Hi everyone and apologies for the looooong delay between blogs. We got back from our bushwalk on Sunday and home to slow internet. We’d breached our cap and got slowed down from nice friendly broadband to, well, slow. Don’t know how we managed to use 24 gb so quickly, but Beloved and I are casting suspicious glances at Radio Boy, who was here for a week, and BF. The power of both of them combined was more than our paltry 24 gig could handle.

We did have a lovely time on our bushwalk, although it was a reminder of just how fragile the bush is and I scare myself when I think too much about global warming. Mt Hotham, where we had our walk, suffered bushfires a couple of years ago. Here you can see the extent of the damage – barren hillsides, so much more bleak when the plants don’t have the epicormic layer under their bark.

The first night we stayed at Edmonsond’s Hut. Huts in the high country aren’t designed for people to actually sleep in them, they are really emergency accommodation for if there’s a real bad storm or blizzard. They’re very cozy and the three we visited were all in cute little gullies with trees around them. These snowgums have recovered a bit from the fires. They’re not fast growing like bluegums, but you can see that their roots survived and they’re putting up new growth from the bottom up.

We camped near the hut – plenty of clear, flat spaces as bushwalkers tend to congregate near huts. I was surprised also that all of the huts we visited had toilet facilities! Last time I bushwalked was long ago, and I’d only ever encountered one hut with a dunny (official Australian word for toilet, especially one that isn’t plumbed in). It was far more salubrious than going behind a tree – but I think that’s probably more information than you needed anyway. That’s the Edmonsond’s Hut dunny you can see in the background behind Beloved.

You don’t encounter a lot of animals in the Aussie bush. They’re mostly shy and nocturnal. We walked past about a zillion millipedes but I didn’t take their photo because it’s too bloody hard to bend down and take a photo when you’ve got a 15kg pack on your back. I took this one of the beetle though because it’s so shiny and ya gotta love shiny stuff. I was really pleased with this one because up close you can see his wings unfolding.

At Roper’s hut I took this one of a big, fat skink. Love those little lizards. Brian saw…a rabbit. How exciting, we walk all that way and encounter vermin. See more native animals at home. I guess because our local wallabies aren’t so shy. In the hut books we read that the rangers had been fox baiting. I hope they are doing something about the rabbits too, because if they wipe out the foxes it means even more rabbits about the place.

This is where we camped at Ropers Hut on the second night. Actually, that’s not true. This is where we put our tent on the second night. We decided that since nobody else was around, we’d break all the rules and sleep in the hut. Oh, yeah, that’s when I saw my only native mammal for the trip: a rat. Funny little thing, running down the wall. I don’t know what it found to nibble on all night, but it was very busy.

The original hut got burnt down in the bushfires, and a new one is about halfway built. It was probably my worst night’s sleep of all time, because that floor was very hard and the hut warmed up real well from the stove, and the rats kept crunching and nibbling on whatever it was they had stashed away there. In the morning we had breakfast on the stove there.

That’s my billy on my little camp stove. There’s nothing as good as the smoky taste of billy tea with a touch of eucalyptus in it.

There was a little bit of snow on the hills, but no spring dump. It just keeps getting dryer and dryer here.

I guess I’m kind of in denial about not having lost much weight these past few weeks. The walk was fairly long over the three days. 2km on the first day, about 8 on the second and about 12 on the third. Not exactly a marathon effort, but hard enough, especially when you’re lugging around the kind of excess baggage I do! But I keep telling myself that things will only get better from here. Especially once I get control of myself and stop eating lollies and stuff, which I have been a bit lately.

I’m going in for my next injection of saline on Thursday so hoping that will really help with a bit more weightloss coming up to Christmas.

The real good thing, though was that Christmas dress. I think I may have mentioned the Christmas dress on this blog before. I bought it to wear on Christmas day last year. Just a plain cotton dress with buttons up the front. Well, fortunately I’d also bought a nice t-shirt and leggings to wear under it (you never know if Christmas is going to be hot or cold in Melbourne) because I could not get that thing buttoned up. I mean, there was a good 2″ gap of ME between the buttons and the button holes.

Well, last week I put that dress on and I buttoned it up. It was a little on the firm side, but the buttons weren’t going to burst. Beloved said it looked nice, but he says all my stuff looks nice. This is because he does not have a deathwish.

Anyway, it feels good to be back. Now I’m going to visit all your blogs and catch up.

Oh, and I just want to whisper “Thank you” to the voting citizens of the United States of America – thank you for the nice birthday present. Yeah, my birthday was the 4th of November. Great present, everyone, and I mean that.

