So it has been a while...

So it has been a while since I have done a blog entry although not a lot has been happening.  A few entries back I mentioned my friend Nicole got married. A week before her wedding I had my acrylic nails removed. This was a huge deal for me because I have had them for the last 16 years at least. I have attempted to remove them before but I just went back to my old nail biting self. Anyway this time this hasn't been the case although they are very weak. I have always kept my nails very short and I am just trying many many things to try and strengthen them. My cuticles need some work as well so I am going to attempt daily applications of hand cream. Anyway this is how they are looking at the moment.

I desperately wont to paint them because I love the look of dark polish on short nails but because I am in the process of using a product called Revitanail I am pretty sure this wouldn't work on top of polish so I am just wearing them naked for the moment.

I also had an incident recently in my car. I was driving home on the freeway going 100km and I was in the middle lane. Suddenly I saw this big piece of metal or something coming straight for me. It had obviously come off a car in front somewhere. Anyway it was coming straight for my windscreen and I am sure if it had of hit it them I would not be here now writing this post. Anyway it do drop a little and ended up hitting my bonnet. I didn't think much of it at first, I was just thinking to myself 'Gee I hope that didn't damage my car...' it wasn't until I had arrived at my destination that I realised it had in fact done a lot of damage. The photo below only shows the top bit, there is more below but I didn't want to post a picture of my Rego. 

So now I have had to put in a claim with my insurance company which is going to cost me my excess of $625 and have the hassle of getting it fixed. I am taking it in next week.

I also went and had an appointment with a hypnotist to try and help me with weight loss. I love to eat food and I think I have an eating addiction. I am trying really hard however at the moment and have lost about 3kg. Anyway her main area is dealing with weight loss and her website is also called HypnoSlim. So I went and saw her for my first appointment which is really just talking and quite intense therapy to try and get to the root of the problem. She had told me on the phone that a lot of people are done after 3 sessions so I thought at $145 a pop I can afford this. Anyway after her hour with me our conversation went like this:

Me: So you said most people are fine after 3 sessions?

Her: Unfortunately you are not one of them. You are not an easy fix!!!!!

So I am sure I will be seeing her for a while however I am feeling really good about it as I think she could really help me. I actually feel that I have wasted my life and when I look at how I am sure I would be in the next 10+ years if I continue along the road I am on I am going to be extremely depressed. I am now feeling uplifted and looking forward to this challenge. My first real appointment is next week so I will let you know how it goes.

Until next time :-)

My Fitness Pal

So I have decided to have another attempt at weight loss and have done well for the last few days except for perhaps today. The title of this post relates to an app that I have recently put on to my IPhone. I have always heard of the benefits of calorie counting and I know it is a big part of the weight loss on shows such as The Biggest Loser but in my opinion was always to complicated. Don't get me wrong I still think it is bloody complicated but this app does everything for you. It starts off daily allowing me 1200 calories. Every time you consume something you can search for it in the search bar and you can also scan the bar code. When some exercise is added to the day that can also be entered to give you some extra calories. For example I started off with my 1200 this morning and then I had a piece if toast with Vegemite which totalled 94 calories. Since I have started this little health kick I had been having a Celebrity Slim Chocolate shake for my morning breakfast however was shocked when I saw that one of these shakes is 211 calories. Exercise is also something that. Am never in the mood to do because I am totally lazy, this is not a good thing when you are addicted to and love food as much as I do. I am a bit of a closet eater and sneak shit loads of food when nobody is around. Anyway Madeline was at a rollerblading party today and I decided to have a go. I had a ball and to be honest wasn't to bad on the old roller blades. I skated pretty intensely for about 15 minutes. Anyway there is a section in the My Fitness Pro app where you can enter any exercise that you may have done in any given day and I searched and found rollerblading for 15 minutes gave me another 258 calories to play with for the day. What I wish i hadn't done however was eat the choc wedge, and the lifesaver ice pole I had about 30 minutes ago. Here is a screen shot of my day.

Hopefully I can try and get myself a little more motivated and start enjoying my life. I hate the fact that I am 36 and that I feel that I have wasted a lot of my life. I love love love my little girl to pieces however I am in a rutt and have been for a long time. I have been single for the past 5 or so years except for a 5 month relationship in between which was a total MISTAKE and for those five months I have no idea what I was thinking. Now even though I feel like I am perfectly happy being on my own I am sure that if I found the right guy I could be a hell of a lot happier.

Disappointments

Sometime perhaps I just expect to much but I have found going back a few years I have been disappointed at certain things that happen in my life, perhaps I am just too sensitive but it makes me feel that perhaps certain people in my eyes to me are 'very important' but perhaps the feelings are not totally mutual. I am not saying that I am not important to these people but I guess not as important as they are to me.

