Seventeen: camillias

Thursday:

I found today a lot easier with no cravings for anything, even things that were readily available. But I still miss real tea (ie with sugar). It was such an enjoyable ritual drink for me. I'd always have a cup after everyone had left for the day, and sometimes when I got home from a trip out. Calming and relaxing. I'm sticking with the sugar free version because I don't want caffeine withdrawal right now, but I don't enjoy it at all. It doesn't seem to have the same emotional impact. Amazing how half a teaspoon of sugar makes so much difference. Oh well.

Today's excursion was to the Camellia Gardens. It's not just camellias, there are lots of different plants on a steep hill with a duck pond at the bottom, pleasant winding (rather mossy) paths. Today was rather cloudy which made the gardens seem a bit dismal, but we wandered around for a while and got our fresh air and exercise for the day. That hill was steep on the way back up!

A camellia in bloom:

 The duck lawn at the bottom:

It would have been a nice spot for a picnic if everything wasn't so grey and damp.

Tomorrow is going to be a challenge, Jasmine is off with her friends all day and staying for a sleepover, I'll have to entertain Aiden all by myself! They play so well together that usually I just provide meals.

Happy Easter

Sunday:

The kids woke us when it was still a bit dark, ready to hunt for Easter Eggs. Sure enough, the Easter Bunny had left plenty of chocolate plus some Easter-themed lollies because my son doesn't like chocolate much. I collected a few, but let the kids get most of it. We also give each other a big egg or bunny (or both). Here is my Easter loot:

The kids had some straight away but I couldn't face chocolate first thing in the morning. Tim and I went back to bed for a while. Meals have been fairly normal today except for dinner, but with lots of nibbles of chocolate between meals instead of my usual fruit. I ended up eating about 50g of chocolate (250 calories), which isn't all that much. And roast pork with crackling. Plus the dessert which had about a million calories (croissants soaked in mainly cream, with raspberries and Toblerone chocolate, then baked. I suppose it's a fancy bread-and-butter pudding). It was tricky moderating the kids' intake, not because I'm mean but because I know what happens! Aiden had a bit of a meltdown just before lunch. His little body just can't handle that much sugar with impunity. I'm making sure they eat real food as well, and after today they will only be having very limited amounts of treats each day.

Daylight Savings ended here last night so everything is a bit out today. It will take a few days to get used to. We will get to sleep in, though, and it will go back to being light when we get up - at least for a while. The weather has turned towards winter.

Straight after breakfast I started Fantasia. In the 45 minutes I finished the storyline and saved the universe from the evil noise pollution! I still have plenty to do, songs I haven't conquered and some I have only just unlocked and haven't even tried yet. But I've finished the plot of the game, which involves being apprenticed to a wizard and clearing each realm of "the noise" by mastering various songs. I would have kept playing but we'd arranged to meet some friends at the playground at the Arboretum.

The playground was pretty crowded but included more friends who happened to be there at the same time. I started by going for a walk while Tim supervised Jasmine on the equipment. Not that either child really needs supervision at their age. Aiden came with me, he had noticed the steep hill cut into big steps (each about 2 metres high) and wanted to climb on it. So we walked all the way down the hill, me on the path and him scrambling down the grass "steps" and then we went back up, both on the steps. Each one was taller than I am and at a very steep incline. I don't think they are actually there to be climbed on! But very tempting. I only touched down with a hand once, but jogged up each one leaning right forward and with my arms spread wide for balance. I threw myself into it each time, bounding up with a little run-up. Then a short rest walking on the flat area before the next one. I'm not sure how many steps, 15-20. My fitbit counted 14 flights of stairs from the bottom to the top. My heart rate got up to 143 and I was gasping for air! I probably looked like a tomato too, I go very red in the face. Near the top I didn't think I could finish but made myself go on. Never give up, never surrender! Aiden ran up each one, hardly noticing. The stamina of the young! It took about 25 minutes down and back. It was fun. And exhausting. And sweaty. And then I sat and talked to my friends until it was time to go home and have lunch.

After lunch I spent a long time catching up on reading blogs and dietbet forums, but then got up and did some more Fantasia. I selected some songs that had been unlocked but weren't part of the storyline so I hadn't done them; like David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and Lady Gaga's Applause. Another hour! That is over two hours of exercise today! I think I have well and truly earned my chocolate.

