Dreamy Times

Ok, so it may have been a little while since I posted.

Ok, so it may have been something like NINE months since I posted.

What are you going to do? Sit and whine at me? Moan at me about starting things and never finishing them? Who are you, my mother?

So I’m sorry. Can I lie and say that things have been SO hectic that it has been virtually impossible to find the time to sit at my laptop and type out a missive?

Enough already of the guilt trip, I shall detail the happenings (as far as I can remember them) of my life since last July.

Probably the biggest thing is that we’re now Australian citizens. Yes, we managed to convince the Powers That Be that we would be a worthwhile addiction to the Australian nation and next thing we knew we were singing ‘Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free…’ in front of the mayor and assorted ne’er-do-wells. Of course the next thing we knew after that, we were stuck in a lift for 2 hours trying to decide which of us would make the ultimate sacrifice and become our food source. Yes, we all piled into a lift, all 8 of us, sure we’d be fine because the lift quite clearly said ‘Limit 9 People’.  It also said ‘Weight limit 600kg’ but we took no notice of that one. We were probably only over by about 200kg… the lift didn’t like it, it stopped mid floor and we had to wait for the engineer to come from the bottom of the mountain to reset the controls.

I, for one, was convinced that the moment we got out of the lift that the mayor would whip away our citizenship certificates (and possibly the plants too – thank God for the plants! Their valuable source of oxygen was all that kept us from collapsing!) and tell us to leave the country immediately, but instead we were offered cold drinks and free vouchers to Scenic World (because when you’ve just been trapped in a confined space for 2 hours you obviously want to risk getting stuck hanging from a cable car over an immense gorge too)

Day of the Triffids

So here we all are, immediately after becoming citizens, clutching our plants (we obviously knew how vital they would be later that evening)

There is a distinct air of stunned mullet about all our faces, I don’t think we could actually believe we’d managed to blag our way into another country. The plants were well rewarded for their life saving qualities. I believe I put them out in the jungle.. er.. garden at some point. Still in their little pots. I guess the chances are that they’re either thriving or.. not.

In other news, my last blog entry was about the medical mystery which was Himself’s broken finger. As I mentioned (and the x-rays proved) he’d done a right proper go of it. He had ENDLESS trips down to the hospital for physio and to see the consultant, but he managed to avoid any need for surgery (hurrah!) and although he still can’t bend it properly (that’ll be because he didn’t keep doing the exercises) and it twists off to one side (because the only way to correct that would be to operate on his finger, shaving a big chunk off one side of the bone… not something he fancied) it is sort of all fine. Sort of. It’s not like it’s an important finger though so that’s all good It has given him another Australian war wound to add to the giant scar on his hand when he took on the ceiling fan in our very first month in Australia so that’s cool too.

What else has happened?

We had a month long visit from Himself’s mother (she was here for the citizenship ceremony). We survived that

James graduated from High School – I now have no children in school, it’s very sad. He’s always said he wanted to do engineering… gets on an engineering course… first day he decides he doesn’t want to do engineering now, thank you very much, he’d like to do … … accountancy. Not a big change there at all! Unfortunately, he couldn’t swap onto a relevant course so now he has to wait until second semester. I’m kind of thinking that he possibly just fancied another six months off… but those are mean thoughts. Possibly accurate, but mean all the same.

I’m also about half way through a certificate IV in Book keeping, with a view to having a formal qualification for all the stuff I’ve been doing for the last 20-odd years. I’m also looking at starting up a business offering administration and book keeping services to small businesses, so we shall see how that goes. Exciting times (hopefully not exciting times in the manner of the Chinese curse)

Weight loss… ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I really need to stick at it. :::munches another Lindt Lindor Choccie.. well it is Easter::: I did really well last year, I did a session of Curves Complete (diet plan and exercise) and lost 6kg. I’ve possibly put about 5 of those back on. To be fair (get ready for the ‘it’s not my fault’ excuse) it’s not completely my fault. The biggest thing I found that helped me lose weight was increasing my mobility. Part of the plan was to achieve 10,000 steps a day. This meant that I couldn’t just sit on my arse all day and just do half an hour on the treadmill.. I HAD to get up and move around, jog on the spot making cups of tea, walk around the house etc. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year I aggravated my old knee injury from the Post Office. Although I can walk on it for short periods, I can’t put weight on it when it’s bent – so going up and down stairs is a nightmare and I’ve been avoiding going to Curves because I’m scared I’m going to make it worse.

