Six word Saturday: Time to move on

We're moving to an actual house!

I've lamented to you all before about the serious lack of space in our flat. It is a one bedroomed thing, it's at the top of two steep flights of stairs (Which, despite what one would think, has done nothing for our health!) with a kitchen in the lounge and a bedroom big enough to fit the mattress into it (and some boxes stacked in a free corner!). I've moaned about the trouble of house hunting and the pitfalls that await you and I've recently had a major security issue that has been the straw that broke the camels back so far as tolerating the place as somewhere livable is concerned.

Well, our landlord took us around a small two bedroomed house in the area yesterday, and whilst it is neither huge nor elaborate nor sparkly fantastic, it is a major improvement on what we're coping with now. Being that we're staying with him we've no deposit to pay, we just start paying the higher rent next month and move on in.

Aside from my womanly glee and day dreaming about the wonderful things I plan on buying for my new home, I'm excited about this for a number of reasons;

• The downstairs is laminate flooring throughout, a blessing for my asthma!
• Two bedrooms means space for eventual babies, but more immediately, space for guests!
• Mould is not creeping in, a bonus for our health in every way imaginable (especially as our current bedroom is on the edge of being over run by the damn stuff)
• We have drawers as well as many cupboards in the kitchen!
• There is space for a tumble dryer...no more mount washmore because we ran out of space to dry laundry!
• It is around the corner from one of the biggest parks in Liverpool, great for perhaps starting going for some jogging?
• It is a self contained house, not a flat/appartment in a shared block, meaning no more drug addled neighbours stealing/opening my post before I get to it!
• The bathroom is downstairs, so my Granny can come and visit!
• It has a fitted wardrobe with mirrored doors so we won't need to fork out for a new one, and I'll finally have a full length mirror!
• It has a proper sized oven! BAKING SHALL HAPPEN!
• There is space enough for a dining room table, we can host parties and people will have chairs to sit on!
• Both the gas and electric meters are "normal" - no running out of gas and having to run to the shop to top it up in order to keep the heating on!

All in all, many many many reasons to be feeling excited about the move. We have a month to prepare, and I am starting today by doing a mega junk toss. Next weekend (ie pay day!) I shall be fetching some sturdy cardboard boxes and beginning to pack all the nick nacks that we don't use day to day. The place will be bland and undecorated, however I can live with that for a month given what will be waiting for us at the end of the road!

So yes, todays six word Saturday is a very happy one, and I can't wait to show you around my new house ^_^

Six Word Saturday!

Sometimes, it's wisest to admit defeat

Six Word Saturday - Loving Work

It's insane, but I'm loving it!

Hahaha, ok, I haven't actually mentioned where my new job is on my blog, and I don't intend to because we've all heard the horror stories of employers tracking you down. It's a high street name here in the UK, although you wouldn't find families in there and you wouldn't neccissarily buy anything of use either (and despite my six words, it's not McDonalds). It is hereby known as "the shop".

It's not a testing job by any stretch of the imagination, and some of the clinentelle are less than savoury. The old men are a bit lecherous at times and the young men can be surly and intimidating. The women on the other hand are lovely so it all evens out.

My workmates are stars, and very patient. During our induction we were only really taken through things like health and safety, crime prevention in the workplace and personal security. We weren't told anything about the meat of our work, how to do it, how to use the till system and how to process our customers orders, so I've felt at times like the biggest n00b in the whole wide world. But my colleagues have shown an amazing ammount of patience In the space of a week I've learned more about this particular product than I'd done in my entire life to date, and it wasn't as if I've never had any experience at all with it.

In other jobs, particularly a certain sales based one, they couldn't spare you the time of day (even though, once again, the induction was based entirely around sales tactics and health and safety as opposed to how to actually do the job) because their own personal gain was at risk if they took any time out to help...and yet this was the meat and bones of the over all training. It was ridiculous. The same can't be said about this place, and when I'm on my first evening shift tonight (which should be quiet, apparently) I'll finally be sitting down to learn some of the nitty gritty aspects with my assistant manager.

It's a minimum wage gig and it probably won't be a 'career job' (and as much as I enjoy it now whilst I'm buzzing around in my bubbles of 'new job' high doesn't mean I'll feel the same way in 3 months time) but for now it's freaking awesome. It's probably more to do with the fact that I'm in work at all as opposed to this job in particular, but this along with some of the recent changes I've made to my life means I currently feel happier than I have done in a long, long time.

Six Word Saturday - Foodie Fail

I broke the weight loss plateau!

