Many thanks for all your comments while I was away. Blame work. So glad I put down that I was only available for 2 shifts a week when it’s not during school holidays. I only had 5 shifts last week and 5 this week! Mustn’t whinge though, they do pay me for going there. I do get wrung out by all the people though, so that when I get home I just want to sit quietly and listen to my ears ring.

I do feel very special being on this blogsite, though, and the thought of you all helps to keep me sane and to keep me thinking, so that even when I don’t make a good food choice, (such as happened yesterday at lunchtime) I know that I can still make a good food choice the next time I sit down to a meal.

You’ll be happy to know that I booked that colonoscopy this morning. I’m in for the 15th of July is that cheating??? 15th of July is the day I’d decided to make my weigh-in date. Might just have to push that back by a week, although the 5kg or so loss that I’ll have after the bowel preparation would look mighty impressive on the ticker!

Please don’t feel mad at my doctor. She’s good people. Really. I have this theory that 98% of GPs are competent, caring people who do their job well. 1% are exceptionally brilliant and should be doing research and saving us all and 1% should be struck off. The trick is to find a doctor within that 98% who gets you, and GP does. She’s been our family doctor for more than 15 years and she’s just conservative. I’d sooner have her overstate a problem and find that it was nothing, than have her understate a finding and not bother to do anything about it and then find out that I should have because it’s all gone bad etc etc.

When my kids were little, I’d serve up their dinner and they’d complain. ‘She’s got less vegetables on her plate than me. It’s not fair.’ Like veggies were a punishment or something.

This week I’ve been trying to think my way around the way that we treat ourselves nicely, and to put it into a different context.

You know the whole thing: ‘I was sooo good this week, I decided I deserved to eat [insert favourite edible foodlike substance here] ‘ or ‘I couldn’t help it. I was so stressed, I just needed to have some [insert another edible foodlike substance]‘

etc

You know the whole story. You’ve done it. I’ve done it.

Now, what if it was a smoker saying ‘I’ve done so well, haven’t had a cigarette for nweeks. I deserved to have just one.’ I mean, if the hypothetical smoker said that to me I’d be pretty convinced that they had rocks in their head. How stupid of them. How counterproductive. Why bother? Don’t they get it? Now they have to start again.

etc

So this is what I have to get my head around:

Eating edible foodlike substances (such as the dog and chips and diet cola I had for lunch yesterday) is a form of punishment. It’s bad for me. It’s bad for my body. It’s up there with smacking my thumb with a hammer. If my thumb was hurting from already being smacked once with a hammer I WOULD NOT SMACK IT AGAIN WITH THE HAMMER TO MAKE IT FEEL BETTER and yet that’s what I’m doing to myself with food.

I need to figure out how not to.So while I ponder all of that, here is a picture of my verandah peas.

They’re really growing well and they even have some flowers on them now.

Yummy snowpeas for me to snack on in a few weeks.

Happy Friday 13th, everyone.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

That quote is from Winston Churchill, pictured above, though I’m not sure which piccy is actually him.

And another star for me for getting on the ol’ tready again yesterday and today. I am going for the idea of not giving myself an option. Just get on it. Just do it (h’m where have I heard that before?)

Yesterday I had a workshopping lunch with a couple of writer buddies. I was very proud of myself, that despite the fact that I was lunching with P17 editor, a renowned eater of cake, I did not allow her evil suggestions to sway me, and I remained cake free for the whole day. And it had been kind of a tough day.

I woke up feeling tired, but went on the tready anyway. I usually take my blood pressure after using the tready, and mine was a magnificent 99/66. Probably explains why I was feeling half-asleep. Had a doctor’s appointment, and went in feeling confident on account of the all-clear on the ultrasound. I’d forgotten about the blood test though. Clearly I hadn’t studied hard enough for the blood test because I could hear the “but” in the middle of “your blood test is good…” Honestly. More buts than an ashtray.

Once again my doc is convinced that I have cancer. Now, the first time she thought I had cancer, it was Radio Boy’s 16th birthday. You can imagine how bad that made me feel. I sat there thinking that I would never see my babies grow up etc etc etc. It really does change the way you think. I guess I’m a little more blasé about it all this time. Won’t have the colonoscopy until after school holidays, because that’s when I get the most work. I guess I just don’t believe this is anything more than a bit of a glitch in my white cell count, just as it was the first time. Then again, GP said that the last couple of patients she’s had with this problem have both had bowel cancers.

Oh joy.

I guess the most I can do is just have the colonoscopy, enjoy the fun of losing about 5kg in a day, and go from there.

Have a great day, everyone, and I wish you all lucky black cats and 4 leaf clovers.

Yes, two stars. One for today and one for yesterday. Not only did I get on the tready, but I went faster. Not that I’m ever going to be fast fast, but faster than last week. This is pretty much 1.2km in 20mins to 1.5km in 20 mins. sigh. Compare this to my friend Crimeweaver’s grand daughter, who did so well in a 2km race that she just missed out on being in a state team. The kid is 8 and she was running against girls a year older than her.

