oops - I promise I'm not suicidal

When I told someone about the title of my last blog post, they immediately asked me if I was saying I wanted to end it :)

I don't - I do not want to end my life, I want to change it. So I am. Not to say I've not considered it in the past, but I've been on this earth for 31yrs and I intend to be here a whle yet. If I go earlier than expected, it will be God calling me home not me volunteering for the visit :)

So yesterday - what did I do to help improve my life?

I've logged several books to sell on amazon (bout 11) and a similar amount of stuff on ebay to sell. Two of the ebay items will sell which will cover ym fees for inserting them so anything else I make now is profit.

I went for a long cycle with Al, bout 80mins, including some hill s we had to walk up! It was quite funny cos his bike is a fold up one whereas mine is a proper one so for every one rev of my wheels he had to make about 5! Still going my my legs and bum today - it was good exercise!

And I've logged and counted all my cals and I'm well under cals for yesterday. I feel very good about that.

So today, for further improvements, I want the rest of the ebay stuff on there - about another 15items - to take advantage of the reduced insertion fees this weekend. Then I will fold and put away all the ebay stuff in a safe place to wait til next weekend when it will need to be wrapped and posted. Just doing that will clear up the living room a lot.

Then the rest of the crap comes off the living room floor. Most of it's a matter of just gather stuff and properly putting things in a place instead of throwing them on the floor.Looking around I see several ebay opportunities I hadn't seen yesterday so that will be good. The plan is this week I want to make enough to cover the cost of the sofabed (£90) and some extra for another thing I need this month (~£60) so £150 altogether.........

And al wants to go out on his bike again so there will be some good exercise there as well :)

All is well really, I jsut need to knuckle down and get moving on this!

My life and I've had enough!

This will be a long post I think. I need to take stock of my life and now seems as good as any time to do it. Here we go.

 

I am 31yrs old, weight 117.3kg, with a waist circumference I don't want to think of and £18901 in debt. Yup, you read all that right. I don't own anything major other than my car, I rent my apartment and I have a pretty good standard of life – albeit one that has been funded by credit rather than earnings. I'm tired of living like this – the constant roller coaster of getting out of debt and back into it, losing weight and putting it on again, over and over and over again. I've figured out that it will take me 12months to reach a weight I am happy with at a reasonable rate of loss, but TWO YEARS to get out of debt completely on my current rate of pay. So let's tackle all this one thing at a time.

 

1) Weight. I am over weight. I am obese. In fact, I may even be morbidly obese (I stopped worrying about the categories of obesity a long time ago). I can lose weight quickly when I set my mind to it, and I know where I can cut back to lose weight, but if I do the same old things I've always done before then I will get the same results I have always gotten. So something different needs to be tried. I've lost a stone over the last three months just by eating when I'm hungry and logging my food. This is fine – and it is a rate of loss that would have me looking slimmer than I have done for years, but I need to stick with it a while longer.  2kg a month will have me FOUR STONE lighter next year in time for my wedding. Think how great that would be.

 

2) Finances. At my current rate of repayment, I will still be £9000 in debt on the day of my wedding. That's assuming my wedding expenses are not covered by credit either. I can manage that. On the other hand, I am sure I can raise extra money in other ways as well. I have things in the house I can sell – books, dvds, cds, clothes. Thank God for ebay. If I took one room per month and did a really thorough emptying and admitted to myself the things I don't/won't use anymore, I'm sure I would find enough to make an impact on the debt. I'm also looking at ways to earn money from home. I think there are a number of websites that crowdsource so I will have a look at those. I can type reasonably well,  am articulate and I'm good at taking down and managing information. I'm also good at maths which might help with some things. For every hundred extra quid per month I can throw towards the debt, that's another month at the end knocked off. So every extra pound that goes towards the debt, is another pound that's free later on for living on.

 

3) Expenses. Generally, I've not been paying attention to what I've been spending and where recently. Petrol and food prices have shot up and while I should be getting by on half a tank of petrol a month, for some reason, I'm  squandering a full tank. This isn't really acceptable and from now on all journeys will be carefully measured. I'm also going to start cooking good proper meals again. I've been living on snacks and takeaways and sandwiches – none of which really help the money or the weight. So, I will be making a meal plan for a week and make full use of everything possible. I have been throwing away food in recent times which is not only a waste of food but a waste of money as well. There are things in my freezer that could easily be eaten as well. So the challenge this month is to see how little I can spend on food for the rest of it........

