Friday 22 May 2009

Hell Yeah!

Right now it is 12:48 in the afternoon.

So far today I have had half a bottle of water (I know, I know, I need to drink more =/) and a piece of sugarfree gum.

Only just now starting to feel hungry but I'm savoring the feeling =]

If I had the stuff at home I'd be having Braised Lettuce tonight, but I don't, and I'm not going to Tesco because I don't have the energy or the will. So no idea what I have at home. Maybe a fat free 100-kcal yogurt? Hmm, I might have some low-calorie Chicken Noodle Soup, actually.. I think it said it's 35kcals per serving? Mmmm.

So yeah, so far so good. And in just over 4 hours I'm home free!

Meeting my friend for sushi tomorrow, but if that's all I eat tomorrow it shouldn't be too bad. Yo! Sushi has nutritional info up at their website, so I'm going to try to stick to the best options and fill up on green tea (unlimited!). The dishes come with two of whatever type of sushi it is and we're sharing, so I will be able to have some variety without pigging out on eighty pieces.

The downside is that after doing some shopping, S's fiancee L is meeting up with us to chill, chat, catch up. And we're meeting him at Starbucks. Now, I LOVE starbucks. And I'm in the mood for a caramel coffee light frappuccinno. BUT! I don't need the extra calories on top of sushi.

Do I have the will power to get a plain small coffee, no milk and with some splenda sweeteners in it?

Funny how I can often say no to food, but not to Starbucks. You are my weakness!

Tonight is going to be busy, since I need to find somewhere to put my aunts' laundry to dry (I thought it would be bad form just to wash my own stuff and leave theirs in the laundry basket for when they got back haha) and vacuum the entire house, including the stairs, which is precarious business if you're like me and have a tendency to fall down them stone sober and barefoot, nevermind trying to balance a fucking vacuum on there. Actually, come to think, there's not that much else I need to do, aside from wipe down the kitchen counters and get rid of some out of date food (why would my aunt feed her dog half a can of dog food and then leave it in the fridge knowing full well that the dog is going away for two weeks and that shit is going to stink?)

I also need to bake... I told my aunt about what me and S made last week (and which I wound up giving to my neighbour =]) and she wants some so I'll have to do that tonight so they can have some when they get home.

It used to piss me off when I made cookies before. Because I used to bake a huge batch of like 9 dozen cookies, take a dozen to work, eat half a dozen, and by the end of the week, if I went for a cookie, there would be none left. How do they eat 7 and a half dozen cookies to themselves? I'll tell you how. Rather than eating a cookie as a snack or a couple for dessert or a treat or something, my aunt would eat 7 cookies for breakfast. She'd have 5 cookies before bed. Wake up in the middle of the night and have another half dozen just because she felt like it. I swear to god one time two dozen cookies disappeared literally overnight - there were a lot left when I went to bed, and I went to grab a couple to take to work with lunch, and there were none. And the last two batches of banana bread I made, I got none of.

Anyway. My point is, that doesn't piss me off anymore. Now, I'm grateful for it. I love baking, it can be kind of therapeutic and stress-relieving for me. But the problem is what to do with the results. I was lucky last week that I was throwing some stuff out into our garbage bin while my neighbour's kid was playing in his backyard so I could hand over the cupcakes and blondies then. I wouldn't just wander over and knock on their door to give them, because I'm kind of dumb but whatever.

Instead, leave it on the counter and it'll be gone in two days and I don't have to face it everyday and feel bad for wasting ingredients and money =]

What does irritate me though is that if my aunts make a group meal it's often a matter that we all pay for it. My aunt's partner makes this amazing dish that I love and have had twice in the 5 years since I moved here. And two years ago when I asked if she'd make it, she told me "sure if you buy the ingredients." However, when I bake, when I'm ASKED to bake (my aunt is constantly asking me for oatmeal raisin cookies, peanut butter cookies, and banana bread), it's out of my own pocket. And I can't really afford to be buying a ton of baking ingredients just because. Sigh.

It's going to be a bit of a problem after they have their surgery. Good and bad. Good because there won't be their crappy food in the house to tempt me. Bad because I won't be able to bake and palm the results off on them. It's a pain in the ass to bring stuff into work on the bus but that's what I'll have to do - I love to bake and have no plans to stop doing it.

Anyway, this doesn't really have a point haha. 4 hours to go, it's now 1:01pm =]

XOXO
Vee

The Aftermath

So after two days of writhing in pain and being unable to even sleep until the pain went away, I'm now living "The Aftermath" - you know, the time after having a migraine where your head still feels a bit sensitive where the pain used to be, where you feel a little shaky and maybe disoriented and so very, very fatigued. Recovering from a migraine attack really wears you down. That sensitive spot just over the arch of my left eyebrow, feels so tender, feels like the migraine is just dormant and ready to spring back. But if I'm lucky, it'll stay away.

I was doing so well yesterday. Up until 7pm I had only eaten around 200 calories worth of rice (one of the only things I had in the house aside from frozen meals and peanut butter) and was feeling good. Through the day my migraine had slowly abated to a persistent, niggling headache. Towards nighttime though, my head was starting to throb and pound all over again and I was drenched in sweat even though our heating was off - and anyone who knows me will tell you that I am ALWAYS cold. So I thought shit, I need to eat something. I grabbed a frozen meal and shoved it in the microwave and ate it without tasting it. I felt like I was panicking. I also downed a ton of water just in case I was getting dehydrated and that was messing me up.

Luckily, after eating I went to bed with a cool gel thing on my head and, although it took me several hours to fall asleep, I woke up pain-free. Thank god.

Funny story: strange noises kept waking me up even though I had earplugs in, but then when I listened there was nothing. I was freaking myself out. This morning I open the bathroom door (I had shut it because there was a spider on the ceiling and I didn't want the little fucker venturing over to my bedroom in the middle of the night) and my aunt's cat darted out and started purring around my ankles. Oops!

Surprisingly, today is an alright day so far, all things considered. My head feels terribly tender and I'm so very tired and have zero motivation to actually do anything. And my bus is detouring from its current route and bypassing 5 or 6 stops, which means I had to walk an extra 15-minutes uphill to get to the next one. Maybe it's endorphins from getting my heart going a little, but even though I'm exhausted, I'm in a good mood. In work I had a little chat and some laughs with my manager and a few other guys in my team. My manager is fine with the fact that I'm going to be down 3 hours for the working period and is more than happy for me to make it up next week. Whoo!

Anyway, I need to get some work done, since I'm kind of behind after chatting.

More later,

Vee xox

Wednesday 20 May 2009

Update

First of all, thanks to everyone who's voted in my poll so far. Cross-Trainer is where I was leaning too as well, but it's always nice to get everyone's input! And thanks to Pasco and Ana who left comments with their reasoning on my previous entry. You girls rock!

So a brief update.

Last night I was violently sick and went to bed with a migraine, hoping I'd sleep it off and feel better. No dice. My alarm went off at 7 this morning and I physically could not move because every tiny motion made my head scream and feel like it was trying to tear apart. I reset my alarm for 8:30 and tried to go back to sleep. Woke up at 8:30 and called work to tell them I won't be coming in. I'm kind of stressing because I need to leave work at 4 on Friday so I have time to finish doing the last bits of laundry and vacuum the stairs and stuff before my aunts come home on Saturday. But, not going to work today means I'll be getting 7 hours added on for sick pay but I usually work 8.5 hours, so I'm going to be down on my hours by that hour and a half... More if I do leave early on Friday. So to make up I think I might have to work until 7 tomorrow, and how much does that bite? Sigh.

Still, I can't be slacking off and stuff and just prove to my manager HEY I totally didn't deserve that raise you just gave me because now I'm 2 hours down at the end of the four week work period and! I've had a sick day. (to be fair I think my last sick day was back in like November or December so it could be worse)

I have a friend at work who tells me to just go home if I'm tired or feeling a bit under the weather or have a cold or the slightest headache. I generally persevere unless it's really severely bad. And she always tells me "You're being stupid, nobody thinks better of you for coming in when you're not well" - and I can see her point, but on the flip-side, people DO think WORSE of you for NOT coming in.

I mean in the team I was in previously there's a guy who takes a ton of sick time. I mean we're talking at least once a month for anywhere from 1 day to 2 weeks. And everyone jokes about it. "That man has more time off than Santa" or "Aw, looks like [namehere] has another runny nose" (I mean to be fair it probably exacerbates the issue that he admitted that he takes so much time off because he hates his job and cant be bothered but STILL)

I don't want to be known as "that girl who takes a ton of time off" so I push through it.

Today was one of those days where even the thought of getting up to pee felt like climbing Everest stark naked in the middle of winter. My head still hurts a lot now, not as bad as it was earlier but it's still definitely there. And I feel disoriented and kind of dizzy because of it. And I should probably take tomorrow off work too, only... I'd feel too shitty about it to just sit at home and relax. Too anxious. And too worked up about how I'm going to make up those 3 hours before the weekend. Sigh.

We'll see.

Love you ladies

xoxo Vee

Tuesday 19 May 2009

Poll!

Hey guys

So, I have a migraine and have just spent the past 15 minutes being sick. My throat is raw and I feel like ass. I'm completely exhausted and passed out for 20 minutes while trying to watch a movie on TV and felt so disoriented when I woke up. And it wasn't until I woke up that I thought, woah, I am going to be sick. Ughhh, my throat!

And only 10 more hours until I have to leave for work. Awesome.

Anyway, this is really just a quick post before I go curl up and die somewhere, to say that I've put a poll in the sidebar. As soon as I move, and everything is organized in my room, I am buying some manner of fucking work out equipment. Problem is, I'm torn. Bike? Elliptical? Treadmill? Dumbells? I mean I'll probably get the weights as well as the cardio equipment but I wanted another option and couldn't think of anything else.

