New healthy beginning

I have now decided to get off my fat arse and do something about my weight. I'm what you might call overweight but not obese. As I am 5'1" its slightly easier to see when I've got a few extra pounds sitting on me. One thing I want to focus on is my lower body. I'm quite happy with the upper half and suprisingly I don't mind my "schmacko" arms.

It all started when a friend started the 100 Pushups Challenge. I thought I may as well give it a go, and Pat is going to do it with me (although he gets to start on week 3). I'll also be doing alot of walking. Vanessa's kindy is just around the corner and I walk her there and back every day so I thought why not continue? And that's exactly what I did this morning. I went for a nice brisk 1 hour walk along a creek that's near here. It felt good and I'm even thinking of going again this afternoon.

I also get my dog over from Melbourne this weekend and she, being a Labrador cross Akita, needs alot of walking so she will motivate me to keep it up as well. It's only been a day and I already feel really good within myself. And i already eat fairly decent so only need to make one or two changes like drink more water and less soft drink. I'm already a housework freak which also burns the calories, and I know a bit about exercise from when I had a personal trainer for a year. Every little bit counts.

Tips:
* Park as far from the shop door as possible for that extra bit of walking.
* Walk to the shops when possible.
* Use public transport more often.
* Use the stairs instead of the escalator/elevator.
* Having a cup of green tea in the morning boosts your metabolism.
* Drink at least 1-2 litres of water a day.
* Do sit-ups, push-ups, squats etc in front of the tv instead of sitting on the couch
* Walk the dog.
* Take the kids to the park on weekends.
* Play a casual sport on weekends (cricket/footy with friends)
* In summer spend time at the beach swimming or walking along the shore.

Now to see if I can follow my own advice :) I will be posting up a before shot and my measurements soon.

My Heart, Vanessa

June 23 2004, 7.30am, with one final push she is in this world. 3.3kg and healthy my daughter Vanessa Ann is born. As the nurses place her on my chest, they cut the cord and she is her own tiny person waiting to learn all there is to learn about this life. I breathe in her smell and position her mouth onto my swelling breasts as she takes her first feed. A tear rolls down my cheek as I fathom that after 9 months I have created this beautiful child who will from then on in depend on me.

I will forever remember that moment. Born on the due date and only a 4 hour labour. I only had the gas and did not make a sound, which funnily caused the midwives to think I still had a few more hours to go when her head was in fact peeking through. They broke my waters as her head came out which is apparently lucky in some cultures (would like to know which). I find myself looking back on this moment when I feel myself at a wits end as to what to do to make mothering her a more calmer place.

Don't get me wrong I love her to bits and she is in a way my saviour, but there is times (and I'm sure alot of parent's out there that understand) when I ask myself why. Time's when I want to hand her over to someone else to deal with. But then I remember the moment she came into my life and that makes it all worth while.

To watch her grow and become her own person, to expand on her bright personality and to see her slowly grow into the person she will be as an adult, it's... in a word... amazing. To be there through her happy and sad times and to comfort her when she is sick or scared. To be the one she turns to when she's having troubles and doesn't know what to do, even if all I can offer her is a hug.

The last four years has seen alot of ups and downs on my part and she has been through alot herself. Myself moving from house to house either on my own or with my parents, her father moving house alot with different people. And now a move interstate which she has settled into quite well. I am blessed with how good she adapts. And even though I do complain about her misbehavior and disobedience she really is a little angel.

She loves anything to do with nature and will always be picking up a leaf here, a rock there. She loves to draw and paint and just about anything creative she can get her hands on. She loves to have a book read to her and also to sing and dance. She also loves animals and will always give them cuddles (unless I hold her back because it's a stray).

All in all she is my little butterfly and I wouldnt have her any other way :D

My Life Laid Out

Life is a rollercoaster

Life's a bitch and then you die.

Why is it that when we seem to be heading in the right direction and getting ahead and things seem to be looking up.... life rears its ugly head and bites us in the arse yet again!!!

Makes you wonder what you have done in a past life to deserve alot of the stuff that happens everyday. Its not what you have done... Life is Crap!!

What brought this about you may ask. Well just as we thought we were getting ahead with money, a few extras popped their head in so we come out into no treats not even a $2 chocolate bar mode. Lets all give a great big sigh.

