's CBD (central business district) with him. I thought it might be interesting to show you some of the architecture of the CBD area. In and amongst all of the high rise office blocks there are streets of traditional shop houses which have now been converted into office spaces, cafes and and restaurants. There are also places of worship for the different religions within the CBD area including a mosque and the oldest temple in Singapore, the Thian Hock Keng Temple which is dedicated to Ma Zu, the goddess of the sea and protector of seamen.

Thian Hock Keng Temple

One of the things that struck me the very first time I walked through Singapore's CBD area, back in 2011, were the palm tree lined streets and green spaces. There are lots of small parks and gardens for people to enjoy and have their lunch. When we lived in Singapore hubby always used to say that it was a real joy to step outside at lunchtime, after being cooped up indoors with the air conditioning, look up and see bright blue skies and palm trees, and just feel that initial heat rush. Aside from the shop houses and green spaces, there are also numerous water features, some with koi carp, and art installations around the CBD area.

Water and art feature

Shop houses in the CBD

From the CBD, I jumped on the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) which is Singapore's subway system and headed to Orchard Road - the famous mall lined street for a spot of shopping. Singapore's subway system is very easy to use as it is in English. Hubby and I still had our EZ-Link cards which we just topped up with cash upon our arrival back to Singapore. With the EZ-Link card you simply tap on the entrance and exit gates at the MRT stations. It is a cashless travel card which can be used on the buses too, and is available for tourists to purchase. Apparently the Oyster card system that we now have on the London Underground is based upon the Singapore EZ-Link card. You can see more in the vlog below :o).

Once at Orchard I went to one of my favourite malls, ION. This mall is full of lots of familiar brands like Zara, H&M, Victoria's Secret, Mango, Uniqlo, Muji,and the mothership aka Sephora aka makeup heaven ;o). It also houses a lot of the designer/higher end brands too. The basement levels of most malls in Singapore are full of food courts and lots of different restaurants and cafes. I stopped off at IndoBox for a spot of lunch and to rest my joints.

Malay food for lunch at IndoBox

Orchard Road is home to numerous department stores such as Tangs, Isetan and Takashimaya, as well as all the malls. The road is tree lined and is particularly beautiful at Christmas with all the decorations and lights. If you're not a fan of crowds then the best time to visit Orchard Road is definitely during the day in the working week as it gets very busy in the evenings, and ridiculously busy on weekends. There is always something going on at Orchard Road, be it pop up exhibitions, promotions, events or temporary art installations. On this particular day there was a display of Gundams. The Gundam Series is a Japanese science-fiction anime series featuring giant robots and these were absolutely huge!

  

The shopping malls in Singapore offer a good mix of western and Asian brands, and every year there is annual two month sales event, known as The Great Singapore Sale, which just happened to be on when we were there :o). After lunch I made my way down Orchard Road to Plaza Singapura which is another mall that I use to go to when we lived in Singapore, and this mall had a huge dinosaur display at its centre! I didn't vlog the rest of my day as we were meeting some friends that night for dinner and I didn't think it would be that interesting for you.

I hope this blog post and the accompanying vlog gave you a bit more of an insight into what Singapore is like. Have you ever visited Singapore? Did you enjoy it? I'll be back with the third and final part soon.

Love Sheen xxx

Singapore Vlog Part 1: Dinner & Night Sights

Good Day Everyone,

When hubby and I left Japan, we did a stopover in Singapore where we had lived prior to Japan, before returning home to the UK. It was an absolute joy to be back in Singapore. It felt so familiar and comfortable, and best of all communication was easy :o). Singapore has four official languages of which English is one. Although living in Japan was an unforgettable experience, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy being back in a country where I knew my way around, could order things of a menu without having to resort to a translation app first, and use public transport with such ease that it was as natural as breathing. Oh Singapore, how I missed thee!

The Gateway Building

The Gateway looks two dimensional from certain angles

I vlogged bits of our time in Singapore so that I could share some of the sights and architecture with you. Singapore is a great place for modern, contemporary architecture and is home to some iconic structures. I love The Gateway building which you can see in the photos above. These two structures actually look two dimensional from some angles, almost as though they were made from a thin sheet of paper due to the particularly sharp angles. You can see the first of the three Singapore vlogs below.

As we arrived on the weekend, hubby and I spent some time catching up with my cousin and a couple of our friends. In this particular vlog, we headed out for dinner to the Arab Street area of Singapore where there are lots of colourful shop houses. We had some delicious Turkish food, including this vermicelli dessert that was topped with crushed pistachios and sat in a pool of ever so slightly sweetened cream - yummy! After dinner, we headed to one of Singapore's oldest tea places so that hubby could have his favourite teh tarik - a milky sweet tea made with evaporated/condensed milk that is served in a plastic bag with a straw! The elderly man at this stall has been serving teh tarik for decades and his little stall is always busy.

