Harassed

Harassed I tell you, that’s what I was and by my friends no less. Let me explain how it happened.

I had a full day off work, my children were at school, I had declined an invitation for morning coffee, (no mean feat) and unusually I had no appointments to attend so I decided that I would finally get to grips with painting my kitchen. It had been a project, long under discussion and my friend had already chosen (simply because I’m hopeless with colour charts and not a good decision maker) and picked up the paint and paintbrushes that I would need.

 I spent a couple of hours prepping the kitchen and was just about to start when my phone started beeping.  It was friend number one, aforementioned who had given me a nudge to get my kitchen sorted in the first place. ‘Measure your kitchen windows for me and I’ll pick up the new blinds for you.’  So, off I went, scouring the house for a tape measure. No sooner had I replied with the measurements than another message came through, ‘Have you started painting yet?’ She knows me so well and that even at the eleventh hour, something will ‘come up’ and I will put off starting the kitchen.  I assured her that yes, I was literally about to dip brush into paint and I’d get to it if she stopped messaging me. 

Two walls later, my phone beeped again.  Friend number two wanted to know if I had booked a Dr appointment yet about my itch.  (Should one mention an itch in a public blog? Please rest assured that it isn’t THAT kind of itch but more of an allergy induced, requiring super strength antihistamines, kind of itch.)  I assured her that yes, itch was contained, being treated and no recommendations of creams and preparations from her would be necessary, regardless of how hilarious the product’s write up on amazon was. 

Just as I was finishing off the first full coat on the final wall, you guessed it, my phone beeped again. Friend number three had tagged me in a post. ‘Had I started my ‘30 Day Challenge’ yet?'  It is a fitness plan that requires you to do so many squats, crunches and planks each day for 30 days and the idea is that you post your results in order to encourage one another. It all looks so fabulous and simple to start with; all listed and plotted beautifully on a colourful chart, a few enthusiastic fitness fanatics (sorry but there is no other word for them) had already started taking screen shots of their planking times and posting them for us all to see.  So, I assured her that yes, I had indeed made a start. After my initial flippant thought of there’s no way on earth I could manage 30 ‘crunchy bars’ in a day, I had You tubed each of the exercises; just to make sure that when I actually commenced the challenge properly  that I would technically be optimizing it. Surely this background research counted as having started the challenge?

By 8pm that night, having given the whole kitchen and utility room two coats of paint, I could barely move and fell into a chair completely shattered. The expression ‘I’ll just give the room a fresh lick of paint’ makes it sound like a quick process; not an all day job that gives you a full body workout and renders one almost comatose with exhaustion. I must admit though, my kitchen does look fabulous. Thank you friend number 1: you did such an awesome job of kicking my butt into getting on with it, friend number 2:  you’ll be glad to know that the hard graft completely took my mind off my itch, and friend number 3: surely painting for an entire day is equivalent to me completing the first three to four days of the challenge? 

How blessed am I to have such wonderful friends? To all those reading this, I wish you the same level of harassment that I enjoy.