Ah. Last time I attempted a fun run I was passed by a little old lady with her handbag slung over her shoulder, 2 women who didn’t stop talking to each other the whole time, and a lady with a pram. Actually, I think the lady with the pram had her baby just jogging along side her. The pram was full of shopping or something. Honestly. Brain the size of a planet, but not a fast runner.

I have written all of that in the hope that no one will read this far and find out that I resorted to KFC yesterday. I have no idea why. I went to have my ultrasound in the morning. Poss is delighted to know that my liver is not pregnant. The tech doing the ultrasound was about 8ft tall and put his entire weight on that one little ultrasound wand thingy in order to listen to my insides. Man it hurt! Maybe he had to do that to get the soundwaves through all the layers of blubber. Maybe he was just punishing me for having layers of blubber. Oh, and speaking of blubber, check out this. It’s a link to belugacam at Vancouver Aquarium. The beluga had a baby, just in the past 24 hours and it’s soooooooo cute! I like whales.

Isn’t Slaughterhouse 5 the best movie? Love Kurt Vonnegut Jnr. That scene of the bombing of Dresden gives me shivers every time I think about it. Do love my balcony garden, too. When I first had it, it drove me nuts because brushy-tails were forever getting up there and either eating my plants, or just vandalising them if they didn’t like the taste.

Cute but aggravating. Then Beloved built me a possumguard™ for my birthday. He made it out of wood and wire and swearing. No possum has been able to trash my plants since then, although they do sometimes hang on the outside of the wire and nibble bits that are sticking through. That’s gotta have some Darwinian moral to it.

Oh, anyway, back to the ultrasound. The technician guy wouldn’t even give me a hint about my insides, so as soon as they gave me the ultrasound pics, I of course opened them and read the doctor’s report. Apparently my liver, gall bladder, aorta and kidneys are all good. They even counted my kidneys for me. Yep, two. I’m delighted.

So basically I’m in fine health. You know, I have normal blood pressure (though it can go a little low sometimes) and I have normal blood fats (okay, my HDL – “good” cholesterol) is a little on the high side, and I don’t have diabetes. Really, my big obesity issue is chafing.

Last night I was watching a TV show about people who are referred to as Super Morbidly Obese. Oh wow. They were just flesh mountains with a very sad human psyche trapped in the middle. Very confronting to see this happen to someone, but all I can think is that there has to be someone there putting food into them all day. Problem is, in my case that person is – me.

Here’s another blog from Craig Harper that hit home for me. The whole concept is again about having no option but to lose weight. There’s the man who suffers from chocolate toxicity and has to give up. The woman who tries and tries to give up smoking but “can’t” and is then trapped on a deserted island and so has no choice: yes, she can survive without cigarettes. It’s hard, but she does it.

In my own family there are stories of people giving things up. Alcohol has always been a bit of a problem, and one of my uncles was an alcoholic. Then he got terribly ill and was hospitalised. Like the man with the chocolate toxicity, the doctor told him that what he was doing was killing him. He’d become epileptic because of the alcohol, and the doctor told him that one more drink would kill him. So he gave up. Never had another drink after that, and I’m talking about a man who wasn’t shy about a cigarette and a beer for breakfast.

Now, I tend to take after Dad’s father with the alcohol: don’t drink, never had, just not interested. Grandfather still went down to the pub with his mates and drank with them and had his shout, but he drank lemonade when they were having beer.

The thing I have to learn to do is treat food the same way that I treat alcohol. Now this is the hard thing, because I’ve gone fifty years so far without needing alcohol and it’s never going to bother me if I do another fifty the same. Same with cigarettes: don’t smoke, never have, don’t want to (heh, I couldn’t afford it, even if I did want to!) But nobody’s going to die from lack of tobacco and alcohol, but lack of food will definitely cause death.

I used to go to uni in the city. I’d take the train in and then a tram up Swanston Street to Melbourne Uni. Sometimes I DIDN’T HAVE LUNCH. I know. Scary stuff! I used to have this fantasy that I would just faint away from NOT HAVING HAD LUNCH and kind ambos would gather me up and carry me in their screaming van to the hospital where dedicated doctors would study my blood and be shocked to discover that I HADN’T HAD LUNCH and how on earth could my body survive such depradations? They would speak to me sternly and tell me that I MUST HAVE LUNCH. It was a nice enough fantasy, but I never really wanted it to happen, so I’d get 1/4 chicken and some roast potatoes, just to stop myself from fading away and needing ambulances and doctors.

That’s the kind of thing I have to deal with.

It’s a shame that guy didn’t do an ultrasound on my brain.

Merry nearly-winter-solstice, fellow Southern hemispherians.