Swimming

Monday:

My weight this morning was 75.5 kg, only a 0.4 kg loss this week but still a loss. I've definitely been eating too much junk. I've only got two weeks of Duromine left - some 30 mg and some the lower dose 15 mg that I started on - and I really want to make the most of any appetite suppressing effects they still give. I think my body has mostly got used to them though. Less than a kilogram to go for a 10 kg total loss, so that is what I am aiming for over the next fortnight.

We were too busy this weekend to have our pool-warming party, which was a shame because we had really hot weather! It was planned for next weekend but the forecast is for cold and rain so we've moved it further back and crossed fingers it warms up again.

On Saturday we went to Samuel's 1st birthday party - the second baby in the family born last year. It was a lunchtime event and we sat outside under a pergola thing. It was so hot! I think the heat frayed the ability of some of the little kids to get along. There were some tears and tantrums. I was desperate to get home and jump in our pool. Aaaahhhhhhh yeah.

Then Sunday Jasmine had another gymnastics competition. It was another 'trial' for people to get into the State Championships, Jasmine and her partner Elise were already through but it's good practice. They got another blue ribbon. Probably 50 or 60 kids there - only one boy! - but some compete in trios whereas Jasmine is in a pair so they are not all in the same group. I think eight pairs earned a blue ribbon this time.

Back home, and into the pool again! With the pool heater on for a couple of days and the warm weather, the pool was up to 29C. Beautiful.

We had family over for dinner, and most got into the pool in the evening. An impromptu pre-party. There is a pool light and some very dim solar lights out there, it is quite dark really. I would be too nervous to swim by myself at night but it was nice with a group.

But I think my sister-in-law Ping is scared of water! Even the kids can easily stand in the shallow end, or there is a super-shallow bit for tiny kids (sort of an extended step) but Ping wouldn't come in. I'll have to work on her.

Today we swam again after the kids got home from school. The weather turned while we were out there, and now it's going to be cool for at least a week. We made the most of the hot weather while it lasted. With the cooler weather I'll be able to get more gardening done.

The final date for the library internship applications was today (I got mine in the day after I was told about it) so hopefully I will hear soon about that. I really want it, even though I'm stressed about how I would cope with the workload of these final four weeks of semester!

Certificate

Wednesday:

Some excellent news today, we finally got our Final Occupation Certificate for our pool! We've been waiting a couple of months since the inspection, because of the complaint (which was later withdrawn). There has been quite a bit of stress involved with that process. We can now sell the house whenever we want (hopefully not for many years) but more immediately we can get our bond back from council - a significant amount of money - that they were holding until they were sure we hadn’t damaged council property during the installation. And just having it done and approved is the main thing, no longer weighing on my mind.

Here is our pool today:

Doesn't the turf look lush! It has not only survived, it has thrived. That's what watering twice a day during the first two weeks will do. I won’t show the front lawn, which is still bare compacted dirt and weeds! We’ll get to it.

I didn’t do much today. My tummy has been upset since yesterday evening. I had a restless night and I was still uncomfortable all today. A good day to get some study done.

Oh, and my friend Cathy from last semester, who is studying online now because she’s working, contacted me for a chat so that was nice. I’ve missed seeing her for lunch. It’s a shame she doesn’t live closer. The only person who lives near me is one of my teachers!

Milestone

Monday:

This morning I weighed 75.9 kg, another 0.7 kg lost. Under 76 kg is a big milestone for me. I remember quite clearly that when my weight was on the way up, sometime after getting married (when I got down to 69 kg) but I'm not sure when exactly, 76 kg was the point where I really started to feel uncomfortable with how I looked. I'm not going to say I hated myself or any part of my body, but at that point I went from just wanting to lose weight to really feeling fat. Weight loss went from a casual desire to one of the big issues of my life, something to struggle with nearly every day since. Getting back under that is awesome, and having someone notice my weight loss yesterday a bonus!

I am terrible at taking selfies, but this is me today.

