Week One of the Twelve Week Challenge

One week over, eleven to go. When I signed up for this challenge, we were encouraged to set goals every week. I kind of laughed at this. Weekly goals? I only overall goals: I want to lose a few of those extra kilos, tone up and get fit. But after week one of the challenge, new goals have started to emerge.

On Day One (Monday of last week), I tried going a whole day sticking to the eating plan. Which meant that for the first day in (quite possibly) my entire life, I tried to go a whole day without sugar. If you had asked me before the challenge if I was addicted to sugar, I would have told you Yeah! with a huge grin on my face because I didn't really believe it. Do I like sugar? Definitely. Am I completely dependent on sugar? No way.

And this is how I was still feeling when it got to ten o'clock at night on Day One. I was getting ready to go to bed. But I couldn't relax. My palms were sweating, I was shaking a little bit and I was starting to get a headache. Finally, after bursting into tears, I raced down to the kitchen and started tearing through our pantry and fridge (all of which had been cleaned out in anticipation of the Challenge). Finally finding some sweet crackers and a half-full bag of chocolate chips, I turned on the grill and melted chocolate chips all over the crackers while simultaneously pouring the chocolate into my mouth.

I wish I were joking, and that my need for sugar was a joke. But after looking back at how I've been eating I started to get a little a lot scared. I realised that I have a sugary drink with most meals (usually fruit juice or iced tea), and that there are most often baked goods lying around in the staff room at work for morning and afternoon tea. I also will tend to grab a muesli bar as a snack at Uni. So basically, without realizing it, I have been feeding myself a constant stream of sugar for most of my adult life.

So my new goal is: break the addiction! Have any of you tried to break a sugar addiction? How did you do it / how did you go?

- H

This is sort of a post about money

Ahh August. We are just over one week in, and I feel like I already need to make some changes to the way this month is going. You see, my sweet friend Elza has just made the life-changing decision to go and bring help and healing on The Mercy Ship - a ship that sails doctors, nurses and thousands more around Africa. Incredible, right? When Wade and I broached the subject of donating to her (she has to raise over $10 000 to cover her flights, insurance and stay on the ship), we both agreed that in order to donate as much as we would like, we would have to sacrifice a little bit.

Now, when I say sacrifice, I don't mean eating rice and tinned food every night, walking to work and the like. Although I definitely could do that. No, I just mean cutting down on the little luxuries that I afford myself every month. Just by eliminating some things from my routine, we should be able to save enough to donate. This will mean not going across the road and treating myself to sushi during my midweek shifts, and instead bringing lunch to work. This will mean not buying cute tops as soon as I convince myself that I need them, and instead creating a wishlist here on my blog. This will mean making my own damn espresso at home with my amazing espresso maker that my friends gave me for my birthday, putting it one of the three thermoses I have and taking it with me to work or uni instead of buying a cup when I get there. This will mean no impulse purchases of books (when I have some I still haven't read sitting on my kindle!), music (after Shazamming that awesome track that was playing on the radio), or - my weakness - nail polish.

I'm going to be honest here and say that being frugal - isn't that an ugly word? - isn't my strong suit. At all. And if I'm trying to save for myself, it is almost destined to fail every time. But when I'm saving for a friend - well, that's a different story. I'll probably be documenting long, mournful posts this month about how much I'm missing my sushi, or crafting clothing wishlists on Polyvore, or trying to talk myself out of buying yet another shade of blue nail polish. Ugh, I just read that last sentence, and I kind of hate myself. I feel like I should hashtag it #firstworldproblems. But I really need to practice reigning in my spending and I'm feeling that August is a good time to start! Who's with me?

- H

Happenings

Reading: Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones. If you haven't read Mister Pip, you need to run - run! - to your nearest bookstore and buy it. Or get it on your kindle and devour it. It's that fantastic. I read this book a couple of years ago when I picked it up at the Lifeline bookfest. I grabbed it because the title of the book reminded me of my favorite Dickens novel, Great Expectations (sidebar: I think it's my favorite because of its conciseness - does anyone else think that?). Imagine my delight when I discovered that the whole book was about the transformative power of novels; in this story, Dickens' novels. Also - get excited! - they are making a movie, due soon, starring Hugh Laurie as the kooky Mr. Watts. Then, a couple of weeks ago, my friend Annie (who has scarily similar tastes in books to me) added this book to her "Books I've Read" section on Facebook, which prompted me to go back and re-read it because this book is pure magic.

