adventuresofanaussieragdoll

Well, it’s been over a week since I was here.  I’ve been back at work for a week and I guess it’s time for an update.

A Casual Vacancy – What can I say?  I like J K Rowling’s writing style.  The characters are well written.  What I don’t like is the language.  I don’t swear (well, try not to) and I most certainly never use the F word.  However, this book is full of it.  There is also very strong sexual themes in this book.  If you don’t like foul language or strong sexual themes, then this book is not for you.

The diet: I am still on it.  Still not perfect in my foods, but I haven’t bought any chocolate since I started.  When I weighed in yesterday I was now 138.9kg.  That’s a loss of 3.8kg in under 3 weeks.  I pleased.  I haven’t been doing as much exercise as I should be doing.  I have a RDO coming up this Friday, so I will see if I can get up early and go to the gym for a swim.  That will gove me not only the swim as exercise, but also the walk down the road to get the bus in the first place.  Why get up so early on my day off?  So I can see how long things take me and see if it is practical to do it before work two or three days per week.

I didn’t wake up early enough to listen to the first session of General Conference this morning.  It was at 3am.  I did get to watch the second session though.  I like that they have lowered the age for people to go on missions.  Especially for girls.  It used to be 19 for boys and 21 for girls.  Now it will be 18 for boys and 19 for girls.  Still a years difference, which doesn’t make sense to me because girls are more mature at that age then boys are, but then I ‘m not the Prophet.  He must know why keep any difference in age between the two.

Anyway, better go.  I’ve paid my bills for this month, done my dishes, balanced my bank book.  House is still a disaster, but it is a work in progress.  Speaking of progress….. I still don’t have my new stitching frame.  It’s three weeks tomorrow since I placed the order and over two weeks since they said they were processing my order.  Seeing as the items I ordered were in stock when I placed the order, I thought it would be dispatched before now!  I might have to phone the UK on Friday if they still haven’t dispatched it by then.

Well, time to go.  I will try to get on here at least once a week to keep you all up to date with my progress (in all sorts of areas).  Talk again then.

Well, it’s now been a week and I am here to report my progress.  2.9kg gone.  That’s a good start.  Only about 79 more to go…

I haven’t reported on my excursion on Tuesday.  Well, it was a bit of a wasted trip.  I walked down to the main road as I had planned, so that went well.  I caught the bus and then the train north.  The train journey was nice.  It was a slow train stopping at a lot of little stations along the way.  At least the scenery was nice to look at.  The problem was that I couldn’t find the shop.  It seems to have gone.  I walked up and down the main street and there was no sign of it.  I sent them an email as I walked asking if they still have a physical shop that people can go to see and then purchase items.  I’m still waiting for the reply.  At least it meant I got in another 25 minute walk.

I just missed the fast train back from the Central Coast, so I had to sit and wait for 20 minutes at the station for another slow train back into the City.  I was feeling very tired on the train trip back.  In fact, I was sooo tired that I fell alseep before the 6pm news on Tuesday!  I was still so tired I didn’t get out of the house or do anything about the house yesterday either.

I am about to leave the house to go to the city.  I am on my way to Dymocks in George Street.  I have pre-ordered a copy of A Casual Vacancy ny JK Rowling.   I was going to have it posted to me, but I decided to go in and pick it up when it is released at 5pm this afternoon.  That way I can start reading it on the way home.  I’ll let you know what I think of it when I finish.

Better go.  Talk again later.

I was going to call this entry Epic Fail, but I thought about it and it wasn’t really that ‘epic’.  Just a moderate fail.  What am I talking about?

I didn’t manage to get out of the house yesterday.  Not at all.  I think it must be related to my depression (lightbulb moment here).  I find that if I don’t get out of the house in the morning, I don’t get out of the house at all for the day. I had to adjust my exercise program to take into account doing none yesterday.  I have put in the walk for today though.

I am almost dressed and will be out the door soon.  I will be going up to the central coast by train today to get me out of the house for a few hours.  So I will be walking down to the main road (and not catching the bus) before catching the bus to Central station and then the train north.  Never mind.  Today is a new day and I am trying to do better than I did yesterday.  One day at a time.

Better go before time gets away from me again and I don’t get out of the house again.  I am determined to get out this time.  So talk to you all again later.

Here it is, the start of a new week.  Not quite a week since I started the new weight loss attempt.  I weighed myself this morning and I was 140kg.  That’s 2.7kg so far.  I know some people will be going, ‘That’s too fast’.  But at my starting weight, it isn’t uncommon to to lose more than a kilo per week at the start.  It will slow down as I go along, so I’m not panicing at this point & I don’t think I am going too hard or over doing it or starving myself.