I had another phone role-play exam this morning, this one about helping a customer find fiction to read ('I really liked Bridget Jones's Diary, do you have anything else like that?). I was a bit nervous already, I like written exams but not face-to-face (or in this case .... mouth-to-ear?), I get performance anxiety, but it went ok. I hadn't realised that the preparation I'd done on the weekend was only for a practice example, but I was given time to prepare the real thing before the phone chat.

My father-in-law's partner Jo didn't come to dinner last night. She's had four weeks of chemo and radiotherapy, with two to go, and is starting to feel pretty sick from it. Des tries to stay upbeat but I think he is pretty worried. I sent food home with him but I don't know if she'll be able to eat it. Cancer is a real bastard.

We've been keeping an eye on the weather forecast as we want to have a pool-warming party now that it is finished and landscaped, but the temperature has tended to plummet on the weekends. We're heading into Christmas season when everyone is very busy so we've just made a decision and are having the party in a couple of weeks, before everyone's time gets booked up. We'll heat the pool and just hope we don't get a storm or something! Warm/hot weather would be nice, please weather gods.

And I get two more weeks before everyone sees me in a swimming costume...

Someone noticed

Sunday:

Big day for me today - someone noticed my weight loss! My cousin-in-law (Tim’s cousin’s wife) was here for dinner and we were chatting in the kitchen. She said I was looking really good and obviously had been working hard. And later as she was leaving she said I needed to buy some new clothes. So that was lovely.

I’ve been dividing my time mostly between study and gardening. Weeding and mulching and potting up a couple of hydrangeas to go outside our bedroom window. I put in my application to do that internship. I’ve also been doing a sweaty hour of Dance Central most days. I have to have two showers most days, after the morning dance session then after some afternoon gardening. Sweaty and filthy!

I didn’t dance today, I had a headache and was a bit tired. I’ve had a sore spot beside my nose for a few days, I think I might have a bit of a sinus infection in there. It woke me in the night, and was hurting on and off today. I’m sore in a line under my eyebrows too - where the other sinuses are. I took it a bit easier today, but I still spent time working in the garden! And hosted a family dinner as usual.

Feeling thinner.

Internship

Thursday:

I got my results back from my cataloguing exam - 99%! One little mistake. But still pretty good! I know one other person got 99%, I don't think anyone got 100%.

While we were having a short break in the middle of the lesson, one of the head teachers came in and called me and the other girl who got 99% (Lauren) out into the corridor for a chat. The State Library had asked for some recommendations for an Internship there (unpaid, about 5 weeks long part-time) doing specifically what we were just tested on, so after consultation with the teacher of the class she chose the two of us. But there is only one position and two of us - and I don't know if they are also looking elsewhere or just at our TAFE - so I don't know if I'll get it.

It is my dream job so of course I want to go for it, it would be wonderful to get real-world experience in the work I actually want to do (not just returning books to shelves). And who knows where it could lead? There are a couple of potential issues though.

Firstly it is in the city, so with nearly three hours travel time a day plus the hours I'd be working there, when would I get my TAFE work done? We're about to hit the last five weeks of semester so I have a stack of assignments to do and exams to study for as well as weekly tasks. The quality of my work might suffer. Not to mention time for exercise, grocery shopping, talking to the kids and husband, sleeping, gardening etc. But I know lots of people deal with that, and it's short term so I'm prepared to give it a try.

The second issue is more of a worry. I have RSI - repetitive strain injury - from computer use. I manage it by moderating my time at desk-work but it still flares up if I'm not careful. I can just about cope with my TAFE work. Or, say, cataloguing part-time for the state library. But both at once? I'm quite scared I will end up in a lot of pain by the end of the semester. And the pain doesn't go away as soon as I stop. I would have to be super-careful, cutting out blogging and forums and anything non-essential, and doing lots of stretching.

But I'm going to go for it.

If you are one of those who think everything happens for a reason, then maybe I didn't get that other job because this one was around the corner.

