Last night I heard frogs. It was hard to tell, over the wind, we were having one of those tornado nights, but I’m pretty sure he was calling from the pond.

Oh joy.

When the WTC towers fell, it was night time here. Beloved was watching TV, waiting for Star Trek to come on, and I was in bed. Asleep. Beloved woke me and told me I needed to see this. It was a news link to New York. We sat there, quietly watching it, wondering what the hell was going on. As we watched, the second plane flew into the second tower. I don’t know what the reporters were doing, because they didn’t seem to know what had just happened, but it was quite clear, that plane going into the building. I seem to remember calling Radio Boy and Poss down from their bedrooms to see what was happening, though they had to be at school the next day. It was around 2am when I got back to bed and I lay there, wondering what sort of world I was going to wake up to, and I listened to the frogs. Whatever happened to people, there were at least still frogs.

For all your comments, thank you.

This place rocks.

You’re right, Patty, I need to Just Do It.

Josephine, thank you for the serious arsekicking. That was needed. And I think Suck it up, Buttercup is my new motto.

Rubyjean and Ella, thank you for your thoughts about self-hypnosis. I’ve spent the past couple of days having a look round the net. Being the stinge bucket I am, I don’t want to spend any $ of course, but have downloaded a couple of mp3s and will be starting on them next. Years ago a friend of mine had hypnosis to stop herself eating chocolate and it worked so well. One day she thought “this is silly” she was someplace where there were lamingtons, and decided she was going to dammit have one of those lamingtons. So she put it on her plate and was then unable to stop herself from cutting the chocolate off it. Which left her with a stale piece of spongecake. Yummy. My own previous experiences with hypnosis were not exactly stellar. I tended to lie there wondering what I was going to make for dinner or how my footy team was going or if I needed to fill up petrol on my way home. Then the hypnotist tried to make the whole thing a bit more other-worldly so he shone a torch under his chin and I just kept giggling at him and then he started laughing too.

Thanks for the team spirit thoughts, Anngirl and Eryn. It really does help, knowing that there are others there with me. That I’m not walking this path alone.

Hey m3at49, it is so confronting, not to have a nice big plate of everything and just let the world pass me by while I dig in, but I know that too much is too much. Such a hard thing to cope with when it goes right back for me, to when I was very young. But that’s what it’s all about. I’ve got a lifetime of bad habits that I need to get over. I want to be like those girls who annoy me by complaining that they can’t eat all their meal because “it’s too much” or “too rich” what is that? I don’t think I’ve ever experienced too much, and as far as I’m concerned, the richer the better. I need to figure out how they get to that place.

Hey, getupnow, sometimes I think my bottom is a rock.

I’ve decided that Jon Gabriel’s book didn’t work for me. It’s been over 3 months and it just hasn’t happened. Which probably means that I have fat issues that I still need to deal with.

This is still gonna happen because I’m going to make it happen, and once again it’s the little things that are working for me. Like yesterday, when I bought some petrol and went to pay. It’s a very busy petrol station and as I was coming back from paying I noticed that another car had pulled in behind mine. I don’t like to keep people waiting, so suddenly I was running to my car. No effort.

Okay, not far or fast, but the very fact that my legs just made me run, instead of the quick waddle I usually resort to is important. And that there was no pain when I ran was also very important.

Tried something different on the tready last time I was on it (how long ago?) Instead of going faster, I stayed at a steady pace and just pushed the inclination up. I did 1 minute at each new inclination until I got to 13%, which is as high as our tready goes.

Oh wow. That really pushed me. In the end I was holding the rails of the tready and I couldn’t make the full minute at 13%. I dropped back to 0 for about 3 minutes of rest and then pushed up the speed for 3 minutes. It was great. It was something really different and made me work hard.

So I’m going to keep trying.

I’m going to keep with the good food choices and make them as often as I can. I like it when I feel dismay at a plateful of “brown” food group (fried stuff with more fried stuff and chips). I like the colours of fresh, healthy food. I want good health. I want it.

The change will come. The frogs are here.

Not such a brilliant writers’ retreat since yours truly managed to stuff up booking the holiday house. Yes, somewhere in the dim, dark distant past we discussed having the retreat in July, and that’s what I booked. I forgot to change it when we decided on June. Wouldn’t normally be a problem since the holiday house doesn’t get a tonne of use outside of school holidays, but as luck would have it, it was booked for this weekend.

Felt so disappointed to have let my friends down and put sister in law in a bad position. Not an utter tragedy, of course, but a shame.

Picture Book Writer kindly offered her lovely home for yesterday, and we did get a bit of workshopping (and eating) but it just wasn’t the same as three days of fun and talking about writing.

I thought I might go to the midwinter Lantern Festival in Belgrave last night, but it was rainy and cold and I just thought “bugger it” and stayed home with Beloved. Instead we just stayed home and watched Star Trek. Original series. We are playing with our  recorder thingy, and having a go at dubbing our tapes onto DVDs.

I spent most of my childhood on board the Starship Enterprise. Was utterly delighted yesterday when I read my story for workshopping and Evil Twin gave me that look she gives and said, ‘You know you’re a nerd, don’t you?’ Yeah! I love being a nerd. Hanging out for the next Star Trek movie.

sigh

Yes, I am procrastinating. Haven’t been on the tready for days. I’ve pretty much forgotten what vegetables look like, and I haven’t even had my ten minutes of sitting quietly and thinking about getting thin time in the morning.

I really have lost the plot. I’m not losing weight. I see how magnificent CrimeWeaver is looking, with all her exercise, and getting stuck into healthy eating and I look at what I lump I am and how disappointed I feel in myself. The fact is, my attempts at healthy eating might have made me healthier inside, but it sure hasn’t made any difference on the scales or in my clothing.

I read all your blogs and feel so inspired, but still can’t seem to make that magic step of eating less. I can. Of course I can. I don’t even have to want to, I just have to do it. I just have to eat less. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even warp engine science. Something just has to reset inside me. I just have to find that switch that will make me believe I’m in a place where eating a lot less food will mean my survival. That’s the only way it can work for me.

When Radio Boy was born, he was large. He weighed 4.115 kgs. That’s exactly 9lbs. Large, for a firstborn, and the doctor suggested I might have had gestational diabetes. Somehow that stuck in my mind and it was during Radio Boy’s first year that I joined Weight Watchers and became a lifetime member. Stuck in my mind was the fear of diabetes and it worked to help me lost weight. But I haven’t been able to find that switch again. Maybe it’s like writing, you don’t just sit around all airy fairy, waiting for the muse to arrive, you just write. You just do it.

Beloved’s on the tready now. He’s been there a while. Must be about time for me to put my shoes on and do some real work.

Going away for a few days, but I did just want to leave you with this thought:

heheheheh

oops. I mean “I’ll have a Diet Coke™ with my large chips and burger, thanks.”

You know, a couple of months ago Radio Boy walked in on a meeting of my writing group (there’s a link to it on the right there, if you’re interested) and he commented on how disgusted he was with us all. There, on the table between us, were our snacks: salads, dips with veggie sticks, more salads and some bowls of fresh fruit. Not a chocolate to be seen anywhere. Radio Boy said he’d never seen anything so healthy in his life, and he thought he’d stumbled into some sort of weird health cult instead of a writing group.

Heh. So much for the brain power of chocolate. We’re gonna work real hard to see that the weekend continues with lots of healthy eating, inspiration, and good fun.

Hope your weekend is as good as mine.