My first example goes back many many years ago when I was young, and single and wanted to go out and have fun on a Saturday night. My girlfriend and I would have planned to 'hit the town'. We would have been meeting at her place beforehand however quite often I would get to her place and she would just say something like 'do you just want to stay in and watch a movie?' This was often a real downer when you have been looking forward to something. It seemed like she had decided not to want to go out for a while however waited until I got there to 'drop the bomb', perhaps if I had been pre-warned I could have decided against going or made other plans. It was often disappointing.

Example two goes back about 6-7 years ago. I had someone who I considered a very good friend. She wasn't part of my group of friends from school as I met her from a workplace however we lived nearby to one another and would pop in to one another's homes a couple of times a week for a gossip. I considered her to be one of my best friends. I had also planned that if I was to get married I would have my two BFF's as a bridesmaids as well as her making it 3. This disappointment came when I wasn't even invited to her wedding.

Example three happened 2 days ago. It was one of my best friends weddings. I have known this girl for about 32 years and we have always been close friends. The first thing her 'husband to be' said to me on the wedding day was how special I was I guess because apart from her family I was the one person there who had known her the longest. When it came to the speeches however and at least 90% of the guests were mentioned in the 'thankyou's' I was missed! I wasn't the only one as 2 of my other friends were missed as well. I know this was just an over site however in my opinion it was a huge disappointment.

I value my friendships so much. I don't have a huge social circle which makes the dozen or so close friends that I have extremely important to me. These examples above however make me realise that perhaps I am not as important to others as they are to me.

Soineya

I read an interesting thing today while browsing various articles on my Ipad. Before I get into it though I just want to say how much I love love love Flipboard on the Ipad as well as Zite even though they are basically the same thing. Both of these are apps where you can just select categories that interest you whether it be News, parenting. Hollywood, TMZ etc etc and recent articles are shown. I then have also downloaded the app called ‘Instapaper’ because I can then put articles I may be interested in reading later into my Instapaper’ and I can read these ‘offline’ whenever I like which brings be to today's article.

Soineya:

I had never heard of Soineya before today. Soineya is known as a ‘Japanese cuddle club’ where people can sleep with strangers. My ‘sleep’ I actually do just mean sleep and maybe a few cuddles or spooning. This business was opened in Tokyo in September and allows people to ‘sleep’ with one of it’s female employees for a price. The females employed there range in age from 17 – 25 years.

Soineya isn’t a brothel but a ‘cuddle club’ where after paying an admission of 3,000 yen (about $38), customers select from a menu of sleep durations. For example for 1,000 yen (about $12) you are able to give the woman a foot massage, have the woman just look at you, or even get patted on the head. The strange thing is that it is more expensive to give a foot massage than it is to receive one.

The shop was opened by a gentleman named Koda and the woman hired have a vast range of costumes they are able to wear from a school uniform and a sailors suit. A standard job involves laying down on a floor mattress with the client for a minimum of 20 minutes to a maximum of 10 hours which could cost up to $630. One of the most popular services involves a Japanese man sleeping with his head on the woman's lap. This itself costs approximately $13 for every 3 minutes. If the client wishes to have the woman’s head resting in his lap the price is doubled.

The owner of this business firmly states that this is not a sex service but a place for men who feel lonely and may want to be with someone whether it be for a cuddle, foot massage or even a slap in the face (apparently quite a lot of guys go for that….)

Business has been open now for approximately 4-6 weeks and is apparently going really well!

(Strange strange strange)

Gambling

I was just having a look through my local paper and there was an article on gambling. It stated that people ion my area poured $88.5 million into the pokies in the last 12 months.... that is CRAZY.

I know all about those damn pokie machines because I to had a gambling addiction many years ago. I am not sure at what age it started but I would say about 19 or so. At the time I was dating a guy who liked to have a bet on the horses and of course that would lead us from the TAB to many trips to the casino. I don't even want to think about how much money I wasted doing this. It wasn't just in the evenings either as I remember at this time I was working at the local supermarket and even on my lunch breaks I would make my way to the local Taberet along with fellow work mates and would pour coin after coin into those damn machines. During some of this time I was living out of home and although I always made sure I had money for rent and bills I would have not much else. My parents were very worried about me and numerous times they would spy on me and confront me whilst I was pushing that damn button and most probably taking a drag on my numerous cigarettes.

There was one night when my parents and I went out for dinner to the local pub and coincidentally I happened to leave my jacket there. Then of course later that evening I just had to go back and pick it up and of course have a gamble. On this particular night I had a big win of about $5000. I was pretty excited and made up some story to mum and dad when I got home that I just put in $5 and JACKPOT. With that win I went out and bought myself a piano. God only knows why seeing I could afford the piano but with my gambling how in the world did I expect to afford lessons???? My gambling continued until I got myself into quite a bit of debt and to help me out of it my parents offered to buy my piano off me. This I am sure was just an excuse as they helped me out of my debt but they never took the piano. Anyway as time went on it got worse and worse. What I think I enjoyed was the fact that I could just sit at a machine and all of my problems etc just vanished and it was just me, the machine and my cigarettes.  Although this is a weird thing to say but in my opinion what cured me from my gambling addiction were in fact cigarettes. When the laws changed and smoking was banned in pokie venues I just wasn't interested in going anymore as It just wasn't the same. Leaving a machine to pop out for a quick smoke wasn't as enjoyable as when I could just do both at the same time.