Watching: Bones is back on TV here in Australia, so I'm falling for the show all over again. *Sigh*.

Listening: I'm falling back into old habits, listening to music that can take me to favorite times and places. Chase This Light by Jimmy Eat World is notable when I get in this mood. I think that was possibly one of the happiest periods of my life. I was just starting Senior Year, I was getting my driver's license, I was full an insane amount of confidence. Oh, and I was falling in love with the boy who had given me this CD.

Loving: Here are three things to give you the happies!

1. Nerdy Love Song - filled with nerdy pickup lines. I tried some of these on Wade tonight, as he's currently at an extremely nerdy debate featuring Lawrence Krauss and William Lane Craig entitled Life, The Universe and Nothing. Please excuse the language - but this song is a classic, and the kitty is gorgeous.

2. Following Grammarly on Facebook. Because of a glitch in completing my Arts degree I have to take another subject on grammar. This is my third grammar-intensive subject in four years, and it has caused me to start calling people out on incorrect uses of who / whom. Yeah... Anyway, Grammarly is awesome because every day you get pictures like this one that make you want to punch the air, even if you are on a bus. I do have an opinion about the Oxford Comma!

3. Annnnd, the 27 Most Relatable Jessica Day Quotes. Especially this one.

- H

Here's to not getting wheeled down the aisle...

A few months ago, I started to feel a familiar twinge in my right knee. Every time it would twinge, I would freak out a little bit, and then forget about it. I didn't tell anyone. Then, one rainy day at uni, I was hurrying to class when my kneecap sublocated and immediately began to swell up. Crap.

You see, I've been through this before. Three times, in fact, with my left knee. I spent a few birthdays in surgery, went to Disneyland in a wheelchair, and abseiled in a full leg brace. I spent so long on crutches, that, to this day, one of my nicknames is Hoppy. If you read my blog, you will know that this actually ended up being quite a good thing, as I agreed to go out with Wade for the first time while in hospital. I won't say whether liberal use of my morphine button had anything to do with that decision.

Spending my 16th birthday in hospital. The nurses made me a cake.

So now, over four years after my last surgery, my fears (and my Dad's and my surgeon's) are confirmed. My right knee might just as messed up as my left. We're making jokes about me hopping down the aisle on crutches. Or my dad wheeling me. And most of the time, it's hilarious because my knee is behaving itself, and I'm working extra hard at the gym so that my leg muscles will hold the kneecap in place. But then, on days when it's twinging really painfully every time I put weight on it, I can't help but think, hold out until I get back from the honeymoon! Maybe nothing will happen, ever and my knee will just occasionally sublocate and that will be fine with me.

Or maybe not.

Here's to not getting wheeled down the aisle!

- H

Our Engagement Party!

At the beginning of the year, when we first got engaged, Wade's parents asked us if we were going to have an engagement party. At the time, some pretty sad / crazy things were happening with my family. A big one was that my grandma (the only family I have in Australia outside of my immediate family) had just gone in to hospital, and we didn't know if or when she would be getting out. So I told them I didn't think it would be possible. I knew that just organizing a wedding would be a huge ask for my parents and sisters. But Wade's parents were pretty insistent that we would be missing out on something if we didn't have an engagement party, and so they offered to host it. Which was, might I just say, amazing of them. We decided to have a very intimate party with just family who lived locally and close friends - especially those who we knew would be out of the country for the wedding. After a drizzly and cold week, I started questioning our decision to have the party at our local park. But the day before the party,  the sun came out, and it turned out to be the most beautiful weekend of the whole Winter! At the last minute, I decided to set up a volleyball net at the park because I knew that most of the people we had invited were volleyball enthusiasts (including myself and Wade). This turned out to be a massive hit (pardon the pun), and I don't know if I'll ever throw a party without a volleyball net again! What made the party extra special for me were the speeches, and the fact that my uncle and little cousin flew out all the way from England to come to the party. So there were two extra Lloyds at our engagement party - which is a huge deal.

I hope your weekend was as beautiful as mine!

- H