Moolies

Gym bore - self obsessed tedium. Ignore.

I've tried very hard to keep the gym thing out of this because it's too "me" centred in quite a selfish sort of way. The blog's supposed to be about living with Nora really.

But i suppose me getting my body back (not even the pre-pregnancy one - I mean potentially we're talking the 'ok, I'll never make it as far back as 1997 but maybe 2000?' body. Because I have been horrifically unfit, which given my twenties history is not something I geared myself up too. Being settled in a sedentary job meant having a gentle slowfall of lard that didn't melt continue and gather apace over the years.

And with that bizarre image...

So I appear to have lost a stone, or there abouts, since I started going to the gym. Given just how many stones there are to lose, the fact that one goes in a little more than a blink of an eye is not that much of a surprise to me.

You want the full weight? Well... ok. put it this way. I reckon I've got another 3 1/2 to lose before I'm *relatively* happy. However, I should of course be going by clothes size and in my current fatso version I'm on size 18, which I still cannot believe. If I stick at this for years and never eat a slice of cake again, I might make it to comfortable size 12 but not loose - but, I have my enormous broad shoulders and hips to contend with so I might be stuck in extremely comfortable size 14.

But have I given up cake? Are you out of your mind? Cake is one of life's greatest pleasures. I *demand* cake.

(Note: slightly physically repulsive descriptions in next part)
The other, slightly gross aspect to this amazing physical revolution is that my collagen on my tummy is...well, in large places, completely knackered. Un-shrinkable. Quite apart from the bit in my bellybutton where my thus far neat little endoscopy scar swelled and pulled its way in to bulging red and purple distention. To put it plainly - there are parts of me that no amount of vitamin e cream is going to help shrink back. There are parts of me that now, given the sudden loss of a stone in weight, have begun to sag.

And it can only get worse from hereon in. Oh joy!

Horrible week

Personally horrible. I've barely seen Nora for more than ten minutes a day all week. I was still travelling home from Doncaster on Monday, Tuesday working late, then gym. Wednesday - Wednesday evening I put her to bed - hurrah. Except, she was a bit freaked out because I was there and hadn't seen her for days. So she wouldn't drink her milk and was a bit grouchy.

I suggested to Mackay that I put her to bed tonight and go to the gym late? No no, it'll be fine. Here's the thing. I really do have to go to the gym. It's not an affectation. My body doesn't work properly. My back is fucked. If I stop going, things will start sliding back. I should be having it paid for on the NHS. I've gto to make my body physically capable not only of carrying no.2, but more to the point, recovering without the level of complete breakdown that followed no.1. It's going to take a while, and there's only so much "while" available.

Still, I get her all to myself tomorrow. Even if I do have to take her to the Doc's* with me, and Steve "the gay" is coming over and doing all of our hair in the afternoon.

I love her so much and after 3 days, she's changed in small ways that make her not quite the same Nora that was there at the beginning of the week. It's very painful.

*slightly boring back problems blether in extended entry if you want to bother reading it.

To be buried alongside other embarrassing TV criticism:

Ok. so Doctor Who has officially gone wrong.

They've done *3* zombie storylines in the series so far. That's 3 stories out of... uh... 5?

Come on guys.

Secondly, the show is supposed to be suitable for five year olds to watch whilst being scared enough to hide behind the sofa. It is not Buffy. Hey, Mr I'm so clever whatsyourname executive producer chappie - you're not producing the British version of Buffy! And stop making it too cheesily 'funny' too.

(The only major gripe here so far is the zombies storyline. Smacks of laziness. But I have a feeling that with point number 3, they may be veering dangerously closely to Sylvester McCoy territory. Particularly when the new pipsqueak David Tennant takes over).

Mobile phone conversation:

-Mummy! Mummy!

-Hello Nora. (sings) Hell-o Nor-a...

-...Giggle and uh?

-Where is Daddy? Where is Daddy?

...Nora points at Mackay. I, meanwhile, am in Doncaster, waiting for a train, grinning from ear to ear.

You just can't type in a husky voice

The tonsils have reduced a bit, but are still very much in evidence. Meanwhile, back at work for 2 days (really shouldn't have come in yesterday), and having 1 too many meetings today - I now sound like Mariella Frostrup after 400 too many fags. Or perhaps a chainsmoking yodeller.

Pain killers are gooood

Now I'm no longer breastfeeding, I can rediscover the joy of painkillers.

Well.

Yesterady, as my tonsils began to subside and behave relatively normally, I did somethign terrible to my back, and have been in extreme pain ever since. Consequently, I got *absolutely no sleep* last night! What joy. Remembered this morning that I have some Voltarol left over from my tooth horror last year. Voltarol are fantastic in that they are a) tiny and b) Last for 12 hours!