That is all

The Hunting Begins

Vanessa is in Kindy, house is organised, everything is settled so time to get a job. I am pretty flexible in what sort of job I will go for. But this doesn't mean that this will be easy. I have Retail and Hospitality experience so first thing that pops into ones head is "There are heaps of those jobs out there, no problem". Here's the problem, I can't be in a job with extended periods of time around food due to my skin allergies, and I only have limited times I can work due to Vanessa. This cuts the available jobs for me down to a small handful.

I have had one interview since I started looking two weeks ago, and it seemed promising. This was last Thursday and the manager said she'd give me a call by Friday. Whether this meant the next day or Friday week I don't know as I have yet to hear from her. I also had a phone call about distributing free Lindt chocolates at shopping centres and as much as I would have LOVED the job the hours were incompatible with my availabilities.

So I am now back on job search sites in the hope that I can find something, anything. I have thought about getting a cleaning job but the hours most cleaners do are after hours. I have applied for various admin/receptionist jobs and been knocked back or didn't hear from them at all. I have also applied for sales assistant jobs and not heard anything.

So I will be printing out some resumes this week (about 30 or so) so I can do the shopping centre drop offs for Christmas casual jobs. Here's hoping I hear from at least one of those.

Here are a few sites I have been looking at:
www.seek.com.au
www.jobsearch.gov.au
www.careerone.com.au

Quick Note #1 FB Apps.

I am an addict to alot of these. Mainly the Playfish ones like Bowling Buddies, Word Challange and Pet society. But majority of them are addictive all the same.

I find I tell myself "Just one more game then I'll go to bed". That one game turns into another hour before I realise it. It is fun converting others though. Well back to the world of facebook applications for me.......

My Monkey Man

This blog is dedicated to my boyfriend Pat. He is what most people would describe a geek/dork/nerd. Whatever you would like to "label" him as, I am glad to call him mine. We met as most do nowadays on the internet. On a forum dedicated to an author we both love. I found my way there via her books and ended up in the chat room. There I met many now great friends and him. After some very long and very intimate MSN conversations the attraction grew and i found myself flying here to Adelaide just over one month after meeting him.



It wasn't scary or nervous it felt, well, right. We decided not to let things get complicated and would still see other people as at the time a long distance relationship didn't seem to be the best thing especially as I had a daughter. I myself found that I stopped looking for guys to hook up with, Pat on the other hand had a whole harem after him, and i guess you could say I got a tad jealous but tried not to show it. He of course new, because I really am not that good at hiding emotions. I wear it on the sleeve I suppose.


Needless to say our nightly few hour long conversations made feelings grow stronger and after a fairly bad experience on his part he decided that the only person he wanted in his life at that time was me. I flew over on New Years and that is when we decided that we would be exclusively dating. That date becoming our anniversary.





We tried to see each other as much as possible, myself flying over here as I had more freedom with weekends off from work and more flexible free money as I was living at home. As our birthday's are only 5 days apart we spent a wonderful 2 weeks together even if the last few days were in Melbourne with my mothers lovely "subtle" hints that she didn't like him. We spent a great day at the Melbourne zoo with Vanessa who tuckered out towards the end.

In October of 2007 we decided to do a month long trial of living together. So I packed up my and Vanessa's things, her bed on the roof-racks, and we headed across country to good ol' SA. I must say it was the best 4 weeks of my life up till then. It felt right and everything fell into place. We didn't loose the "honeymoon" feeling and Vanessa absolutely adored him. Now she had met him before so I knew it wouldnt be a problem as she always asks to speak to him on the phone.

That New Years we celebrated one year of being together. I gave him a ring and he gave me some gorgeous earrings with matching necklace. We went out for dinner then met up with a few friends to celebrate the New Year together. It was such a great night and one I will always remember.


A few weeks later we were off on our first holiday together. We went to Queensland and stayed at a friends place. We did the touristy thing, I got mega burnt at Wet and Wild and WB movie world. It was so great to be away from work and family and just be ourselves. And for all those Python fans out there we found Monty Python Holy Ale. I have never seen Pat more relaxed than that holiday. And I hope to see him that relaxed in the near future once he gets a job in the field he studied for the last 4 years and $30,000 later for a piece of paper. And which I am so proud of him achieving.


