general random ramblingness.

No cohesion today.

• operation caffeine wean going well but slowly slowly
• I have agreed (reluctantly) to joining Jaykay’s walking team for trailwalker. What the hell. Good practice for the Inca trail if I ever do it. Which I will! And I might do away with the gym membership when training picks up for TW.
• I think I would like to go and work in a third world country for a little while. Really in Australia we complain about the health system but it is second only really to Scandinavia. We do not know we are alive.
• I have discovered an interest (and hopefully some talent) in managing behavioural problems in the elderly with dementia.
• For Shells: I have booked in a haircut with Phoebe at Fur. I want her to FABULIZE me.
• Going to mum’s tonight for a roast.
• I need to finish off my project write up.
• I need to do my tax return
• I need to sort out my paperworky stuff
• I did a contemporary dance class at CM today. I did the intermediate class instead of the beginners (am on call and had to go into work this morning). It was quite difficult especially at the end of the class but it was great fun.
• Following said class I mosied around South Melbourne. Was fun. Kind of like North Melb but with hook turns.

Coming off caffeine – slowly and painfully

I am drinking lower caffeine coffee at brekky time.

No espresso shot in the am – green tea instead.

I am requiring a little “pick me up” of coke zero in the arvo.

And by 4pm……sore head.

The last 2 nights I have flopped into bed with a headache and slept for 2 hours.

In the arvo, my brain is mush. So it is either the gastro-oesophageal junction or brain that suffers.

It is like coming off crack.

Doing stuff differently.

Have been to Chunky move for contemporary dance.

I cannot explain what it does for me. So I won’t.

Then I went to cafe quince for some food and good coffee.

I hope you like my poem. I like it.

A poem for Sare.

Apologies for the break between blogs. Have been working on a poem. It is for my friend who has been struggling with severe depression. I don’t want to wax lyrical about demons etc. I just want to make my feelings clear.

Oh baby girl, I see you there,

You look so sad and broken.

All I can do is smile at you,

It all just feels so token.

‘Cause all I want, yes all I want,

Is just for you to be well.

I know no words will be enough

To take you from your hell.

Wanna pick you up, just pick you up

My dear, you look so flat.

Just yank you by the shoulders

But it doesn’t work like that.

I know it doesn’t work like that

‘Cause I have been there too.

I can see your mind ticking over;

Can see right into you.

Can see into your mind, girl

Your thoughts spinning unchecked

They corrode, erode and crush you

I fear you will be wrecked.

Despite your reassurances,

I just can’t help but worry.

That you will go too far one day

And we will all be sorry.

I do not mean to lecture you

Just want to be your friend.

Just want to see you better now,

For your light to shine again.

Latterly, this week.

It just hasn’t been that busy at work. So plenty of time to relax!

Wednesday – pilates.

Thursday – Did a contemporary ballet class at Chunky Move studios. Really nice. Very different to Jazz Ballet. More expressive. Different music. Instructor (female) with hairy armpits(!?) which of course I don’t particularly care about.

Friday – our Fuhrer (hint hint “Sauce Bottle”) came to my workplace and my resident and I were running about giggling like little schoolgirls! We were trying to meet the Fuhrer but got thwarted by his minders. And the tealady got a photo with him!

Friday evening: Hubby and I caught up with our friend Ollie and her friend Winnie from Hong Kong. We had a wonderful night. First, we went to Hu Tong for dumplings, and then we went to the Melbourne Supper club for wine, cheese and chocolate coated almonds. The three best food groups, I say! It was really nice at the MSC with comfy chairs and not too loud music. Our waitress managed to pout, pose, pour the wine and prance away. Very flirty, but with all of us. The male waiter had a very spiky hairdo and I told him he looked like an older, brunette Bart Simpson which he really thought was funny (or at least goodnaturedly acted like it).

This morning, Chunky Move contemporary class again. I actually joined up as a member. The instructor was a different female with hairy armpits. She thought she was teaching an intermediate class instead of beginners, so she took us through some more complex floorwork, good for the abs and legs.

It was fun. Sensuously so. An affirmation of life and the body. The instructor turned the mirrors around so we couldn’t see ourselves and could just focus on the movements. We did things we never thought we could.

I am high on it right now.

After dance, went to lunch in Williamstown (western suburbs Brighton) with the girls.

But enough waxing poetic. Gotta do some lounging about, tidying and finishing off my presentation.

ta taaaa

Vale Camille.

Was at a catch up dinner with some medical girlfriends tonight.

I was really saddened to hear that one of the girls in my year level recently died in a car accident after a long shift during a long drive home.

I wasn’t that good friends with her but was friendly with her. I remember she took a year off and was a final year student when I was an intern. I showed her how to insert an IV drip and she bought me a freddo frog.

It pays occasionally to remember that we are all vulnerable and that we must treasure every moment with our loved ones.