So, vote in the poll and tell me what you think. Feel free to post a comment if you prefer something not on the list, or to elaborate on why you prefer that particular piece of equipment (more versatile, burns more calories, better cario, whatever).

Thanks for your help =]

Goodnight and sweet dreams darlings.

Xoxo
Vee

Revelation?

Hm, I just re-read my previous two posts and... maybe... I'm losing my shit and stressing out BECAUSE things are going so well?

I'm used to things breaking down and hitting rock bottom the instant that my life starts going well. So maybe... Things are going so well right now and I'm expecting another huge setback to fuck me up, somewhere around the corner. I don't know if I could deal with it.

So maybe I'm making myself stress out because I'm waiting for the second shoe to drop as it were.

I'm psychoanalyzing myself and I've never taken a psych class, I need to shut the fuck up.

I feel like such a screwup.

Fighting

...hopefully NOT a losing battle.

I'm in full-on binge mode. I can feel it swelling up inside of me. I'm not even hungry but the need to eat and eat and eat is almost overwhelming. Earlier it was just "good" homemade food that I wanted but now I'm in a place psycholigically where it doesn't matter what the fuck it is.

So far I've been okay. I've had a couple of the very small brownies I brought in, and lots of water, and nothing else. But when I go home, there is food. And I'm in a mood where I almost want to make a huge batch of peanut butter cupcakes and then devour all two dozen of them.

I feel like a complete failure admitting this because, although last week's food was bad and couldn't technically be called a "binge" I guess (portion control wasn't TOO bad), I've only been restricting properly for ONE fucking day and I'm already a mess.

Part of me is telling me to just get it out of my system. To eat everything I want tonight, and then throw away EVERYTHING so that the ONLY food left in the house is my aunts'. But I don't want to be a failure before I've even really gotten into it. If I had been restricting and fasting for two weeks, I could understand the need to binge that's welling up inside of me, that's cresting over me like a fucking tsunami. But I haven't. I've had one meal a day for the past two weeks, and that one meal has NOT been restrictive. Somewhere between bingeing and restricting is where I'd been. I want to say "normal" but normal people eat more than once a day, right?

But the fact of the matter is, I've gained weight. I don't know how much but I'm estimating that I have put back on the 5lbs I lost the week before. I am planning to NOT step on the scale until Saturday morning, that hopefully whatever damage was inflicted will be undone by then. Because if I look at the scale and see 200 again I... just have no idea how I'd react. Even when I weighed in at 198 a couple of weeks ago, it was bad but damn it, it was under The Magic Number.

So the huge other side of me is screaming at me not to fuck up. To be GOOD for fucksakes. To understand that my body can not possibly be that hungry and starved of nutrients and calories and shit. And even if it IS, that's just a better oppourtunity to let it burn and enjoy the ride.

I've never felt like this before. I've had my bingey moments, don't get me wrong. But I've never felt it like THIS and I don't know how to react or what to do. I don't want to give in. And if I do, I will feel worse than I do right now. So is it worth it? No, it's not. But I'm sure you out there can appreciate that it's not always up to us what we do and don't eat. And I'm terrified of fucking up, of being unable to get myself under strict control. Why was it so easy before Birthday Madness? That first week back here was so easy. And before all the shittaliciousness that caused me to fall off, back in February, it was so easy.

So why is it so hard right now?

Usually my drive to eat, my inability to reign in the fat monster inside of me, is linked with stress. But I'm not stressed right now!

Since I moved here I never really forged any close friendships except with my ex, who turned out to be a monster douche. Now I've got a really close friendship with S and I love her. My working life is going amazingly well. I just got a raise so I can stop obsessing over my half-year review coming up in six weeks, because obviously my manager is damn happy with me! I'm going on two rock ass vacations before the end of the year. I'll get to see my best friends for the first time in three years, and then laze around in the sun in a four-star hotel on a beach in Cancun. In a few weeks I'm moving to a slightly bigger house in a much nicer neighbourhood - once my trips are paid off I can look into buying some stuff for my room, to make it My Space (not to be confused with the social networking 'site). There isn't a man in my life right now, but for the first time in a while I'm not actually depressed over that fact.

Everything in my life feels like it's slowly starting to fall back into place, that the pieces of the puzzle are slotting themself together and I'm feeling optimistic for the first time since I can't even remember when.

So why do I feel like I'm losing my shit?

It's not just the whole wanting to binge and sabotage myself. I feel like something contained deep down inside is fighting to come out. That its bonds are cracking at the seams and something is going to explode. I feel like I'm going crazy.

Give me strength girls. And thanks for listening.

Bleghghghhgghgh

...Shit, I forgot what I even wrote about yesterday, let me go check.

Okay yeah, I already wrote about work. So, instead of writing about work more, I'm going to ramble.

Mostly the rambling is because I am SO god damned tired that it is unbelievable. So this is going to be terribly disjointed and retarded.

Yesterday wasn't too bad, in total I guess I had maybe 600 calories, which is more than I had intended but it could be worse. Still, it sucks.

Anyway while at work yesterday afternoon I decided I would bake, to bring into work. I guess it's some kind of "tradition" or whatev that when it's your birthday you bring something in, like something homemade or a buffet. But, I'm cheap, and no way am I going to traipse around the supermarket and spend £50 on food I'm not even going to eat. So instead I bought £12 worth of eggs and butter and vanilla and peanut butter and chocolate, and made my Peanut-Butter-And-White-Chocolate-Blondies instead.

I was going to make peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate frosting. But the problem there is that there would be NO WAY that I could possibly resist them. I fucking love peanut butter, and PB-Cupcakes would be amazing. And I also decided against them because, do you know what a pain in the ass it is to take cupcakes to work, on the bus?? Yeah.

God, I'm sorry. It's so counterintuitive to be talking about baked goods and stuff here, and I apologise if I'm awakening cravings in you. If it bothers you let me know and I'll try to cut it down/out ^.^

Anyway the Blondies are in a clip-top container thing on a desk near me, but I'm holding back and not having them. I also gave the rest of the previous batch to my neighbour's kids last night so woot.

I am so ridiculously tired today. My insomnia is rearing its ugly head with more force than usual. I knew I would be tired yesterday because my sleep schedule was thrown completely out of whack during my week off. But yesterday wasn't so bad, I was in bed by 11 and so tired I should have passed right out. Key words there being "should have." And when I finally did fall asleep, one of my aunt's cats came in trying to play with my cat and she was having none of it so she kept fighting with him. Finally at 5:30 I got up and had to shut him out so he'd stop bothering her.

When my alarm went off at 7, it was the WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD. Ugh. I feel sick - probably because I just downed my vitamins on an empty stomach with half a bottle of water, and taking my vitamins in the morning always makes me feel sick for some reason?? - and I'm so tired I almost fell asleep on the bus into work. And I'm starting to get a headache, and have no painkillers on me. All I have is this holistic herbal menthol gel stuff that you're supposed to rub on your forehead and it's supposed to make headaches go away. Yeah fucking right. And plus, the gel fucks up my makeup =/

And I'm totally craving food. Not just like your average binge-food. I don't want anything sweet and I don't want takeout or anything. I'm just craving something SUBSTANTIAL, and home-ey. Like the kind of food my grandma makes for Sunday dinners or used to have waiting for me when I got home from work. Which is EXACTLY the kind of food I do not need! Fatty roasted meats and lots of potatoes and shit. Sigh. What I really want right now is a full English breakfast. But I'm not going to get it. Because A: it's not worth the agony and feeling shit and self-sabotage. And also because I need to be saving money.

Seriously. The money I spent last week on Birthday Food And Stuff is ridiculous. In the end I've decided that, if I keep telling myself "V, you can not afford that MAC Lipstick" then why the fuck should I be able to take that same money (or more) and spend it on like pizza or something?

Exactly.

So, when I'm on the verge of giving in and buying something I should not be having, I think what I might do is transfer the cash into my savings instead. Or withdraw it and stash it somewhere.

Once I've finished paying off my credit card, I mean. Fucking flights and their costly.. costs.

Anyway. I'm rambling even more than I expected to, so that's all for now. I'll post up the SC2009 details at some point today, assuming I don't pass out at my desk and/or die from feeling like shit =]

Xoxo
Vee

Monday 18 May 2009

S2009 Challenge

Just a quick note to say that I'm going to put up all the details for this challenge in the near future, just what with last week I didn't want to be a hypocrite. In the meantime, for information on this challenge, please have a look at THIS blog =]

Xoxo

Vee

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.

Wednesday 13 May 2009

Happy B-Day x2

So today is my birthday. And also the day my braces were removed.

Well, I guess I should say YESTERDAY since it's just after midnight now but what the fuck ever.

I'll write more later but basically it's been a bad long weekend, sigh.

The braces are gone and the retainer is in place. And putting the retainer in and taking it out hurts like a mother. Hopfeully my teeth will stabilize soon and I won't want to cry everytime I touch the damned things.

Still, it's all been worth it and the teeth look better than I was expecting =] So glad I didn't bother with the teeth-removal-plus-extra-18-months-in-braces proposal. <3

Hope you're all okay. I'll try to remember to do a proper update tomorrow. If I have the energy. You'd think being off work this week I'd be sleeping BETTER than usual, but you would be wrong. Sigh.

Night darlings!
Vee xox

Friday 8 May 2009

Operation: Door Slam

Was a failure.


My aunts didn't say anything about me being noisy this morning. But yesterday when I was woken up I put my facebook status as "V... has a monster friggin headache and is not happy about being woken up while trying to sleep it off =/" and today my aunt commented and said "we are allowed to have guests over in our own home!"

So tonight nobody said anything (I checked this at work before I came home) but while we were in the car I was laughing about what some mutual friends had written on one of my status updates last week. And my aunt commented that "Yeah I replied to yours with this" and laughed. So I was like "Yeah well it wasn't the guests that woke me up." Which she should have known.