This year has seen our worst ups and downs but we have made it through. And now 22 months into our relationship we are now living together. We will be signing a lease to a 3 bedroom house on Thursday afternoon and while I am in Melbourne for the long weekend (Melbourne Cup) as I have to take Vanessa over to see her dad, he and a few of our friends will be moving all our stuff from his tiny flat to our house. And the following weekend my parents will be bringing the rest of my and Vanessa's stuff across from Melbourne.

So begins our life together and I hope it continues on in the way it has so far. And if it ceases I will always treasure the time I've had with him as it has taught me a lot about myself and that there truly are pure hearted souls in this world.

My Life Laid Out

Realisations

I have recently discovered I have a money spending problem. I guess you could call me a shopaholic. I go out with a mind to buy bread and milk and come back with $50 worth of groceries that we didn't REALLY need. I also recently gave us a very large debt which although is being paid off in fortnightly installments, it was an unnecessary debt which i keep beating myself up over. So since then, and the realisation that I have a problem I have been reluctant to get anything from the shops. I have only been once and even though I only bought what I needed, I felt horrible because I kept looking and gettin the urge to grab things we didn't need.

I never used to have this problem. I used to always have savings sitting there. at least $500 and at one time I had $3000 sitting there and I went out and bought myself a whole new wardrobe because I had lost weight. But I think the problem stems from when I was with Vanessa's father. His wage was his to spend and he told me how to spend my wage which didn't give me much choice at all and savings were never heard of unless it wa for something for him.

I was only allowed to spend $100 a fortnight on groceries, and if i bought a $10 t-shirt I would be yelled at for being selfish, and yet he would go out and spend $800 on a petrol powered remote control car he never ended up using after spending another $400 on parts and add-ons. Now out of that $100 I had to get formula and nappies and wipes as we had a new born and I lost my breast milk when she was three months old due to stress. Which didnt leave a lot of money left for food for us. We lived on 2minute noodles and frozen pizza because he would bring that home after I got bread and milk with the remainder of the money.

What didn't help the situation is that we were stuck in a town with only one local store which was more like a milk bar than a store and it closed at 5pm every day and was closed Sunday. I had a car so I could drive the 40 minutes to the nearest supermarket but I unfortunately didnt have the money to get fuel. I was also 40 minutes away from the nearest doctor and hospital which was frightening if anything happened. We didn't have any fresh water, we had to go next door to have showers, and our toilet was blocked up because the septic tank needed to be emptied because it was full. We also lived in a rat infested run down house. Every night we would hear the rats nawing at the bed head.

Why didn't I leave? Well I didn't want to fail. I had a daughter and didn't want the whole single mother stigma over my head. I also had severe post natal depression and with him constantly telling me I was worthless and would never find someone else if I ever left him and he had had constant offers from all types of girls down at the pub, well lets just say my outlook on my life wasn't all that great.

There were many times I wanted to just leave Vanessa on the lounge room floor hop in the car and drive, if it was off a cliff well so be it I just wanted to leave. I had no self esteem, no sense of self. I was a shell doing what I needed to to keep Vanessa alive.. I would change her nappy, feed her and bath her, the rest of the time she lay on the lounge room floor till she fell asleep and I would put her into bed and then go to bed myself. Vanessa's father had no interest in her at all. Didn't feed her, bath her, cuddle her, change a nappy, didn't even acknowledge her.

When Vanessa was 8 months my mum and aunt came up and packed me up and took me back to mum's place. Only then did i get up the courage to tell Vanessa's father that it was over. I slept for two days straight and mum took over looking after Vanessa for me because I was too riddled with guilt over how i brought her up. It didn't help that I got a phone call every day from Vanessa's father wanting to see her. After 8 months of not wanting anythign to do with her suddenly because he no longer had control over me he wanted to see Vanessa so he still had a hold over me. Which didn't help my self esteem and made my spending go awol.

After I left him I found I would spend more money than usual. I would buy unnecessary things and I never had any savings anymore and I didn't understand why. I would go out drinking every weekend and spend hundreds on alcohol. I would also buy a new outfit for every weekend. That sort of spending has settled down a lot since but I still find myself going out and spending money I can't afford.

I hope now that I have realised my problem that I can start controlling it. It has made me stoop into my depression a bit but as I have been controlling that over the last 4 years it isn't as bad as it could be. I only hope that I can work through this and with Pat supporting me through it it won't be as hard as if it would be if I was going through it alone.

My Life Laid Out