But no more.

I really need to stop kidding myself and get rid of this weight. So, I’m going to do an 80km in April challenge and I’m also supporting a friend who’s doing a 10kg weight loss in 10 weeks challenge (supporting her by trying to lose that too) We’re going on holiday at the end of June (an entire week! In Cairns! How exciting!) and I’d like to under 90kg by then. And fitter. So, big push to get myself motivated again because I know I CAN do it.

I have done an exercise tracker and a weight tracker for the two challenges, I just need to work out how to get them on my blog

I may be some time!

As ever for us, it is a long and involved tale, beginning yesterday lunchtime.

“I think I’ll walk the dogs up the hill and get some cigarettes,” Himself declared, much to the amazement and amusement of the rest of the family. It’s been a long time since he volunteered to walk anywhere and especially not with the dogs.

So he grabbed Ben to walk t’other dog with him and off they set. 30mins later, Ben returned alone (well, apart from the two dogs that were happily dragging him down the road). Himself had apparently told him not to wait while he went in the shops and just to walk back himself.

Being concerned that Ben may have done him in and left him in a ditch somewhere, I thought I’d have a walk up the hill and walk back down with him, which I did. We arrived back, safe and sound after our wild adventure

Now – at the front of our house we have a garden which is enclosed by a fence, a wall and a badly closing gate. The gate is generally held closed by means of a cleverly looped bit of strapping which stops the dogs from getting out. Himself failed to cleverly loop the strapping.. so when he went back out later to have a cigarette and the dogs went out to have a wee… and Bobthebloodylabrador saw a German Shephard across the road… it meant he could get a nose in between the two gates and force the strapping loose.

Himself leapt down the porch stairs and valiantly hurled himself after Bob, managing to hook a finger under his collar. But he forgot – You Can’t Stop the BobTrain! (Honestly, you can’t. If Bob wants to leapfrog over you on the settee to sit on a cat, there’s nothing you can do about it) As we all piled out of the house to the refrain ‘The dogs are out!”, Kev was cradling his arm while still trying to grab a dog. We managed to retrieve them, drag them back into the house and Matt shouted – ‘Look at his finger!!’.

We looked. It wasn’t pretty. And neither was his hand. His right ring finger was sort of pointing at a strange angle. His face was a peculiar colour. I knew that a trip down the mountain to A&E was called for.

We threw him in the car and set off. Fortunately I even knew where the A&E was (an improvement on our time in Queensland ) – about a 30minute journey away on the other side of Penrith. We arrived, I negotiated the parking and we went in. Packed, as you might expect.

He saw the triage nurse really quickly which raised our hopes and had x-rays done at the same time (we’re not sure how, apparently this was jumping the queue). Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Obviously (and rightly) he was very low priority and for some reason, Saturday afternoon is very popular for injured kids, so we just kept getting shuffled further and further back. Not to worry, he’d had some painkillers when he’d had the x-ray done, he had an iceblock and we had our kindles. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any food with me and I could feel the blood sugar dropping. All there was on offer was vending machine crap which I really didn’t want.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. After about 3 1/2 hours or so, they called him through again. By this time, everyone who had been in the waiting room before we arrived had long gone home, so we were hopeful that he’d get some treatment. So I waited. And waited. And waited. After another hour, when I was starting to wonder if they’d kept him in and hadn’t told me, I heard my name being shouted. I looked up and there was Himself, standing on the other side of the treatment area, gesturing me over.

‘I might have to have surgery next week,’ he said. I was aghast. On the way down I’d been convinced it was fine and that I could have just stayed home and splinted it with two lolly sticks and some sticky dressing. Now they were on about surgery!

He brandished the photo of the x-ray at me – ‘Look at that! I’ve done a proper job!’

I have to admit, it was more impressive than I’d thought it would be.

So, after another half an hour or so (I wish I’d filmed him having the backslab put on, he was incapable of holding his hand right and the poor nurseyperson was getting more and more frustrated) the doctor came back out to have a chat with us. They thought he might have to have surgery to pin it but they were going to try traction first. So we have to toddle off to the Physio clinic on Monday and then go to see the consultant a week on Tuesday with a new x-ray, where they’ll make a decision.

Great fun.

Good news though – I managed to avoid the vending machine crap, I had McDonalds on the way home instead

Not a particularly brilliant month but I’m still trying (yes, yes, very, I know). I managed to put my back out at the cinema – no, you dirty minded people, not like that. We were sat right at the back and for some reason the seat was raked almost completely upright. I was in agony all the way through and then the next day, bent over a shopping trolley, back went into spasms and it took a week before I could sit/stand without crying.

