Squeak Like the Wind

Day 4!

Well, I survived it. It's going to be a long, long month.

Who knew it'd be so hard? I don't consider myself materialistic, and I think of myelf as being "good with money", and proud of my frugal and groovy op shopping habits.  What this is doing is really pointing out to me two things:

(1) that I buy more new stuff than I realised and

(2) I do a LOT more impulse buying than I realised.

I drove out to Spotlight in my lunch break yesterday to suss out polar fleece, thinking it'd be fun to make some of these rug thingies that you can buy from Ikea. How cute would it be with your own sweet designs cut along the edge? Turns out polar fleece costs a bit more than I thought it would, though. These cost about $5 from Ikea, and polar fleece (even the cheap unprinted non-premium stuff) costs about $8 a metre.

I drove back to work, despondent and defeated. I'd hoped it'd be a fun thing for me and my niece to do rather than another night of vegging out in front of dvds. Poor little thing, so much for me being the fun aunty, I've crashed with fatigue most days. I think that having someone at home noticing what I'm doing has made me more aware of what I'm doing - which isn't much these days.

Anyways, in short, the 4th of October brought me:

- a near-miss with Buy Nothing New - I drove out there but I didn't buy anything! Hooray!

- the realisation that I'm doing almost nothing creative these days

- an awareness that my fatigue issues may need addressing on a more formal level. Soon.

Overall, a success, I'd say ;)

New skirtlet!

The feeling that things are terrible and un-fixable passed, as it always does. I choofed off to the local op shop for a treasure hunt, and came back with a cute little skirtlet which turned out to be (despite its very convincing vintage styling) hand made, and a couple of cute coats, one wool and one tweed, and a little handbag. $25 total. I love op shops! Also, I took the pic from a delightfully flattering angle perched on my chair at work, and people said lots of nice things on my facebook page when I put it up. LOL, thanks for the compliments, I think I needed that today :)

The food/points counting was difficult. I'm trying to acknowledge my near-misses, as these don't get counted, just the "failures". If I list them it looks really weird, but suffice it to say today was like the food equivalent of guiding a ship through a coral reef.

...not that I've ever done that. ;)

Diet blog, incoming

Oh my GAWD. I'm so HUNGRY I think I'm gonna FALL OVER and I'm so frustrated by being hungry that I want to claw my own EYES out. Is there anything in my office drawer to eat? I'm sure I had a stash of stuff in there before. Damn. Must have eaten it all when I got the hungries yesterday. AARGH. SO HUNGRY! I'm so HUNGRY I think I'm gonna FALL OVER...

Yeah, that's a little preview of what runs through my head for much of the day. When I'm busy, it's not too bad - the distraction takes the edge off my ridiculously healthy (more like aggressive) appetite. A lot of the time though, and especially at home when I have more temptation and less things that I have to be doing, this is what my inner monologue looks like. Enough to drive you crazy, right?

Today is worse, because I'm back on weight watchers. I initially kicked off the WW thing about 2 years ago with a lot of success, lost about 14kg, went from 72kg to 58kg. I went onto maintenance and crept up to 60kg which I held easily for quite a while. The last 6 months I've crept back up to about 62kg, and the last few months I've gone back up to about 65kg. I'm depressed and disillusioned by this. I know why I'm gaining the weight - too much treat food (desserts, chocolate), too much rich food (creamy sauces, curries etc)

I have a slight problem in that I'm not the main cook in my house. This is 98% awesome, because D does nearly all the grocery shopping and nearly all the cooking.

Problem is, because he's male and about 30kg heavier than me, he gets a much higher caloric intake allowance to remain steady. He can afford to eat richer, heavier food more often than me. He's also running fairly high mileage (between 40 and 50km per week on average) which I just haven't been able to maintain myself mostly due to fatigue, and the difficulties of trying to fit my run around my work schedule during winter's shortened days.

He tends to cook things like stroganoffs (cream sauce), curries (often cream or coconut cream), home made pizza (much healthier than takeaway pizza but still high in propoints), steak-n-veg (nice low points but somewhat boring if done too often) and baked things (er... one word: lard)

It's delicious. But it's fattening. And he's so good at it, and he is so thoughtful - as I was leaving for work this morning he says "stroganoff for dinner", and I (probably shrewishly) said "do you cook *anything* without cream in it?". I was aiming for forlorn, but probably hit bitchy. I felt terrible, his whole face fell. "I suppose I could do a curry" he said. Gack. I have a wonderful partner who is there for me, who makes me coffee in the morning and cooks me dinner at night... and I'm bitching about his meanu plan? "What on earth is wrong with me?", I ask myself in frustration.