I would never have thought I would say this but THANK GOD FOR CIGARETTES!

Now I should think about trying to quit those........ 

My Family stickers

So WDYT? See me personally am not a fan of the My Family stickers. I am sure you all know what I am talking about but just in case there is some lucky person out there who doesn’t know about them they are this is what it says online.

These fun ranges of family stick figure characters have been especially designed for you to be able to create your own unique sticker family. You can put My Family stickers on your car's back windscreen or side windows, stick them on your letterbox or wherever else you can think of! Families come in all shapes and sizes so it stands to reason that each set of My Family™ stickers will be totally different and will consist of a unique combination of stickers to suit the individuals in each family. 

So on the back of a car you may see something like this:

And while you are driving along you may think 'Oh look at that PERFECT' family. There is a successful daddy (seeing he holds a laptop) with a mummy who enjoys tennis whilst taking her son out for a ride on his bike with the dog happily running behind whilst waiting for the cute little girl to finish ballet!

 

So apart from the fact that I mainly just find them a little tacky I do wonder if they could be a bit of a security risk. Pretend for example I had them on my car. I would have a photo of a lady (me), a little girl (my daughter) and 2 dogs. So if some weirdo was to see those on my car then what is to stop him following me home and breaking in at a later date and doing some ‘god awful’ things to myself and MY FAMILY. Although this may appear a little extreme it could happen.

And to finish off, this is the sticker that I have on my car.

This is the sticker that I have on my car.

Time to get healthy!

Starting a health kick tomorrow. If all goes the way it usually does when I start a health kick I will probably last about 5 hours if I am lucky.

I spent some time browsing around the Iphone App store under weight loss and I got a few apps. One of them is called 'My Weight' which is really just an app to track your progress. I estimated my height at about 163cm because for some strange reason I always seem to forget my height. I mean it hasn't changed in about 20 years so why on earth can I not seem to remember it. I also entered a start weight in back on the 13th July of 85.5kg. I hadn't even started trying to be healthy then but now I am weighing in at 83.9kg so that is already 1.6kg without trying! It also tells me that my BMI is 32.77 which puts me in the OBESE class. I guess on the plus is the fact that at my heaviest about 3 years ago I weighed in at 99kg so I have made quite a big change but not big enough for me to feel healthy and happy and attractive.

Another app that I got is called 'Weight Loss'..... well that was a depressing app. What this one does is you type in what your weight is and it brings up what you should look like at that particular weight. When this pic appeared I was quite shocked!

I didn't think I looked quite so...... cuddly!

So now for my goals and to be honest I am not going to go at it 'hard core' because I will have no success that way. I know even if I manage to lose a maximum of 500 grams a week it is better than nothing.

Another app I got is called 'Weight Loss' tweek a week. All this one is a list of different weekly tweeks to try and get you into a better frame of living. The first tweek is to 'Drink enough water', well this in itself will be a challenge for me because I hardly drink any water. It says that our bodies need between 1-2 litres of water a day and I would be lucky to have a mouthful when cleaning my teeth. I decided when I was at the supermarket to just by one of the biggest bottles I could find and I ended up bringing this baby home.

I had never seen this brand of bottled water however the reason I picked it was because it would fit in the drink holder in my car. It holds 1.5 litres. The only way I am going to be able to drink 2 of these bottles if I force myself to as early as possible in the day. If I manage to drink 2 then I will reward myself with a Coke Zero! One thing I know water will do is help to regulate me which is a bonus.

The last app I got is one called 'I CAN' which is Hypnotherapy. I purchased the one called 'Lose Weight' (obviously) It is read by some guy called Donald MacKinnon who is Scotish and just from having a quick listen I hope I can keepup with the accent. The app doesn't look overly 'user friendly'. All it has on it is an introduction to Donald and then you just press 'PLAY' and the session begins. I have no idea how long the thing goes for though. I thought of just going off to sleep with it on, just hope little Miss 7 who sleeps with me every night (did I mention she is 7!!!!!!) doesn't wake up when it is on. Who knows, maybe Mr MacKinnon can be a miracle worker.

STATS AS OF Sunday 22nd JULY

Starting weight: 85.5kg (July 13th 2012)

Starting BMI: 33.4

Current Weight: 83.9kg

Current BMI: 32.77

Total lost: 1.6kg

Wish me luck!!!!