Insomnia

Wednesday:

Since a week off Duromine and then restarting, I've experienced gradually increasing insomnia. Last night I spent a lot of time lying awake. So today I skipped my pill and I'll see how I go tonight. Today of course I was very tired, I got the results of insomnia without the pick-me-up! I definitely ate more, and chose worse foods, as I always do when exhausted. I don't keep 'junk' in the house any more but there is always nuts, cheese, and dark chocolate!

I went shopping for shorts today, my denim ones wore through at the inner thigh where they rub. My requirement for shorts is that they go all the way to the knee, to cover the wobbly bits just above the knee. I ended up buying the exact same pair as had just worn out - in the same size. One size down zipped up easily but gave me a horrible muffin top. But now these ones, after only half a day's wear, have stretched a lot at the waist so maybe I should have bought a size down after all! I can't exchange them, I unpicked the stitching that held the hem in a rolled-up position (too short). Oh well, they are not that loose, I can certainly wear them.

Aiden's been away at school camp the past three days having a great time - except for the food - doing canoeing and archery and all that stuff. I only remember one school camp when I was a kid, and that was very educational, none of this adventuring stuff. I do remember me and my room-mates staying up very late and falling asleep watching a video the next morning.

I have no idea what he wore yesterday, but today Aiden came home from camp wearing shorts, a pyjama top, and shoes without socks.

More gardening - so much to do in spring! - and more study and assignments.

I went over and talked to our neighbour Craig who hadn't got back to me after I left a message with his wife last Friday - he didn't seem inclined to withdraw his complaint about the pool heater in writing (he said as far as he's concerned it's all resolved, and pointed out a couple of other things the certifiers had got wrong, and some problems he had with another neighbour...) but at least he said he was happy for the certifiers to ring him so I've passed on his number. I am bobbing gently above the waves of stress, not letting it bother me, it will all be resolved eventually. He has confirmed he has no problem with us, I've just got to get that communicated to the authorities.

Cutting the grass

Tuesday:

Yesterday my weight was down to 76.6 kg, another 1 kg loss. Actually it might be a bit more as I don't think my scale was on the usual place (I moved it and today I was 76.3) but whatever, I am happy with a kilogram.

I've been keeping busy. Today for example I watered the garden, had breakfast, walked up to Aiden's school to buy a new summer uniform (total walk 30 mins), faffed around on Internet (checking emails and blogs etc), 25 mins Dance Central exercise, shower, snack, TAFE schoolwork, visit hardware store to buy a push lawn mower for new turf (the new turf by the pool is up a couple of sets of stairs and we decided to get a little push mower to keep up there instead of trying to carry the heavy petrol mower up and down regularly) and some more plants, lunch, more TAFE schoolwork, cup of tea and chat with kids as they get home from school, put mower together, mow turf, another shower, start dinner, collect Jasmine from acrogym class (she walked there earlier), more TAFE schoolwork, dinner, TV.

Mowing the lawn (new turf in the backyard only) was interesting. I haven't used a lawn mower for 18 years, when I started going out with Tim and he started mowing my lawn for me. Using a push mower was fine, except it couldn't cope with even the smallest stick or piece of bark getting in the blades so I had to keep stopping to pull them out. And I didn't tighten the screws enough when I was putting it together (just attaching several pieces of handle to the base, nothing technical) so they all worked loose and fell off and I had to find them in the grass. And I still can't find one bolt.

We were worried about the timing of Jasmine's acrobatic gymnastics final. It's the same weekend as her Dance Concert (she learns tap, hip hop, and contemporary) which I have to buy tickets for long before we get the final timetable for the gymnastics competition. But we were told today that it wouldn't be Sunday afternoon, which is when her Dance is, so that is all we care about. Looks like she can do both, which is a relief after a year of rehearsal. We had a couple of stressed days. A picture from last weekend's competition of her and Elise, her partner, is on the official Gymnastics NSW website! (Scroll down in the facebook box) How special to be chosen.

