Aquarium and waxworks

Sunday:

Yesterday we had a family day at the Sydney aquarium and our version of Madame Tussaud's waxworks. Ping had a voucher that allowed her to take ten people so we had six adults, my two children and two toddlers. We've been there before not that long ago but it was mostly good, I'll get to the bad in a minute.

The aquarium includes a couple of those big tanks that you can walk under so the fish are swimming all around and over you.

 The waxworks were pretty convincing. Here are the kids hobnobbing with royalty...

And me with Katy Perry. The crown and wig are props, they had lots of those for photos. Now I think about it, I'm a little grossed out that I put on a wig that probably a hundred people have had on their greasy heads every day for year. Euw.

We had lunch at Italian restaurant, I had grilled fish. Still being good! Lots of unhealthy snacks had come out earlier and we also stopped for morning tea, but I said no and told everyone I was having no junk until Christmas. I'd brought some peanuts with me, I don't usually have morning tea these days but I knew we'd have a late lunch since everyone else had morning tea junk, so I was very glad I'd brought the nuts so I could last until then.

As we were walking back to our car after lunch we saw a lot of people staring at this building (tall glass one) and noticed a lot of ropes hanging down from one of those dark alcoves near the top. There was a sign saying this weekend only you had the chance to abseil down 44 floors! The little figure at the top is someone just starting their abseil. How terrifying! I abseiled a few times as a teenager, but nothing like so high as that.

Now for the bad of the day. The lesser was that we drove in to the city, because of delays and trackworks on the train (we almost never drive in due to traffic and difficulty parking). We got there ok but on the way home we got a bit lost and missed our way three times, going round and after about 20 mins literally driving past the parking station we'd started in! Our GPS was a bit confused about whether we were on the street or down in the cross-city tunnel (we were in the tunnel), and we missed a turn-off, and I was trying to navigate with my phone instead, and it was just a frustrating shambles. But we got home safely after rather longer than we'd expected.

The worse thing was that on the way into the city in the morning I started needing to urinate. I've talked before about having a small bladder but the drive was only 45 minutes, I'd gone to the toilet before we left and hadn't drunk much with breakfast, there was no reason for the suddenly urgency. We were on a busy highway with nowhere to stop until we got to our destination. Over 15 minutes or so it became extremely painful, I was getting desperate. By the time we got to our multi-story parking lot I felt that I literally could not wait until we found a toilet somewhere and I just crouched behind the car to pee! Luckily no one was about. Now that is something I never thought I'd do. How embarrassing.

Twenty three: aquarium

Wednesday:

Today we went to the aquarium with Ping and little Emma. It's quite a long trip in, an hour and half to the city (drive to the station, train) and then a few blocks walk. The aquarium was nice, with glowing jellyfish:

and dugongs (how anyone ever mistook them for mermaids I can't understand! Sea cow is a better name):

and those huge tanks where the fish swim over and under and all around you.

The whole place was enormous and you can't leave halfway through, you have to follow the chain of interlocking rooms until the end. Quite tiring! 8700 steps today.

Food was a real challenge today. When we got to the city it was 11:30 and it was decided to have morning tea. Everyone else had pretzels (the big salty bread kind, not the cute little snacks) from a German bakery, I had some nuts left over from the movies the other day instead. I was a bit worried that everyone else was eating a lot so close to when I would normally have lunch, knowing they wouldn't be hungry again for a while but I would be. We went into the aquarium, and at 1:00 Ping suggested quietly to me that we get ice creams from a stall there but I said no we'd be having lunch soon (I wasn't going to have one either way, but I didn't want to let them fill up again and delay lunch more). I totally underestimated the size of the aquarium. We got out at nearly 2:00. I normally eat lunch at noon! And when you are restricting calories you are generally very ready for your next meal at your usual time.

We went to the first place that looked like it had kid-friendly food. I thought it would be ok for me too. Unfortunately it was either heavy on the carbs like burgers and pizza, or crumbed and deep fried. But it was so late and with three tired hungry children I didn't want to push to go elsewhere. I was still trying to decide what would be most adaptable to my low carb plan when Aiden said he would like pepperoni pizza. There was no way he would eat a whole pizza, even a small café one, so I decided to share it with him. There is nothing about pizza that goes with my food plan, but I ate and enjoyed it and it filled my tummy. I am not disappointed in myself, I think I negotiated some pretty tough challenges today, but I am disappointed that it didn't work out the way I would have liked. Especially since I got down to 79.9 kg again this morning and now I might bounce back up! And also the pizza was nice but it wasn't fantastic for something I was breaking my diet for! If I had my druthers I'd have a healthy lunch and a chocolate éclair! Or just the healthy lunch.

What I am most pleased about today is that I got through to 2:00 without having some kind of food-deprived meltdown. When I was eating junk regularly, there was no way I could have gone that long without panicking. I would have felt like I was starving, my blood sugar would have dropped making me cranky, I would have shovelled in whatever calorific food I could get my hands on. I would not have said no to pretzels or ice cream. Today I was hungry, but I was ok. I was more worried about finding food the kids would eat.

B: chicken, cucumber, tea.
S: raw mixed nuts.
L: pepperoni pizza.
S: tea.
D: veal in mushroom sauce, salad.