Tagged

Well, have been tagged by Kim so here goes:

Four things about me:

A) Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Checkout Operator
2. Receptionist
3. Office Manager
4. Nurse Aide

B) Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. Flashdance
2. Happy Gilmore
3. The Mists of Avalon
4. The Power of One

C) Four places I have lived:
1. Cromwell (Central Otago, South Island, New Zealand)
2. Dunedin (Otago, New Zealand)
3. Tawa (Wellington, New Zealand)
4. Palmerston North (New Zealand)

D) Four favourite TV shows:
1. House
2. ER
3. Greys Anatomy
4. Lost

E) Four of my favourite foods:
1. Lamb Chops
2. Chicken Cordon Bleu
3. Roast Kumara
4. Ambrosia

F) Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Goal Weight
2. Sunshine Coast of Australia
3. Castle Hill (my spiritual place)
4. Anywhere where I was relaxing, drinking nice vodka cocktails

G) Four friends I think/hope will respond:
1. Zara
2. Crankybee
3. Mel
4. Esther

On a different note, I went and bought the kids new school uniforms for their new school today. What an expensive exercise. $225 for a sweatshirt each, a packaway parka each, two polo shirts each, two pairs shorts for Ben, one pair shorts for Peta and a sunhat each. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when have younger two at school and older two at high school. Better open a savings fund now. Haven't even gone and got the books yet!!!

Am not really enjoying my last day eating haphazardly. Stupidly, I am even bypassing healthier foods to eat as much shit as possible. Blair in town at moment and then I am going to head down to the local shops to find some good electronic scales. Apparently weight watchers have some out now??

Had a Long Day

Today, for some unknown reason, seemed extremely long. It has just gone on forever. And I am itchy, I just feel like something is biting me everywhere. And the Rangiora volunteer emergency services siren is going off as I type. Something new to get used to in a smaller town. All the volunteers will come sprinting out of their houses and all arrive at the local fire station and head off to whatever accident/fire/tragedy that has befallen the local area. The wierd thing is, for a small community, I hear this siren a hell of a lot. Either there is a shit load of inbreeding which has led to a whole lot of clumsiness, or I just used to coast along blissfully unaware in the big smoke of Christchurch as to how much ill fatedness was going on around me.

Tangent Queen!!

Had Sian at hospital this morning for followup with Paediatric Neurologist and all is sweet and he said "Goodbye, I hope I never see you again" which was quite funny, yet a bit mean at the same time. Her calcium levels have come down to within normal range and that rules out epilepsy.

Made a lovely venison chasseur dish for dinner but, I didn't like the texture of the venison medallions so Blair ate my share. Disappointing as they looked like melt in your mouth steak but so weren't.

All you kiwis out there will appreciate this:

I found Toffee Milks at the supermarket. And for $1.96 a pack of 10 (which pisses me off as there are no five cent coins anymore, let alone any one and two's, so why the hell do things still cost in units of money that don't exist?? Barstards!!). Anyway, back to the joy of Toffee Milks. So remember them when I was a teenager. Used to only cost about 10c and you could chew them forever. For those that don't remember, they are small, thin bars of hard (snappy hard) caramel covered in milk chocolate. And these are not going to be part of my vocab after tomorrow but I had to buy some before the START!!

I have decided to add to my list of things I have to do as well:

Have to track
Have to be honest with myself
Have to email Zara more regularly!! (Just because I know you have mental health issues).

