Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Big deal

Tuesday:

Big day for me today. It was busy, I was rushing here and there, but the big deal was when I went bra shopping. I've had damaged shoulders and limited rotation for nearly twenty years now, most recently I tore my left shoulder about six (?) years ago and since then haven't been able to do up my own bra at the back. I get Tim or Jas to help me, or I put it on backwards and wriggle it around. Really annoying. I've needed new bras for ages but put off shopping because of the hassle of trying them on. Today I decided I just had to do it, I went to a store that has a fitting service so there was someone on hand to help me do them up. But found I could do it myself!

This is just a major achievement for me! I mentioned maybe six months ago (?) on this blog that my shoulder mobility was a bit better, but still not able to reach my bra hooks, and I was pleased that it was so much better. And now another improvement. It seems like after many years of little change it's got a lot better over the past twelve months. Or maybe it's been gradual the whole time. Or maybe it's all this gardening I've been doing, getting my arm and shoulder muscles working. The tear of the tendon never actually 'gets better' or reattaches itself but the muscles eventually learn to compensate (a lot quicker if you do all the physio exercises!).

Anyway, I've very happy about it. Being able to dress myself it a big deal.

Dress

Monday:

This morning my weight was up to 75.2 kg, so I've regained 2.5 kg in the three weeks I've been off Duromine and I'm back to where I was at the start of the year. This time on Duromine I really felt like it wasn't doing much good, but as soon as I went off it I realised it actually was! Without it I'm eating too much of all the wrong things, sleeping badly, have night sweats and bad dreams, and drag myself out of bed with no energy for the day let alone exercise. Well regardless, the side effects were horrible so I'm not going back on it for a while if at all, so I have to find a way to lose weight or at least maintain without it. Starting today.

I wore one of my new dresses last night and everyone commented and I felt good. And I'm wearing my new khaki trousers today (it's cold and rainy) and they fit nicely and I am so much happier this weight than 10 kg heavier. I'm not going back there!

I'm not used to a dress though, it's knee length when I'm standing up but when I sit down I'm mainly just sitting on skin which I don't like at all. I tried to tuck it under my legs but its not really long enough. When we bought our leather lounge suite (more than ten years ago) Tim promised me that leather doesn't make you stick and sweat, he said that only vinyl does that, and that leather is fine. Wrong!!! Any time my skin touches it for any length of time (like if I lie down) I end up having to rip myself away. I much prefer cloth seats. I hated sitting on it with bare thighs, even with shortelettes underneath. The price we pay for fashion.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

TAFE stuff and bad karma

Friday:

I'm feeling as busy as a one-legged man in a ass-kicking contest at the moment. I finally have all my TAFE subjects available, I've only got three units but one of those is actually three smaller 'integrated' units, plus there is work placement to organise for which I had to fill out forms and update my resume. So I have six things to juggle. I know everything always feels a bit crazy at the start of the term, and only getting the integrated units a couple of days ago makes me feel a week behind already but it will settle down soon.

Yesterday a student friend posted info about a library job going at a school - and it was the school so close to me I can literally hear the announcements over their loudspeaker every day! I got a bit excited, a within-school-hours job two minutes walk away, how perfect. I wasn't familiar with the computer system they use but I found an online tutorial for it that I was planning to do so I could say I knew it. But with further investigation it turned out you had to have teacher qualifications, not just librarian. Some school jobs are like that. Oh well.

I don't have to find my own work placement job, the TAFE does that, although I might have to go to interviews. It won't be until next term, autumn/winter, so I guess the two floaty summer dresses can be party dresses not for work! The other navy one will be good with a jacket and the trousers and long skirt will be fine. Still glad I got the dresses, that pink one is so pretty!

One of the integrated units is customer service. I plan to apply for RPL (recognition of prior learning, it means you don't actually have to do the subject) as I have many years of customer service experience. I'm not sure if I'll get it though. My Centrelink experience was nearly 20 years ago - I have a certificate thing from 1999! - and I don't really have any evidence for my customer service work for my more recent editing business. I was my own boss, no supervisor! Maybe I can contact one of my old customers.

My cataloguing teacher from last term sent me feedback for my third exam - 100%. So over the total of the three exams I made one mistake, giving me a final result of 99.6%. Not bad! Not all subjects give a mark, many are just satisfactory/not satisfactory, but I made over 90% in the ones that give a mark. Cataloguing is my best. And my favourite subject. Since not many people like it, I hope I'll be able to get into the field. I'm feeling a bit jealous of Lauren with the cataloguing internship. What if it leads to a job? Reminding myself that I've been sick with flu which would have interfered with the internship anyway doesn't really help.

