It's working

Saturday:

After one week on Duromine (phentermine) I am down to 74.3kg, a loss of 2.7kg in the first week! Awesome! I know half of that is water weight, but who cares? The first week is so motivating. My clothes already fit better and my stomach is less bloated. No cravings for junk food, and although I get hungry at mealtimes I'm satisfied with less, and I can wait for the meal instead of having a snack to tide me over. Hunger seems less life-or-death when it is not paired with cravings.

Perhaps best of all is I've had a whole week with no night sweats! I don't know why Duromine has that effect for me, but it nearly always does. I have some other sleep issues but I'm getting so much more sleep than I was, I feel normal again - tired at the end of the day instead of exhausted all the time. A human again instead of a zombie.

We saw an echidna last week on a family walk to the local shops, in a tiny pocket of bushland beside the road. I've never seen one in the wild before, not for certain. It's a prickly creature like a hedgehog or porcupine. It and the platypus are the only two mammals in the world that lay eggs. It was bigger than I expected. You really do see kangaroos all the time in Australia, in Canberra I've seen them on the school oval or literally hopping down the street, but echidnas, koalas and platypus are much more elusive.

I've finished this block of work at the library, the original plan was that I have four weeks off before they need me again, but they may actually need me earlier. Either way is fine, as long as I get this week off! I need a haircut, and I've got a tradesman coming to fix our dodgy lights, and a few other things lined up. It's hard to get everything done when you're working.

I ran storytime at the library last week. Although it is an adult education institution, we teach childcare (so why don't the students do it?) and there is a childcare centre next door. They come over once a week. Lynn usually does the storytime but was needed elsewhere, Maya refuses to do it, so they asked me. I was really nervous when I ran it once last year as part of my work experience but I was fine this time. They are just kids - 23 of them! 3-4 year-olds.

I chose a theme and read them "You can't take an elephant on the bus" to which I added lots of little comments (did you know a blue whale's tongue is a big as an elephant?), got them up to dance to "Going to the zoo" then another story "Too many elephants in this house." Then we coloured in - guess what!? - a picture of an elephant that could be turned into a mask. It all went very well. And I got a comment from a bystander on how nice my singing voice is, which was lovely of them. 

Sickness has struck the house again. Jasmine was home the last three days, luckily she is mostly better as she has the State Final Acrogym competition this afternoon! Tim came home early Thursday and is still feeling awful. I stayed home yesterday (so I'll have to go to the library next week to hand in my keys and pick up my stuff) but wasn't as bad as them, and I'm fine today. Aiden seems to have dodged it so far.

I saw this tip on English spelling at work and it made me laugh:
"i before e - except when your foreign neighbour Keith received eight counterfeit beige sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters. Weird."