Well, it says I should eat a big breakfast. Trouble is, I like to eat. I like to eat a LOT. This morning I had a great big bowl full of fresh fruit and nuts and bran and my yummy yoghourt sauce (after 2 glasses of water) but I was going to have a hot cross bun as well. (Do these pants make my arse look big? No. It’s all the bloody food you eat!)

I stuck the bun in the toaster and wandered off to load the dishwasher and – oh dear. The bun got burnt. I hate burnt stuff. So I chucked it out, turned the toaster down from 5 to 3 and went to let the chooks out and came back to – oh dear x 2. Burnt again. And that was the last bun. Thing is, I really wasn’t hungry. I just wanted to eat that bun because it was there. Now it’s gone into the compost, or maybe I’ll give it to the chooks. They don’t seem to mind burnt stuff. Still, I was saved by the toaster from making a pig of myself.

I don’t know why I do these things. Well, maybe I do. It’s all about needing to be fat. Funnily enough, I got another newsletter from Jon last night, and it was about this very subject. Here’s a link to the newsletter so you can read it for yourself. I’m pretty sure my emotional reasons go waaaay back to when I was a kid and told to “be a big girl”. There was always the fuss over my little sister, who never seemed to eat quite enough. I even remember Mum and Nana looking at Sissy’s bottle (Mum didn’t breastfeed) and seeing how many ounces she’d taken, and being so concerned. In my mind, she was being “bad” and I still remember the taste of that formula. Yeah. When their backs were turned, I grabbed that bottle and drank it all down. I stole milk from my baby sister. Strangely, Mum and Nana were not delighted by my successful control of the baby formula infestation.

There are things in my childhood that I guess I will never reconcile. Nana’s boyfriend (we lived with them) sexually assaulted me when I was 8. Birthday gift for my 9th (?) 10th (?) birthday from Nana and the boyfriend was sexy underwear. Yeah. For a 9 or 10 year old. I’m talking 1966 or 67. A lacy bra and suspender belt. For a little kid. Now, the funny thing was, although I was pretty average, the underwear did not fit me, it was too small. Was I rescuing myself by overeating in order to ensure I would never fit the sexy underwear and have that man groping me again? Could be. I will never understand that gift. Was it all his idea? Was Nana grooming me for him? I hate to think. I’m only glad we stopped living there not long after my 10th birthday. If for no other reason than if Dad had even suspected what that man was doing, he probably would have killed him, and Dad wouldn’t have deserved to go to jail on account of that bastard.

Um, got a little of track there, didn’t I? But I eat too much for all sorts of reasons, and I believe that there is probably an element of emotional obesity in my psychological makeup. I just have to know now that it is safe to be thin. That it’s okay to be thin. That it’s safer to be thin than it is to be fat.

I know this is a bit of a big picture, but I like the detail. I’ve always loved Bunnykins. The really scratched up plate with the artist bunny on it is mine. I ate so many dinners off that plate when I was little. The other plates belong to my kids. There are bowls and cups, too, out of shot. The two Lindt bunnies are still alive and well, though living in the fridge now on account of the hot weather made them go sort of melty and some of the oily stuff came out of  them. It’s cooler now. I will buy some Easter chocolate for my kids and Mum. Beloved has asked for just 1 chocolate thing, and I’m happy to not go berzerk. One dark chocolate bunny for him. And I’ve said that’s what I would like, too. Just one. It’s enough. At the moment I don’t even want any at all.

Part of my whole plan for losing weight, maintaining good health and improving my environment involves planting trees. Last Christmas I was faced with the usual problem of the tree. For the past few years we’ve had a live tree in a pot, but it was just looking too unhappy to bring indoors. It needs to be planted. So I thought about supporting the local Christmas Tree farm down the road, but that seemed wrong, too. I didn’t want to cut down a tree.

Instead I spent the same amount of money on two trees: a mango and a mulberry. While they didn’t exactly take to being decorated, they looked nice and survived being indoors for a couple of weeks. I still haven’t planted them. We have two voracious appetites in our garden: Betty and Stella, the sheep. The third problem is that combination of poor soil and lack of rain. Rainfall has been bad here for the past 13 years and the past few months have been the driest on record.

But our tank’s still got water in it and I want our trees to survive.

The same week I bought Jon’s book, I also bought a bokashi bucket. There’s a link that’ll open in another window so you can check out all about bokashi if you want. When the bucket’s full, I’ll bury it in the spot where I plan to plant the mulberry. Then Brian can figure out some brilliant way of sheep-proofing it so that it will actually survive. He’ll have about 4 weeks to do that while the bokashi breaks down, and then I can plant my tree. By then it will just about be time to empty the bucket again, this time with a spot to plant the mango.

This is what my bokashi bucket looks like. Except mine doesn’t have the sticker on the front.

At the moment my mulberry tree just looks like a stick with leaves on it, it’s a bit taller than me. Someday I hope it will be as big and shady and fruity as the one in the picture.

My mango tree isn’t even as big as the mulberry. I love mangos. All summer I make mango salsa and it’s totally yummy! I hope one day I’ll be able to just pick a mango off the tree for making my salsa.

I’ve also got a gooseberry bush, several rosemaries, a couple of self-sown nectarines and a lilac that I want to plant. We’re planning on a veggie garden in one of the yards where we can stop the sheep from getting in. It’s all part of my master plan to eat healthy, to look after us and to make our corner of the world a little bit better than it originally was.

Just to finish, a couple of pictures of Stella and Betty, the two troublemakers. Stella is a merino/border leicester cross. Here she is with Coconut, who has since gone to the big henhouse in the sky. It was a cold day, and I’m sure Coconut was keeping her feet warm in Stella’s wool.

And here’s Stella with Black Betty (named for the song) aka Stella Bombella and Betty Spaghetti:

Had a good time yesterday, I found out that one of my poems had been Commended in a competition. It’s my first go at Bush Verse, so was very happy with that. Will get a nice certificate to put on my wall. Gotta love that.

Today I made too much breakfast. This is a first for me. I had food on my plate that I didn’t want to eat. The chooks were very happy because it meant they got to have a hot cross bun for their treat. And I had one bit of hot cross bun with NO BUTTER can you believe that? I can hardly believe it. I wanted it with no butter. I WANTED that. Me, the queen of “can I have more cream with that?” and “I like my butter on thick”. I ate it with no butter and it was nice.

I’ve been tempted these past few days to get on the scale and see what’s happening, but I’m resisting. It’s a lot easier with the scale in the exercise room instead of the bathroom, coz I haven’t been going in the exercise room lately. Heh. That’s a great way to lose weight, isn’t it? Well, it’s been too bloody hot for that sort of rubbish. Got up to the high 30s again yesterday and supposed to be 39 today.

At least the nights are a bit cooler. Although the night before last was warm, and Fred the cat kept catching mice. And bringing them into the bedroom to show us how clever he was. And miowing loudly so that we had to get up and tell him what a magnificent hunter he was. And then eat them. Mice are very crunchy. But last night was better. As long as you didn’t want to have bedclothes on.

So I’ll be back in the pool today.

And I wanted to post my “before” and “after” shots from mymodel website:

so there I am, same haircut, roughly the same clothes. Now and the future me. I can do an underwear version, too. Check this out:

Okay. Gonna stop playing dressup dollies now. Just wanted to have a bit of fun, really.

Have a great day.