Changes for Life

I went to the doc today for my liver function tests that I was supposed to have a week after the last hospital visit - the week before Xmas!! I took the opportunity to have a chat with him about my weight, my blood pressure, my fatty liver and motivation etc. It was great. He chatted to me about my cholesterol, which is perfect by the way. He said I am in no danger of having a heart attack at my age but that I have the markers there for it to happen in 15 years if I don't do something now. He said that I have every thing in my favour for turning the blood pressure and fatty liver around as my cholesterol is low and that means my fatty liver can reverse. Then we got onto the subject of my motivation. He put it out there that I have to make my walking and healthier eating a priority in my life and not put it off because I was too busy. I explained how I have lost a bit here and there over the past couple of years but whenever the going gets tough I put it right back on. He explained that I am an up and down sort of person and that, when I put my mind to it I can lose the weight but that is only when I am revved up. I said I had contemplated doing the whole Liver Cleansing whole foods only approach and he said that I just wasn't in the right place to try and go completely against my usual eating pattern. He said the stress of trying something so rigid and then failing again, would be more detrimental then helpful. He told me to just approach it in a baby steps manner but the changes I make need to be made for life, to be there in stressful times and good times. So we came to the conclusion that I should try to walk the kids the 2km to school at least a couple of times a week, even if we are running late. He said it was more important for me to walk than it was for the kids to always be on time to school. He stressed how extremely important the exercise was. So I have decided to do a wee start up plan to kick start me into the next 4 wks. If I want a wedding then I need to put the $20 a wk towards that so I won't be going to weight watchers. Instead I will get a good set of electronic scales.

So this is my start up plan, starting Feb 1st 2007:

On fine days, walk kids to school.
Try to implement more incidental exercise into my daily activities (vaccuum every day etc)
No snacking on biscuits or processed crap. Have carrot sticks and nuts on hands (not roasted nuts)
Drink 2L water a day.
Cut out fizzy drinks, lollies, chocolate etc as everyday items.
Takeaways only once a month (this is for money saving as well as low fatness).
Have a good breakfast every day.
Base my days around 28 points (while I am breastfeeding) but don't dismiss my hunger, as that can be bad when breastfeeding.
Be positive. Positive things happen to positive people.
Weigh once a week on a Thursday morning, starting Feb 1st.

A General Update

In all the excitement I have forgotten to let all you dudes know that I made the move to Rangiora a couple of weeks ago. We advertised in the little local paper and found a 3 bdrm to rent for $250 a week and they are quite happy for us to rent on a periodic lease, meaning that we only have to give 3 weeks notice to move out. Once our new house is ready we will be able to get on into it without having to wait for a rental lease to run out.

Ben got chickenpox on the 3rd of Jan and the two older girls, Phoebe and Peta, are just getting over their bout of them. Nothing like chickenpox to make moving house a bit more complicated.

Sian is doing great. Put on heaps of weight and just adorable with plenty of smiling and giggling. She is coming up 10 weeks next Thursday. Have her followup appointment at the Paediatric Neurology department at the hospital on Tuesday. Just to make sure that the calcium levels in her blood have gone down and that she doesn't have epilepsy, which I am quite sure she doesn't.

Blair has been offered a new job by a couple of old mates who have formed a building company out here in North Canterbury. The saving in petrol alone will account for nearly $80 a week in our pocket and that doesn't include the rise in hourly payrate, vehicle and phone. Not to mention that he will be working with really great guys and hopefully, we may start getting back into the old social circles again.

Peta and Ben start at Southbrook School in a week and a half. They are both nervous in their own ways. Ben informed me yesterday that he thinks he is ugly. I think he is a really attractive wee man and I told him so. For those of you that are newer readers, you will probably not have seen photos of my other three kids so I may just have to post some

Peta

Phoebe (with a wig on!)

Ben

As for the wedding, older readers may recall that I have actually been engaged since October 2002. We were booked in to get married on 22nd October 2005 at Mt Potts Backcountry Lodge but I ended up pregnant with Phoebe. So, with so many people getting engaged after us and married before us we were starting to get a bit pissed off and then Blair's brother phoned to say that he was engaged to his longtime girlfriend of 10 years and that they had set the date for 2nd Feb next year. That was the final straw, I demanded we start seriously thinking about our wedding. It won't be anything flash and we won't be doing the high country thing (as much as I would LOVE to) as we have to be realistic with four kids and an impending mortgage. But, it will be special and I want it to be this year.

Now here are my dilemmas/thoughts:

Thought: we could have it on New Years Eve in our new house in the backyard which will be northfacing. Maybe marquee

Dilemma: Is New Years Eve a bad time to have a wedding? What will everyone do with THEIR kids?? Brother and girlfriend will be home from Aussie for Xmas but good mates will have only just been over from Sunshine Coast and will have returned any probably not afford to come back again, esp at Xmas/NY time.


Thought: Could have at Mum and Dad's lifestyle block in Okuku (20 min inland from Rangiora).