In the late afternoon (pre-evening or prevening as Sheldon would say) Tim took the kids to see the SpongeBob movie. I had to stay home to start dinner, but didn't mind at all. A nice bit of quiet at home! It's not one of the movies I want to see. It's school holidays in a week and I'll take them to see a couple, probably Home and Cinderella. Tim was not at all impressed with SpongeBob but the kids loved it. They are the target demographic, after all.

I only kept the CPAP on for four hours last night. My nostrils got very sore. It's like getting used to new shoes, it gets worse before it gets better. Still keeping to that four hour minimum. And, as you can tell by my increase in exercise, I have more energy already. Love that restful sleep!

I haven't been tracking my food for a few weeks, I plan to start doing that again tomorrow. Keep a handle on my chocolate intake!

Report card:
Diet: Poor. Celebration day.
Exercise: Excellent!
Water: Excellent! More than eight glasses.
Sleep: Good.
Mental health: Great.

Hiking around this wide brown land

Tuesday:

I spent the morning at the Arboretum café writing, then went out onto the hillsides for a walk. There are "trails" that are literally just signposts on the grass between the baby trees.

Which makes it kind of fun. And I was wearing my new hiking boots. I walked from the café on one hill up a bigger hill with this statue thing on top:

This is a quote from Australia's most famous poem:

I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,

Of rugged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains,

I love her far horizons, I love her jewelled sea,

Her beauty and her terror, this wide brown land for me.

It was written by an Englishwoman, Dorothy McKeller, and there is a second verse about how England is pretty nice too, but no one knows that one.

And when you turn around, you get this lovely view:

Not sure about the weird spiky trees.

Climbing up the hill was fine but going down down down into that valley was a bit hard on the knees. My boots made me feel very secure though, no slipping! Then back up an extremely steep slope to the café again, I don't think that bit was supposed to be climbed. There actually turned out to be a little fence at the top that I had to step over. I had to keep my arms out wile climbing to balance. Any steeper and I would have been crawling. So I felt pretty good about powering up it. I may hate many forms of exercise, like jumping or bending, but I do like walking and climbing.

In all, 45 mins of hiking around the hills.

And I have had what is possibly my biggest win of the year so far. I bought a family size packet of chips yesterday to share tonight at D&D. And I haven't eaten them yet! I don't even know why I dared buy them, so many times before they haven't lasted an hour. These have lasted two days - an exciting new flavour I haven't tried before. Still unopened. If you have a trigger food that you usually can't resist if it is in the house, that you will eat until you are feeling sick and then put aside only long enough to feel a bit less sick then finish them, you'll know how big a deal this is to me.

Some not very good photos of a lovely view

Monday:

I've been going to the Arboretum to write in the mornings (I need to get an annual pass for parking, it's very expensive) and it is beautiful there. I took a couple of pictures, unfortunately my camera skills are sadly lacking. This first one, since I took it from my café table, shows you what seems to be a vast expanse of bare café. If you can get a close up of the window it is very pretty. And I suppose you can also see that it is a very roomy space for writing, no noisy neighbours butted up close to your table.

 

And this one, outside the pavilion where they have weddings, draws attention to a sandy patch of ground rather than the little pond and then the lake behind it. Honestly, it's lovely. I never even noticed that bare patch when I was standing on the balcony!

The little green dots down the hill are baby trees. There are more mature ones on the other side of the café and all around other directions, these are the youngest ones but I was trying to capture the view of the lake. Oh well. And even the biggest trees are only five years old.

 

I went for a walk after I'd done my writing session, from the café around to the wedding pavilion and then down the steep slope of a grassy outdoor auditorium. Lovely manicured green grass, soft for audience bottoms, nothing like the sandy stubble in the pic. I jogged up the other side of the bowl and made it about 2/3 of the way up before I ran out of legs. Then I realised I'd probably forgotten to breathe while I was running uphill, because it suddenly seemed like there wasn't enough oxygen in the world! I kept walking the last bit while trying to get some air. It's a nice area, I'll have to do some more walking around there. Lots of hills.