Because last night I SAID to her "She woke me up banging the bathroom door last night" but tried to make it into a joke by saying I really needed to get up and do my hair anyway. Just because I hate conflict and don't want to start an argument with my aunt...

Anyway so today she was like "well then what did wake you up?" and I said "the bathroom door banging." Conveniently J kept out of this entire conversation even though she was driving the car we were in. And then my aunt said (half-jokingly, she always says things that annoy her half-jokingly, so I never know HOW Serious she is about shit but whatever) "You're a little bugger for making noise at night, especially if you have your earplugs in!"

Of course, I know I NEVER make noise at night. It's only maybe once a week (if that) that I even get up to use the bathroom at night with my earplugs in. And even if I do get up my bedroom door is gay and sticks and bangs when you OPEN it, no matter how careful you are. You have to force it out of the jamb, in part I think because the carpet and underlay in here is a little too tall for the door so it sticks. Anyway. When I close my door and the bathroom door however I am always SO FUCKING QUIET. So I can only assume she was using this morning's noise to bring it up, since I haven't made any noise in months and my aunt hasn't brought it up in months. But of course somehow "the two bangs I made this morning on purpose" turned into "I bang every single night multiple times" which is bullshit.

Of course again I just ignored it because I didn't want to start a fight. I should have gone on about how ACTUALLY I make an effort and it's J who wakes me up EVERY NIGHT. I usually tend to go to bed earlier than them due to my insomnia. It sounds like a contradiction but I always figure, the earlier I get to bed and eventually fall asleep, the most cumulative hours I'll have stacked up by the time my alarm goes off, in between waking up a billion times. And Every Single Night J bangs around in the bathroom.

So, I was too much of a pussy to turn it into a fight this afternoon.

It doesn't help that they got me a really nice silver charm bracelet with two charms (a union jack / UK flag, and a dolphin) for my birthday and let me open it today even though it's not my birthday until Tuesday. Now I'm looking forward to adding charms =] So I couldn't be a bitch, sigh.

Anyway, they're going away tomorrow and I'll have a big quiet house all to myself for two weeks. Awesome.

And also, the rest of my ED books and stuff came today =] So I've got my 200 Under 200 book which I'll start transcribing to my ED-Foodblog this weekend whoo! And two more tarot books and my new Wiccan Oracle Cards which are pretty awesome - the card feels a little flimsy but they're so beautifully illustrated so I love them.

And we spent half the day at work doing tarot readings - I thought I'd be in shit because half the team was using my "communal" cards (I only have one deck that I'll let other people use, the rest I'll let people shuffle for readings but won't let people "play" with them) and trying to do readings for themselves. And no work got done for like two hours. But then my manager had me show him how to do it and was all enthusiastic for me to show another guy / supervisor dude in my team who sits next to him, so obviously he didn't mind, which rocks. I really like my manager =] He looks a little bit like a shorter Johnny Depp, too

Anyway, I'm tired so I'm going to try to get to sleep early - my aunts are waking me up at 5 tomorrow morning so I can say goodbye before they leave - so I'll talk to you guys tomorrow.

Muchlove!

Vee xox

Dream of Freedom

I've just been chatting over MSN to a friend of mine, who we shall call R. Because it is his first initial and I'm pretty sure we don't have an R in our story yet =]

Anyway. He's... I don't want to say a hippie type but it's probably the best way to describe him. He's all dreadlocks and political opinions and reefer. But that isn't all he is. He's very intelligent and very wise beyond his years, even though he's only a year older than I am. I find there are very few people these days that I can actually have a real, meaningful conversation with, and even fewer people that I can be my completely real self around. So many people don't appreciate certain sides of my personality and sometimes, although I still consider myself an individual and don't really care much what people think of me, I find myself editing out the pieces I know people don't appreciate. Like the swearing or the constant sarcasm or the fact that I'm a mean, nihilistic, cynical bitch who has zero faith or respect in humanity, and laughs her ASS off at dead baby jokes.

R gets all of these parts of my personality and I think that's why we get along so well; in many ways, we're pretty similar people.

We met when he came into my team at work as a temp a little over a year or so ago, and I made up some training notes for him and the other new person to use. We didn't talk a GREAT deal at the time, because I was pretty new to the team myself and can be introverted and shy when the mood strikes me, and he's the same way. He told me later that he's the kind of person who wraps up who they really are and doesn't really let himself loose around people he doesn't know. Ironically, it was his last day here, the day before he left to go into a much better job that his immense artistic talent was much more suited for, that those walls broke down. We talked and we joked and it was awesome. We clicked like old friends. And then, of course, he left.

We have kept in touch though, talking on occasion over facebook but more often by chatting on MSN. Our conversations vary between meaningless chatter about our day or a video game, to more deeper, introspective stuff that forces us to really think. And it's nice to have that variety, you know?

But one major difference between R and myself is that he is so much more free, so much more... independent. He sees what he wants and he charges ahead to get it. And I respect him SO much for that, I don't think he realizes.

He's planning on moving to Korea, and just now told me that he'll have to put it off for a while because when you land in Korea they do blood tests, and he said he would be deported as soon as they found traces of cannabis in his system. This in and of itself is a huge deal, and a step I wish I was brave enough to take. He's moving to Korea ON HIS OWN. I could never just take a leap and move to a completely foreign country all alone. Yes, I moved from Canada to England once I turned eighteen, but that is so not the same thing. I had a firm support net here, and moved in with family immediately. My family supported and continue to help support me. If I didn't have them here, I would not have moved, it's that simple.

But while he's waiting to go to Korea, he's going hitch-hiking and backpacking around Europe. On his own. And again, that is something I really admire about R. That he's fearless and just goes ahead and does these things. Sometimes he feels much wiser and more worldly than I am and I feel embarassed, because he's only one year older than me. And surely that one year doesn't make THAT big of a difference, does it?

R is an old soul. That's the only way I can think to describe him.

Anyway. He asked if I'd like to go along with him, and you know what? I would, very much. I would love to drop everything and get a bag of stuff and just leave. To see the world (Europe at least) and not from a tourist-in-a-hotel perspective. It's so much more REAL to do the backpacking trip instead of spending several thousand on booking a hotel and first-class flights. It's something I would love very much to do.

But I can't. I have so many other things holding me back, strings tied around me and anchoring me here. To my home and to my job. Things I can't just drop, not without a lot of planning in advance. I'd like to think that if I didn't have so many obligations and things I need to do in the next six months, I'd just go. But the truth is, I don't know if I would, if I could LET myself. Maybe it's not my life and my plans and obligations, but myself that holds me back.

He's said he might be screwed because if things don't go well he has no home or job to come back to, but I've told him I've got a spare bed he's more than welcome to if he needs somewhere to sleep, he could probably get a temp job back here again. But I have every faith that he'll be just fine, that things will be amazing and he'll have the trip and experiences of a lifetime.

So right now, I guess I'm a little sad. I'm wishing him all the best on his trip and hope he stays in touch. But right now I find myself mourning that little piece inside of me that maybe I never had to begin with. That piece that is ready, able, and willing to embrace freedom and just let go of all the restraints holding it back.

I wonder if I'll ever be able to be that person.

What the Fuck

Why can't I sleep?

I've had issues with my sleeping patterns for years. Then after my ex left me, I was lucky to sleep an hour a night. It's not that bad now, but I'm feeling so drained and worn out. Last night I went to bed before midnight (and then it took me at least two hours to get to sleep) and woke up no fewer than nine times that I can remember. And each time it took me forever to get back to sleep again.

After The Breakup, my doctor prescribed me a sleeping pill called Zopiclone, told me to try it for a week and see if it helped. It didn't. It made me really fucking tired but didn't help me actually fall asleep - and it definitely didn't make me STAY asleep. I just wound up feeling worse in the morning because on top of the not-sleeping, I was also feeling hungover, which my doctor told me is a side-effect of the medication.

I reported back and she basically told me that if it wasn't working, there was no sense in giving me another sleeping pill and dosing my body up with medication it doesn't need.

I still. Can't. Sleep.

It's driving me crazy. This week for some reason has been particularly bad, and I'm sitting at my desk at work typing this and I could quite easily pass out. Only, if I did pass out it would only be for ten minutes until something woke me up and I couldn't get back to sleep again anyway.

Thursday 7 May 2009

Commence Operation: Door Slam

I'm a bitchy vindictive cunt but I do not care.

I came home, had a sandwich because my head was banging, and decided to go to bed for a nap to try to sleep it off.

Twenty minutes later I'm woken up when J comes up to use the bathroom. And BANGS the door. Our doors are such that, unless you turn the handle when you close them they bang and the metal clicks very loudly into place. When I first moved in, I did not realize that, and my aunts actually told me off and said "do you know how to TURN A HANDLE?" and since I realized hey, these doorknobs are fucking retarded, I have made every conscious effort to do so.

I'm always very careful and quiet when other people are asleep because I know how much it fucks me off when people wake me up for no good reason.

But nearly every single night, J bangs and clicks and talks loudly because SHE DOES NOT POSSESS AN INSIDE VOICE. Which is one of the reasons I sleep with earplugs (A: because certain people can not talk quieter than a shout and tend to do so very late when other people are trying to sleep and B: THE SNORING OH MY GOD).

It pisses me off all the time, but today REALLY got to me. Because here I am in bed, sick, with a fucking migraine shooting through the right side of my head, and BANGBANGCLICK! Two minutes later as she goes back downstairs BANGBANGCLICK! And I know damn well that if the situations were reversed she would have torn me a new one.

For. Fuck. Sakes.

So, Operation: Door Slam.