(In totally the wrong direction)

I knew I'd probably put on a couple of pounds this week but I didn't think I'd be back in "The Wii says I'm so fat it isn't even gonna weigh me let alone let me work out on it" territory. I'm not gutted or anything, there's various reasons, a couple above and beyond the simple "I ate like a pig last week". A little angry with myself because of course eating like a pig did have a lot to do with it though; I didn't need to get that slice of cake in Costa, I could have had fruit juice instead of hot chocolate at the zoo, I didn't have to order that second cocktail, I didn't need that large popcorn at the cinema, and when we were at pizza hut I could have probably skipped the starter since there is now unlimited free salad (which I did indulge in). There are more but these are to name a few.

Shoulda woulda coulda. But we also walked for miles each day, I pushed (with help) a rather heavy rusty car wheel accross wet sand (erm...pictures later lol). I was up at the crack of dawn each morning raring to go and absoloutely exhausted when I went to bed each night. When it came to meal times I was famished. Perhaps the meals themselves could have been less calorific and healthier choices, but I was famished before each and every one. I ate because I was hungry.

Add the fact that (TMI time boys) that I had my first "visit from Aunt Flo" in oh...three...four years...and have lost 2 centimetres from my waist over the past two weeks despite the extra weight I've added (my hands and feet on the other hand....) and I'm not sweating over the weight gain. The important thing now is to make sure it comes off again, and that it doesn't happen yet again at the end of this month. To this end I'm going to make a pact that should I feel the need to "treat" myself at the end of this month for all my hard work in earning a pay cheque, it won't be with food but instead with lovely clothes or perhaps some of my favourite brand makeup (which is, by the way, Urban Decay...that was a hint to Ben for future reference) or perhaps I'll even go to the hair dresser and get my roots done or even go and get a manicure or something...ANYTHING but a takeout or a three course meal or tons of sweeties. I've managed to make excuses the past 6 months about why I've worked so hard at loosing 12 pounds then regained the lot. This month happened to be that my family were down. No more, I swear to God no more because I'm sick of seeing the same numbers going up and down over and over again.

Six Word Saturday - Autumn already?

Summer seems to be flying by

Being that I've now got a job I can overhaul my wardrobe somewhat. It's full of clothes I've had for years which weren't necissarily the nicest pieces, and a lot of them were actually hand me downs from my mum. It's a symptom of being both mahooosively fat and also skint. It's not that lovely clothes don't exist out there for us fat girls but they are rather pricey and I've had much more important things to invest in. Like food, and bills and stuff.

Anyway, I was just browsing one of the less frumpy plus sized catalogues online (who are now so succesful that they're opening an actual shop here in Liverpool - I'm so excited!) and whilst there are still loads of summery cothes there it surprised me how many Aumtumn/Winter clothes were already out. We're only just going into hot hot August!

Obviously I'm so not used to clothes shopping ^_^;;;

 But it really made me think wow, where has this year gone? It doesn't seem like two minutes since we were up north for my birthday back in April. That said, time is an odd thing and it feels like years and years since I had long hair when in deed I only just had it cut in February. Odd how your perception of time gets so distorted. I wonder why April seems like just last week as opposed to February.

Basically, I think Summer has just decided to skip over us.

Not that I mind so much. I love Spring, when the sun is out and it's cheerful and you get that smell of fresh new life on the air, but there's still a nice fresh breeze to stir things up and you probably need at least a nice cardigan to keep the chill off your skin. The long hot days of Summer tend to irritate me. There's no enjoyment to be had from trying to get to sleep when the Sun is still shining, or staying asleep when the Sun wants to be out, nor is there enjoyment to be had from trying to accomplish regular day to day activity when weighed down with bucket fulls of sweat and getting more and more irritated as no relief is to be found.

Thankfully, I live in the northen part of a little Island sticking out into the North Atlantic and such long, hot Summer days are short lived and usually broken up with rain in between which can bring some relief.

Anyway, I've rambled on much too long. I know many of you out there love the Summer but I for now am looking forward to the end of it. It's just scary how soon it seems to have passed already!

Six Word Saturday - The future!

I think things are looking up

Still no news from my interviewer, but I'm not worrying about it like I was yesterday. Whether or not I have got the job, things in general are looking up for us in the not too distant future. I'm very much excited for all the prospects that are coming our way :)

Six Word Saturday - Kitchen

 My kitchen has never been cleaner

It's strange to admit, but once I've kicked myself up the backside to actually do cleaning, and do it properly, I actually rather enjoy it. It's become this weeks compulsion, even. I'm afraid to admit it, but I may well become one of those people who buys Good Housekeeping every month, and it's not that there's anything wrong with such magazines...it's just that, well, I never understood what women (or men, like I said yesterday we don't discriminate and I know of men who are way better at housekeeping than many of the women I know!) could get from reading magazines about housekeeping when surely housekeeping was the complete antithisis of rest and relaxation (rest and relaxation being in my mind what magazines should be all about, even if only in the sense that you are reading about something that fascinates you).