Today was Jasmine's school's swimming carnival. She's had an ear infection after her flu so it wasn't really appropriate for her to go (and most of her friends weren't going, although it's compulsory). So we went shopping. Jasmine needed a couple of things, I needed a couple of things. Like the belt for the navy dress I bought on Tuesday. Now there was an instant karma moment. The belt was supposed to come with the dress, when I tried the dress on I had to go down a size but the smaller belt was too small. So I swapped it with the other belt on the larger size dress which I still had with me in the change room. (Not so good for the people who would in future try on the bigger dress with a tiny belt.) Then I bought the dress. While folding my dress, the saleslady put the belt to one side. Then forgot to put it in the bag and I didn't notice. She called when she saw it, as I was driving home (I have hands-free in the car). It was too late to go back. Definite karma for my sneaky belt swap! The saleslady put it away for me to pick up today. She was so apologetic, but I felt just as guilty!

I had my eyes checked today, it's been about three years I think since the last time. Only a small deterioration in one eye. I though my eyes were getting a bit worse but it's only that they are taking longer to adjust when I look from near to far, symptom of age and glasses won't help that. It wouldn't be worth getting new glasses but Ping works there and gets a staff discount and wanted to get me new ones as some of the shading has worn off these. So she'll organise new lenses, I'll keep the old frames which I love.

I bought a new very sparkly phone case. My old one was very discoloured and yucky. The new one is so glamorous!
It looks even better actually on the gold phone (I had to take it off to take the photo), and the glitter moves around like a snow dome. It sparkles whenever you move it!

Monday, February 19, 2018

Shopping frenzy

Tuesday:

We had a busy weekend. On Saturday morning Aiden has his tennis lesson, Tim always takes him so I’ve never even met the coach. More on that in a moment. Then we went to lunch to celebrate a cousin’s birthday and saw the movie Black Panther, which was quite good but a bit strange. One odd thing was a peaceful and technologically advanced civilisation using single combat to determine leadership!

On Sunday morning I was out doing some gardening when our neighbour called me over the fence. (Not the one that complained about our pool heater, the other side.) I’ve barely met her in two years but she seems nice. They have three daughters but they go to a different (Catholic) school to my kids. After some general chat she brought up Aiden’s tennis coach, she must have previously learned from Tim who we went to. She said she’d pulled her kids out of lessons with him some time ago because he’d once become very aggressive with her over nothing, getting right in her face and scaring her enough that she reported it but no action was taken because he wasn’t physical. She has since met other parents who’ve had similar experiences (obviously Tim hasn't). But now she’s heard he is going to court this week because he physically attacked a woman walking her dog, and gave her facial injuries! So, that’s scary!

Sunday lunch we celebrated Chinese New Year, my sister-in-law is Chinese so she organised it, making sure there was my favourite roast duck, but it was held at cousin Daniel’s new house. They only moved in a few weeks ago and it’s the first time I’d seen it. We considered buying that block of land but decided to buy an existing house instead, and I’m glad we did because it’s taken well over two years for them to get to this point! They had to rent in the meantime. But they got to plan the house they wanted.

Then our Christmas present to Tim’s brother was theatre tickets, that was on Sunday night so we babysit our nieces Emma (5) and Ashleigh (1). Ashleigh had had a nap after lunch, and it was quite an early show so we didn’t try to get them to sleep. We had a swim in the pool, dinner, and some TV. Ashleigh gave a wail as her mother left, but I was able to distract her quickly and either Jasmine or I carried her around most of the evening. No tantrums or tears from either child.

Monday afternoon we had Emma again after school - they’ve got after school care organised elsewhere from next week - I had a headache and did find the constant ‘why?’ and ‘what?’ a bit tiresome! But we got through it with colouring in, afternoon tea, cubby house construction, and quiet time on the iPad.

Today I spent most of the day clothes shopping, again mainly for work things although I did also buy a new swimming cossie (the modest kind with a skirt). I bought lots! Three dresses, and navy pants and a blouse. With the things I bought last week, I feel fully ready for work placement and job interviews. I’ve never had so many new things in my life! I still don’t know how the work placement thing is going to work. I’ve also volunteered to help at Aiden’s school library this term.

Here is a selection of new clothes...