Also, the doctor insisted on giving me a contraceptive injection.. ‘will it make me put on weight?’ I asked.. ‘oh no’, he assured me. Well the injection itself might not cause weight gain but it definitely caused an increase in my appetite and I spent most of the week when I couldn’t exercise stuffing my face with extremely illicit food. Upto last week, I’d put on about 1.5kg… so I was extremely relieved at today’s weigh in that I’d got that down to a 100g weight gain.

So, here’s the figures that count

Total Centimeters lost: 32  (from 27 last time)
Total Weight lost: 2.0kg  (from 2.1kg)
Total Body Fat% decrease: 1.4%  (from 0.6%)
Total Body Fat lost: 2.23kg (from 1.47kg)

As you can see, although I’d put on 100g, I’d actually lost another 0.76kg of fat. Hurrah!

I’ve just had my second progress weigh in at Curves and everything is still going the right way! Despite missing all of last week exercise wise (a combination of kids doing my head in, ANZAC day and walking into the towbar…) and eating half a pan of the rather delicious Carrot and Lentil soup I made yesterday (Seriously, my farts should be classified as a bio-hazard)

So here are the scores on the door:

Total Centimeters lost: 27  (from 18 last time)
Total Weight lost: 2.1kg  (from 1.7kg)
Total Body Fat% decrease: 0.6%  (from 0.6%)
Total Body Fat lost: 1.47kg (from 1.31kg)

Fantastico!

(Now I just have to find where I put the bloody spreadsheet I created last month!)

After a trip to the dietician a month ago, she recommended that I should do some strength training to top up my treadmill walking. One of the things she mentioned was Curves, which is one of those 30 minutes express circuit training places especially for women.

I decided to give it ago and toddled along. First session was really good, but I managed to throw my back out over the following weekend (just coincidentally I think.. picking up dog poo!!) so I couldn’t really get back into it for a week. I’ve persevered though and today I had my first monthly check in. I also sorted out the Curvesmart tag which tracks your actual progress on the machines and tells you how many calories you’ve burned doing the circuit.  (252 today, which is pretty damn good)

I am so ecstatic about my measurements!!

Total Centimetres lost: 18
Weight: -1.7kg
Total body fat %: -0.6
Body Fat: -1.31kg

The biggest measurement loss was around my abdomen – 8cms gone!!!! How fantastic is that?

So – bottle of wine to celebrate?

So it may be some kind of record on the blog front – no posts since September last year! I am duly ashamed and vow to do better.

Obviously a lot has happened since then: we had our trip to the UK; Matt has passed his diploma at college and is now in Uni; we’ve applied for citizenship; I’ve been to see a dietician. Naturally, my appointment with the dietician is the most important thing, so that’s what I’ll talk about first

My weight loss has been pretty much non-existent, despite mostly sticking to 1600 cals a day, exercising mostly every other day, trying to be good (and keeping my blood glucose levels at a good level) I am aware that there are a lot of ‘mostly’s in this paragraph but I do try very hard. After our trip to the UK I put on about 2kg – couldn’t shift them. After Christmas, I put on another couple of kilos and I can’t shift them either. The result of this is that I’m pretty much back to where I started when I was first diagnosed with diabetes, almost two years ago. It’s very disheartening and depressing to say the least.

At my last diabetes check-up I finally succumbed and asked if I could go see a dietician (I get 5 visits to a diabetes related professional every year, as part of my diabetes care management plan). I went to see her on Tuesday. In brief, she thinks I’m concentrating too much on being a diabetes sufferer, that because my HbA1C blood results (the test I get quarterly, which gives an average overview of your glucose levels over a three month or so period) are so good (5.6-5.9) that I have my diabetes well under control. That’s without medication too, so I’m a little star. However, what it also means is that I don’t really need to eat so many carbs and I also don’t need to eat quite so often. At present I have breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner (I’m supposed to have supper too, but there’s a limit to how much I can chuck down my neck). I’d also have to have between 30-60g carbs for each meal and 15-30g carbs for each snack, so between 120g-240g.. so now she wants me only have a snack if I’m actually hungry, to have no more than 45g carbs per main meal and no more than 165g carbs per day. Also, I have to do at least 60minutes of exercise EVERY DAY, burning at least 200cals. I should also be doing strength training and reduce my calorie intake to 1400 cals per day.

