04.32 pm
Well, here it is, the last day of February! I have to admit to a certain amount of nervous anticipation this afternoon, for it’s tomorrow that I go to see Dr. Y…. Luckily, my hair is not going to look too bad because Sean was over yesterday to make it all look nice for the occasion – but what on earth am I going to wear?! It’s going to be hot, too, so it’s just as well my appointment is for eleven o’clock – hopefully it won’t have had a chance to get too hot by then (though knowing my luck – or rather, lack thereof… 
) I don’t really know why I’m so worried – the last lot of tests I had a week ago were all good; he’d told me he thought I should weigh around about 70 kg (from 134 kg – so I went down to 65 kg. before going onto Maintenance – just to be on the safe side, you see – and continued to plummet down another three kilos, to 62.something!) Unfortunately, these horrible and totally despicable little pills that he’s told me to take every third month, do terrible things to me, and weight, mostly in the form of excess fluid (yes, I am on anti-fluid medication) just piles on – and although I do manage to shed a lot of it afterwards, I never really get back to where I was before. It’s also been the very worst possible time of the year for me – because I didn’t plan things terribly carefully! My very favourite youngest daughter was born on December 12th, and now that she’s all growed up and married and all that, we all go out for a quiet, unassuming little family “Big Birthday Bash” (however it’s not too bad – Julian and I don’t have any dinner that night because we’re still too full from Kate’s Birthday lunch!) Then there’s Christmas, and all of the “Holiday Festive Season” to munch our way through… then we’ve hardly finished our last slice of Panettone, and it’s my very favourite eldest daughter’s Birthday on January 12th, when we repeat the Big Birthday Bash scenario! (see?! I told you I didn’t plan things terribly well, all those long years ago! Two Birthdays a month apart – with Christmas in the middle! Arrggghhhh!) And if that wasn’t bad enough, Julian’s Birthday is February 4th, and mine is on March 9th! More “B.B.B’s”! Finally, as we raise our food and chocolate tortured eyes to the calendar – we see Easter looming up on the horizon! Does it ever end? (Winter shakes her head dolefully) Not down this end of the year, it doesn’t! So all in all, what with those spiteful little pills tipping me over the edge of my “Goal Weight cliff” (70 kg) to crash ignominiously onto the “Rocks of Weight Gain” below, plus the advent of the Festive Season (and still with Easter to munch and waddle through!) I’ve gone from my so-called “ideal weight” of 70 kg… to 73.8 kg this morning! Julian’s started to put on a few kilos too – so we’ve decided, that once the last Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns have been consumed, we both going to get back onto my very successful Optifast Diet! However – why wait until after Easter to do this (I hear you all muttering in the background)
Well, the reason is pretty simple, really. There comes a time in everyone’s life when one have to ask oneself – and come up with a logical and reasoned answer – “What are you willing to do to maintain a “so-called”¹ healthy weight?” I look around me at (all the) people struggling to fit into “Fashion’s Dictates”. Skinny, skinny, skinny, seems to be the goal this century, but not all that long ago, it was the buxom, bosomy “Rubenesque” figure that was admired and emulated – so who knows what it might be next year, or next century (if we all survive that long!) Anyway,I digress – to fit into today’s impossibly tiny fashions, most people I know – men included – have to exist on lettuce leaves and carrots, and spend six hours working out in the gym every day to even come close! (Yes, alright, that was a slight exaggeration – but only a slight one, OK?!) I’ve learnt, through trial and error and experimentation, that yes, I can hang on indefinitely around the 63 – 65 kg level… if I never eat another chocolate, if I only eat crispbread with a dessertspoon of low-fat cottage cheese and a slice of tomato for lunch, or I only have a salad – hold the dressing please – for lunch or dinner when I go out, if I never have another oven-fried chip, only eat a very small piece of meat twice a week, never have processed meats like salami or ham, never have an ice-cream, and limit myself to half a banana a day for my fruit intake. I’m sure that a lot of you have been there, done that, and decided that the benefits are simply not worth the sacrifices. Life is meant to be not only lived, but enjoyed! Food is meant to be enjoyed – it makes up almost as huge a part of our lives as sleeping does! It’s a social thing, too… So I decided, well before Christmas, that I was going to enjoy my “Holiday Season” – I was going to eat nice things – not stuff myself on them, of course, but quite frankly, I don’t want to give myself an extra three years of life if they’re going to be miserable and resentful years, if I can’t enjoy one small chocolate after dinner every night, or a small piece of fruit and a small tub of yoghurt for dessert! If I have to watch, weigh or count every morsel that goes into my mouth, then as far as I’m concerned, it’s just not worth it.