Myaunts leave Saturday morning so it probably doesn't matter, but J is off work tomorrow and as such does not have to get up at 7am like we usually do and I am REFUSING TO TURN A DOOR HANDLE for the next 24 hours. I could be a man about it and just say "so dude, do our "house rules" only apply to me or something?" but instead I want to piss her off so I can say "EXACTLY THANK YOU NOW FUCKING STOP IT"

...because I am a bitchy vindictive cunt. And also because I fucking feel like ruining someone's day now because mine has been thoroughly ruined.

My Addiction

And I don't mean food. Food, I can fight off with enough thought and will power and distraction. My other addiction is more all-consuming than such trivial things as tasty food to put in my mouth and make me fat.

I think I mentioned once or twice before that I'm a Beauty Blogger and have a YouTube channel, which I endeavour to ONE DAY actually do something more constructive with than ramble about randomness, do the odd half-assed review, and maybe one or two eyeshadow tutorials. Sigh, right now it all very much sucks and I haven't posted anything in over a week, partly because I haven't been able to think / find the motivation / time to do anything new, and partly because I've been concentrating actively harder on THIS blog rather than that one. But I need to get my ass in gear because damn it, beauty and makeup is something I'm very passionate about.

To my own detriment.

Mostly I'm a big fan of MAC makeup. It is wonderful, and I've even successfully applied for a MAC Pro membership which means I get 40% off when I order over the phone. So yay. And today two new collections came out. Which means today, I have even less money than the none I usually have. But I can't stop myself.

The thought of not getting BOTH of the beauty powders that HAVE THE SHAPE OF A ROSE BLOOM EMBOSSED ONTO IT OH MY GOD!! was just entirely inconceivable. I made my order and not ten minutes later was kicking myself for not getting that gorgeous pinkey-mauvey nail polish (which I then had to go on MAC's website to order separately even though I wouldn't be getting it discounted because god damn it, I had to have it)

This is why saving up for Canada and Mexico by September is going to be so fucking hard for me.

I can deal with not being able to get a laptop until the end of the year. I want a new, decent, super-high-res camera too, but I'm going to deal with my 2megapixel Fuji FinePix S5500 Zoom and my 5-megapixel Sony Cybershot cameraphone instead because hey, I can live without a professional-quality digital camera, right? A Canon or a Nikon can wait another year. I can even deal with the fact that the wardrobe that I can actually wear right now is limited to like four tank tops, two tee-shirts, two hoodies, two pairs of jeans, two pairs of work trousers, and maybe five work tops (a couple of which are too big but since I wear a cardigan you can't really tell). I mean, that amount of clothing is a fuck of a lot more than I had growing up (in high school I had like two or three pairs of plain black trousers, two tank tops, and like two tee-shirts. And a hand-me-down pair of sneakers, of which the sole of one had torn straight down the middle of the shoe all the way through and when I walked to school in hip-deep snow, I might as well have been walking fucking barefoot. I shit you not.) I can wait to go clothes shopping until I've lost weight, or at least until I've lost SOME weight and am in Canada and things are cheaper.

I can even put off getting bedroom furniture that I'm after (like a vanity table or storage units or a fucking mirror) or wanting to redecorate (the terra cotta carpet in the new house is hideous, for real).

But I can't put off buying makeup. Every month MAC has a new collection out, most of which are limited edition items. And immediately my brain goes into a frenzy and starts crunching numbers and firmly shouting at me that I HAVE TO GET THAT ITEM TOO OR THE WORLD WILL EXPLODE.

All of this is to say that I've bought makeup today that I know I don't need, but that I NEED with every fibre of my being.

And thank fucking god that my relationship with food is not this insane.

Scratch That

No SlimFast. I'm going to Starbucks instead to feed my cravings.

I think I'm going to get a light caramel frappucinno - only 192 kcals for a Venti, which is less than my slimfast and I'll enjoy it a hell of a lot more.

Also, my stomach is starving. AWESOME.

I might have half a sandwich or something, because my headache is getting worse.

So why the fuck am I getting coffee?

Well, I WAS going to get a mocha or a caramel macchiatto or a vanilla soy latte. But hot coffee makes my headaches worse, wheras cold coffee is usually okay. And the iciness I can hold against my forehead to freeze some of the pain >.<

So yeah. We'll see. I'll buy a skinny muffin or a sandwich and keep it on the sidelines. If my headache gets worse I'll have some. If not, I'll save it for dinner or something. But my head is pounding right now so I'd rather be safe.

Headache!

Bleh.

First things first: no weigh in today. Or tomorrow, probably.

Last night, around 10-10:30ish I was on my computer chatting to a good friend of mine. I'm running out of abbreviations here. I can't call him J because J is my aunt's partner and I can't call him D because D is my best guyfriend back home. So we'll call him J2. And also the "J that has a penis"

So anyway. We were chatting and being generally bitchy and irritated with the world at large, which is kind of our thing. He may or may not be losing his job due to his regional managers being gay retards (he manages a store) and the fact that they do not like that he is a human being to his staff. GOD FORBID. THAT IS BAD. Although, as I told him last night:

"So basically you're maybe losing your job because you're NOT an asshole who shits on people for fun? Well no, technically you ARE an asshole, just not to peoples' faces. So that doesn't count."

Anyway, suddenly I started getting the odd random lights flashing in front of my eyes. I just call them "flashies" but I guess the current scientific/medical term is a "migraine aura" or something. My aunt gets them nearly every time she's about to get a migraine. I do not get them often at all. I think in the past 17++ years of suffering from migraines, I've had flashies maybe half a dozen times?

Anyway for me, "flashies" mean bad times. I only ever get them if I'm going to get a more horrendous migraine than usual, and you may think "horrendous" and "migraine" are synonyms already and using them together is redundant, and ordinarily you would be right. But migraine attacks preceded by flashies are, for me, something I would gladly trade for a night in the woods with a serial killer. Or maybe an embolism?

So, bad times, I popped some painkillers and went to bed. I've got a headache today but not a proper attack, and I keep getting the occasional flash of light on my periphery. Unfortunately, guess what, NO MIGRAINE MEDS STILL.

The migraine meds I take are not strictly prescription-only (I think they were back in Canada but here if you go to a pharmacy and ask for them and tell them you've had them before they'll give them to you) so I can buy them over the counter at any pharmacy. My doctor tells me to take them, refuses to give me a prescription for something stronger, so I just keep buying them. J (not to be confused with J2 With A Penis)'s doctor has given her a prescription for them, so she just gets it refilled that way.

Now, here's where it gets retarded.

My doctor didn't give me a prescription for THESE ones because the standard cost of prescriptions here is more expensive than standard-size of these anyway. My aunt's partner however has a prescription for the double-size boxes so she essentially gets twice as many pills for nearly the same cost.

Obviously my doctor is an idiot. The reason I don't have any migraine meds right now is because I can't afford to buy them, and also my aunt and J took my last half-dozen pills. Rockin'.

Speaking of my doctor. Two years ago I had some blood tests done. My ex had just left me for another woman and I'd had to move out of our home together and back in with my grandparents. And the stress of it all and the utter heartbreak and depression was taking a huge toll on me. I was being sick every day, had no appetite, couldn't sleep AT ALL, and this feeling of nausea and dizziness was constant, for months. Of course, my doctor assumed off the bat that of course I must be pregnant, even though I told her that A: I'm on the pill and B: my ex CAN NOT HAVE KIDS BECAUSE HIS BODY DOES NOT PRODUCE SPERM. But she was all "hey, anything can happen."

Of course, that came back negative so she decided to do a batch of blood tests to rule out anything scary causing my symptoms - and of course, did another pregnancy test to be sure (and for those weeks my grandmother pissed me off relentlessly by saying EVERY DAY "I think you're pregnant, you know" fuck off please?).

Things came back mostly okay, I didn't have any diseases and wasn't diabetic or anything. I personally thought maybe I'd be anaemic, because I had most of the signs, most specifically the CONSTANT FUCKING FATIGUE. I was surprised to find out my problem was the opposite - my RBC, Haemoglobin and Platelet counts were all marginally too HIGH rather than too low, which it was I was expecting to hear.

My doctor said they weren't so far out of whack as to be panicking or anything (even though all of these things can be signifiers of bigger problems) but said she'd redo the tests in 3 months to see if things are back to normal/have balanced out, or are the same - and to check things aren't getting worse.

I haven't been back to my doctor since, there isn't even a note on my file to say that I should go have tests done. When I called a couple months ago to order a repeat prescription of my BCP, there was nothing, and I'm fucking not about to invite myself over for a blood test that nobody knows anything about.

Wow, I'm rambling so much lately.

Anyway the actual point of this post is just that my head hurts and I want to go home but instead I am stuck at work and it is only 9:30 in the morning. I've been here for an hour but it feels like three. I'm leaving at 4:30 and it can not come fast enough. That's six hours from now. I might actually die of old age before I get to leave.

I'm such a drama queen, I know.

I didn't have time to find a container to put my blueberries in this morning, so instead I've brought a coffee SlimFast for lunch. And, this is probably gross and too much info, but everytime I have coffee slimfast shakes, it makes my pee smell like coffee. And not yummy sweet starbucks coffee either, like really horrible cheap 4p-a-jar instant freeze-dried coffee. From Netto.

Wednesday 6 May 2009

Ramblematic

I'm too tired to string together too many coherent sentences, let alone profound ones. So instead I'm going to remain off topic and talk about laptops.

Dell is out, since I posted my question I've heard a lot of bad things.

The Macbook is still a maybe because, well, it's not been majorly dissed. The thing is, do I need to spend a grand on a new laptop when all I want it for is like surfing the internet, chatting, and maybe playing some web games? Probably not.

Toshiba was suggested, and I think the laptop I had with my ex was a Toshiba. Which is an option, but that mother really slowed down after a while (although at the time I was running the Sims 2 on it with like four expansion paks so it was my own fault)

Haven't heard much about Vaio's yet so I'll need to do some research.