Blue ribbon

Sunday:

We spent Saturday morning at a family birthday party, Lucy was the first of our new babies last year and she just turned one! The party was very nice but it is really pissing me off that no-one has noticed my eight kilogram weight loss yet! I'll go out somewhere feeling like I'm quite a bit thinner, but come home feeling like I must look just the same. Well I can see the difference.

We all spent Sunday morning working in the front yard: pruning hedges and pulling some of the weeds from the lawn and trimming edges and raking. Tim and I did about two and a half hours and the kids helped for most of that. It was a good workout.

I went over to our neighbor's on Friday to ask about getting something in writing that they are ok with the noise from the heat pump, Craig was away but his wife whose name unfortunately I can't remember said she would talk to him. I'm hoping that will be resolved soon. Today she saw us working in our front yard and brought out some warm apple muffins she'd just made and had a chat. So she is willingly to be friendly and repair any awkwardness or bad feelings.

Sunday afternoon was the highlight of the weekend. Jasmine had her trial for the State acrobatic gymnastics competition, she and her partner got a blue ribbon (the highest rank) and are through to the State final! It was a much bigger event than the little one a couple of weeks ago, with a lot more competitors, and held at an enormous Olympic-fitted gymnasium. Everyone from Jasmine's acrogym school did well. I know Jasmine certainly worked very hard. We are so proud!

Great day

Thursday:

Today was a great day. I had my cataloguing exam and I'm sure I aced it. And I enjoyed doing it! I had studied hard and was well prepared. I find the work something like solving a Sudoku or crossword puzzle, mentally challenging but in a good way with a sense of achievement when it's done. I am hoping for 100%, but I know it's likely I'll get something wrong that will have me saying 'doh' when I see it!

In my afternoon class I got my official result back from the face-to-face exam a few weeks ago. The teacher did give me great feedback at the time, but it was nice to see 'excellent' on the page!

And the third thing, chronologically first, was a big drop in weight overnight. When I weighed myself this morning I wasn't sure I believed it and had to weigh myself again to check. After three weeks of almost no loss, my weight had been going down each day this week but today a whole 0.7 kg drop. That gets me down to 76.2 kg! I have been eating more carefully but also exercising hard. I started up 'Dance Central' on the Xbox again, an hour each day of dripping sweat.

I'm sleeping much better and I'm feeling good.

The only thorn in my side is the ongoing pool heater drama. We need to get a final inspection certificate to say the pool is fully completed, safely fenced etc etc. We had fixed any interim issues, like the height of the fence, long ago. But then our neighbour complained about the potential noise from the heat pump, before it had even been turned on. And although once he heard it he said it was fine, that official complaint is out there being a nail in the wheel of progress. It's been going back and forth between us, the pool company who installed the heat pump, and the certifiers (who are very very slow to respond to anything). This has been going on forever! They came out to do their final inspection on 29 August, more than six weeks ago. I'm going to ask our neighbour to put it in writing that he is ok with it, and I also need to check that it is far enough from the boundary fence. Endless phone calls and emails back and forth.

Anyway, I'm not going to let that get me down. It will work out in the end. And I'm happy today!

Restart

Monday:

House all to myself again! Easier to get work done, but lonelier without the kids around.

This morning I weighed 77.6 kg. So a 0.2 kg loss without Duromine, its surprising because I ate a lot of junk this week! Of course I'm happy to maintain/lose instead of gaining as I expected. Not so happy about giving in to junk food cravings.

Night sweats again - three nights in a row, and I think four out of the last six nights. Making up for all the weeks with no night sweats. It's really messing with my sleep. Last night's dream was about realising I'd missed a whole subject at TAFE, and had to catch up on ten weeks' work with an assignment due tomorrow and the teacher saying there were no grounds for an extension (fair enough, I had no excuse except I forgot to go to class). And there was something about a broken chair. And being naked. I can deal with the annoying dreams but I wake drenched in sweat and clammy and can't get back to sleep for ages.