And in conclusion? Enjoy your lives! Life’s too short not to make the most of it while you can! 🙂
Sunday we played WoW, naturally, and we’re coming along very well – we did die quite a few times, but that was because the two of us were running a five-man Dungeon, on our own! And we finished it, too, which we both thought was pretty fantastic! 🙂 We finished a bit late, but as we’re getting into the upper levels, there’s more to sort out and deal with when we do get back to “base camp”. I was rather wistfully hoping that we might have made it to level 70 on Sunday, but that was a goal a little bit too far – we made it up two? three? levels? Level 68, anyway, and were well pleased with ourselves!
On Monday our cleaning lady was here in the morning, and after that we headed off to Bushy Park to get more fruit and vegetables, then we went on to The Glen where we had lunch and did a bit more shopping. We got home, and I took some photos of our first tomato crop that Julian had “harvested” on Saturday – there’s still more coming through too, but this lot don’t look too bad, do they? 🙂
It was a bit weird at The Glen – nearly all the shops down at the “David Jones” end are closing, or have already closed, due to the extremely extensive re-building that will be starting there soon. Unfortunately, I don’t think David Jones will be returning to The Glen, and it looks like the Arena, our second favourite lunch place there – and which has already closed – is gone for good, according to the whiteboard that they’d put up – saying something along the lines of “Goodbye, and thanks for 15 years of loyalty!” 😦 Very sad – but I guess that’s “progress”
Sean was over in the afternoon, and I’m going to have my hair colour re-done next Monday – a bit too late for Dr. Y., but I’ll still look good tomorrow, anyway! 🙂 “Les enfants terribles” are real little treasures, but boy, they get into everything! Satai’s latest play pen is the dishwasher – as soon as Julian opens the door, he has to climb into it – he’s fascinated anything to do with water, so I’ve decided to relent, and put my little “Lucky Bamboo” into the shower recess, so that I can leave my bathroom door open (except when I’m using the bathroom, that is!) Both cats absolutely love it when I turn the taps on at a trickle in both my hand basins – Sal likes to sit and watch the water trickling down the plug hole, Satai attacks the trickle of water with a vengeance! He bites the water (and sometimes the tap!) and smacks the water on the sink with both paws at once! You should see the bathroom though! Water goes everywhere! So much for the cleaning lady coming yesterday – I ended up with water splashed all over the mirror, the bench top – and the floor! Oh, and he also loves to play with my bath towels! The first thing he does when he gets in is make a bee-line for my towels, where he jumps up and swings on them, pulling them all down onto the ground! I think I’ve found a way to hook them up so that he can’t pull them off, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating! It’ll be interesting to see if they’re still hanging up next time I go in there!
Well, it’s too hard to try and remember what I’ve eaten over the weekend and yesterday, and I already told you what my weight was this morning (down four points from 74.2 kg yesterday – Monday, to 73.8 kg this morning, just to save you having to back-track! 😉 ) but I’ll get back to my usual accounting of the food and weight facts tomorrow…
Auric and Dapple are also both well, and enjoying the benefits of the new filter pads that Julian put in the last time he cleaned their Fish House – the water is certainly staying cleaner and clearer for a lot longer! Now I have to go and feed the furkids and the finkids – but I’ll be back “ron” 😉
Back! Well, I haven’t fed the finkids, because they get all skittish when their overhead tank light is turned on, so I’ll finish this and then feed them. The furkids are fed though, but before we fed them I snuck into the bathroom to see if my towels were on the floor or not – they weren’t! 😀 My trick worked! However, my two bottles of liquid hand soap were not where they should have been, and my hand towel on the bench top was skewed, so they’d obviously had a bit of a romp in there. Satai is favouring one of his back legs – I hope he hasn’t hurt himself! Being a Bengal, he’s very, very boisterous, and he keeps knocking himself and falling off things (he’s not terribly “graceful” yet – he’s still very much an un-co kitten!) There’s no way short of putting him in a cage that we can stop him tearing around, helter-skelter – and we certainly ain’t about to cage him – perhaps I should start looking up “common accidents suffered by boisterous Bengal kittens” – just to be better prepared for whatever happens! Anyway, that brings me to the stage of saying “and that’s about “it” from me for tonight!” – so I’ll say it – that’s about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night though and find out how I got on at Dr. Y’s, and if my weight went back up again or not, and if I have to stay on those hellish tablets! You’ll get all the latest on Satai and Sal, and if Satai’s hind leg is still troubling him – in which case we’ll probably be in for another dose of nerve deafness, with him yowling at the top of his lungs all the way to the Vet! Until tomorrow though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that it’s better to regret the risks that didn’t work out than the chances you never took – and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on the circumstances, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
¹I say “so-called” healthy weight because what constitutes a “healthy weight” seems to change from year to year, depending on what new scientific discoveries and breakthroughs have been made, and who’s discovered (or made up) the newest (or wackiest sounding) diet theory (or fad)
My Word! 