So now, when I swallow, I can tell that my throat is sore, but it doesn't actually feel sore and my completely inoperable back feels like a mildish pain. trying desperately to get through as much work as possible before I start collapsing on my desk. Have begun yawning. This is not a good sign. I believe that lunch may be on the agenda asap.

Sorry to post up such uninteresting rubbish. Maybe when one is sick as an adult, moanign about it on the interweb is the equivalent of lying on the sofa under a duvet getting your Mum to make you a cup of tea.

Tonsils

I had a cold. Felt dreadful, got over it, and now, a week later wake up to find my tonsils are like a pair of quail's eggs stuck in my throat, and feel absolutely horrendous.

Luckily, I have the luxury of going back to bed in a moment (having spent the morning asleep) given that Mackay is on childcare duty today. Needless to say I do have the usual worry about losing work time. But tthere you go.

Milk, bras - the usual kind of discussion

Returning to the spirit of this supposedly being a warts and all relating of the experience of early motherhood:

I can't believe I'm still making or storing a very small amount of milk. I'm expecting this lot not to last a week but still - it's been somewhat longer than the ten days I'd been led to believe was the dispersal period.

How do I know this? Well, interesting you should ask. At the gym, in the shower, I thought I felt a mastitis lump and was groaning about it - went to find out, put a leetle bit of pressure on my breast just below the nip and it wasn't so much mastitis but a highly pressured little sac of milk on the point of screaming to escape. As it did. In a spidery, jet-like watery pale arc, across the shower cubicle. Ah. I thought. Checked the other - same thing. Right.

Not quite as extreme since then but I have realised one thing - not to worry about it too much if you express off a little as it's all fading away (sob).

The next thing on my radar is to go and get properly measured up for normal, every day sort of bras, since the ones I've got are either all nursing bras or massive Howard Hughes type pregnancy jobs. Given that I'm somewhat reduced, these are about as much use as a wheelbarrow to carry a melon.

Ok. I give in.

Doctor Who.

I cannot *believe* I'm writing about this. I feel awkward and embarrassed, as if I've been watching really bad seventies UK porn or something and now I'm admitting it.

Tonight's episode was really rather extraordinary. FTR, it's the one where Rose cocks up time. It was a very touch and go tightrope act veering in to extreme melodrama at all times, but with flashes of superior Shakesperian comedy throughout. I mean it was really quite stumping in a way. Are they really trying to get away with calling that a kids TV show?

Aaaanyway. Having admitted my TV geekdom, I must now shut up immediately. except to say that we're plannning a barbeque for the Sunday of the last episode in the series. My head is in my hands. We are all doomed.

Ok... I have one crit. You can tell from the way the series is constructed how much they've learned from series like Buffy or angel - and it shows, but in a nicely quirky British way. However, the main characters in that show were slightly more accessable. If you dug the shows, you did, however cornily, feel something for characters like Willow, Zander or even Buffy, plastic girl that she was, pretty quickly. Christopher Eccleston is great. Really great - but very unknowable or... he doesn't really fulfill any 1 sterotype so he's not completely dark and mysterious, he's not completely whacky, he's not a compete speed freak drug fiend... he's a bit difficult to emotionally tie yourself to, basically. They're trying to get you to link with Rose in seriously heavy handed style. What they could have done is make her slightly younger, and get her to go through a bunch of teenage angst on the show, but of course that would have meant the relationship between her and the doctor would have been even more bizarre than it is already.

AGHHHHHHH. I'm shutting up now.

I've lost track

Tiredness and overwork has led me to be somewhat tardy of late with entries (see HHG review for example) so I will attempt to be a little more "up to date".

...and therefore do that awful thing where you list everything that's been happening recently, as if putting it all in a bullet list will somehow make it alright. You will also have to make allowances for the fact that I've drink nearly a whole bottle of wine tonight.

- Kitchen is nearly done. the 8 day (respectable estimate - aha, yeah. Sure) job is now at day...fifteen? but I doubt very much if it'll take another five.
- dun du dun dun... I joined a gym! three weeks ago (er, ish). I'm going Tues, thurs & Sunday every week thus far and made the stupid mistake of weighing myself, which i won't do again for a number of weeks. The short version of the weighing incident was that i lost approx 5lb's in weight in about 3 days. surely, that must sound like some kind of miracle? Until you realise the initial acreage involved. Then 5lb's in 3 days doesn't seem quite as impressive.
But. the general rules is - fuck weighing. the idea is to get fit. If I lose bulk and 2 clothes sizes at the same time then wonderful, but my poor body5 - with chronic lower back pain and a very dodgy knee needs all the help it can get ie: get the bloody weight off my torso, as well as make the body fit enough for No.2. Whenever that may be.

I've just realised that I'm almost incomprehensibly exhausted, and am now going to bed. so the comprehensive update I'm afraid is going to have to wait.

Yawn... goodnight.