I totally understand why people can enjoy it now. I think Ben was seriously scared yesterday when I spent a good three or four hours just happily scrubbing, decluttering, wiping and washing and yet declined every offer of help.

"But you keep making strange noises, and huffing and puffing, and I'm worried that you're struggling or need help" says he.

"Well, you know, that's what happens when you scrub a floor" says I. I never even realised I was making such noises, and I'm the queen of sighing and huffing and puffing when I'm pissed off at having to, for example, wash the dishes.

I hope that, whilst I'll inevitably have days in which I cannot be fashed with doing housework (who doesn't?) I won't loose my mojo. I hope I can now carry this great positive energy I've found into the rest of the flat.

God knows that after three and a half years it's about time I turned this place into a home, and not just a place to stash our detritus out of the rain.

I look forward to blogging to you this evening from my super duper lovely new kitchen with a smashing curry recipe :)

Six Word Saturday - Curry

Searching for Curry recipe's is dangerous

As part of my quest to expand the recipe journal I got from my baby bro and sister for my birthday, I'm undertaking to try more new meals. To start myself off, I'm simply going to make dishes that I know I like but that I'd otherwise reach for a jar to make. As Ben is a great lover of curry, and curry is one of those things that I always imagined tasted so much better when made from scratch, mixing the spices etc myself, and having been inspired by Saturday Cooks this morning, I have decided that next Saturday we shall dine upon a feast of Curry with a side of Naan bread and Bombay Potatoes (as I cannot stomach rice.).

The Naan bread and potatoes are not really an issue. I used to bake my own bread on a relatively frequent basis, and while Naan's have a slightly different recipe (in that it includes yoghurt and seasoning) the basic concept is the same...flour, yeast, knead it all up, leave it to rise, stick it in the oven. The potatoes, again, not so much a problem...prepare potatoes, spice and fry.

But trying to find a recipe for curry?

Curry is not one dish, it is almost a food group...it's like saying oh, I need a recipe for soup. There are hundreds of variations, some are hot, some are chilled, some are clear and some are thick and brothy. I expected no less for curry, and in my hunt for a nice recipe to try I've found some amazingly delicious sounding dishes. However, the recipe's seem to lie at either end of two extremes...either they are so simple I may as well just get my stuff from a jar, or they contain a million and one ingredients that I'd probably have to go to one of the international food stores to pick half of it up, which wouldn't be a problem except I'm looking to put these recipe's into my journal, and I want to know that wherever I go I will always be able to have access to these ingredients...so whilst Liverpool is great for its range of exotic food stores thanks to its wonderful multicultural community, if I were to want to cook this for my parents when I next visit, I would really struggle to get half of the ingredients required. Plus, you know, I'm on a tight budget and can't really afford to go running around Liverpool looking for these exotic items, and last time I looked, neither Asda nor my local green grocers weren't stocking Lemon Grass.

I've found a recipe that looks promising, however. It's called a "Lamb Curry" which in itself is a bit worrying...I mean, what kind of curry it is I couldn't tell you (it's obviously not a Korma, but that's all I know!) and the list of spices is pretty easy to come about at our local Asda. The only "exotic" thing I might struggle with is that it also contains Garam Masala, which I understand is actually a spice mix, and the exact contents of said mix apparently differs from cook to cook and dish to dish so where to start really! However, I shall endeavour to find a recipe for a good all rounder.

Either way, I expect that next Friday my spice rack is going to get much more interesting! I shall, of course, let you know how it goes!

Six Word Saturday (along the lines of a dieting rant)

Why has my willpower forsaken me?

I don't want to turn this into a ramble of self pity. Oh woe is me. I'm guilty. There is only one person who forced me to eat 90% of a loaf of bread within 24 hours, leaving the other 10% for my poor exasperated husband, after all, and it wasn't an evil leprechaun on my shoulder whispering temptation my way. Also, I understand that may sound a little bit over the top, but I'm not exaggerating, it's not the first time I've done this (though hopefully the last).

What it is is just pure disbelief at myself. I've often said there were two me's. There's the me that gets emotional and upset, the me that gets depressed and thinks silly, silly thoughts from time to time, the me that, well, binges on entire loaves of bread.