Thursday, February 15, 2018

Valentine

Thursday:

So it was Valentine's Day yesterday. Tim and I exchanged boxes of chocolates (both Lindor balls, different flavours) and he made an effort to sit on the couch near me while I was watching my favourite show (My Kitchen Rules) last night, but otherwise we didn't celebrate in any way. I'm still slowly on the way up from flu and had that horrible night of little sleep, Tim was actually feeling worse again with his flu. So we just sat in the same room felling rotten and had to be content with that!

I'm feeling a bit better again today, slight improvement every day but much slower than I'd like. I've been sick three weeks now if you include a few days when I thought I was better before getting sick again. At least I had a great sleep, unconscious for about nine hours.

I was getting increasingly paranoid about the fact I had nothing to wear if suddenly called upon to look neat and professional rather than stay-at-home mother and student (I have worked since the children were born but almost entirely from home with no customer contact, only six weeks in an office quite a few years ago and in winter) so today I did a bit of clothes shopping. I found a nice khaki pant that will go with several tops I already own, so that was a relief. Also grabbed on sale a few non-work tops and a skirt that unfortunately goes with nothing I own! I’ll need a plain white top to go with that one. I tried on many things and was exhausted by the time I got home. I made the kids walk to their afternoon sport. Apparently the coach was dubious about their walking home again! It's twelve minutes walk away, fine weather, in full daylight along streets that are neither isolated nor too busy, a safe city in a safe country, the two of them always together, and Jasmine is 14. I consider myself an overprotective mother but even I thought that was fine!

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Back to TAFE

Wednesday:

TAFE is back this week, which I am really glad about. I felt well enough yesterday to drag myself to my first class. I only have three units left plus work placement to finish my degree. TAFE classes are pretty small, there are only 16 computers in each classroom, but this unit had nearly double that! They've asked if half of us can move to another free timeslot and since it's the only class I'm doing face-to-face and I don't care which day as long as it fits around kids school times, I'll be one of them. It worked out well, I know all but one of the people in the moving half but almost no-one in the other half! It was nice to see people from last year and chat. I didn't get to talk to Lauren, the girl who got the internship I wanted, I'd love to hear how it's going. I think she feels a bit awkward that she got it instead of me but I don't blame her for that!

The class I'm doing face-to-face is a higher-level subject which only the Diploma students do (some other classes are shared with Cert 4) assessed on one big research paper, I've already got an idea of what I want to do mine on. The teacher said to pick something that interests you because you'll be living with it all semester! Library-related of course.

I've been eating terribly for the past couple of weeks, my weight on Monday was 73.4 kg which was an increase of 0.8 kg for the week! (The next day it was 73.1, so there is probably a lot of water fluctuation.) I definitely need to get a handle on the sick comfort eating.

I had a really bad night last night and feel awful this morning. On Monday night I had a great sleep, Tim was away on a work thing that he felt he had to go to even though he's not fully well yet either. I had a big quiet bed to myself! But he was back last night. Tim has asthma so he is a heavy breather at the best of times, but of course it is much worse when he is blocked up with flu. I just couldn't sleep with his wheezing beside me. Eventually I went out to the lounge and got a little sleep there but it's not the same as being in a bed and I didn't have sheets or anything so I was a little cool (I didn't want to turn lights on to find them), it's summer here and was a hot night so it wasn't cold but it's still nice to have a covering. When I staggered back into our room just before Tim had to get up he didn't even know I'd been gone!

I'm certainly not perfect in the quiet sleeping stakes, by the way, I have sleep apnoea and of course currently the remains of the flu so I'm sure I'm just as bad! I know my CPAP machine (which I haven't used for ages) really disturbs his sleep (mine too!). We don't have a spare room here but I've been thinking seriously that we need a daybed set up somewhere for when we need it. There have been many nights when I've felt like I just can't stand being kept awake. We still have Aiden's old bedframe (he got a loft bed when we moved here), I'd just need to get a mattress. Kind of weird having a bed set up in the lounge, but I think it can look ok, I've seen it done. If we can get rid of the huge old TV cabinet that we tried to give to the Salvos but they didn't want it, and use that corner. You can make a daybed look more like something to sit on. But ready to crawl into. Are mattresses supposed to be replaced every ten years? If so we all need new ones!

I think Facebook is going to far with its targeted advertising. I was thinking about the daybed thing yesterday after the good night's sleep alone, hadn't mentioned it to anyone or looked up anything online, logged onto Facebook in the afternoon and there it was - an ad for a daybed. Mindreading is a step too far. It was a bit scary, really. Had I seen the ad in previous days and that's what made me think about it?