Flipping heck.

So, with all this in mind and with my trusty myfitnesspal app in hand, I have an appointment at Curves (recommended by dietician) – one of those strength circuit places where you do 30 minutes of targeted exercise. Also, if I’m watching the telly, doing laptop stuff, reading etc (ie all those sedentary activities I love so much) I have to do as many of them standing up as I can. Der dah! Laptop on ironing board, kindle on treadmill etc etc. She wants me to lose 0.5-1kg a week (1-2lbs) and she wants me at 90kg in 3 months time. Considering the last three months I’ve lost 200g, I’m hoping that I can do it!

Enough of all that now

In other news, we have our citizenship test appointments for the beginning of next week, so fingers crossed we all pass those and that we get a date for the citizenship ceremony shortly afterwards. I’ve had a look on our local council’s website to see if they say how often they hold the ceremonies but I can’t find anything. Then it’ll be a case of getting Aussie passports.. then we’ll be all done. Hurrah.

The two eldest have just gone back to uni – both in their second years. Matt was able to fast track straight into the second year on his diploma, so that was a job well done. He had to pick his major/minor straight away. ‘well, Matt, what did you pick’ I asked. He told me. ‘And are those conducive to the type of career you want when you graduate?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Would it not be a good idea to think about what type of career you want and choose your major accordingly?’
‘I dunno.”
‘I’m sure that’s how most people would do it – you can’t just pick things you like the sound of!’
‘I think you’ll find that’s what I have done.’

Hey ho (again)

And so finally – our trip to the UK last year. I had planned on doing a weekly update while we were away. Obviously that didn’t happen. I haven’t even got my photos uploaded yet!  Suffice to say, we had a great time.. and I’ll do a proper entry around the piccies.

Honest guv.

Just under 4 hours now until the taxi (which I must remember to book) turns up to collect myself, Himself and smallestchild. Then its off to the station to catch a train to take us to the airport to catch a plane to take us on our first trip back to the UK in almost 4 years!

Because they’re both in Uni, Eldest and middle children aren’t allowed to come (and plus its handy being able to leave someone sort of responsible at home to look after the animals)

I have posted endlessly about this on Facebook but my intentions were to leave the house immaculate so that I could expect the same standard on our return. As I’ve had a bad cold, a sprained ankle and a horrific dose of general apathy this hasn’t happened.. but I’m past caring now

So, we land at Heathrow on Thursday morning, UK time, pick up the hired car and head to Himself’s mum’s house in Folkestone. We’re having a week there, so Himself will get to spend his birthday with his mum, and then we’re off upto York to see the people we left behind when we moved out to Australia. In the meantime we’ll hopefully catch up with Rory and some others, which will be great.

A long weekend in York is followed by another trip up the A1 to my mum’s in Newcastle. I’m hoping to see some old school friends before we head across the Pennines to Blackpool, for our obligatory trip to the Pleasure Beach and (if its open) several rides on Valhalla  Down the M6 for a week in Warrington to see Neil’s family and then down to Heathrow for a couple of days incorporating a day in Thorpe Park and a quick visit with Sknowsy.

Awww… I’m starting to get excited now, even though its a lot of travelling. It’ll be lovely to see my dad, who couldn’t come when my mam came out to visit us, although I’ve decided that Middlechild is too much like his Grandad Colin.. and also to see my sister in law Dawn who I miss a lot Not to mention (although I just did) all the other friends and family.

Naturally, I’m hoping the weather will be like it is here – 25-30C.. but I’m not holding my breath, lol! I shall report from the Other Side.

It was, as ever, an interesting time in the Dreamy household on Friday night.

I’ve been suffering really bad cramps and diarrhea (yes, yes, I know, TMI) with a bit of nausea chucked in for good measure, but I had a bit of a craving for a baked potato. We’ve got one of those microwaves that has a ‘one touch’ button for baked potatoes – you bung it in, press the button and it stops cooking once its done. Fabby!

Now.. the microwave has a bit of a history. About a year or so ago, Ben was cooking steaks. Unable to judge for himself, and unable to work the oven timer (god help the engineering world once he’s working in it) he decided he’d use the microwave for the timings. Not the timer on the microwave, but the actual microwave. He was also, apparently unable to cook more than one steak at a time, so he did all 4 individually (I was upstairs with a migraine at the time so he was only making dinner for everyone else… I hasten to add that Himself was also in attendance!!)… naturally, by the time he’d done all four, the microwave had thrown a hissy fit and fused the leccy. :sigh: It’s never really been the same since.

