Operation Fabulous has begun!

I’ve been horribly slack with updating this over the past few weeks. My mood has been low and my life has felt like it is spiralling out of control. Again.

But no longer!

Operation Fabulous has begun!
(Many thanks to Erin for posting about Tres Lola which has contributed to the inspiration.)

Over the last 12 months, I’ve put on a considerable amount of weight, almost 10kg, making me the heaviest I’ve ever been. My motivation and energy levels have been low. Clothes I love don’t fit any more. My most faithful pair of jeans that had fit me over 6 years of fluctuating weight (aged 16 to 22) no longer fit. It was devastating.
I’m perpetually tired. I’ve struggled to keep my house in order, and to cook properly nutritious meals. And my finances? They’ve been in a mess since Christmas.
The only thing that has stopped me from descending into complete despair and hopelessness has been my lovely partner. His support has been immeasurable.

Early last week, I decided that I had had enough. I’d had enough of looking frumpy. I’m 23, for crying out loud!
So I went out and bought some new clothes. I managed to squash the despair of having to buy clothes a size larger than I’d ever had to before. This week I started wearing high heels again. I’d stopped wearing them when I moved out of home in May last year. The effort was too much, and they weren’t exactly comfortable. But as a kick-start to feeling better about myself, wearing heels with my new office clothes certainly helped. Next step – wearing some of my fabulous jewellery again, and perfume too. I doubt I’ll ever be one of those women to put on a face full of makeup for work every day. I can’t stand the stuff, or more accurately, the feel of foundation on my skin. It bothers me. It’s ok for special occasions, but definitely not for everyday. But I digress.
I look forward to Friday, I have the day off work and I’m off to the hairdressers, for some much needed maintenance. My hair grows fast and it has been 2 months since I last went. So it has grown well out of the style I had it in, and just looks messy. The ash-brown regrowth doesn’t help either. Thankfully you can’t see the greys. These grey hairs are not new, I’ve been greying since about the age of 18, and even before then I knew it was only to be expected. My mother was completely grey by her early thirties, and I new the same fate was on my cards. But since I’ve had my hair coloured constantly since I was about 17, this isn’t such a big deal.

So come Friday evening, I will be back presenting myself better. No more obviously ill-fitting clothes, and drab hair.
The weight will take longer, but I’m working on it. I never stopped the sessions with my personal trainer, and that has helped. I’m back doing Body Combat classes at the gym, and after the first week, I realised just how much I missed them.
But it is still a fight to get to them. Somewhere, I have to fit in another gym session. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary.

Next step – getting the house in order. Clean out my wardrobe. Unpack those final few boxes from when I moved. Get rid of the things that don’t fit. and I don’t wear. Get all my lovely winter coats dry cleaned. Cull my shoe and handbag collection. File all those bills and receipts somewhere other than my desk.

Then, back to planning meals, and especially breakfasts and lunches. More salads, more veggies, and cut back on the treats.

Then finally, concentrate on getting my finances in order. This will be the toughest of all. I hate hate hate being in debt. The mortgage is bad enough, but now I have credit card debt to go with it. It’s not pretty. And in my recent emotional state, I’ve lacked the will power to deny myself the things my sad thought processes thought would make me happy. So maybe if I get the rest of my life in order, I can get the finances sorted too.

I’m also going to start doing Project 365, and my sweetheart will too. It will be a challenge sticking to it, but I will do it!

I’ve just got to find the camera first….

Experimental Cake Countdown

I’m counting down the last 15 minutes of my working week.
When those 15 minutes are over, I will dash off to the shops to buy the ingredients for my awesome experimental cake.
I’ve gone and bastardised several different recipes to come up with the one for my cake, so I have no idea how it will turn out.
If it works, it will be awesome. If it doesn’t work… well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
Stay tuned next week for the results.
And what sort of cake am I making?
Well, it involves chocolate, hazelnuts, and raspberries. And various combinations there of.