The Ugly Truth. (or TUT)

Am going to see that movie with a girlfriend today. So a good name for my post.

The ugly truth was realised yesterday as I was reading through my past blog entries.

Repetetively:

• I wanna lose weight. Am not happy with my body. Only this morning, I was looking at myself and thinking this.
• Then going into minute detail of the rich, decadent and often just plain crappy food I eat.

A pattern emerged. I was going to say “a shameful pattern” but to put it into perspective, the violence in the city and the treatment of refugees is shameful. I would say it is uncomfortable.

I, like most overweight people (and yes overweight seems a derogatory term but it is in fact the truth, with my BMI sitting at about 27) seem to be in a chronic state of denial.

Now, on the surface, I know everything there is to know about weight loss. Portion control, lots of vegies, food more important than exercise, not eating a big meal just before bed, good protein, low GI, low GL, low fat ad infinitum.

I am also a smart girl. A go-getting girl. I am quite fit. Not unattractive. I can do almost everything I put my mind to. Except, that is, to get the body I want.

Will being thinner make me a better person? No, it most certainly will not. Will it make me healthier? Probably, in the longer term, yes, it will make a difference. Will it make me happier – well, I am generally a happy person but this is one big area of my life that I am not happy with. So yes, maybe it will. 

So why do I find it so difficult? I know exactly what to do. I think the problems are not to do with food at all.

Let me put the reasons out there. Maybe typing them out loud is the first step.

• I eat the crappy food because I feel that if I don’t eat it now, when will I? (when in reality I do it all the time). A sense of missing out.
• Stress….. stress needs to be chocolate coated and filled with caramel and biscuit pieces.
• Boredom? 
• Celebration. I feel like a good event must be chocolate coated, served with wine and a rich meal.
• Is it possible that I do not actually  want to be “normal weight” (i.e. BMI 20 to 24.9? No excuses then!
• Is there something even deeper than that? Something gloomy, creepy and Freudian?

What is clear is that, despite the fact that I think I cope well with life and what it throws at me (and, from what I have achieved, I would say that that is true), my response repertoire to day-to-day events is very, very limited.

I stress. I eat. I drink wine. I celebrate. I eat, I drink wine. I am bored, ditto. 

Holy crap, I think I just got what the book The No Diet Diet is on about!

A breakthrough of sorts.

Where to from here?

I just lurve dancing….

I love it more than running.

There, I said it.

I am on call for some of the nursing homes but I still managed to make it to beginner/intermediate jazz class at the dance factory. It was taken by the pretty guy, not Carnie the peppy blonde. It was fun, and I actually feel like a dancer. The pain from the pulled muscle in my shoulder just went away. The pain in my tooth went away too. I can truly be me. And I have developed enough self-confidence that if I fluff a move or look like a spazz (sorry) I can laugh it off.

I will also do some beginners contemporary classes at chunky move. Good name for a dance studio. Sort of removes the whole vision of sinewy ballerinas with sharp cheekbones, rippling calves and tight topknots.

I had stage three of root canal yesterday. One freaking tooth to cost about 2500 bux! Plus other fillings! Note to self – floss and visit dentist regularly!!!

Tonight I am off to a 40th birthday party. Am looking forward to it. Don’t want to guts myself though.

Last night I went to a little Sicilian restaurant near my joint that has just opened up, called Bar Idda. It was great! Subtle north African accents. And a to die for hot chocolate and pistachio gelati to have for afters (shared of course)

Have not even weighed myself recently. It fucks with my head.

Sassy, the ballerina.

So I went to Jazz class on Saturday and decided that I really enjoyed it and was determined to look less like a buffoon.

So along I went to Tuesday beginner/intermediate Jazz, to Richmond from Epping in peak hour. Yerk. Made it just in time.

I really enjoyed the class. The dance at the end was to “Flashdance (what a feeling)”. Very fun. Enjoyed it.

One of the ladies in our class (36, quite overweight but a beautiful dancer) was going along to the Ballet class afterward. I thought hell, yeah, why the hell not! So I went along. 

Good cross training for balance, glute med, calves and adductors.

Also we did a little dance to “wind beneath my wings” (i.e. Beaches soundtrack). Fun and fun again.

I love dancing.

On thursday we are taking my Mother in Law to see Wicked the musical We snaffled some house seats. It is a surprise for her.

Happy days.

What Sassy wants (after two wines).

1. For pizza to be diet food

2. Ditto chocolate

3. Ditto wine.

4. For the cracks in our house to be gone. 

5. To be thinner and prettier

6. to have a light which attracts and the norms to be broken (don’t ask, being deliberately cryptic)

7. To be fitter

8. To not have to go to work tomorrow. Only when I really feel like it

9. For the dog to stop tipping over the garbage bin

10. For my mum and sister and brother to have more money (not least because they will stop borrowing mine)

11. To have more sleep

 

Some of it is a bit selfish….but I have had two wines and feel entitled to say what I like…..