Vermicelli Dessert

Now no trip to Singapore is complete without a night time visit to the Marina Bay area. This part of Singapore is home to some of it's most iconic buildings and the whole place looks incredible when it is all lit up. I've always felt that Singapore looks particularly beautiful at night, and it's so much easier to enjoy when the temperature and humidity has dropped a little, although I was still a sweaty betty ;o).

Singapore Flyer (ferris wheel), Helix Bridge, ArtScience Museum (white lotus flower shape) & Marina Bay Sands Hotel

Whilst walking off the calories from dessert, we saw that there were numerous Ferrari cars parked outside the iconic Fullerton Hotel (which is a stunning building and used to be the old general post office), and naturally the boys wanted to go take a closer look.

Ferrari on Tour

I hope you enjoyed this little peek into our stop off in Singapore and I hope to have the next post up soon :o).

Love Sheen xxx

From Stables To House: We Are In!

Good Day Everyone,

I am beyond excited to type these words - we have, after almost six months of living in Cora the Caravan, finally moved into our house! We are no longer living in a space that was about the size of our bathroom in Japan. Hubby and I can now move without bumping into/stepping on each other and it feels wonderful :o).

Apologies for the poor quality photo but I've not had chance to take any recently

Whilst the sense of space feels wonderful, the reality is still some way away. The house is very much a building site. We have no internal doors, no finished rooms, nothing to sit on bar the bed but we are inside, and that is the most important thing. It has very much been the weather that has accelerated our move to the inside. The torrential rain was one thing, but coupled with the gale force winds, it was becoming increasingly difficult to sleep in Cora. Especially when we could hear the trees creaking as they swayed crazily above us. Oh the nights when we've laid awake debating the possibility of a tree coming down on us! The wind has been so severe on some days that Cora has actually rocked and swayed herself, and I've wondered if we'd wake up finding ourselves drifting in the sea in our metal home... dramatic I know, but very real in my dream let me tell you!

In an ideal world, we would have liked the renovations to be a bit further along before moving in but the temperature has dropped significantly this week, and with there being no end in sight on the rain/wind front we decided to take the plunge. Luckily the basic necessities are in place. We have heating, hot water, a working toilet, sink and bath (no shower yet), and we have a kitchen sink and hob (but no refrigerator so we continue to use the one in Cora), oh, and a bed of course.

Now that we feel a bit more sheltered from the elements, we can hopefully start to sleep a little better - once we become accustomed to all the strange noises the house itself makes ;o). It also means that we (when I say 'we' I mean hubby, for the most part) can carry on working later into the night and make some good headway in the coming weeks.

If you're facing weather conditions anything like what we have here in the UK, then I hope you manage to stay safe and dry :o).

Love Sheen xxx

From Stables To House: #4 General Update

Good Day Everyone,

I finally have another update on the From Stables To House renovation. If you missed the previous update then you can catch up here. I haven't done an update for a few weeks and there are a number of reasons for that. Firstly, a lot of the work has been a bit more behind the scenes (like sorting out the wiring, plumbing and reconnecting our mains water supply). Secondly, hubby and I have been finding living in a caravan a bit tough lately. We have been living in our metal tin for five months now! Five very long months! The weather has turned colder and we've had a lot more rain recently, which means we barely get any sleep on rainy nights because the raindrops make so much noise when they hit the caravan roof. Even if the rain stops, we then get water dripping from the trees above falling onto the caravan. We are also experiencing some very severe winds at the moment, and being by the coast means we are getting the worst of the crazy weather. I've spent nights wondering if the trees at the back of the house are going to come down on top of the caravan!

Aside from that, we miss being able to take baths and having a nice bathroom... actually forget bathroom, we just missing having a nice home. A home where we have a fully functioning kitchen with a decent sized refrigerator, and our personal belongings around us. Another thing that's been making me a bit unhappy is that our diet isn't as clean and healthy as it usually is. We find ourselves snacking a lot more (on the not so healthy stuff), and opting for the convenience and ease of cooking pasta or eating bread/wraps, given the kitchen limitations in the caravan. I am so carb-ed out right now that I cannot wait until we can start using our new kitchen - I'll be gorging on oven roasted vegetables, smoothies and salads :o).

We now have painted window frames

Finally, we've just had a bit of a challenging time with some of the tradesmen. We've had people accept jobs and then not turn up or turn up a week later than agreed... a whole week late! This obviously has a knock on effect on the works schedule. We've also been a bit frustrated with some workmen just being very careless when onsite. We've had several packs of tiles broken, wires have been drilled through, walls have been damage... all accidentally of course, but nonetheless it still costs us money to then put right other people's mistakes. I guess people aren't that diligent when it's not their money or home that's at stake.We are currently a month behind where we should be and that delay is purely down to people not turning up for work on time and rectifying mistakes made by others.