Dilemma: Mum and Dad!!! Distance from town


Thought: Could just flag the whole fucken hassle!!

Dilemma: Defeats purpose of trying to get married.

Motivation

I just don't bloody have it - anyone got some they would be willing to sell??

I am severely lethargic and have just spent 50 mins looking at other people's blogs and it hit me. I SPEND TOO MUCH BLOODY TIME READING YOUR BLOGS AND NOT ENOUGH WRITING MY OWN!! I need to remember the reason I am doing this blogging thing, for me. The first thing I should do is get on and do my entry and then have a look at you guys!!

My bubs has just woken and I am going to have to go, hopefully can come back and add some more tonight.

Need to discuss a wedding - yes mine!!

A New Start

I have been pondering a question for a couple of days now. How many of all the successful weight losses here online have been from Weight Watchers?? If my memory serves me well, quite a bloody lot. Then why hasn't it worked for me, or more accurately, why haven't I worked with it?? I have always lost around a stone but never made it under the 100kg mark since I hit it in early 2001!! That was six bloody years ago. Now, I have had constant health problems lately and the trip to hospital before Christmas was really horrible. But has that scared me into changing my bad eating habits, of course not. My feet are massive, my blood pressure high and I look puffy and like a bag of arseholes. What will it take? I have the desire but seem to lack the follow through. What has made weight watchers work for you??

You Wouldn't Believe It

Here is my darling wee Sian on her first day in the world:



And here she is at about 2 weeks:


And in hospital at nearly 3 weeks old with a drip in her arm:


Yes - hospital! My 4 and a half weeks since Sian has been born have been full of drama. At first I got a huge haemorrhoid, and I am talking the size of a nectarine. If it wasn't for that I would have had a pretty good first two weeks. Then colic hit in and Phoebe got quite sick with a chesty cold. I was running on the reserves of energy. Sian started having seizures. They would last from a minute to five minutes and consisted of her limbs jerking violently and her respiration rate going up quite high. Then her temperature started to go up and down all over the place. I felt something was different and took her to the doctor on the Tuesday, 2 days before she turned 3 weeks. He was concerned and sent us to hospital to get some blood tests. Everything went topsy turvey. Drs were convinced that they had to rule out all the nasties as she had a few symptoms of meningitis and encephalities etc so they did a lumbar puncture!! It was bloody hideous and they took 3 goes to get it right. Blair thought he would be up to handling it but left the room crying in a matter of seconds. I have never felt more useless. We ended up in hospital for four days while they tested her on every possible thing and put her on three different IV antibiotics. Policy with newborns is to treat first and find results later. Things just happen too quickly with that age group and they have to err on the side of caution. You can imagine by the time I got home both Blair and I were exhausted. Finally got diagnosed as having benign neonatal sleep myoclonus, which is a sleep seizure thing that about 1 in 30 newborns can have. Should go by about 3 months but have to have some more blood tests etc to rule out epilepsy in about another month.

Had been home five days and I woke with a bit of heartburn sort of pain at 3am in the morning. It went after an hour so I thought nothing of it. At 3pm the next day I was rushing around trying to get two young uns in the car in the pouring rain to pick up kids from school when I started to get pain again. Took a mylanta and then headed off to school. Pain got worse and worse just below my breast bone and was stabbing into my back and radiating out in both directions. I started to panic on the way back home that I was dying! Stopped at my doctors surgery in handicap park and went into surgery and started to cry to receptionist. Kids were surrounding me in consulting room as I had an ECG to check whether I was having a heart attack. I wasn't, thank god!! Blair arrived and took kids and they waited for pain to ebb. It didn't. Ended up in hospital on morphine with suspected gallstones. They ultrasounded and found no gallstones so I ended up bunking in with Sian for another two nights in hosptial while they ran more tests and then on the Friday morning they did a gastroscopy, where they put camera into stomach to see if any ulcers or inflammation. All a bit horrible but nothing showed up and I haven't had any pain since. My guess is that I passed a gallstone and that is why they didn't see one on the ultrasound. So I got out of hospital 3 days before Christmas and had a mad rush to get organised.

So, my friends, that is why I have not posted. But, I am back.