Hold on tight to your dreams

Today marks all four of us celebrating a first birthday on Rum as I turn 39. We've also had a Christmas, New Year (or as us trainee Scots call it 'Hogmanay' ;)), wedding anniversary, Halloween, Bonfire Night. I thought there was not much left but a quick check of the diary tells me we still have Burns Night, Valentines Day, Mothers Day and Easter! We've saved a fortune in greetings cards since we moved away from the mainland!

It's been a lovely birthday. Rum continued to leak water from the sky pretty much all day long but I had phonecalls from family, cards had arrived during the last week or so to open today, Dragon and Star had made me cards, I had some lovely gifts from them and presents from friends on island too. Ady made me a cake, one friend called up for tea and cake and we visited other friends for more tea before coming home for dinner. I like birthdays, I like marking the passage of time, I even quite like getting older (it beats the alternative!). I'm still far from grown up, mature or responsible as I proved quite spectacularly on Friday night at a party night crammed full of wii dancing, chatting and general raucous and rowdy behaviour but I quite enjoy the outward appearance of being an adult!

We've been doing lots of looking ahead, trying to control as much as we can of what happens in 2013 while ever aware that we can plot and plan as much as we like but we still get a hefty dose of what life chucks at us alongside it and life could chuck ever such a lot at us this coming year given how many variables there are for all we want to achieve. More on all that to come, I have various blogposts in draft waiting to be fully written.

Tomorrow we're off to the mainland for three nights - the bright lights and dazzle of Fort William and Inverness. Shops! Electricity! Baths! Traffic! Fast food establishments! We're off to blow our winkle money on exciting essentials such as underwear, toothpaste and more supplies of candles, hopefully get Bonnie spayed, trawl some charity shops, soak in the bath for hours on end, watch tv and plug things in to our hearts content and then come back here and feel smug about how this is the right place for us and the mainland is nice in short sharp bursts but we can't be doing with that many people, cars and 24 hour supermarkets all the time!