I am home alone with Lulu due to a couple of reasons. We were fine :-)
I for one, and I know of a fair few, am very pleased to see the back of the 13.
Hope for the next year is high. It seems to have been a year of heartbreak for a lot of people and that is just among a very small amount of people I know of!
Hoping for joy to enter my life once more, hoping for a wonderful summer full of garden parties with lots of laughter, hoping for lots of lovely vegetables growing in my back garden, hoping for happiness as I renovate and decorate my new house making it a home, Hoping for lots of socialising with friends over dinner and looking forward to sitting with my coffee overlooking the hills across the countryside from my front court yard, especially when the grapes are on the vines, Oh I can't wait.
I am soooo looking forward to living in my own village. I miss the friendship, I haven't found this in any other village I have lived in this year. Maybe because they know I am not an owner so therefore not a permanent resident but it has been very lonely living in the last 10 months and three villages.
I am so looking forward to my Bulgarian/English lessons again, learning words like skateboard hahaha, it is the fellowship I miss, not knowing most of what is going on but having a great time anyway. I can't wait to get in and throw a dinner party with my lovely Russian friend and Bulgarians. Also to have some lovely English friends who were my first landlords, others I have met this year and look forward to getting to know
I am not setting any resolutions, there are things I want to achieve, so I will hope.
I need to lose weight, I have a few things this year where I want to feel good, for myself but mainly I want to be healthy. Not quite sure how this will go as I have been up and down with it this year. At one point I had lost a stone and ten pounds but a stone of that has snuck back on due to not eating hardly anything and then when I do it sticks like glue. A transformation of habits is needed every day not some days.
The saddest thing about being alone, cooking good food and lovely meals, is having no one to eat with. Sometimes I just can't bare the terrible empty feelings when I sit at the table with a really lovely meal, the loneliness is all consuming! So started the not cooking & eating. Picking is one of the worst things to do, I still make sure I don't have snacks in my cupboards. I find other not so good normally pasta in a home made sauce which includes cream or mayo. Mayo became my new comfort food and I have eaten jars of it!. No biscuits or crisps but then not being bothered to cook led me to crispbreads and far to many in one sitting. I need a complete overhaul of my foods to find other good snacks. So I need to go shopping and sort myself out.
I miss my girls.
Since I lost all my chickens I don't now have a glut of eggs, which was a good source of easy dinner or lunches. One of the first things I will be doing is buying a new group of ladies and maybe a couple of Turkeys, love Turkeys! So at the end of the worst year of my life what am I grateful for, because there is always a positive side to life and we must never overlook this.
I am grateful for.......
My Mum, love her, so thankful to still have her in my life. Mum will be 90 in less than 8 months, she means the world to me, what will I do when the time comes that I don't have her here?
My family, they make my life worthwhile, otherwise what on earth was I doing here?
My kids and granddaughters are gorgeous happy and live life to the full.
My sister Brenda, Wow what a wonderful blessing she is to me, my niece and nephew, my brother lives on in them.
Brenda walked into my life when I was 12. She is the most constant person in my life other than my beautiful mum. So no she is not my sister in law, she is my sister! I did not have the pleasure of having a blood sister and I know it is because I was going to have Bren.
My friendships here, the real ones.
My lovely girl Lulu, she has saved my life and gives me lots of cuddles. She is lovely company and is always there when I cry to comfort me, bless her! I thank my lovely friend Ali & her boys for this lovely girl xxxxx I miss you Ali, please hurry back to Bulgaria where you belong!!!!
My good friend Annette, with out her I don't know what I would have done these past few months. She has taken me shopping, we have enjoyed girls lunches and shopping trips around the kilo shops hunting for bargains :-) as well as many other things, curry evenings, medieval night, car boots and she has been a wonderful help at the Secret garden events.
My real friends are a major blessing in my life, Sue and Dave are a beautiful part of my life. I don't see them very often as they live a long way out, near the coast. I met them at a charity event for the Silistra orphanage and kaboom a lovely special friendship has developed. They have been a God send to me and I love them very much. It is so special when we get together, I wished we lived nearer to each other.
As I think about this last year I believe God has been good to me, giving me these special friends showing others for the destructive people they are and giving me other special friends who have supported me though emails, due to them not living anywhere near me. That is the thing about living here, it can be quite isolated especially if you, like me can't drive. We make friends in different villages all over Bulgaria, only getting together sometimes once a year. I have a couple of good friends who as yet I have not met but they have been so supportive to me through email, It is a phenomenon of our times and part of the ex pat life here, and thank God, for some, though not all.
My life here. How on earth did I end up living in Bulgaria? We had such a wonderful and extremely happy life in England. This was a really great adventure. Do I regret the move now? YES, but only as I think we would still be wonderfully happy had we not come here and I would give anything to have that happiness, love and joy in my life again. Would I go back, NO not if I can stay here. I would love to be near my family, to babysit my granddaughters again, to see my mum & sister and be on the coast, I love the sea, but it is not possible.
Now is the time for me to be brave and trust God for my future, what will happen to me, where will my life go, what does my future hold, will I find love again, how will I get anywhere in life, do I need to????