I just wish I could get a good night’s sleep.  I keep waking up during the night.  At least three times.  I had planned to get up early (about 4am) to go for a swim at my gym.  To do that, I need to walk over 1km down to the main road to catch a bus into the city.  There are no buses where I live at that hour of the morning.  My gym is close to my office.  So my plan is to go for a swim before work at least 3 times a week.  I’m on leave this week, so I was going to still get up early to test the timings for going for the swim, and then showering & dressing to go to the office afterwards to see what time I would be getting to the office.  I initially plan to swim for about 30 minutes each time.

Because I didn’t get up early enough, I think I will go for a walk down to the main road (buses are running now, but I think I will still walk it) to get some money out of the bank and then go to the city and catch a train to the central coast.  There is a cross stitch shop up there not far from the station.  Even if I don’t buy anything (not going with any preconceived ideas in mind), it will get me out of the house for a while as well as the exercise of walking.I’m not a really quick walker, and the footpaths in the area can be a bit ‘homicidal’.  I have fallen because of footpaths in the area twice in the past.  Not a pleasant experience.  Not one I want to replicate.

You know those houses in shows like ‘Horders’?  Well, mine isn’t quite that bad, but if I don’t do something about it, it could be.  I’ve started to tidy things up.  I went through a storage box and threw almost everything out.  It was mostly manuals and assignments from my Legal Administration course almost 10 years ago.  When I looked over the assignments, I realised how much I liked my course and how well I did at it.  I scored highly on all the assignments, with many of them at full marks or only just a few marks off that point.  However, at my age (over 40 at the time) I wasn’t able to get a job in the area.  I was too old for a junior position and I didn’t have the experience needed for a more senior role.  Catch 22! I remember my teacher telling me at the time that within 6 months I would have my solicitor so organised it wouldn’t be funny, because I had a little bag with pretty much everything we would need in class.  Pens, technical pencils (no need of sharpeners), highlighters, glue sticks, hole punch, rulers, sticky notes, marker pens, sticky tape, little containers with rubber bands, paper clips, small stapler, staple, faxed and copy stamps.  I am still like that in my job today.  Have most things in my drawers at work that I will need (and not always on a daily basis).

But I digress, back to the tidy up:  I am working mostly on the kitchen dining room area at the moment.  In my local government area we don’t have wheely type bins for recycling.  We have plastic crates.  One for paper products and one for glass, metal and plastics.  Well, my next recycling day isn’t until Thursday and my paper crate is already full.  I can’t fit any more into it.  It’s going to be heavy to lift to put out for collection, so I really can’t over fill it.  I do have some cardboard boxes that I hadn’t put out yet.  I will just have to re-form them (they are flattened at the moment) so I can put some more paper rubbish into at least one of them to put out with the crate on Thursday.

Well, I think that’s enough for today.  Will let you know how I go with getting out of the house, later.

This is the first time I have had a blog.  This blog is going to be about a number of things.  My struggle with my weight as I try to lose about 80kg or more.  It will also be about my rekindled interest in Cross Stitching.  There will be other things along the way as we go through this adventure together.  I should, I guess, introduce myself.

I am an Australian woman, unmarried and very overweight.  I really need to lose the weight because I am not as healthy as I would like to be.  I guess I am a bit depressed.  I mean, at my weight (I weighed 142.7kg on Wednesday) who wouldn’t be? I am hoping that as I lose the weight, my health will improve and that my depression will lift.

I have recently rekindled my interest in counted cross stitch.  I am currently waiting the arrival of my new stitching frame and the stand on which to work.  I am planning to do some of the Disney Dreams series of designs.  They are quite large, compared to other projects I had worked on previously.  Hence the need for a new, larger, frame.  I decided to go with the Millenium Frame from Needle Needs in the UK.  I would encourage any cross stitchers out there to go to their site and check it out.  They are the only company that makes these frames and they look wonderful.  As things go on, I will post photos of the frame and my cross stitch progress.

I know there will be questions…. Why call this blog Advenures of an Aussie Ragdoll?  I have a Ragdoll cat.  She is now 16 years old and has been with me since she was 14weeks of age.  I like to honour her in different ways.  My business (I used to be a professional Interpreter for the Deaf here in Australia), my twitter name, and I’m sure if I thought about it, there are other things in which she has been honoured.  She is my furbaby as I am unmarried.  As a very traditional, old fashioned woman I have no children.  I believe that the correct sequence of events should be marriage and then children.  No marriage has meant no children.  I might talk about that later.  It’s still a difficult topic for me and doesn’t help with my depression, I’m sure.

Well, I think that’s enough for the first post.  I will return and talk some more.  As I learn how to put in photos and make the whole thing more interesting to look at, I hope you will want to go on this adventure with me.

Aussie Ragdoll.