I feel like 2018 hasn't been great so far. I've been sick a lot of the time, depressed a bit, the weight loss isn't going well. I hope things pick up. I'll enjoy getting back into study.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Snotty

Sunday:

Not much to say, still sick. Tim basically has to go to work tomorrow whether he’s felling better or not. Jasmine is doing ok and already back at school. Aiden hasn’t been sick at all. I’ve moved into the  snotty nose and sore throat phase. So tired. I nap a couple of times a day. Surely it’s nearly over? TAFE goes back this week. I will have work placement this semester and I have no clothes suitable to wear. Since I lost some weight all my old clothes are baggy (I didn’t have much anyway) but the only new things I have are a pair of very tight jeans and a pair of denim shorts. No work appropriate clothes for the lower half!

I’ve been doing lots of reading and watching TV, like the Winter Olympics. Eating the wrong foods, easy carbs like toast and 2-minute noodles, or home delivery like Thai tonight.

I’m supposed to look after Emma for a while tomorrow. I don’t think her parents really have any other option. I hope I feel better, and I hope I don’t pass on my germs.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Spread of germs

Tuesday:

Well Tim was sneezing all morning before he left for work and Jasmine had a sore throat and runny nose... I'm still tired and headachy but better than yesterday.

Wednesday:

...and today both Tim and Jasmine were home sick. And Tim pulled a muscle in his back sneezing so now can hardly walk.

I continue to improve, although now my gums are really sore! It hurts when I floss.

Yesterday Jasmine’s school contacted me to say she had been marked absent at roll call and I hadn’t called to let them know she wasn’t coming in. Even though she’d gone to school as usual. The first time this happened last year I had a bit of a panic, but now after it’s happened a few times I just ask them to check as she is a quiet little person, easily missed. And they find her in class where she is supposed to be. So today it happened again, and I’m thinking “two days in a row? Of course she went to school.... oh yeah that’s right she didn’t.” Luckily this response only happened in my head!

Monday, February 5, 2018

The dreaded lurgy continues

Monday:

This week I only lost 0.2 kg, another puzzlingly small amount considering I’m eating way less than my tracker says I’m burning. I’ve decided not to ask my doctor for another script for Duromine, no point putting up with side effects and possible dangers when I’m not even losing weight on it! If I ever try it again (don’t know if i will) it would have to be after a much longer break than the two months I waited this time. It’s disappointing, because it did work well for me last year. I had one pill left but didnt bother to take it today.

Well, I shouldn’t complain too much, I’m now 72.6 kg which is 12.1 kg less than I was around six months ago, and the lightest I’ve been for years. I’ll continue trying to lose without the help of an appetite suppressant.

I’ve had the flu continuing most of the week, mainly aching back and general fatigue. I felt mostly better by the end of the week and since we had a cooler week I was able to get a lot done in the garden, but then I started feeling really tired again yesterday and woke this morning aching all over worse than ever! And at bedtime Jasmine said she was feeling sick.

Aiden went back to school (starting year 6) on Tuesday, and Jasmine (year 9) on Wednesday. Jasmine’s actual birthday was on Tuesday so it was just the two of us. We went out to lunch and saw the movie Pitch Perfect 3 (again). Her main present from us was a set of handstand bars for gymnastics - not as impressive as that sounds, they are two low stands like little footstools that you can grip which is more comfortable than hands flat on the floor. Jasmine’s final birthday celebration was an extended-family dinner last night. I didn’t enjoy it much because I was starting to feel sick again but didn’t want people to know because I had just served food I had prepared! Hope it wasn’t germy.

On the days I was feeling well I spent hours out in the garden. I had an exciting moment when I realised I had just disturbed a wasps’ nest in a neglected corner. I ran for it, and didn’t get stung. Over the next couple of days I made several lighting attacks with a can of spray, eventually the big paper nest was empty. I rarely use poisons but make an exception for wasps and red back spiders. Everything else gets to stay - as long as it’s outside.

My niece Emma started kindergarten last week, and as both parents work some days and they are still sorting out after-school care, I’ve been booked in for a few days of babysitting spread over the next few weeks before Ping’s parents become available. I find Emma quite exhausting - she is so full of energy! And today was tricky because I was feeling pretty awful and I also had to get Jasmine to dance lessons. But of course I am happy to help, and they don’t often ask me to babysit. I picked her up from school - the same one Aiden goes to, but he usually rides his bike as it’s not that far - and we kept her entertained for a couple of hours. It must have been ok as she didn’t want to leave when her mother arrived.

Hopefully Jasmine and I both feel better tomorrow.