American cheese

Wednesday:

I was out and about today, and at lunchtime I found myself with a choice between KFC or an American-style burger place. I went with the burger place but ordered nachos, and specified no sour cream (not for any virtuous reason, I just don't like it). When it came out it had pale orange stuff squeezed all over it and I wasn't sure what it was at first. Had they given me sour cream after all, and it had orange mould in it which had changed the colour and made it go runny, and someone had scraped it into a squeeze bottle and forgotten to throw it away? No, tasted kind of like... nothing much really... maybe mayonnaise with a bit of cheese powder mixed in? OMG it was supposed to be cheese! WTF? Is this really what "American cheese" is like? I'd say it was horrible but it didn't have enough flavour for that. Bland and cold, nothing like the bubbling melted cheese I'm used to. It wasn't the worst nachos I've ever had, but it was certainly the strangest. Melted cheese (real cheese, can't believe I have to specify that) is the best bit of nachos. It was an interesting experience and I don't regret it although I didn't eat much of my lunch, all knowledge is worth having. I guess I tried a new "food" today lol.

When I make nachos I top the meat and corn chips with two kinds of cheese, and jalapenos, and salsa, and chopped tomatoes, capsicum, cucumber and lettuce. Delicious!

It was too hot today for Jasmine to ride her bike to school (Aiden was ok, his school is much closer) so she caught the bus for the first time alone! She's probably been on a bus ten times in her whole life. I walked her to the bus stop and made sure she got on ok. At the end of the day I walked to the bus stop so she could see me and be sure she was getting off at the right stop - but she was already off and walking towards me before I got there. She did great.

My family of visiting birds keeps getting bigger, or else they visited all at different times before so I didn't realise how many. They come and call me at all different times but I'm restricting feeding to morning and evening or it will get too expensive in meat! There is one butcher bird, three kookaburras (one might be a large baby, it's the end of spring here), and three magpies, one of which is definitely a big baby. The two adults will take food from my hand, the baby will sit and screech and wait for mummy to put the food in his mouth. Even if it's right in front of him. I also put out discarded fruit for the parrots but that is out the back rather than the side kitchen window so I don't often see who comes to eat that. Still, finally a use for all of Aiden's half eaten apples and nectarines gone bad in the heat! Fruit doesn't last as long in Sydney's humidity, I might have to start refrigerating some of it. Canberra got hot too, but never humid. We have to put the rubbish out pretty quick here too or it starts to smell.

A man is coming tomorrow to assess our block for a pool, an in-ground one may not be possible within a reasonable budget due to narrow access at the sides and rocky ground to dig up. But we'll see. Like with the dining tables, the pool fashion of the moment seems to be solid clumpy rectangles. We want swoops and curves. I chose this place because it does still have a model like that. Crossed fingers.

Walking for nachos

Wednesday:

Since I don't have the car and can't get to the gym, Wednesday is an official rest day for me in terms of exercise. But today there was no particular reason to take a break, no excessive muscle soreness or tiredness, so I did 30 mins of dance. It was nice to do something a bit different, fun, with no pressure of doing a certain amount of time or at a certain intensity. I was moving my body and enjoying the music. And since I did it in the morning I felt I'd started the day off well.

Shortly afterwards I decided I wanted to turn my leftover pulled pork lunch plan into nachos with pulled pork. I don't consider corn chips to be very healthy but I have completely changed my old "lazy nachos" which were just Doritos with salsa and melted cheese - lots and lots of melted cheese - into a far more nutritious version with salsa and much less cheese plus a bit of meat, jalapenos, and topped with a big serve of finely chopped lettuce, cucumber, tomato and capsicum. And it is so delicious! But I certainly don't keep corn chips in the house as anything like that is an instant trigger food for me. Today I could only have nachos for lunch if I walked to the shops to buy some corn chips.

So I did. I got in nearly half an hour of brisk walking in the lovely sunshine and bought a single serve of corn chips plus some strawberries. No hay fever symptoms at all. Sunshine makes me happy! And I earned myself a fabulous lunch. I kept the meat and cheese proportion low and it was under 500 calories, still a very hearty lunch but I managed to fit it into my calories for the day.

We still haven't decided about Jasmine doing the extra dancing next year. Auditions are on Friday. She already does one dance class, French, karate, swimming, and trumpet for school band. Not sure about adding two more dance classes! I suppose she could drop karate to have one afternoon free. But self defence is important, and so is learning to swim (especially here in Australia). And music and languages are fabulous too. Hmm.

I talked to mum this afternoon. She hasn't been feeling quite so well lately, which is worrying. A few aches and pains coming back, sleeping a lot of each day, and her voice is really croaky again. It's nearly a year since her cancer diagnosis (breast and bone). She'd been doing so well before this, responding well to chemo and radiotherapy. She'll see her doctor soon, and hopes changing her medication might help. She sounded cheerful but there was a real turnaround in her ability to cope with things - she's been talking about moving to a retirement home but today it all seemed too hard to her. And her car got rear-ended, nothing serious, but the boot won't close properly and she doesn't have the energy to do anything about it. We have a family wedding coming up and she was very glad that I said we would be driving her but not sure how she'll deal with tiredness on the day. It's all a bit scary that she has gone downhill since I saw her last just a few weeks ago.

I don't want to finish on a depressing note so I'll remember that I had another day of eating within my calories, exercising, and feeling happy and healthy.