Comicon

Saturday:

Today we had visitors from Canberra. Tim regularly skypes with his friend there but I hadn't seen them since we moved. They planned to come over "in the morning" (arg! I need more detail than that!) but at 11 they called and said "lunchtime". So we spent a lot of the day sort of waiting around. At least the house is now very clean! And when they arrived we had a nice chat over lunch and then played Boggle while the kids used the Virtual Reality headset. I lost every round, you'd think a writer could hold their own against a physicist and a lawyer at a word game, but no. Janet wasn't feeling well and had a little nap while we were playing. I bet she would have beat me too. I'm just no good at seeing words in a jumble of random letters.

Sunday:

Today was Comicon. Last year we came to Sydney especially for it, I went with them into the city but went to a show instead. This year I was very back and forth trying to decide. It didn't really interest me, but the thought of sitting home alone didn't either. Originally there had been some plans for "the girls" to all go somewhere else together, but they are all heavily pregnant and not so up for running around the city. I had been leaning towardsgoing along to Comicon and seeing what it was like. But the last few days I'd been feeling pretty uncomfortable with the pelvic thing, and today I woke up with PMS hitting me hard. I decided being miserable at home alone was easier to deal with than being miserable while wandering around Comicon. I think it was a good choice, I was pretty teary all day. Also there was a "Festival of Chocolate" on in the city and we all know I need to stay away from that!

Tim and the kids dressed up:

Santa Claus gave Tim the Darth Vader costume for Christmas so he could wear it to the new Star Wars movie premier on Boxing Day, Jasmine's Hunger Games outfit and Aiden's stormtrooper were bought specially for Comicon.

I did manage to get out of the house, I went for a walk up to the shops to buy ingredients for lunch, and also a chocolate éclair for dessert. And other junk. I really didn't do well at all with food today.

Ready to edit

Monday:

All our scheduled guests for these school holidays have gone, and today is a public holiday (celebrating the unions winning an 8 hour working day) so we have Tim home. A lovely quiet day. Tim dug up the hard-packed earth in the herb garden for me, so I planted the chives and did a bit of weeding. I am still hesitant in venturing out at the moment as my hay fever is pretty bad. Antihistamines are helping. But I forgot to take one yesterday and really noticed the difference. My nose was too blocked to use my CPAP last night and I didn't get a very restful sleep.

There is still another week of school holidays so I'll need to think of some fun things to do. Then the following week I start editing my book. There are already things I know I need to change/fix but I didn't want to stop my momentum as I was writing so I just made quick notes for myself when I thought of things. So I will attend to those first, then go through and work on the fine detail. A lot of people dread the editing process but I am looking forward to it - it's my day job after all, so I feel like it should be easier than the actual writing.

I've done government work and edited articles for scientific and medical journals, but what I like best is editing novels. And what I like very very best is substantive editing fantasy fiction novels. That is the big picture stuff - world building, characterisation, holes in the plot, why does magic work one way in chapter 3 but completely differently in chapter 12? Cutting out the 37 pages on the life cycle of Quirmian High Elves. Though it can be hard sometimes to convince the author that their readers don't need to know all this groovy world-building they spent four years creating. The trick is weaving the essence of it into the story instead of just dumping it on the readers' heads. Then after that you get down to copyediting, the nitty gritty of word choice, spelling and grammar. Important, but less fun. I am itching to get back to work. I find it very difficult to work with my kids around, so I'm waiting until they're back at school.

Floriade Mk4

Saturday:

I had a good day today. Everyone else took the kids to their swimming lesson this morning so I had the house to myself for a little while, then we had a nice lunch and off to Floriade.

We found a dinosaur ...

And a mutant tulip with one stem but lots of flowers ...

And some pretty pansies ...

And walked 5 km during the 2.5 hours. It was a very warm sunny day, I was wishing I'd worn shorts instead of jeans.

When we got home I made dinner while everyone else had a nap or played on the computer, and now I am exhausted! But it was an enjoyable day. I've mostly been able to avoid hearing any political arguments by the simple tactic of leaving the room. Although there are some comments going on behind me right now. I will block my ears. It all other respects grandad is a great visitor, excellent with the kids and happy to eat any kind of food (unlike my own parents, who both have very specific diet preferences) and willing to go along with anything.

The kids are being put to bed, then no doubt there will be some games, maybe Trivial Pursuit. If I can stay awake.