Anyway, back to Friday night (I put the above in so that I am completely absolved of any blame). So, I’m sat reading, sort of half watching the telly too, feeling sorry for myself, when all of a sudden the smoke alarm in the hallway goes off. I sat up and was horrified to see that the kitchen was full of smoke. Now, we have an open plan kitchen/dining/living room.. so its a little disconcerting that I didn’t realise at some point before the alarm went off that there could have been a problem. (And no, Kevin Arnold, I wasn’t drunk!!)

I jumped up, trying to work out where the smoke was coming from. As well as the microwave, the oven was also on for the kids’ dinner.. had a look in there – no burning. By the time, the kids had come in from the study and were frantically waving teatowels at the smoke alarm (but hey, at least it works!!), wafting doors and trying to help me work out where on earth the smoke had come from. Finally, I remembered that I’d put a baked potato in the microwave. Which was now a blank, powerless machine. I couldn’t see anything inside it, so pulled the plug out of the wall and carefully opened the door. Yep.. that’s where the smoke was. My baked potato was now a cremated mess in the middle of the turntable and the inside of the door had partially melted. OMG! Obviously, the sensor had failed somehow and the potato had just continued cooking.

Now that we’d worked out the danger was over, we carried on trying to get rid of the smoke. Through the kitchen door, a small white cat appeared proudly bearing a gift for us all. Yes, Obi had somehow managed to catch a mouse. How he did it, we’re still not quite sure, but I’m betting that Leia was the architect behind it’s downfall. We shouted at Matthew to get hold of his cat. So he picked Obi up – the dogs, already hugely excited by the smoke alarm, were jumping up and down, trying to get the mouse out of his mouth. Matt is just vaguely waving Obi around, I don’t know if he was using him as a smoke disperser or what, so I shouted at him to put the cat down and get the mouse (which we assumed was dead) out of the cat’s mouth.

So Matt did as he was told and put the cat back down. And let go of him! Fortunately Obi was still so surprised to have caught something that he just stood there in shock. Then the back leg of the mouse wiggled and we realised it was still alive. We all shouted at Matt to get the mouse out of the cat’s mouth and he stood shrugging his shoulders like we’d asked him to come up with a viable theory to explain time travel. James shoved his fingers in the sides of Obi’s mouth and he dropped the mouse. Of course, now the mouse decided it would have a scamper around the kitchen bench… Ben threw a teatowel at Matt and told him to catch the mouse. Eventually, it was captured in the teatowel and I told Matt to go put it in the garden. He went out on the deck and flicked the teatowel over the edge of the railing. Coming back inside, he realised that the mouse was still clinging on to the towel for dear life. He ran back out and flicked the towel again.. this time a bit too energetically because the mouse AND the towel went over the side.

:sighs more:

It is all quite amusing looking back on it.

I am thankful that it happened before we disappear off to the UK for a week.. and Ben has promised that he won’t use the new microwave as a timer at any time..

I called into Coles for a few bits and pieces on the way back from taking James to school.

This is quite a normal occurrence and not usually something which causes me terror (well, apart from having to dodge all the Curtis Stone gurning cut outs).

Heading back to the car, I bent over to lift the hatch.. and was stopped in my tracks by the sight of the hugest, fattest, hairiest, hugest, juiciest, hugest, enormous, hugest Huntsman spider, pinned to the back of the car by the boot door. Did I mention it was huge? It was also, fortunately, extremely dead. I was too traumatised to take a photo so, with the power of Paint (why has no one bought me Photoshop yet??) I have recreated the incident (James Cameron has nothing on me), to scale.

The moment the spider was revealed

I’ve only just realised that I’d lost my blogroll in the last server move.. d’oh! So if people could email me their blog links again I’d be endlessly appreciative.

The reason I realised the above was when I was adding a new blog link – Diary of a Stay at Home Dad - which I can thoroughly recommend to everyone as a damn funny read. The bloke who writes it is a member of an ex-pats forum I write on (except he’s in the US rather than Aus) and his posts are always funny, usually disgusting, sometimes thought provoking and did I mention they were funny… I haven’t checked all the way back through his blog but I really, really, really hope he’s uploaded his ‘first week in a low paid job’ story – I still have nightmares about TheHorseInseminator.

That concludes today’s offering… I’ll be back soon with a proper entry. Honest.