 

4) The wedding. By any account we will need £10000 for the wedding. But that's assuming we pay full price for everything. Thank God, Ma and Da are paying for the food, so that's a major expense out of the way, but we still have things like bridesmaids outfits, wedding dress, stationary, flowers, cars, entertainment, photos.......there's a lot of money going on here. If I can get in with the sales on most things, that would be good. I think I need to start a wedding folder as well to see where things are and how we can manage it. I may even see when what sales are on and all the rest – see what kind of deal the florist will do for me.......and oh Lord the cake1!! Currently costs are looking like this:

My dress - £800

Bridesmaids - £200 (total)

Cake - £300

Photgrapher - £700

Flowers - £250

Cars - £250

Entertainment - £500

 

So £3000 and counting.......

 

It's all still up in the air of course and there are obviously places we can cut back on with this. I need to decide what's important for me not what's going to please everyone else. But it's hard....really hard.......

 

So overall – financially, I'm screwed at the minute. Weight wise I'm not much better. But this is my line in the sand and it goes no further. It gets no worse. £9000 is the MAX I'm willing to be in debt on my wedding day, not one penny more!

Hen weekends

I was away on a hen weekend this weekend. IN dublin of all places, but it all went well and I felt proud of my capital city :)

To be fair though, I spent breakfast and evenings with the ladies and after that, it was separate groups. I went home for a few hours on Friday straight from the airport, Ma fed me (thank God!!) and had a good chat with the parents. After the drama of last week in work, it was really good just to go home and chill for a few hours. Once I checked into the hotel, I met the ladies in a pub and it went from there.

On Saturday, I was bright eyedc and bushy tailed at 6am, so went for a dawn stroll around the city centre, then hit the gym for about 45mins. I met a good friend for lunch and 4 hours later emerged, slightly tipsy from about 6 margaritas, to join the rest in the pub. After a few hours, two of the ladies appeared with party bags for us all, complete with headbands, pink T-shirts, whistles, party poppers, lip gloss, etc,e tc, etc..........Add into that some barmen who were very pleased to have such custom even if they were maginally bemused by the whole thing, other customers who ALL at one point or another came to wish the hen best wishes with a variety of kisses, hugs, handshakes etc - Irish pub goers take these things very seriously! The night went very well.

Yesterday was mostly hanging around airports, so when I got home at 7pm I was exhausted, especially when I woke at 8am yesterday and went for another walk, just so I wouldn't wake the girl I was sharing with. Still, everyone had a good time so all was well. And the weather was glorious!!! Such a shock, but a welcome one :)

I feel awful

It was a tough day today - the investigation into bullying has started and that's left a bad taste in the air. Even though I know I did the right thing by volunteering as a witness, but it was still stressful having to do it. Add to that one horrible dizzy episode where I nearly told my boss where to go cos I couldn't get the room to stop spinning and you have the recipe for one hell of a day.

I probably wasn't safe driving home, although I could at least see straight at that point, but I've decided if I feel like this in the morning I'm taking the day off work. It's not worth risking my safety and others driving like this again.

So now I'm off to bed. To sleep, to stop the room spinning..........

I feel like I've been through the wringer......

It's been a day and a half. Al has had his second formal review in work and is on his final warning. Thankfully, the school closes for the summer at the end of this week so he's being paid over the summer and has the chance to make everything good again in himself before the next school year starts.

I'm so relieved about that.

However, I have a friend of mine who's on the edge of......... something........but I'm not sure what. She's in a bad way since her other half is, frankly, useless and she is dealing with his mental health issues on her own since he won't seek help for them and she's dealing with her own health issues with no help from him  at all, as well as going through some upheaval in work and all in all it's a mess.

So between supporting all of that today and keeping up in work, life has left me a bit drained tonight.

A bath and a glass of wine and a bit of pampering are calling........