Update

Thursday:

You may have guessed from my lack of communication on the subject lately that my weight loss isn't going so well. I refuse to stop blogging, I am not going to disappear just because I'm eating way too much of all the wrong things, but I tend to avoid that particular subject when I'm not doing well. Time for an update.

I am walking a little bit most days. Not anywhere near what I should be doing at my fitness level. I was really concentrating on writing, and very excited about that, so I don't actually regret taking that time to write instead of exercise. But I need to increase now (while still working on reviewing my book as well). My health is important.

Another reason I've been staying inside with the doors closed during some lovely spring weather is that a particular weed is flowering profusely all over the area and giving me bad hay fever. I don't get hay fever often, but this Capeweed stuff seems to get right up my nose, as it were. A friend of mine has had to keep her son home from school he is so badly affected, so it's not just me. Headaches, sore throat, foggy head, runny nose. And I'd just got over my cold! But I'm better as long as I don't go outside, and hopefully the flowering season won't be too long or people will mow down the flowers or something (it's a daisy-like weed that infiltrates lawns and the school is blanketed in it, the oval is a sea of yellow). Today is raining anyway, and I plan to dance inside the house.

My food has been bad. And the scales are reflecting that. Up a bit more each week. It's a nasty shock each time I weigh myself. Or see a photo. And I look terrible in the face, although that is more hay fever than fat. I am not liking how I look or feel at the moment.

As usual at this stage, I am torn between the two extremes of an unsustainable punishing regime to lose weight quickly and a more gentle small-changes approach that won't work fast enough to motivate me.

We are in the last week of school term before two weeks of holidays. In the first week we already have planned a visit to Sydney for a party and to see my mother, my dad and his partner staying here for a few days, and my father-in-law and his partner staying here for a different few days. The whole week will be filled with offering and being offered excessive food. I do plan to make healthy desserts, or some of them at least, and I am responsible for what goes in my mouth, but I'm just saying it will be an additional challenge.

And yet, all this is just one part of my life. I need to make my health more of a priority, but I am very happy about other things. I have written a novel, people!!

Temptations

Sunday:

Today was much harder, diet-wise, but all the more reason to be proud of myself.

Thor has been very excited by all the visitors so maybe that is why his sleep was a bit more disrupted last night. He woke just as I was going to bed so I had to stay up for a while, then was up at 3 and 6 and finally up for the day at 7:30. So my sleep was rather disrupted, and I only wore the CPAP for my first sleep of around 11:30 to 3 so some of my sleep was of poor quality.

I made a fairly high-calorie breakfast but had no morning tea and a light lunch (soup) so I expected it to balance out - but the French toast breakfast was a bit more calorific that I had thought! The light lunch was satisfying at the time but then I got hungry. I had to pop out to the shops because I had more people staying for dinner than I expected, and all the snack food looked so tempting. I badly wanted to get an armful of junk food to enjoy with everyone while we played games and chatted in the evening. But somehow I managed to resist.

I came home and had my planned cheese and crackers (four pieces) from the cheese platter I offered but could easily have eaten a lot more. And then everyone went out to the park to play boule while I stayed with the very overtired Thor and after a while started to get dinner ready. So I was home alone, still a bit hungry, and with the knowledge that there was a platter of cheese, dried fruit and nuts on the table and, worse, a chocolate mousse left from last night in the fridge. Oh, that chocolate mousse was calling me! And only 280 calories, not so bad, right? Even though I was already a bit short of calories left for the day. I honestly don't know how I resisted it.

I made a lovely dinner and yes I might have picked at bits of pork crackling as I was carving it up. And then I had the dessert everyone else was having, icecream and berries, instead of the healthier version of yoghurt and berries I had planned. But no one is perfect, right? And I didn't even eat it all, mainly because my father-in-law started talking politics and he gets very loud and excited and I hate it and left the table as soon as I could (and I'm not the only one!).

After the kids were in bed we played more games and everyone else scoffed down some supper and had liqueur. I didn't have anything. I watched other people, a couple of them quite overweight, eating, and had no impulse whatsoever to emulate them. I actually went quite judgemental (hopefully only inside my own head): how can they eat so much! Don't they know it's unhealthy and fattening?! Like I haven't done exactly the same thing many times.

So overall I had a few more calories than usual, I got up to 1650, but I resisted so many things! Sometimes it was easy, like supper, sometimes very very hard. I consider the day a huge win in terms of mostly sticking to my diet under sometimes adverse circumstances.