I'm probably not buying until after September anyway, since that's when the Canada trip is over with and I've finished paying off the all-inclusive trip to Mexico (assuming of course that Swine Flu hasn't eradicated the human species by then, how lame), and I might actually have some money to my name again.

But I needed something else to occupy my mind today. I've decided not to weigh in until... well. Shit I don't know. I was going to weigh in on Saturday when my aunts had gone, so I had free reign to fast for the weekend in entirety. But then I remembered, birthday family meal out on Friday night, so Saturday will be bad times. I might wait until Tuesday and weigh in on my birthday. Right now it's not looking like much loss will happen for the next week or so.

1. Friday night - meal out with family
2. Saturday through Sunday - eat as little as possible
3. Monday - out for a Chinese buffet with grandparents for my birthday
4. Tuesday through Thursday - in too much pain to eat, yay
5. Friday - baking with my friend S, but told my neighbour and her kids that I will be passing goodies over to them =] And taking leftovers to work the following Monday. She did, however, ask me to make my linguine for us while she's over here.
6. Saturday - Cocktails and dinner with S at TGI Friday's. Not sounding very promising.

But after that I've got a full seven days in which I have no engagements or obligations, and no aunts at home to supervise / try to feed me.

If I can make it through the next week it should be easy sailing. My aunts aren't too bad, last night they made Shepherd's Pie and I did have to eat some of that, but my aunt asked me tonight if I wanted any before she made her tuna pasta bake. So hopefully I can keep going with more of the same and just constantly spew out the nothankyou's and hope they will listen. I'm a bit more hopeful after actually being asked tonight for the first time =]

I'm taking a banana and some blueberries to work tomorrow. Nothing else on the menu! I've got some hummus I should eat before it goes off, but I'm beyond caring about the waste now. I might throw it out anyway so it's not there to taunt me when I open the fridge =]

I'm going to bed. It's only 10 but I am a zombie right now so I need to pass out.

Night lovelies!
Vee xox

Laptop Advice?

So. I'm bored and looking at laptops online. But I am also indecisive so I want your advice, ladies.

I want to get a laptop toward the end of the year, which means I'm going to spend the next six months researching laptops, probably. All the same, I'd like your input as to what YOU would get if you could / what you have and why you love it.

I'm currently debateing between:

A white MacBook, even though I have never used a Mac computer in my life (not counting junior high because I do not even remember those computers). The pluses? It's SO PRETTY. I've heard good things about them and did I mention they're gorgeous? And have a great built-in webcam which is good.

A Dell of some description, maybe their new one that comes in six colours. The plus here is that it is cheaper.

Maybe a Sony Vaio? I do not know.

Which should I go for? Ignore the fact that I'm not buying RIGHT THIS MINUTE, I still like to make my decisions before I spend half a year second-guessing them =]

Six Days From Now

I will be 23 years old. Emphasis on the old.

And also my braces will be gone.

This blog entry needed to be made simply because I HATE MY BRACES.

Back in the day, as it were, I loved them. They hurt so much but the hurt was so good because by GOD they were working! The way my teeth would move overnight and from one week to the next was astonishing to me. They didn't rub like I was expecting them to - which is not to say that they didn't rub at all, oh no - and I very quickly got used to them.

At one point, I thought I might actually miss them when they were gone.

But let me tell you, right now I am THIS CLOSE to tearing the fucking things out of my face myself.

My teeth are straight and in-line and no actual moving has occurred for the past several weeks, except for twisting the roots of one canine into a slightly more upright position. So why the fuck are ALL OF THE MOLARS ON THE LEFT SIDE hurting so much?

I think I can blame that naan bread and hummus I had a few days ago. The bread must have wedged under my braces where it pressed into my gumline everytime I chewed, because the gums between two teeth back there have been very sore ever since. But today all the god damn teeth hurt, and I just want this metal out of my mouth, very very much.

I can't wait for them to be gone. This time on Tuesday I should hopefully be walking out of my orthodontist's office with a shiny (well, clear) new retainer over my naked teeth. It sounds so naughty, I can't wait.

I'm taking several painkillers and maybe one or two valerian root pills because I am a bag of stress when shit like this happens. My teeth are extremely sensitive to everything now, and the drilling to get the extra glue off is not going to be fun. Blech. At least I have an excuse to not eat for several days.

I'm so fed up, so I needed to have a bitch. That is all.

Six Days And Counting.

Vee xox

Boredom is gnawing away at me

I'm at work. I just finished 8.34 hours worth of work in 2.41 hours.

Which means that I can take the rest of the day relatively easy if I want to. Once I finish the rest of the work that I've got lined up for the day, I'll have done 12.18 hours of work in an 8 hour day.

My job could not be easier. I need to stop bitching about it.

That said, though, I'm bored and wish I had something interesting to occupy my time. I think I'm up to date on blog reading, and I can't afford to shop online, so I don't know what to do with myself now.

Only 5 and a half more hours until I can go home. Bring it on, baby.

Speaking of which

I just ate half a bag of grapes.

Awesome. So tasty and now I am not hungry.

Score!

How the fuck

do you find a man?

Especially a decent one?

But at this point, just A MAN!

God.

I Have No Idea...

...what I weigh today.

After yesterday's badness, I decided to not weigh in today because the numbers would just depress me. Especially since, my stomach itself feels empty and hollow and hungry, but the rest of my digestive system feels crammed full and bloated. I can just imagine ugh >.<

So no scales for me today.

I'm going to try so hard to behave today. What I want to do is nibble on some grapes at work and then go home and have lettuce soup. But I have no idea whether or not my aunts have some dumb meal planned again. I know they were going to make southern-fried-chicken wraps one night but I'm hoping its not tonight.

Why are they all of a sudden deciding to cook? When they know I'm trying to lose weight and would much rather not stuff 600+ calories worth of "real food" into myself at night.

Besides, yesterday was a really bad day. That horrifically horrible cottage pie at work. Then Shepherd's Pie at home (although we didn't have a packet of the sauce mix they usually use, so it was just normal gravy which probably saved me a few calories but not a large amount) and then I gave in and had an (admittedly small) slice of my aunt's Bakewell Tart-Thing.

And it was disgusting.

I went and did some of my Japanese course for half an hour before getting into bed. I was so tired I completely forgot to take off my makeup last night, and didn't even realize it until I was all crusty-panda-eyes this morning. Those who know me know that I'm pretty anal about my skincare and makeup and ALWAYS take it off at night because... well, I'm anal-retentive. So, that speaks for how worn out I was yesterday.

This morning I have a headache and feel like I haven't slept at all. My eyes feel puffy and a little swollen. I've taken some paracetimol but I still don't have any migraine meds so I'm probably going to be majorly screwed in a couple hours.

And I am SO HUNGRY.

I do not know what the hell is wrong with my body. I can restrict for several days and barely feel hungry at all, but I fucking binge like the huge pig that I am, and the next morning, before the food's even been digested, my stomach is screaming at me for something to eat.

I have eaten one grape so far. And however much I am completely CRAVING a big sausage sandwich, I am not going to cave today.

My grapes, they are good enough. And I am going to savor this hungry feeling. I will feel myself starving, and I will like it. Eat my fat away, go ahead, I beg you to do it.

In somewhat more serious news, when I got home last night my aunt's doctor HAD called her - though probably only because my aunt's partner J went to the doctor's office and demanded that she call (and then had to drop a passenger off at the office where my aunt's therapist works and popped in to see her secretary. Apparently the therapist is back in work today after being off for six weeks and J has left a message asking her to call my aunt and set up an appointment so she can see her before they go on vacation. My aunt is not at a very good point right now and when she doesn't see her fucking retarded, unreliable therapist, it gets even worse).

Anyway the doctor said she thinks that her enzyme levels were all out of whack because of... well, something to do with when she had her gallbladder removed late last year. My aunt has said that sometimes when she eats certain foods she still gets a dull ache where she used to have full-blown gallbladder attacks so bad that she thought she was having a heart attack and dying, so she thinks that the surgeon left a little of the tube in there and it's still reacting. If that's the case and it IS something like that whacking up her enzyme levels, the doctor said it WILL Delay her gastic bypass surgery.

My aunt is all depressed and was sobbing yesterday over it. She said she needs to have it done before we go to Mexico because, and I quote "I refuse to go to Cancun like THIS!"

I wanted to say she could join me on my diet. I'll make her fruit salads or healthy brown-bread sandwiches for lunch and she can start having weight watcher's frozen meals for dinner, or lettuce soup ;], and a fat free yogurt for dessert. I mean I realize that's not what I'M doing or anything but I could quite easily help HER diet "properly" if that's really what she wanted to do.

The problem is, it's not.

So, we'll see. She should hopefully get the blood work back this week and go from there.

We're also definitely moving at the beginning of June, which is going to be pretty damn hard if nobody gets any boxes. We have none and we've got nearly a whole house to pack up. If all goes according to plan and my book case and computer desk go in the spare bedroom, I'll have extra room in my bedroom and I'm going to see about having my aunt's treadmill set up in there. There's no point bringing it up to my room now if we're moving in a few weeks, and there isn't room anyway because my room is so small. And if she keeps saying she can't be bothered bringing it up to my room once we move, well then, I'll just buy my own damn treadmill or cross-trainer and have the delivery men bring it up for me =P

Mmm, I just need to say: rarely have grapes ever tasted as good as these. Eating healthy on an empty, starving stomach, makes it taste so much better.

Tuesday 5 May 2009

Hypochondria

Again.

So... I'm not feeling as shitty as before. I am, however, depressed. I very nearly left work when I spoke to my aunt this morning because... Well I wanted to be with her and support her. And mostly to be there if her doctor calls back so I can get the information right then and there about what's going on. As much as my aunt is a worst-case-scenario type of person, so am I.

I once trapped a nerve in my forearm that caused my thumb to twitch of its own volition for three days. At the time I was convinced it was Parkinson's Disease and soon I would be incapable of reading a book for the constant involuntary swaying of my head.