So ironically, considering that Duromine (phentermine) often causes insomnia, I started taking it again today. So I can sleep better (partly). Only a week off instead of the 10-14 days the doctor recommended. But the break was only to help make sure that it would work when I restarted. And it's definitely working. Interest in food decreased, energy increased. I feel good. Happy. Enthusiastic about life. Don't know about the night sweats yet, of course, will see tonight.

Duromine is usually prescribed for three months, so I am halfway through that now. I know I will have to go back to dealing with food without help after that. I don't think I have any physical addiction, or withdrawal without it (I just felt like my old self, which wasn't as pleasant as my new self) but I can certainly understand how people can get a psychological addiction. And I'm sure I have readers who think I shouldn't be taking it at all. I understand that. My answer to that is that I am under doctor supervision and it is for a very limited time and I have tried just about everything else except surgery. I don't stop eating altogether, I don't feel hyper, I feel like I think a "normal" person feels - I mean someone who has a healthy relationship with food and eats when they are hungry to fuel their body (but still enjoys what they eat) not for comfort/entertainment/cravings, and has enough energy to enjoy life. This is the "normal" I would like to be all the time. I'm sure people taking medication for anxiety or depression or other problems could have the same reaction, just relief to be... "normal".

I did some study for my upcoming exam and was pretty happy with results of my practice exercises, only one little mistake. Maybe by Thursday there will be no mistakes!

Then when the kids got home we had a lovely swim. The weather has been quite cool for the past couple of weeks and will be cool again from tomorrow, but for some reason today peaked at about 32C which is hot! I had the pool heater on yesterday and today in preparation and it got up to 27.5 which was very nice. I'm looking forward to a resort-style summer!

Frangipani

Sunday:

Yesterday I was crushingly exhausted for no apparent reason, although sickness has been going around the family (Lucy's first birthday party was postponed from this weekend because of it and the only person able to come to dinner here tonight is my father-in-law, everyone else is sick). I sat in front of the TV all day and fell asleep there both morning and afternoon. Even when I was awake I felt foggy and exhausted.

Today I am much better. Tim and I moved the frangipani up to the backyard. We were going to buy an advanced one for that corner until we found they are about $1500 for a decent size tree, but luckily the previous owners had left one in a pot, which it had overgrown and its roots were delving though the pot holes into the ground. It had also slumped over at some point so was growing sideways. I thought the back corner had been dug over but it hadn't, still full of rocks and roots! So that was a fair bit of work preparing the soil then getting a reasonably mature tree out of its little pot and safely into the ground. It looks great, very architectural.

It looks very bare (and interesting) in winter, it is just about to burst into leaf and then flower. In summer it will look something like this random picture from the internet:

It has beautifully scented tropical flowers like this.

I'll plant some things around the bottom to fill out that corner a bit. 

I also started to tackle the little shady area behind the house that is lined with tree ferns. They look great and help shade the back of the house, but they had a lot of dead fronds. I worked my along about half, until I got too filthy and itchy! 

I did some study in the afternoon for my upcoming exam. It's my favourite but also most difficult subject. It was great to get back into a topic I enjoy after that last assignment!

My night sweats came back almost as soon as I stopped taking Duromine. Three times in the past five nights I've woken after a frustrating dream, drenched in sweat. Yuck. And my craving for unhealthy foods is fully back too. Weird to compare how I felt about junk food most of the time on Duromine when I could take it or leave it! Now I definitely take it. Yet I've actually lost weight this week. 

Kids are back at school tomorrow.

Friday:

I didn't get that casual library position, the interviewer (Sue) said they needed someone more available at the times they wanted. Fair enough. I'm not bothered, I wasn't really that keen on working weekends and evenings anyway. I barely even thought about it today until Sue called at 3:00 pm. I will continue to concentrate on my studies until I get my degree, then look for something that suits me.

Speaking of my studies, I'm still working on this horrible assignment - third of four I wanted to get done these holidays but I think I'll be lucky to get three done plus study for my exam next week. I really hate this particular assignment! Basically I have to recommend a new library computer system for our imaginary library, with lots of fully referenced reasons. It doesn't really cover anything taught so it requires lots of research, things I don't know about at all like 'open source' and 'in the cloud' computer stuff, and finding out about the different systems available. I suppose I am learning things I didn't know! But it's both time-consuming and boring. Hours and hours. Oh well. Just get it done and over with, Natalie!