Hadn’t realised it had been so long since my last post. Funny how you can get so busy doing pretty much nothing. I was proofreading the latest issue of Page Seventeen for Editor. Time has been a little short for her since she had her third baby, just a couple of weeks before the anthy was due to go to the printers. It was fun helping out though, and I got to read a heap of really good stories, as well as placate my urge to edit.

Aside from that, I’d won a children’s writing competition. Prize included an introduction to a publisher, so I was in a hurry to get the first three chapters of my book polished and off to the publisher before she completely forgot who I was and why I thought I had any right to her precious time. Then there was work, of course, which really hasn’t been very busy.

Thanks to the whole financial meltdown, no one really wants to be spending their hard-earned dollars on movies. Particularly since some of them are bloody awful. If you do want to see a good one and enjoy a bit of black comedy, though, I can highly recommend Burn After Reading. It’s hilarious. Saw Eagle Eye today, because I do love Billy Bob, but it’s a bit of a stretch. I mean, those people who went for a bit of a swim in the liquid nitrogen tank, and then hopped out again to foil the evil computer – mmm, not so convincing.

I’m writing this blog on my new computer. It was supposed to be a birthday present, but my birthday isn’t until Tuesday week, so I guess I won’t get a pressie on that day. Beloved just couldn’t wait for me to play with my new toy. It’s heaps faster than my old mini, a MacBook. One of the cute little white ones, not the sexy new silver ones. I loved the way I could just plug my old puter into it and they just talked amongst themselves and got all my data crossed over while I went off and did other stuff.

At the moment, the weightloss is just going along. Haven’t lost much weight, but I do notice that I’m not particularly hungry. I have to shore up my loins and really do something constructive about exercise. I’m going to blame the weather at the moment. Waiting and waiting for the spring rains, but I just don’t think they’re going to come this year. I doubt that I’ll even get my birthday thunderstorm (I was born during a thunderstorm which blacked out the hosptial. Probably the only time in my life I’ve ever made much of an entrance.)

The good news is that Doc has taken me off the anti depressant medication! I’m excited and a bit scared and I’m writing again a little bit and getting some of the old passion back.

Wanted to comment on the header I’ve got for today’s blog. You know, I was always the Good Girl. The one who cleaned her plate (and then got dessert.) The one who ate everything, even drank her baby sister’s bottle of formula. I had a strategy for plate cleaning: save the best for last. Eat the beans (yucky) first and then go onto the mashed potato (with a well of melted butter in the middle) and save that fatty chop tail for last. All that greasy meat, mmmmmmmmm

So, aside from no longer even buying the kind of chops that have tails, or having wells of butter in my mashed potato, I eat the good stuff first. The tasty yummy stuff. Because now I have a limited amount of room and I want to feel happy with what I eat, so I’m not going to clean my plate, shovelling down the yucky stuff first so that I can force down the good stuff and hold it there and hold it there and stretch my stomach all out of shape. These days I leave stuff on my plate. It makes the dog happy. It makes Boris the chook happy. It makes the bokashi happy. It makes me happy.

I hope I get to blog again before my birthday, but it’s going to be a busy week. You see, Beloved and I are going bushwalking. And my birthday is on a very special day: the first Tuesday in November. Yes, that very special day when we all turn to the TV and wonder who the winner is going to be…of the Melbourne Cup, one of the biggest horse races in the world. People in Melbourne have a day off work. They’ll be at barbecues but they’ll come inside to watch the race on TV. People at work will have the race on their computer screens or gather round the office TV. Students sitting their university exams will look up as the teacher writes the place getters’ names on the white board. All the roses will be in bloom at Flemington and the nation will stop in the afternoon, wish me a happy birthday, and hope their horse comes home.

Heh. You thought I was going to mention something else about the 4th of November, didn’t you?

It really has been a couple of weeks, hasn’t it? Just shows how time can get away from you when you really, truly decide to procrastinate.

I’ve been dressing up my model again and  there she is, yet again, dressed in black. It’s a funny thing, how used you get, to always wearing black. To always thinking it’s going to help, because, yeah, I look like a size 10 when I wear black. Right? I guess if I can find a deep enough shadow then no one will notice me.

Here’s the truth: I’m waiting for the weight to come back. I mean, it’s always come back before. Last time, it was Weight Watchers. I did it at home and followed their plans to the T. Cooked all the recipes and lost weight. Magically lost weight. Got down to about 94 kgs and didn’t I think I was it and a bit! I was never going to get back into triple figures again. No way. Not me. You just watch. Yeah. Stuck on near enough to 20 kilos after that little effort.