Then there's the me which doesn't run on raw emotion, which knows, logically and sensibly, this isn't going to help anything. It's the higher self, the part of me which sits and observes (I always imagined this part of me as a little white fairy which flits around, hovering just above and behind my head) and is the source of my intellect. The lower is just me, my body, the primal beast running on an auto pilot which has been programmed by millions of years worth of evolution and about 24 years of bad habits. The little fairy watches the brutish beast and she can scream all she wants, when the beast is on the hunt there is nothing that can stop it except tug on the frayed stringy leash of will power.

Sadly, the little white fairy seems to have lost the leash of will power, or else it has frayed beyond all repair and broke as the beast tugged too hard, driven by its terrible primal instincts.

Today's post is brought to you by the little white fairy that hovers over the beast's head. She would like to point out to the beast that after a wobbly start to the week, she did really well up until Thursday. But even then it didn't have to be all bad. But no. One bad day...

But this got the little white fairy thinking (as she is prone to doing). How badly does one bad beastly day mess the diet up? She counts the beasts calorie intake fastidiously these days, through the good days and the bad she is there with a pen and paper (or she just tugs on the beasts strings and the beast sits down to type it up) to scribble down her calculations and she knows that the beasts body does not live on a given number of calories a day and then stores what is the remainder each night. The body is more complex than this and calories are used and burned and stored and released over longer periods of time.


So a little glimmer of hope that when all added up together, the calories consumed by the beast this week add up to almost exactly her roughly calculated basal metabolic rate (the amount of calories the body requires to maintain the status quo and keep its basic functions ticking over if it lay down and didn't move) so since the beast has not just sat around motionless all week, the fairy hopes that this will equate to a loss in the beasts mass, or at least to remain the same and not have put on...


But still, all this talk of fairies and beasts aside, I was quite releaved to see that overall not too much damage was done this week calorie wise, but I'm still struggling to loose and I can only hope that things will pick up next week. I've already planned my meals out and on the understanding that I keep to my resolve and my willpower, I'll be well on my way for a loss next week. Fingers crossed!

Six Word Saturday - Birthday!

I'm so excited for my birthday!

It's the most excited about a birthday that I've felt probably since I turned 18. Since everyone outside of my family pretty much forgot that particular day of mine I think I started dropping my standards from then! And it's shown...it's not that I don't like recieving gifts or doing something that I want to do, but I hate rubbing it in people's faces or making them feel obliged to do something for me. And then there's the fact that the past few years have been very lean...we really couldn't do anything much for the occassion up until last year, and that was such a spontaneous thing that I didn't have time to get excited about it!

Anyhow, comfortable old habit has it that at Easter we usually go down south to stay with Ben's family for the weekend but this year the Easter weekend is really late and lands slap bang on my birthday. So I thought well, we usually go somewhere over Easter, since it's my birthday we should take a break from the norm and go up north to see my family.

And now I'm all excited ^_^ We're staying with my Granny this time round so as to avoid the nasty effect that cats have on me but it's only for the weekend and we'll be up at the folks no doubt every day anyhow (my poor Gran will need her rest time from us no doubt after all :D). I really really really hope the weather stays good and we can go to the seaside or something...there's no seaside like the north east seaside (Sorry, Blackpool, personal taste I guess) and I can get to work on task 62 hopefully with the help of Nat and Chiz (hopefully that is, if Nat isn't too busy playing with his lamePod or some such thing...stupid kids growing up in to stupid adults...should be illegalized). And of course I can get started on my photo's too. I would have already done so, except there's nothing really too exciting to photograph here in my flat :p

So yes, for now I'm feeling really really very excited for my birthday and I can't wait to see the folks and please oh powers that be please make next weekend up north lovely and sunny and warm ^_^

Spring is almost almost here!

Sunshine makes me feel unreasonably happy

^_^

Six words

Cabin fever is no laughing matter!

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In other news,  Ben bought me my anniversary present today. He bought me exactly the same thing as he bought me last year. Any other self respecting wife would be mortified, but as that thing happens to be The Sims 3 (any of my nearest and dearest could describe in detail the strong emotional bonds I create to my Sims and the trouble this can cause) only for the Xbox (as opposed to last years PC game...long story short the PC broke and we're on a much lower spec model which actually runs away wimpering in fear when I approach it with a sims game). Alongside this, his mum is coming up to visit tomorrow (yay!) and will be leaving on Monday, then on Tuesday we shall be venturing forth to the frozen north that is County Durham to visit my family there and shall not be returning until about this time next week...

Soo between simming it and family-ing it, I'm actually going to be a busy bexy over the next week. Never fear, I am commited to seeing NaBlo out! I've come this far... not sure I could keep it up for another month mind you but I shan't give up now!

So, expect tales of fun times to come and I wish you all well :)