Every migraine screams BRAIN TUMOUR... it doesn't help that my father's mom died of breast/brain cancer, either (there is some dispute as to whether it was brain or breast cancer. My aunt says my dad told her it was the former, my grandmother has it in her head that it was the latter and therefore nearly every time I see her she makes some comment about how I should be getting mammograms and why isn't my doctor doing it? blah fucking blah. I'm sorry, but if I did have cancer I'd rather just let it kill me than spend years of suffering trying in vain to fight it off. Maybe that's a bit cynical and nihilistic of me, but it's the truth. So many people live full happy lives, get sick, and die a week later from terminal, inoperable cancer. But so many more find out they have cancer and spend YEARS going through painful treatments that don't do anything other than prolong their life for another week, month, year, which is all the while filled with more of the same. But I'm getting entirely off topic, what the hell was I talking about?)

Oh yeah, hypochondria.

So, of course, the first thing that springs to mind when my aunt called this morning was "oh god her liver is shutting down and she's going to need a transplant oh god I hope we have the same blood and tissue types, she can have half of mine, oh fuck." Which I suppose I could say makes me a selfless person all, here, have half of my kidney, k? I'm deluding myself, it's entirely selfish. Because my life would suck if she wasn't here. But again, I'm digressing.

The thing is, there was really no point in going home because I know my aunt as well as I know myself, and right this minute I know what she is doing. The TV is tuned to NicToons or some other cartoon network - probably showing back-to-back episodes of Spongebob or Fairly Odd Parents, while my aunt dozes snoringly on the sofa until dinner is ready. This is how her life goes, especially when she's in the deeper throes of her depression, where she is currently regressing further and further into each day. So being at home to support her would result mostly in me sitting in my room boredly all afternoon while she slept.

So, I've stayed at work. I can't let myself overreact or I'll have a panic attack. My work is easy but it keeps me busy and I'll find out when she does what the problem is and what the final results are. Chances are high that it will be something fairly minor, and I shouldn't be stressing out. But stress is what I do best.

Did I mention I was convinced that I had a tumour or some kind of serious scar-tissue-damage in my ear when I finally made myself go to my doctor about my tinnitus? I had myself fully convinced it would need lots of surgery and I would go deaf anyway.

So yeah.

Instead, I'm depressed and stressing on my own, and when I'm depressed one of two things happens.

The first is what happened when my asshole cheating ex left me to marry an ugly fat whore, and that was to be so depressed that nothing in my life mattered at all, which meant constantly considering suicide and being one step away from doing it and wishing, praying without cease (EVER) that I would go to sleep and not wake up, or that I would grow a pair and have the balls to do something about it. Nothing mattered except spending my energy trying to will myself to death. Including food. I stopped eating almost entirely, and I lost 30lbs in a couple of months.

The second way I deal with depression is similar yet opposite. I completely lack energy for anything at all. I spend most of my time sleeping, even though I never feel rested. And I eat. I eat and then I sleep and then eat and then sleep some more, and do not care what it is that I am putting in my mouth.

Today, after I spoke to my aunt, I glared at the bag of grapes on my desk and stomped to the canteen to order food. I ate a large serving of cottage pie, which may or may not have been made using fake potatoes, and which I'm pretty sure had baked bean sauce in instead of gravy. It was disgusting but I ate it.

And now I feel sick and bloated and regretful. Today, well, it's just a bad day. We all have them, so I'm trying not to be too hard on myself. Tomorrow is a new day and I will not allow myself to fuck up.

I need to make a conscious decision to choose Option A over Option B. That starvation is always, always preferable to bingeing. Because I felt AMAZING. I still weighed around 170lbs at the time, but damn it, I felt... beautiful and attractive for the first time in months. And even though I was depressed and wanted with all my will and every fibre of my being nothing more than to die, at least I looked good.

So, minus the symptoms of depression and huge urge to try to kill myself, that is what I need to turn back to. Food only has the value that we put upon it ourselves. If the food is something we need to fulfill a craving to feel full and bloated, then fill up on water and black coffee and green tea and sugarfree jello. If it's a flavour we need, then have a bite and SAVOUR IT. If it's an emotional reponse, then turn those emotions into something more constructive. Like will power. Like self-hatred, if it helps motivate yourself. To a more creative output, like art or poetry.

Comfort eating is not what it is chalked up to be. Comfort eating does not comfort me in the slightest, and I just wind up pissed off and more upset and depressed and angry than I was to begin with. And a whole lot LESS comfortable.

This is the lesson I'm choosing to take away from today. To turn my negative impulses into something else. Or at least, try to.

I apologise, because this reads really disjointed to me and doesn't seem to make much sense, but I had to get it out there anyway.

But maybe this is the emotional kick in the ass I've been needing to have to make the conscious choice between Road A and Road B. At the end of the day, if I give into the food and turn my back on my starving soul, I'll only succeed in winding up just like my aunt. I'm not ashamed to admit that my sense of self-worth is strongly tied to my weight and physical appearance. And I've chosen to do something about that: I just need to stick to it now.

God, I'm rambling again. I'm sorry, I can't help myself.

Today was my first true "binge". It consisted of one serving of one meal, but it's the first time I've ever really... gone there. For me a binge is usually giving into a craving. Or sometimes being forced to have a meal out and being unable to cut back on the calories and consumption. But today was mindless and emotion-driven and I could not stop myself even though I knew what I was doing, and somewhere deep inside it felt like something was doing this to me on purpose. That a self-destructive part of me, that hates me and does not want to see me succeed and be happy, made a conscious decision to ruin me.

I've made my mistake. I've learned from it. I'm moving past it. And I will be a stronger person because of it.

I'm such an ass

I feel like a jerk. All I ever write about is how much people irritate me, and that always seems to centre upon my aunts. Which is probably because I live with them and they're the people I have the most contact with but still, it isn't fair. Yes, things they do annoy me, but I am a very easy person to annoy. And I feel like such a fucking asshole for bitching about them. My aunt, especially.

I want to go back and delete my last post because it's not fair, but then I remind myself; it's bitchy, but it's true. My aunt talks through movies and that annoys me. I have a right to be annoyed, don't I? So why do I feel so guilty for writing it? As if she would ever read it anyway.

I feel guilty AS I write those kinds of things but after the fact the guilt is always more pronounced. The truth is, my aunt is my best friend and probably the one person I love the most in the world. She annoys me probably because she has the most OPPOURTUNITY to do so. Though my grandmother winds me up everytime I see her, which is like once or twice a week, and after ten minutes I kind of want to kill myself. I love her too, but god...

Anyway.

So I just had a missed call from my aunt and then a text.

I think I mentioned before that she had her preop last Thursday. That included taking 4 vials of blood for various tests, and on Friday evening we had a message on our answering machine asking her to go in because they had to redo one of the tests. My aunt stressed about it all weekend but I was convinced it was probably just a high white blood cell count, as she thinks she has an ear infection.

But, the text said that there may be a problem with her liver, she had her blood taken and the nurse told her that her "liver function test came back abnormal" but had no more information. So she's calling her doctor this morning to try and get her to call back when she has time later to talk about it and what they could potentially mean. My aunt is the kind of person to make a mountain out of a molehill (I get that trait from her =/) and something tiny becomes a constant source of stress. So something like this, a potential problem with her liver, well, I can only imagine what's going through her head right now. I called her back to make sure she was ok and see if there was anything else, but she had no more details. She's taken today off work and is heading home now.

So I'm hoping all comes back okay, or that any issues are easily treated, and that this does not stop her getting her weight loss surgery. However much I may disagree with weight loss surgery and look upon it with a certain level of distain, it's something that I can admit she does need. She doesn't have the will power to just stop. And she NEEDS to lose the weight because it is imposing a very serious risk on her health. But most of all because her self-image and self-confidence are both extremely low, and these things only work in favour of her depression and are just another nudge in her constant spiral down to self-harming and suicide attempts.

So... we won't find out for a few days, hopefully they push it through fast (my aunts leave for Spain on Saturday morning) so she'll get it sooner rather than later. And I hope she's okay.

Mostly though, I feel like a fucking jerk.

Shit

Yep. Back up 1lb to 144.4

Not surprised, I fully expected it. But still disappointed.

The worst part? My aunts appear to have arranged for proper "family, sit-down" dinners all this week until they go away. Tonight's culprit is Shepherd's Pie. Nobody told me, hey, you need to be home by x time because that is when we will have dinner ready. So, I was kind of planning to do overtime until maybe 7, come home and be all, "oh well you didn't tell me I had to be home at a certain time" so I wouldn't have to eat WITH them at least.

But, I just got into work and there is almost no actual WORK to speak of. An assload of people came in on overtime over the long weekend and basically got through everything, especially the easy stuff. All that seems to be left to do involves calling people to find out what they want before we can do it, and I hate doing phone work. If I wanted to be on the phones all day I would have gotten a job at a fucking call-centre (not that any of them actually exist in the UK anymore).

So, there is no overtime, which means I'll more than likely have to leave at 5 because there just isn't enough work to keep me going beyond that, which means I'll be home while dinner is cooked and served and if I don't finish it all then by GOD there has to be something wrong!

They drive me crazy sometimes. If I'm not laughing and peppy and full of energy, there must of course be something wrong. Case in point: Sunday night.

First we were watching The Ruins on dvd, and my aunt talked through the ENTIRE THING. Now this almost always irritates me because I, for one, would like to watch the movie without a fucking commentary every thirty seconds. Sometimes she is so bad for this that I want to explode. A few months ago while we were watching episodes of season 1 of Lost, it got to the point where I wasn't even concentrating on the tv anymore because I couldn't even hear what was going on, and was instead counting my head the number of seconds between her TALKING.

