Into the home stretch of dietbet

Monday:

My third week of dietbetting, like the second, was basically a maintain. I had lost a little bit but then the weekend happened. So out of the three weeks sofar, I only lost weight on the first.

This means that with slightly over a week to go, allowing for a 48 hour weigh-out window, I need to lose 2kg! This is only even remotely possible because, after two weeks maintenance, it's like starting a new diet with at least a kg of water weight to drop. A big call though. I am giving it a really good try, eating clean and low carb and exercising.

Even if I ultimately fail (but I'm not giving up!) I am still really happy I did/am doing the dietbet. This time of year I normally would already be into all the Christmas treats. Celebrating with food way too early. This year I've had only a little, here and there. Maintaining my weight instead of gaining. So if I sometimes have an errant thought that this was a bad time of year to try dietbet, NO! It is the best time of year to do it!

I had a bit of an experience online today. I was playing World of Warcraft, in which you share the game world with lots of other real people and can see their avatars running around and interact with them if you like. I was trying to trap clefthoof (big shaggy animals) for their skins, which involves attacking them so they chase you into the trap. There was another person there doing the same, a female avatar so I'll say "she", but she kept going for the same animals I was. In Wow whoever hits an enemy first tags it which means they get whatever benefit comes from that creature when it is dead - its treasure, fur, experience or whatever - even if someone else eventually kills it. I would be winding up for a big damaging spell, which takes a couple of seconds, and she would jump in front of me and attack "my" animal. She did this several times even after I tried to go right up the other end of the field away from her. It was very annoying.

I got a bit cranky and did something very unlike me - I went for revenge! Usually I shrink from any kind of confrontation. I'd let her tag the animal but then I'd kill it before it got into her trap, so she had a big useless dead animal, not what she wanted for this particular purpose. After maybe three times she asked me to stop, I did it once more and told her why I'd done it, then stopped. And she told me she had "reported" me - i.e. told the Wow authorities about me! Seemed like a very trivial thing to report someone about, but I doubt there will be any repercussions and I am quite prepared to defend myself if anyone contacts me.

I went onto the general chat feed, read by everyone currently in the same country we were in, and without mentioning any names I was like "how exciting, someone just reported me" and told my side, then she jumped on and told her side (i.e. lied) and called me a liar and I was totally pumped with adrenalin and sort-of having fun. The interesting thing was everyone who responded seemed very much on my side which surprised me considering I had been a bit mean really. But I think it was an attitude thing - she sounded really aggressive and defensive and not very likable whereas I tried hard to be relaxed and not nasty about it. I was all pumped up for ages afterwards. And I'm not sorry. Don't I lead a sheltered life!

Virtual fishing

Wednesday:

Unless you want to hear about my aches and fatigue and runny eyes and aching teeth, I don't have a lot to talk about today.

I went fishing in the Jade Forest this morning. No, not real fishing. In World of Warcraft, a computer game with lovely graphics. Instead of having to deal with cold weather and cold water and nasty stinky flapping fish and dead worms, I sat in a warm room and stared at a rippling stream surrounded by willows and cherry blossoms and white cranes. And the virtual fish didn't flap or smell or actually die. And I didn't have to eat them in real life either, bonus!

I took some pretty screenshots but can't find them to post here. I really need to become more computer literate one of these days. So I can show off my pretend fishing spot in a peaceful corner of a violent world.

I also planted some virtual carrots and melons.  Because you can't have too many pretend carrots as big as you are, even if you are a minotaur.

Easter bunny

Monday:

Happy Easter everyone. We don't eat anything special on Easter other than chocolate eggs so it wasn't a particularly bad day diet-wise. And despite the chocolate I've lost half of that horrible holiday "salt" weight, down to 83.9kg. Still not great. Back to working on it today.

Nothing exciting happening here to talk about. Oh, except my husband and I got to level 90 (the maximum) in World of Warcraft. We hadn't played for ages (defected to Rift) but started again recently and I've really enjoyed it. We play as a team. Jasmine gave us both hand-made certificates which was very cute.

One of her teeth fell out last night so the tooth fairy came. She still believes in the tooth fairy. And the Easter bunny. And Santa Claus. She is ten. Aiden, who is seven, is starting to question. It's probably time to have the talk. But I thought it would happen naturally before now. At this age, keeping up the pretence is starting to feel more like lying. With all of these, we have tended to lump them in with God and aliens - we say that some people believe in them and some people don't and you get to make up your own mind and it can be hard to know one way or the other. Yet then we leave Easter eggs around the house which is "proof" that the bunny exists!

I've heard the story that Spike Milligan used to write notes to his children from the fairies at the bottom of the garden in teeny tiny script, and so they believed in fairies well into their teens. Is this making their childhood magical, or just really weird and wrong to let it go on so long? Has anyone else had to have this talk with their kids because they seemed too old for it?