What a good weekend

I have had a great weekend. Al just left to go home, which always feels like the end of the weekend to me. Friday night we crashed, but managed a good couple of hours on the Wii - I can actually hit the pins on Wii Bowling.......not in real life though.......I'm the one who cheers when the ball doesn't go into the gutter and who actively campaigns for the gutter blocker to be allowable to adults........

Then yesterday off to Bournemouth for a beach BBQ with friends. OK so the wind was gale force (and not the 'slightly breezy' I was promised :P) but the water was warm, the conversation was good, the food was excellent and I discovered a lovely Swedish cider flavoured with strawberries and lime :) (And also the barman was the typical 'surfer dud' that if I was 10yrs younger, I would waste a lot of time fantasising about :))

And the travellodge lived up to its advertising - we both slept really well!!! Like logs in fact :)

Today, it was back to Salisbury. I've got the bin sorted out, made it to Sainsburys before it closed to stock up on food and cleaning products, we got the stuff for the tip in my car and the treadmill upstairs. So actually, my hall looks really good right now. I'm going to keep it empty and clean the way it is now I think - it looks good. I'm planning on attacking the kitchen now after I have a hot drink - not so much cleaning it, as it is quite clean, but more just sorting out and putting things away that don't need to be out and clearing space on the counters and generall making better use of the space. That will keep me busy and not thinking about being alone again for another week.

I've got a fridge full of good food and I'm going to use it this week. I've got to remember to call by the garage in the morning and put some petrol in the car. I've got to remember the stuff in the boot for the tip tomorrow evening and to do something quick and easy for dinner cos I've got the PT tomorrow night as well.

I want this week to be busy and happy. Now I've got a treadmill facing me every day, I've not excuse for 'forgetting' to exercise so that means more adherence to the program I've set up for myself. I've got a year and three weeks to the wedding. At a pound a week, that's 55lbs or 4 stone (well, 3st 13lb.....) That would make a huge difference to my life right now. And it's only a year away........

actually I have this dream that on the morning of my wedding, I will go for a run........Now I need to make that run come through...........

After a good weekend, it's a good time to make a plan :)

I've found the 'stat's tab.....

Wow it looks like there are people out there clicking on my blog......maybe I should get all stressed now about making the content more reader-friendly?

Probably not going to happen in reality. I have got a story knocking around in my head, so that may get posted later - I think God's Warriors need another outing............

But for now, until I either win the lotto or win a massive publishing deal, it's back to the daily grindstone. Althugh I may have the excitement of a visit to A&E later if my heel doesn't stop screaming in pain everytime I put weight on it. Anyone know about the bones in the foot at all?

Long hard road

I've not been sleeping properly this week - I think it's partly to do with the humidity and partly to do with stress. Either way, it does not make me a happy bunny.

I'm also applying for a LOT of new jobs. I've updated all sorts of details and emails and CV's and job sites. It's hard work and it is a pretty much full time job. But I already have a full time job, so it's being squeezed in.

Hayfever is going nuts again which doesn't help with the sleep thing either.

So in many ways this is a not-good week.

But Al is coming down tomorrow so it will be a good week!!!

But that also means I need to tidy up a bit - he doesn't need to know quite how much of a slob I am before we're married, right??

Proposals

Dara O'Brian does a very good sketch in his stand-up show about how everyone's wedding proposal is 'perfect'. As in, 'It. Was. Perfect.' Normally to be accompanied by hand waving of the sort normally associated with society IT girls or the like. It's fairly understandable – the wedding is meant to be the most important day of your life, particularly if you're a woman, and this should extend to the proposal as well.

But I have some problems with the notion of perfection. For a start, when I spoke to many of my friends, the male ones looked embarrassed and muttered something along the lines of, 'Well, she told me we were getting married and we did......' The female ones looked at me and replied in either an extremely sweet don't-mess-with-me voice or a strident I'm-a-modern-woman voice, 'Proposal? I'd be 80 if I were to wait for a proposal from him.  Men can't make big decisions like that!' And they say sexism is dead.  It seems that outside of Hollywood or the world of princesses, most of us do without the Perfect Proposal. IN fact most of us do without the proposal at all!