Part of the issue with weight gain is my complete sense of loss of control. It's times like this, when I feel I can't control what I eat without upsetting someone else, without having to cook two entirely separate meals... it's tough. I have a strong temptation to blame him for my weight gain, knowing that the menu/cooking issue is only a small part of the equation.

But I think the other big part of the picture is my tendency to eat when I'm not hungry. Eating actually does make that hole in my chest go away for a while. It's kind of hard to stop doing something that works SO well. The only other option is to turn the volume down on the inner monologue (since the off-switch is OBVIOUSLY broken) and start to learn to not be so scared of that chest-hole-feeling.

Be warned, peoples. This blog is likely to turn into a dieting blog for a period of time while I sort this stuff out. I'm thinking I may try to post my points summaries here for those who are interested, with sincere apologies to those who are not.

On the up side, Canberra is looking good. Really good. As in "thank fuck it's finally spring" good. These photos taken this morning on the way to work :)

Weekend of recovery

I'm feeling a bit better, on the mend! This sick business sucks a bit, and I'm not very good at being sick - I fear I suffer from "man-cold syndrome", where the slightest symptoms will convince me that I'm DYING and need HELP NOW OMG THE PAIN THE PAIN and DRUGS! I NEED STRONGER DRUGS etc etc. Anyway, today I'm actually feeling like doing things other than faffing about on facebook.

Part of the mental lift is thanks to my dear friend Michelle, who came and visited this weekend with her boyfriend Drew. They came despite my dire warnings of contagious lurgy, and it was great. Chelle is a keen jigsaw enthusiast, and helped me finish off the 1000 piece puzzle I'd started weeks ago and couldn't be arsed doing much of. Butterscotch schnapps was also ingested, for medicinal purposes of course. It made me feel surprisingly better. LOL. So, yay for friends who inspire you to get off your butt and DO things. I'm pulling out an old knitting project which had been going really well but put aside. Feels good.

One of the things I do when hanging at home with very little to do is that I get very involved in the drama that constantly swirls round the bird feeder in the back yard. This is one sassy young rosella, madly porking out with a hungry sulphur watching him. I bang the window when the sulphurs come over for the seed - fatties can go find their own food - but the rosellas know they have right of way, and make the most of it. The sulphur would fly over, the rosella would spook (I mean he is 10 times his size) and fly into the tree, I'd bang the back door, the sulphur would retreat to the fence, and the rosie would fly back to the feeder and continue his frenzied gobbling. Rinse, repeat, until rosella is full and does the flying equivalent of waddling away. Heh. Very sweet! At this time of year, I think they all probably need a good feed, so the backyard is a revolving door of lovely parrots and cockatoos (as well as other less desirable winged friends) wandering through for a free feed. Yay.

Another sunny Saturday morning ride

Another ride in the sunshine!

Canberra gets quite chilly in winter. It's usually about the same temperature or colder here than in Hobart. Not! OK! *sigh* I don't handle the cold very well. I had a massive emotional implosion when the first cold snap hit, and then was sort of all right for a while, and it's starting to get to the point in winter when I've counted the days 'til the solstice, and survived that, and about a month or so later start twitching and saying things like "Rightyo Winter, you've had your fun, now it's time to, you know, fuck off. No, really. Because I've had enough." And I start wondering how seriously one should take those fleeting homicidal urges that come when you check the weather forecast and realise that Sydney, only 3 hours' drive away, is 15° warmer today. Eeeeeyeah.

So. The only thing that keeps me sane in Canberra's cold winters (7 below last night, yuck) is the fact that although they're cold, winters here are mostly sunny and bright. You'd better have your sunnies handy all year round when you live here!  And riding off for a late morning tea-and-yummy-things is a divine way to spend Saturday morning.

This pair had stopped for a picnic - zooming about on a tandem, how cute!

"we" stopped for a coffee on the final 2km leg of the round trip - popped into the little coffee holder and slurped on it for the last leisurely few minutes. Yum.

 

 

 

I'm not sure what the deal with this little road is - it leads to nowhere, from nowhere. I'm certain there's a story there but I don't know what it is. Any ideas? I thought perhaps the creek was a man made channel rather than a natural creek, but the road didn't start again this side. Intriguing!

Finally, just a few photos I took of the bike, I've been playing around with my cute hipstamatic photo app on the phone.

 

 

    

Sick day!

So, I had a day off sick today. It doesn't happen very often, in fact this is the first sick leave I've had this year, and after tomorrow it's anyone's bet as to when it happens again. Sleeping on the couch, a dvd or two, rugged up in ugg boots, fluffy dressing gown and knitted rug, it's been a good day for recovering and looking after myself. The best thing? Two tiny feathered nurses, who do the whole buddy support thing, and sleep when I sleep. Too cute!