Stop procrastinating.

[edit: yay finished the assignment!!!!]

Interview at the library

Thursday:

I had my interview today. It was barely an interview really, more a ten minute chat. She mentioned a couple of points on my resume (You worked for Centrelink for ten years, so your customer service should be fine) and told me about the job (four hour shifts mainly returning books to shelves, told me wages etc). What they are looking for is someone who can work weekends and evenings  - the head library is open every weekday until 9. I can do weekends and I offered one evening (which was a compromise for me because evenings aren't really convenient for me). I don't know if that will be enough, she said evenings were important. I suppose it depends what other applicants can do. She said she will be letting people know tomorrow.

It's not a challenging position but it would be a foot in the door. It's in a good location for me and decent money considering the level of difficulty. But on the other hand I'm not prepared to completely neglect my family for a casual job.

I saw my doctor in the afternoon and got another prescription for Duromine. I told her that the past two weeks it hadn't seemed to have any effect any more, and she supported my suggestion that I wait a few days before restarting, but she said a 10-14 day gap was needed rather than the shorter gap I'd planned (it's already been 3 days). So I'll try that. I certainly haven't experienced any withdrawal symptoms or cravings for it or anything like that. I've been eating more, and making worse food choices, but that slide happened well before I ran out of pills. I need to keep a rein on myself, I'm ok with maintaining for a couple more weeks but I don't want to regain all I've lost! And I need to start some other kind of exercise now the bulk of the hard work in the garden is done - pottering around and watering like I'm doing now isn't the same as hours of digging and carrying rocks.

Wildlife

Tuesday:

A kookaburra has started visiting us again. Apparently he likes cold roast lamb.

Today we got home at lunchtime and found a big lizard (some kind of skink, not sure if a blue-tongue lizard or not) on our front doorstep.

 
An hour after seeing him on our front steps, went outside and found him on our back steps! I assume it's the same one. We call him Grumpy, because he looks very cranky. Probably sick of us watching him. Can't he get a moment's peace somewhere in the garden? I gave him some cold chicken.

And finally a tropical hibiscus flower from our new garden.

(You know that thing in the middle is basically the flower's penis, right?)

I spent most of the day working on another assignment. A stupid one, that I feel is a big waste of time. Hours I'll never get back again. But it has to be done.

Tiny loss

Monday:

It was a public holiday today, not sure what for, Labour Day maybe? We didn't do anything. We talked of going to the beach for a walk along the coast but on a public holiday there would be no parking anywhere. I was feeling pretty awful all day, Tim's been sick on and off too, still not sure if it's hay fever or flu. Both are around! I finished the second of four TAFE assignments I'm working on, had a nap while Tim took the kids to mini golf, pottered a little in the vege patch. Tim had some friends over in the evening while I watched Survivor on TV.

Tim is back at work tomorrow but there is another week of school holidays for me and the kids.

My weight this morning was 77.8 kg, so a tiny loss (300 grams) this week. Better than a gain I guess. I need to see my doctor for another script, but after two lacklustre weeks I'm not sure what to do.

Garden

Sunday:

We all spent the morning in the garden planting everything. We also bought some solar-powered lights and we recently got a couple of sun lounges. There is still a bare corner and we need to mulch everything, but most of the work out there is done! It looks lovely. And of course it will only improve with time as everything grows.

Then in the afternoon and for dinner we had lots of family over. Of course we showed off the garden! We've promised a pool party next hot weekend. And it was Uncle Matt's birthday (Tim's cousin). So there was cake. And chips. I didn't eat a lot over my calorie allowance, but some of those calories were definitely unhealthy. Which made me feel yuck. It's not as easy to resist the bad stuff (or food in general) as it was when I started taking Duromine.