The longest she lasted in silence? 42 fucking seconds. Through THREE EPISODES OF LOST.

So, Sunday night she was doing the same thing and I was trying very hard not to get annoyed. At one point I had my head cocked and was almost squinting at the screen in concentration to hear what the fuck was going on over her voice. And she looked at me and said "what's wrong?" and I said "I can't hear anything" and she ignored me and kept talking.

At the end, once again, she kept jabbering. It also annoys me when people are watching a movie and say "such and such is going to happen. I TOLD YOU! Didn't I?" Her partner is worse than she is for that (J has a tendency to "predict" what is going to happen and then be all "TOLD YA!" even if it's a movie WE HAVE SEEN BEFORE and I just want to scream out THANKS FOR STATING THE OBVIOUS, CAPTAIN RETARDO! YOU DID NOT "TELL ME" SHIT!" Obviously, I am a very mean, mean person with serious rage issues. Moving swiftly on) So of course my aunt is all "this is going to happen. I can see it. Just watch! AHA SEE I TOLD YOU DIDN'T I?!" and I just kind of ignored her. And because I wasn't giggling in awe of her AMAZING film-predicting talent (even though she herself admitted "it kind of sucks how so many movies are so damn predictable these days, huh?" and figuring out the end is not, therefore, a huge act of talent or skill) she turned and said, in an almost offended tone "what's wrong with you?!"

When she says that to me, and especially in that tone, I want to scream. My aunt suffers from severe depression and possible bipolar disorder. When she's down, she's quiet, bitchy, and sleeps like every single hour that she isn't at work. But it's OKAY for her to not be the sunny life of the party, and that is what pisses me off: something must be WRONG if I am quiet or tired or not laughing my ass off every single second of every single day. But she doesn't even ASK "is something the matter?" in a tone that sounds caring or halfway interested. No, I get an abrupt "what's wrong with you!?!?!" instead.

WELL GEE SINCE YOU ASKED SO NICELY...

I'm not saying that something is always bothering me, but sometimes there IS something and I'm not going to talk about my feelings to somebody who acts like that.

In this case, the something wrong could have been summed up by "If you're not going to watch the motherfucking movie, then tell me and I will go watch it on my computer instead so you can sit and talk yourself in peace, because I, for one, would actually like to hear what the fuck is going on."

But it's perfectly okay for her to shush other people. If J is talking my aunt will hush shush shush shutupplease her until she is quiet. God forbid if I did.

Incidentally, that time with Lost? I even told her "you know, the longest you went without talking was 42 seconds" and she just laughed it off and said she was bored because she'd seen it before. She was the one who wanted to rewatch them. Otherwise, again, I'd have just watched the episodes on my computer in peace and silence.

God, I'm turning into a ranty old asshole of a woman aren't I?

And obviously, every little thing can really piss me off. But yeah, I was super anoyed the other night and I can't help myself.

I forgot what else I was actually going to write about here, so I'll leave off with that for now and write more as and when I can think of something else. In the meantime, I need to try to scrounge up some work to do =/.

Much love ladies, and I hope you're all having a better start to the week than I am. Four "family" meals together, and I'm home free for nearly two weeks. Bring it on.

Also, this time next week I will be sitting in my orthodontist's office and waiting for my braces to come off. Fuck yeah! I will also, however, be old. Fucking birthdays.

Starve on,
Vee xox

Monday 4 May 2009

Fatigued! [and more tarot-ey goodness]

So, today started off kind of a busy day.

I was in a bad mood to start off with, mostly because I couldn't sleep at all last night, ugh. Then I had to get up and go to the mall with my aunts, because they needed to buy a new vacuum (long story short: ours broke, but we had my aunt's partner's brother's because he lives in Spain and we're buying their house and everything in the house comes with it and they told my aunts sure, take the vacuum. But they're back in the UK for a few weeks now and asked for it back so my aunt just had to go spent a hundred pounds on a new one, sigh)

God, okay, sidenote: just changed the batteries in my keyboard and I can finally type like a normal fucking human being again!!!

Anyway, so I also needed to get some birthday presents for my aunt's partner and my grandfather, plus birthday cards for both of them and one to send to my brother in Canada. I could not find a decent frigging graduation card, so I'm going to have to have another look sometime this week, but there's a nice store up the road from where I work that sells handmade ones so I might get one from there...

((another sidenote. An online friend just messaged me on AIM to say "catch ya tomorrow". I haven't spoken to her in over a week, why the hell start a conversation to say goodbye? Fucking weird ass people))

So I got J (aunt's partner's) present right off the bat. She's into Scrabble and has borrowed my DS version to take on holiday with her, so I bought her her own. It's her birthday while she's away and she'll have mine anyway but at least she'll have her own to keep her busy back home. And for my grandfather I got him a couple nice polo-neck tees from Mark and Spencers, because that's what he told me he wanted. Well, that was some confusion over that. At his house on Saturday he gestured to the top he was wearing and said "I just want some more of these" so fine, I thought, get him some short-sleeved tops. Then my aunt spent today convincing me that what he wanted was some sweatshirts, and that the long-sleeved top I got him for Christmas was a "thin sweater" but he was like a "jogging top" instead. And I was like, dude, I got him one of EACH of those kinds for Christmas, and anyway why the hell would he be asking me for more sweaters when it's almost summer, and this is a man who is almost always twenty degrees warmer than the average human being?

So we get to M&S and my aunt has me absolutely convinced he wants a thick sweater, and I'm going what the fuck. Of course, in May nowhere sells thick sweatshirts, just cardigans and thin long-sleeved tops. So I'm wandering around muttering about how this whole thing is retarded and wondering where the hell my aunt decided he meant a long-sleeved sweatshirt to begin with. So she said "well he said he wants some more sweaters" and I said "No, he pointed to what he was already wearing and said "some more of these tops"" and my aunt was like "oh, maybe it is then, but grandma said.. hangon I'll check"

So she called my grandparents' house and my grandfather answers the phone. She asked for my grandma, wanting to be all sly and not let him know we're shopping for him right now, but she was out and instead of just ASKING HIM WHAT HE WANTED she hung up. So I wanted to call back but didn't want to be an idiot, so I just went and bought him some nice short-sleeved tops instead. For. Fuck. Sakes.

Why did that have to be so god damn difficult?

After this we went and bought our respective birthday cards, and while I was waiting in line my aunt told me she'd meet me down at Argos because they were going to go buy a vacuum / wait for it to be brought out front from the storage area. So about two minutes later I was done and trekked down to Argos; and they're not fucking there. Do not get all impatient and tell me to meet you somewhere and then not be there! Like I said I was in a bad mood to begin with this morning, so by this point I was irritated and called my aunt to ask where she was. After ringing eighty times she picked up - I didn't think she would, earlier when she told me to meet her at HMV I called her 4 times to make sure she was still there and she didn't answer her phone - and told me she was in a shoe store. So I waited, and was still annoyed.

By this time, my back was starting to ache and I hadn't had anything to eat or drink all day and it was around 1:30 and I was super thirsty and had totally crashed. My blood sugar levels were probably close to zilch and I was getting a headache. After they ordered the vacuum though, we managed to get the fuck out of there.

In the car, I decided that since I was about to pass out, I'd make the pasta early. That way it would also be out of the way and I'd have the afternoon to digest it and hopefully get it out of my system before the dreaded weigh-in tomorrow morning. So we got home and I got cooking and the pasta was amazing, and then the aunts went for naps and I came to my room to chill and wound up doing a few of the Japanese lessons on my Rosetta Stone software (woot for learning!)

Just as I climbed into bed for a mid afternoon nap to supplement the lack of sleep last night, my aunt knocked on my door. They were heading to my aunt's partner's brother's house to take the vacuum back to them and my aunt asked me if I was going to have a bath tonight. Um, yeah. I tend to shower more often than have a bath, mostly because I'm incapable of having a bath that lasts under 45 minutes and sometimes it just seems like a waste of time. But the night before I have to go back to work - usually Sunday night but in this case today was a bank holiday so it's tonight - I have a long soak to relax and whatnot. So I said yes, and she asked me to have my bath while they were at the brother-in-law's house, so that J had time for a bath tonight.

So, there went my nap. I told her I had planned on having a nap but then of course they were banging around and I was wide awake so figured I might as well have a bath anyway. And that basically brings me to now. It's 6:45pm, I just got out of an hour-long bath, and I need to dry and straighten my hair for work tomorrow. But I'm so fucking dog tired all I want to do is climb into bed and pass out until my alarm goes off for work tomorrow. Of course, on the other side of that coin, I would never go to work without sorting my hair out, so the straightening, as huge a pain in my ass it is, needs to be done.

Once it is, I'll probably go pass out again.

God, that's a fuck of a lot of rambling about absolutely nothing, I apologies.

So now for something completely different.

I mentioned in my previous post some Tarot-ness. Once again my readings came up with a lot of stuff about self-control and goal-reaching and was all around pretty positive stuff. But by 2 this morning I was getting tired and couldn't be bothered with full spreads and card interpretations, so I did a series of Yes/No readings instead.

A Yes/No tarot reading is easy. Basically you shuffle your deck while concentrating on a straightforward yes or no question. Then, you turn over the top cards one by one until you get your answer. Generally speaking the yes and no cards are part of the major arcana, and a lot of people tend to use the Death or Devil cards as no, and something else for yes. I make it easier than that. Card 0 - The Fool, the first card in the major arcana, is my NO card. Card XXI - The World, the final card in the major arcana, is my YES card. Whichever card comes up first as you turn over the cards one by one from the shuffled deck, that's your answer.

And things meshed pretty well.

Question 1: Will I reach my goal of dropping 4stone by September? (4 stone is 56lbs by the way, which is significant to the following questions)
Answer: No

Disappointing but I moved on.