On a more positive note, we've had our boiler installed and being able to run the underfloor heating is a real joy as a lot of the work we are doing now is inside the house. Things are progressing as you'll see in the video above, and this is keeping hubby and I motivated to push on.

Due to the wet weather, we have been prioritising getting the gutters and drainpipes up. Restrictions from the conservation officer mean that we have had to replace all of the plastic gutters and drainpipes with cast iron ones. As these are quite expensive new, hubby has been collecting second hand ones for over a year now from ebay and various online sites. We've had to buy some new pieces, but overall, hubby's initiative of searching for these months before we actually needed them has helped to keep the cost down significantly :o). In the photo above you can see hubby cleaning up a second hand drainpipe that was painted bright green. Once the paint was removed, we painted it in a rust coloured primer for additional protection from the sea air, before painting it in our chosen colour which is lichen by Farrow and Ball. Lichen is a beautiful sage green that we've used not only on the gutters and drainpipes, but also on the window frames and external door frames. The colour looks slightly washed out on the gutters and drainpipes due to the rusty coloured primer underneath, but on the window and door frames it is a little bit darker and a bit more green. Hubby and I both love the colour and feel that it compliments the natural stone of the building really well with it being quite an earthy and muted green. 

More recently hubby and I have been busy painting the upstairs. The transformational effect of painting the walls and ceilings is quite amazing. All of a sudden we feel that the upstairs isn't too far of from being finished. Hubby has also been working on getting the family bathroom fitted and tiled. As soon as a bedroom and bathroom are ready, we can move out of the caravan and into the house, whilst we complete the rest of the work, and that will be a momentous occasion indeed :o).

Love Sheen xxx

JVlog #26: Last Week In Japan - Shinjuku & Yokohama

Good Day Everyone,

This blog post is a continuation from the previous one (you can read that here) of our last week in Japan. By the time it came to our final week, hubby and I were absolutely exhausted, both physically and mentally. Moving homes is no easy feat and when you add a change of country into the mix then you're definitely taking it up a level. Our bodies and minds craved complete bed rest, but we found that we couldn't just take it easy and chill out at our hotel. We felt the need to be out and about, making the most of the limited time we had left in this amazing country, because otherwise we may regret doing nothing during our last few days. We had to make the most of the time we had left. 

Hanazono Shrine

Hanazono Shrine

On this particular day though, I did leave hubby to rest up in the hotel, as I wandered out. We were staying in a part of Shinjuku that was quite different to where we normally visit and so I took my vlogging camera and went exploring. I came across the Hanazono Shrine which I'd walked past the previous day but didn't have time to walk around then. The shrine is situated on a main road and used to form part of the Imperial Gardens. The buildings at the shrine have been redeveloped over the years to what's currently on the site today as some of them were damaged during World War II. You can see more in the vlog below, as well as the rest of our final week in Japan.

By the time I'd finished wandering around the shrine, hubby had joined me and we spent the rest of the day in the main shopping district of Shinjuku before heading back to Yokohama the next morning. 

Cruise ship at Osanbashi Pier in Yokohama

Back in Yokohama, we had to finish packing up our shipping boxes as they were being collected soon. We did, however, take a break from the packing and head down to the bay one last time. It was such a glorious day that we couldn't spend all of it indoors, especially as it was forecasted to rain on our last day in Yokohama, so you know... we had to make the most of it ;o). We headed to Rinko Park, our local park, and walked along the waterfront where we spotted a huge cruise ship at Osanbashi Pier. Naturally, we had to go take a closer look. We then went to Nihon Odori back to the Turkish restaurant that we'd been to numerous times to say goodbye to the family that run it and grab a bite to eat. 

Minato Mirai 21, Yokohama

MM21 all lit up at night

We ended the day with heavy hearts as we walked back from Nihon Odori, taking in the sights that we'd become so accustomed to, one last time. That night we'd be moving our suitcases into our final hotel near Yokohama station, and we knew that we would not be coming back to Minato Mirai 21, the place that had been our home for the past nine months, again. So we lingered around just a bit longer, taking in the sunset and watching MM21 light up at night, for the last time (and wiping a few tears as we did).

Cosmo World amusement park, Yokohama

Whilst leaving Japan was very sad, hubby and I were immensely grateful for having had the opportunity to live in one of the most unique countries we'd ever visited. It also made me glad that I'd taken the somewhat bold step (bold for me anyway) of vlogging as now we had captured memories that we could relive via my videos :o).

Once we'd boarded our flight to Singapore the next morning, the excitement of arriving to our previous home was starting to take over from the sadness of leaving our current one. I did do some vlogging whilst in Singapore and I hope to share that with you in the coming weeks.

Although this is my last Japan vlog, it is by no means the end of my Japan blog posts (or videos about Japan) for I have many things that I still want to share with you, including all the things that we bought before leaving Japan. However, all that may take a little time as we wait for our shipping boxes to arrive and try to progress with our house renovations, but I will get there :o).

Love Sheen xxx