Monday Catch-Up

I avoided my blog last week, mostly because of all the crap going on. I also completely avoided my scale, and it's killing me not knowing exactly what I weigh. But I think it would be much worse to look and find out just how MUCH I've gained.

Last week was The Week of Birthday Eating that I couldn't get out of. Restaurants and fast food and more restaurants, and baking (although I've been really good with the baked goods, I only had a couple "blondie" brownies and a cupcake - the coffee in the buttercream icing gave me a migraine so it was a great excuse to avoid the rest and give them to my neighbours).

I won't list all the crap I had to go out for with friends and family, because I don't want to trigger a binge for anybody, but we'll suffice it to say that I will not be at all surprised if I weighed myself this morning to find the big 200 staring back at me.

But, all of the birthday festivities are over and I can go back to the whole "Um no I can't go out for dinner" excuses.

And today has started off remarkably well!

But I have to skip back to last week again before I can explain how good today is. See, after my aunts left for Spain on Saturday Morning last week, I've been on my own in the house except when people came over for birthday shizz. And I tend to get really paranoid and retarded when I'm on my own. I'm not afraid to admit that I'm afraid of the dark to start with, so I am very good at freaking myself out. I also live in a neighbourhood where the local teens are not above mugging old men or slashing tires for no reason. So every noise had me completely convinced someone was going to break into the house or bust up my aunt's car.

The third night, I had stayed up until around 2-3 am, chatting with my good friends online, when a short, very high pitched, VERY LOUD beep sounded throughout the house. I couldn't figure out what it was or where it was coming from. That night, I got to sleep around 6am, no lie. Ugh. And for four days I could not figure out what it was or where it was coming from, and it was really weirding me out that it was only doing it at night. It would start at 1am and keep going at random intervals (anywhere between 10 minutes and a little over an hour) until between 9 and 11 the next morning. Thank god for earplugs, although it was loud so I could still hear it.

Yesterday, it kept going, and after beeping every 15 minutes until 2 in the afternoon, I finally figured it out: our fucking smoke alarm. I went up to it, braced myself and pressed the TEST button - and nothing happened. It SHOULD have emitted a high, loud, fast BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP that would probably deafen me entirely OR cure my tinnitus with shock therapy. But nothing happened. So I took the fucking dead battery out and HEY NO NOISE. AWESOME.

Of course, the night before last I didn't go to sleep until around 4 so I slept fitfully until 1pm yesterday afternoon. This kind of sleeping pattern is not conducive to going back to a work schedule. So of course last night I couldn't sleep at all, finally passed out around 4ish and my alarm went off at 7. Ugh.

So, I came into work - 20 minutes later than usual - and thought this was the shitty start to a shitty new day. But when I went to get my phone out of my bag (I keep my mobile on my desk "just in case" because between my aunt's suicidal tendencies and my grandfather's "could-drop-dead-at-any-minute-five-minutes-from-now-or-ten-years-from-now" heart condition, you never know) I discovered £10 I forgot I had. I'd gotten £10 cash back when I'd paid for some baking supplies at Tesco on Friday and thrown it into my bag with the receipt and then forgot all about it so whoo!

Then! My manager pulled me aside a few minutes ago to tell me about pay rises. I was under the impression I wouldn't be getting one, because our work's intranet said the pay review was only for those who haven't had any recent raises already. But my manager clearly rocks out loud. Basically he'd been given a budget to give everyone in our team a rise up to a total of 3.5% of our annual salary, at his discretion. So he said he'd decided to give people he was really impressed with the full 3.5, 1.75 would go to average people, and very little-to-nothing to people who were "crap" (his word, not mine) - then he proceeded to tell me he's super pleased with me, the work that I do, how I interact with the rest of the team (and apparently my facebook updates make him lol) so I've got the full 3.5%. THEN! To make it even better he came back to tell me it will be paid in this month's salary (next week) AND! it's being backdated for the previous 2 months. Considering the amount of overtime I've got in this month's pay, that should really bump it up.

Thank fuck, because I really need all the help I can get or Cancun is going on my credit card.

So yeah. This week, like I said, is a "new leaf" as it were. Effective immediately I'm cutting back to a maximum cap of 400 calories a day and will try to keep below that. I've been having probiotic drinks in the morning because my immune system and also my digestion (From a childhood bout with pnumonia, and all the shit I've eaten this week, respectively) are fucked up. I've got a fat free 100kcal yogurt on my desk that I was planning on having for lunch but I'm not sure I even want it now so I might just get some hot water and a stock cube and have that instead for 19kcals. Dinner, I don't know yet. We'll see when I get home. But sticking under 400 should be ridiculously easy =]

Mmm. I just remembered I need to update y'all on the braces front too, but I'll make a new post for that one.

Here's to starting fresh. Again, I know, but still.