Question 2: Will I manage to lose 40lbs by September?
Answer: Yes

Question 3: Will I lose 50lbs by September?
Answer: No

That one I should have seen coming based on the first question, but I like it when the tarot gives you the same answers and reinforces your previous questions instead of giving you mixed signals.

Question 4: Will I lose 45lbs by September?
Answer: No

Final question: So then I will lose between 40-45lbs by September?
Answer: Yes

Which would be fucking AWESOME.

I don't rest ALL of my faith and expectations on the tarot, not by a long shot. But the possible insight is still pretty cool. And then to test it, I did a very lame reading. I asked the cards what time I would first wake up and look at my clock at this morning. The value of the card would equal the time. I did this twice and both times I got a card with the number 8 on the face. Last night I didn't sleep well and tossed and turned, but the first time I actually looked at the clock, it said 8:04.

Spooky no?

So, we'll see. Either way I'm determined and am going to make that 40-45 goal my MINIMUM goal, but I'm going to try to push myself to lose more and prove it wrong ;] Because I'm weird and a bit obsessive like that.

Anyway I need to stop procrastinating and do my hair.

As always, thanks for your comments dears (I don't know if you see, but I do reply to your comments, only I reply in my own comments section because posting back to your own blogs to me messes up the chain response/conversation and confuses me haha) and stay strong.

All my love!
Vee xox

Oh what?

After last night's blog about how I was okay yesterday but not good enough to lose - and probably bad enough to gain - it was with no small measure of trepidation that I stepped onto my scale this morning. I kept thinking, maybe I should stop weighing in every day and just do a weekly weigh in on like Friday or Saturday. That way, I can just count up the pounds lost in a week and there won't be quite as much daily up-down fluctuations going on. And maybe I'll be happier to see a drop of 4lbs all at once, rather than the odd pound here, half a pound there.

The problem is, I'm a slave to my scale. I am physically incapable of not weighing in, unless I've managed to completely forget about it as I'm running late for work or something. So, I stepped on, bracing myself for the magic number - 195? 195.5?

But no. 193.4. A drop of 0.6lbs from yesterday.

Can I get a FUCK YEAH!?

Such a relief. Today is going to be a non-eating day for MOST of the day. Unfortunately my aunts want me to make my famous linguine (which includes an olive-oil based garlic sauce and fresh parmesan cheese) tonight, which means that I can afford one small serving of that and NOTHING ELSE if I don't want to balloon back up tomorrow. Hopefully not eating for the rest of the day will balance out the oil-calories, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not holding my breath. Again. The last time I made my pasta I put on like 2lbs overnight.

Luckily it's back to working long hours tomorrow so I'll be able to get away with not eating much from Tuesday to Thursday (Going out for a birthday dinner with family on Friday BUT then my aunts are going away!)

Anyway, I need to get dressed and put my makeups on - gotta get fakin' that perfect skin of mine! ;] - because I need to hit the mall and do some birthday shopping for my aunt's partner and my grandfather. I also need to get an 18th birthday card for my brother and a graduation card to send to my sister, both in Canada. I'm probably forgetting something, May is a brutal month for special occasions =/

I did a lot of tarot-playing last night and the results I got were pretty interesting and motivating! So I'll share that with you when I get home, I don't have time right now =]

Vee xox

And Also...

I'm too lazy to just edit my previous post, eat me.

Some of my ED-Books came the other day. I picked them up from my grandparents' house yesterday afternoon. I had to tell them "Some of the stuff is books and some tarot cards for me, some of it MIGHT BE early Christmas presents because there was a sale on Amazon, so I can't open them right now and show you."

How messed up is it that my family is so nosey that they always DEMAND to know exactly what I ordered. That time I ordered diet pills they kept asking me what the package was and when I was all "it's none of your business" they wouldn't take that shit and thought I was joking and kept PESTERING ME so I told them I'd ordered some more Valerian tablets to help with my insomnia. It was bullshit, but it got them off my back.

It just reinforces that my life is not nearly as private as I would like it to be. What if I was ordering lengerie and flavoured lube from Anne Summers? Or fucking sex toys? I mean seriously, what I buy online is nobody's fucking business but my own.

Yet again, I wish I could afford to move into my own apartment. But there's no way in the forseeable future that is going to happen.

Also, my nails are suffering and that pisses me off. It's probably a mix between the lack of lots of proper food (I forgot to take my vitamins every day but twice this week, I suck so hard) and I probably over-filed/buffed them last week. But they keep peeling and now I've had to cut them down so the peeley bits are gone and have to wait for them to grow out again. Fucking nails. Show some respect, motherfuckers. I bit my nails constantly until I was 12 and then stopped cold turkey, and THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME?

I swear to god I'm not ACTUALLY going crazy.

In other news, one of my Tarot books also came. I've got two tarot books and a Wiccan Cards oracle deck (the artwork on them looked really nice, I always seem to buy cards based on how they look. Yes, I am shallow, and I do not give a shit.) coming in total. The one that came is called The Tarot Bible, and was well worth the money. It gives pretty in-depth descriptions of each card, as well as lots of different spreads, as well as lots of info about the history of the tarot and how to use them most effectively. I used it in conjunction with my Egyptian Tarot deck last night, and all the spreads seemed to be pretty spot-on. I got a lot of cards about perfectionism and idealism and new goals and will power and fighting self-indulgence.

It always creeps me out a little when things ring true. I do not profess to be a psychic by any means, but sometimes things are just so RIGHT.

Of course, when my ex left me for an uglier other woman, I did a reading with a set of fortune cards. It was a simple spread. Card 1 = me. Card 2 = him. Card 3 = the dynamic between the two of us. And then I did a second spread on him and her and their dynamic.

The dynamic between him and me came up as "True love and happiness." The one between him and her said - and this is VERBATIM FROM THE FACE OF THE CARD ITSELF "Fate has blocked this path for you."

OF course I convinced myself this meant we would get back together. Maybe he'll come crawling back in the future when he realizes how dumb it was to leave ME, but I doubt it, and if he did I would laugh in his face because I'm mean like that.

So, maybe my tarot just tells me what I want to hear, or what I need to hear to make it through another day, I don't know. Time will tell, but last night's made me hopeful that I can and will succeed.

Unrelated sidenote: I think the batteries in my wireless keyboard are dying because even though I'm typing at half my usual speed and not missing any keys, HALF the letters are not registering so it's taking forever to type this and it is PISSING ME OFFFFFF!!!

Gah. Ok I'm going to stop there because I'm annoyed and need to charge these bitches up.

Goodnight my darlings.

Vee xox

Sunday 3 May 2009

You and Me and the Devil Makes Three

Today was good and bad.

The good points:

Although we had Indian takeout last night, I didn't eat much of mine and stayed the same weight from yesterday, which was a surprise. So today I'm still 194, which is a fucking hell of a lot better than gaining.

I went to Makro with my aunts this afternoon... I don't know if they have Makro in America but essentially it's very similar to like Costco, where you buy things in bulk and they profess to be way cheaper, until you realize you've got to add your 15% VAT on top of that (in England, prices in most places already include VAT so what you see on a price tag is what you pay at the till. Not so at Makro), so in the end you wind up saving very little. It's a very good marketing ploy though, and I bet they make tons of money.

Anyway, my aunts just went for some laundry detergent and some soap and OXO stock cubes to take to the owners of a pub they go to in Spain (they have a time share for two weeks every year in May and have made friends with these people, who are from England, so when they go they take back a couple things that they miss and can't get over there.) As we were checking out, the older lady at the till scanned the package of Imperial Leather soap and asked me "So is that your secret?" and told me I have lovely perfect skin. I laughed it off and said hell no, I use Clinique and she was like "My sister uses Clinque but she doesn't look like you!"

Obviously, that comment totally made my fucking day. What I SHOULD have said to her is "My skin looks perfect due to much MAC concealer and foundation, thankyouverymuch, but at least it's doing its job!"

The funny thing is, this comes the day after I get my hair cut and coloured (another plus for this weekend, by the way). I usually get some blonde highlights on the top/sides and around the front, but this time I wanted to really lighten my hair up so I got lots of blonde highlights all over. And it looks amazing. It sounds dumb but I swear to God, people do seem to notice me a lot more when I'm blonder. For better or worse, I'm not sure yet.

Anyway. Those are the good points.

The major bad point is that I'll probably have gained tomorrow. Which makes me sad.

I did pretty well today, but not well enough. I had a couple of pieces of warm garlic naan bread with some hummus. It doesn't sound bad but... Hummus always feel like such a dirty indulgence to me and although I love it, I ALWAYS feel guilty when I've had it. In the evening my aunts and I were watching a movie (The Ruins) and I was craving nachos with melted cheese and salsa, but had a little organic coffee ice cream instead. And a few chocolate-covered Brazil nuts.

It feels a lot worse than it sounds to write it. Maybe I'm deluded and think it's not all that much, when really it is. I guess the scales tomorrow will tell.

Although - and this is probably too much information, but whatever - I've been feeling really consipated today, and yesterday. So maybe I'm slightly lighter than the scales are showing, and when that passes I'll drop another pound or so?

Wishful thinking. I know, it's bad. But I can't help but hope.

I'm kind of looking forward to going back to work on Tuesday. The weekends are always worse for me, because my aunts are always around. At work, I can get away with not eating all day, even if I work until 6:30. And by that time, I can usually tell my aunts I ate already or have something small when I get home. But on the weekends there's almost always some level of pressure. Like, they decide it will be nice to make a Sunday Dinner (England has its traditions, like nice sit-down family meals on Sundays, which are usually a roast of some kind but not always), or having one of my favourite meals ready when I get home from work.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I wish they wouldn't.

Twelve weeks. My aunt's waiting list for her surgery is twelve weeks.

If I can make it until then without slipping up, I'll be down to the home stretch.

I can do it. WE can do it.

And I don't need surgery to stop myself.

Starve on.

Vee xox