[Update]: It didn’t really work. The raspberry ganache was perfect, incredibly tasty, although it took much longer to set than I thought it would. The jam glaze didn’t work, it overpowered the rest of the cake, much to my despair. And the flourless chocolate cake was only so-so. It’s possible that using a hazelnut meal base rather than almond meal unbalanced the flavours. The cake would be fine on its own.
Perhaps I shall try it again sometime, with a few modifications.

Terra Australis Incognita

It is a strange country I live in. Look at the current state of things.
The top half of the country is under water, and the bottom half is on fire. The rest of it is bone dry.
Perhaps I’m generalising too much here, but I’m one of the fortunate few to live in an area that is neither underwater, nor on fire, nor as dry as the rest of the country.

To date, 126 people have died in the fires that are currently raging across Victoria, and that number is only expected to rise. Whole towns have been wiped out, now only ash and memories.

On the other end of the scale, most of North Queensland is underwater after two cyclones passed by in the last few weeks. The forecast is for more rain over the next week.

The whole country has been subjected to ridiculous temperatures over the past month. I had the misfortune to be in Sydney on Saturday, out west. It was a nice balmy 44 degrees Celsius (approx 110 degrees Fahrenheit). Ridiculously hot. And then the air conditioning in the car broke. Exploded, in fact. I would have cried, had there been any moisture left in me. The hot air just sucked it straight out of you.
And then mercifully, we got close to home, and coming closer to the coast, the temperature dropped ten degrees. If it was possible to hug a breeze, I would have done it.

And what is the current temperature? 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit). WTF mate. I’ve given up trying to understand the weather in this country.

But, I love it all the same. This is my country and I will always love it, no matter where I end up. And that brings me to my inspiration for this piece – Dorothea Mackellar’s ‘My Country’ (aka Core of My Heart). I’ve put the whole thing here as much for my reference as for any reader.

My Country – Dorothea Mackellar
The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze…

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Rant 1

I’ve had a bit of a frustrating couple of days, so I’m going to take it all out here.
Most of my stresses are connected to my work – things not going to plan, things going wrong, things going disastrously wrong, simple fixes taking entire days. And people still get my name wrong. ~sigh~
But added to that are other things.
Such as my flatmate being late with the rent. Again. This is the fourth time I’ve spoken to him about it in the six months since he moved in. And I HATE doing it. I feel guilty about it, like I’m the one in the wrong. I shouldn’t, but I do. To be totally honest, I’ve had problems with him since he moved in, and some of them are justified, and some are not. His fondness for watching crappy tv shows on my television isn’t a justifiable annoyance, even if he does have his own in his room.
But being late with the rent? Justifiable annoyance.
Leaving glasses and plates around the house? Justifiable annoyance.
Ruining an $80 saucepan? Justifiable annoyance.
Racking up a $70 phone bill on STD calls? Justifiable annoyance.
(and given I make 4-6 local calls a month, and had budgeted $30 a month for the phone, that came as quite a shock)

And everytime I try to mention the phone bill or the rent, its me who feels like the guilty one, like I’m in the wrong. I hate it.

“Just kick him out” I hear you say. Well, it ain’t that easy. We’ve been friends for quite a while, and I don’t want to damage the friendship. Although, it may already be damaged beyond repair in my own head. ~sigh~ I should have just struggled through the mortgage repayments on my own and never gotten a flatmate.

Anyway, that brings me to my next rant topic: Telstra. Our wonderful telecommunications company. HAH!
I’m reduced to paying my landline phone bill by phone because their stupid online system doesn’t work. I rang up today to get an itemised account for the December phone bill (the aforementioned $70 bill) and had to go through their automated system. And it isn’t the “press 1 for option a, press 2 for…” system either. No no no, it is the absolutely ridiculous system of “Say yes if your enquiry is about x” “If you wish to pay a bill, say bill payment” ARGGGHHH!!!
Just one of the many reasons I am switching to Internode’s Ultra plan. Not only do they have a much simpler payment system, but the calls are cheaper too.

Right. Now that I’ve gotten all that out of my system, I can get on with the rest of my day.