I'm a case in point. I've been engaged for a year. The church is booked, the hotel is booked, I've started to look at dresses and wonder vaguely about bridesmaids and hen dos. I've not been proposed to yet, nor is it likely to happen any time soon. He has yet to purchase a ring – although he has pointed out this is my fault for not finding one I like that won't cost more than the deposit for a small house. Or indeed, that won't rival the cost of said house in its entirety. I know I can't be that unusual in this.

None of this bothers me – I'm not a girly-girl at all. My mother is still in shock I'm wearing a dress for my wedding, hair and make-up will be extremely minimal, there will be as little fuss as possible about this wedding. Thankfully, my fiancé is even less concerned with the whole thing than I am. In the grand tradition of bridegrooms everywhere, he is trying his best to ignore the whole thing and leave as many decisions to me as possible which, in all fairness, isn't the worst attitude he could have. I'd rather he be like that than to change personality completely and develop a worrying interest in flower arrangements as a friend of mine once did.

I'm sure Al will get around to proposing to me eventually – probably when he sees me at the altar, although I'm hoping for a ring before then – but this isn't the important thing to me. The trappings of the day aren't the important bit. We don't live in a society where a woman's life as herself is over once she marries and so her wedding day is her last hurrah as it were. We live in a society where a woman is perfectly entitled to and capable of having a marriage and a life outside the home, so the wedding day is more a declaration of intent than an excuse to enjoy one last day where she is the centre of attention. It is a declaration that she and her husband are standing up in front of their family, friends and in some cases God, to say that they will spend the rest of their lives together, they will support each other, they will love each other and they will be there for each other. This is not something that is even necessary any more – it is a deliberate choice that each woman has to make.

I would hope that the days of women expecting a fairy-tale world of perfection and idealism are gone. I would hope that these days people realise that marriage is hard work, and will probably always be hard work. Rose tinted glasses soon become faded when the realities of housekeeping in the modern world come creeping in. Most people these days manage to live together before the wedding day so some of this is dealt with even before the wedding, but it never hurts to have a realistic view of the situation. A piece of paper, which is all a marriage cert is in reality, will not make life easier or harder in itself. It is the expectations that come with the bit of paper that cause the problems. And possibly in this generation, because we have the options we do in life, those expectations are higher than ever before.

So maybe expecting the perfect proposal isn't the way most people go about it, but maybe expecting the perfect proposal and then getting one that isn't quite perfect can wake a woman up from the dream of handsome princes and 'happily-ever-after' endings. Maybe we need to stand up and make our own happy endings, rather than depending on the man in our lives to make them.

Monday again

I forgot to take my hayfever tablet last night and this morning I have proof positive that they are actually doing some good.

I'm sniffly, my eyes are running, my ears are popping - in short, I look like a plague victim with added snot. And I have to go to work in a few mins.

I hate Monday's - it means it's the longest time possible before i see Al again. Also, it means another day of work in which things can go wrong. Feeling a bit negative this morning? Why yes, yes I am.

I have some aims for today though. I've had my breakfast and i've made my lunch. I have a chicken in the fridge for dinner that I will be cooking and there's a stir fry pack to go with it. Food aims are to eat all that and to remain within cals for the day.

I want to clear off the top of my chest of drawers in the bedroom. It's covered in a combination of CD's and other clutter and it will be the first step towards the tidying of the bedroom.

And of course there's my torture session tonight. No I don't mean my PT session, I think it will be torture - I can't breathe as it is, never mind following extreme weight lifting :) I may be unable to type tomorrow.......

weekends should be perfect?

My darling fiance said this to me this weekend. It came about cos we were hanging a row about him not talking to me about some things that are happening to him. To me - life isn't perfect. It never is and the bad bits just make the good bits better. He wants to make my weekends with him, our weekends together, as perfect as possible, to make sure our time together is not marred by anything unpleasant or unhappy.

It's a basic problem for us cos to me - well even the bad bits with Al are better than the good bits with anyone else. It's why I want to spend the rest of my life with him. So when he says he wants to make my weekends perfect.....it's a pointless exercise cos life with him is as good as it gets. For me anyway.#

Mind you the row led to me drinking/eating far too many vodja jelly shots last night so I'm going to bed in 5mins flat so I have a hope of making work in the morning.