But this time it won’t come back. This time it goes away and stays away.

Forever.

So I need to dress in pretty stuff.

This is what I put on my model today:

Isn’t that so much nicer! Okay, it’s still a fantasy because she’s wearing light colours and I go from 0 to filthy in 0.3 seconds, but it’s a nice fantasy. So I’m aiming for cool and pretty clothes this spring and summer, and I know it’s coming true. I know it as a fact, even if emotionally it hasn’t worked its way through all my layers yet.

This is the story of pants:

I hate my work uniform. Honestly, it sucks. It was made by fairies, for fairies. And by fairies, I mean people who think they’re having an off day when their size 8 is a little loose. The sizes are tiny and the fit is tight. TIGHT. Even the little slender people at work complain that they have to wear 2 sizes larger than normal. They are also a bloody horrible fit. They’re those awful kind of pants that show off your whole arse when you bend over. Or, in my case, show off all your underwear, because I do NOT go to work commando-style. But that’s not the worst thing about my uniform. Worse was that at some stage I managed to split the seam in the pants so that there is a gaping hole right in the middle of the backside. Oh, such a great look that I’m sure I must have done when I foolishly bent over at some stage.

Now, being the lazy, yet optimistic person that I am, I have never repaired that split. Partly because I suck at sewing, partly because I was worried that the bloody thing would just split again, only worse, and partly because I didn’t want to waste the time when I had every intention of getting smaller and not needing those pants any more. Instead, I wore black undies and no one ever noticed. Or if they did, they were too polite to mention it.

Those pants had been feeling a trifle baggy over the past few shifts, so when I came home from work last week, I decided to try something. I left those pants done up and I pulled. They came down. Down over my sticky-out arse and down over my fat thighs. Down to the floor and out. Yeah. I was doing the no-pants dance. Proof positive that the scales aren’t lying. That something is happening. That real changes are here to stay.

Isn’t this gerbera lovely? CrimeWeaver had a book launch last week. She edited and contributed to a cookbook that also included stories about how the recipes had been found, created, shared in families, or sometimes just growed. It was a lovely day, and many of the ladies who’d contributed to the book got up and read their stories. I even rated a mention in CW’s story because she is a vegetarian and loves to make fritattas from the eggs provided by my chooks.

It’s got quite funny around the garden lately. Every time Beloved goes out there, Boris, our Isa Brown hen, has to come and help. She’s figured out that when he’s there with a spade, he’s likely to uncover some goodies for her. I do love having a chookie helper in the garden. Our tomatoes are doing well and it looks to me as if Illya Kuryakin, my Black Russian tomato will be the first to fruit. Go Illya

The best news is that the taddies have hatched. I went to look, staring down into the somewhat murky water and wondering where the frogspawn had gone. Then I saw them, hanging like commas in sunlit patches of the pond’s sides. The frog must be so happy.

The worst news is that our mango tree has died. In just a couple of days it’s gone from looking like a nice little tree to looking like a battered stick. Something clearly did away with it. Now, I know it wasn’t either of those troublemakers, Betty and Stella,

because they are forbidden access to that garden. I suspect it was some kind of six or eight legged pest. Now the question – do I replace it? Must find out the culprit before I really can. But I do love mangoes and having a tree was part of my dream of abundance. The one that’s just died was one of last year’s Christmas trees (I decided it was a “greener” idea to have a tree that wasn’t just live, but live and productive.)

Heh heh, yeah, m3at49, I’ve shaved my head before. It mainly started because I had the world’s most awful haircut and couldn’t afford to do anything about it. We had a set of clippers here that Beloved used for his beard and I knew that nothing I did could be worse than what I already had. At least my hair would be short enough to wear a hat if I had to. But it looked good, and because my hair is so thick, it was nice to pat, too. I have a nice, round head. Very Charlie Brown.

I’ve got a sort of “progress” page on the blog. Mostly it’s got a photo of me designed for scaring small children. guess I should do some measurements and put them there along with the ticker (do love those tickers). I spend a lot of my time hiding from the camera. Will have to get used to sometimes letting Beloved take my photo so that I can put it here to share with you all.

It’s Radio Boy’s 22nd birthday next Saturday and he’s here for the whole week. It’s so nice to have him home. I must tell him that, instead of yelling at him and nagging. I am so lucky to live here, to have my family. On Saturday RB’s school friends were having a reunion. I was standing on our verandah, enjoying the balmy spring evening, listening to parties all across the valley and thinking how lucky I am and what a wonderful place to live.