I love my fiance, I get to spend the rest of my life with him and even if things aren't perfect, well they will be, cos it's him. I don't believe in fairytales, I believe in hard work and the rewards hard work brings..........and it will bring rewards, I know it will :)

So in a way it was the perfect weekend, I got to wake up next to my darling two days in a row and he looked after me when my ankle went crazy............I love him so much, and living away from him is so hard, but it will be worth it in the end. It will.

And the bottom dropped out of my world....

.....well nearly. An unpleasant toilet experience first thing in the morning is not good for my health!

So yesterday was not a success. My kitchen smells and I can't figure out why - I've scrubbed the surfaces, I've emptied the fridge, I've cleaned everything I can think of......but it still smells. I can't put the bin out til the morning (or at very least this evening.......) and it doesn't stink too much more than usual. It's leading to me not spending any time in the kitchen so I'm popping in and out and not eating properly at all.

Today then, I'm stopping by the shop first thing and getting some things for food for work. I generally manage healthier food that way than if I go to the sandwich man. This means i need to get off my backside and get dressed as well.

Sometimes life isn't fair. I want to spend my day doing something very specific today but I have to go to work instead. Pulling a sickie was a real option this morning but I have too much to do in work.

I may postpone going to Kettering til later tomorrow to get some of what I want to do done.....we'll see.

In the mean time, I'm pulling some clothes on and getting out the door. Now.

Drugs and hayfever

I've been suffering badly from hayfever for the last month or so, to the point where I've been spending days in bed because of earache and headache I strongly suspected was connected to the hayfever. Well my ma convinced me to go to the doctors and it appears that yes, the earache was due to hayfever. The upshot is that I am now on industrial strength antihistamines for less cost a month than the normal tablets were costing. Bonus as fas as I'm concerned but we'll see how the tablets work out.....

I may actually make it through the day today now without someone asking if I'm ok/have flu/should be in work/need to sit down, etc et etc.

I'm hoping this will rekindle my energy levels as well because at the minute I'm not exercising really. OK my body will beg to differ - last night's session with my trainer nearly killed me. Well it felt like it, but he's happy with what I'm doing so that's good. I actually saw a hint of a waist last night in the gym mirrors.......

what I really want to do is take back up my running training. I've not even started the C25k program I promised myself I would last week. My house is a mess. My general affairs are a mess. Basically, I need a good long weekend to sort out everything and then go on a selling spree and then have a nice clutter free house. But I don't have a nice long weekend, nor do I have any coming up........

I also have a uni assignment to write this week. It's due on Friday, it's now Wednesday, and I have read the bits I need to read, but i've yet to put pen to paper on the whole thing. It's not the tightest I've ever been on the deadline side of things, but work is busy at the minute so getting it done in work will be difficult.

I think what I will do is promise myself one hour on housework tonight and one hour on assignment. That will make a big difference to the end result in both cases. That's what I'll do - one hour on housework and one hour on assignment tonight. That still leaves 3hrs for faffing about :)

So for now, time to get myself in gear, get dressed, get ready for work and get out the door. Easy right?

Good weekend/ bad weekend

I braved the M5/M6 on Friday afternoon to head to my friend in Northwich. Multimap swore blind to me the journey would take 3 hours, I assumed that meant 4hrs, in actual fact it took more than 6.5hrs to get there. It's a good job we're such good friends!!

 

On the plus side, there then followed a good 2 days of chatting, gossiping, putting the world to rights and generally having fun. We had a great long walk on Saturday afternoon after a gorgeous lunch in Knutsford (check out here http://www.piccolinorestaurants.co.uk/knutsford.html, thoroughly recommend it!) Then she introduced me to the Boondock Saints duo of films and we had such a laugh over it all -not usual for a shoot-'em-up but trust me - they are extremely funny :)

 

The journey home on Sunday was less traumatic that the one on Friday, thank God, but I got home to some fairly stressful news and am now in immediate damage control mode. Lucky me, eh?

 

I hate being this far away from Al when things are this bad and I want to be there to support him and help him, but I can't. There's no one I can talk to or beg for help really - everyone has their own problems........

 

So there we go. Another week, another problem. Does life ever get easy?