I will probably die, but at least I will die slimmer!

So last time we talked, I told you I was going to be really lame and boring, and talk to you about weight loss and fitness. Perhaps you don’t find it boring. Perhaps you are going through the same thing? I mean, it is July, and do you really want to have a 42 inch muffintop protruding from that itty-bitty-polka-dot-bikini? DO YOU?! Not that mine is 42 inches but you know, its big enough…that is, big enough to look huge in said polka dot bikini.

I took drastic action. I will be on the beach in T-2 months. I look like I’m pregnant, but I’m not. I have been so desperate, that I was inclined to take action off of a geek blog. No doubt, it helps to get fit when dudes feel the same. Plus, my boyfriend’s cousin is here, and he is F-I-T. Little bastard. I wish I was as tanned and fit as he was. And he’s 18. So what action do I take? Well firstly, I am trying to go from this:

to this:

Of course, not so drasticlly, but I do need to lose about 20lbs, and it just so happens, that if I focus hard enough, I can achieve this by September 1st. Now, I know what some of you may be thinking, and to be honest, I couldn’t agree more. Firstly, losing 20lbs in two months is massive, and most people lose that much in a year. Of course, I’d be happy to do it in that time period as well, but there’s nothing like setting a target for yourself. I don’t want to be like some girls, who take it so far that they’re controlling their diet to say, a cucumber a day, and 82 cigarettes, with maybe a hint of diet coca-cola (which is kind of like the second Mischa Barton photo and is representative of Jade from Britain’s Next Top Model. Poor girl. This is why I prefer America’s Next Top Model, they’re less bitchy, yes I did just say that, and they’re real women. Not skinny flag-poles, mostly, waltzing around. I mean, how cute was that little shy French chick on cycle 11?).

So on Sunday, I took my hefer ass out the door, and I ran. At first it was torture. I won’t lie. But then, once I got into a rhthym, I progressed form 1 minute running/1 minute walking, to 3 minutes running/1 minute walking, to sprinting for 3 mintues at a time, to running 4 to 1 minute walking, and so on. I couldn’t walk the following day, but I was so stoked that I still had it. A fit runner stuck in a hefer’s body. A Mischa Barton stuck in Kirstie Alley. A….you know what I mean.

Every January, a guy at my office sends round an email, asking if anyone would like to take part in the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge. A 5.6km run that takes part all over the world. The fastest time wins a place in the New York Marathon. Of course I signed up. I thought you know, I had 7 months to prepare, right? So is it any surprise that I just started ‘training’ on Sunday? In other words, my run on Sunday went so well, that I thought with confidence today after already backing out of the run, that hell, I should do it anyway, because otherwise, I’d have to run 3k normally on the tredmill, so what the heck! Let’s run 5.6km through a park! With 5,000 sweaty, fitter people! And make my work colleagues wait 3 hours for me to complete it! Because there’s nothing better then getting into that polka-dot bikini.

I changed my diet too. Kinda. What did I change? First, I now eat breakfast. Yes, I still consume the Red Bull on the train and the Starbucks in the office, but now I also eat something solid. Secondly, I have halved my dinner proportions. The main idea behind this, is the more you eat in the AM versus PM, the more chance you have of burning the calories. We’ll see.

Nevertheless, I am a slightly thinner heifer! I weighed 74.8kg on Monday, and I am now a svelte 73kg! And no, I didn’t stop drinking water, so its not dehydration that’s caused the sudden weightloss. And no, I didn’t cut my hair either. And yes, every morning I weight myself as naked as possible after I’ve peed. So it is serious. I have lost nearly 2kgs. From running. And clenching my butt cheaks, a lot.

So welcome to my exercise programe. If you like, I can share some of the body-pumping, Arnold Schwezenagger-enthused moves I’ve been putting down in front of terrified Shih Tzus, alongside my innovative running plan where the number one rule is Don’t follow training plans!

Wish me luck at tomorrow’s race. As I said to my boyfriend: “I WILL PROBABLY DIE, BUT AT LEAST I WILL DIE SLIMMER!“

90 Days

Hi! How are ya? What? You don’t remember me? We haven’t spoken in er, three months? At least? (Well, at least we have spoken more recently in comparison to my sister! or my aunt! or Jesus!)…actually, I lied. I have spoken to Jesus more recently then you. Sorry about that. It’s just that I’ve been really busy. Like, extraodinarily busy. I even potentially failed a university course, due to my busy-ness. So don’t feel too bad, okay? And yes I know that two of my blogging friends who never blog have blogged more often then I have recently. Just be happy that I’m back. Did you miss me?

Okay, so this is what I’ve been up to, my list of excuses for not chatting with you for a longer period then that of Georgia’s war with Russia last year (or indeed, Russia’s war with Georgia. God, they’re so childish!).

The last time we spoke was in the middle of April, just before my house was being turned into a war zone. The family was in high-stress-mode, which meant that we all wanted to kill each other, and builders were raping us of every single penny we had. We had no floors. And it was spring, and the weather was nice, butwe had spiders crawling up through our naked floorboards, and we had no furniture, it was all locked away in our garage with even more spiders, and our dogs were permanently caked in dust, and dirt, and plaster, and paint, and electrical wires. Phew. A previous post I’d written on this subject gives you a small idea of the scale of work we undertook (and you can see some before photos here).  But I have to admit, at that time, we had no idea all of the additional work we would have to undertake. For example, we found out that we had to completely re-wire the whole god damn house. Which in itself is one of the largest projects I have ever encountered. Every single wire in those 80 year-old walls was ripped out and replaced with lovely new wires, and junction boxes! and all that other shit they stick in there! We didn’t have power for a fucking week.

To be honest, the plastering and painting was the easy stuff, even though our builders were complete assholes. We changed one (he actually caused my mother-in-law to storm off back to Ukraine) as he kept asking for more and more and more and more money. It was like “one thousand pounds” was the only phrase in English he knew. Altogether we changed our painters/plasters three times. And the last lot we had were most likely stealing supplies from us. They were defenitely asking us to buy supplies, and then using their own cheaper version. They would take our expensive version and try to claim back credit at the DIY shop. Fuckers.

We also had a carpenter! (So that’s now an electrician, 4 x painter/plasterers, and now two carpenters!). They re-did our stairs for us, put down new skirting boards, and hanged a couple of new archatraves (something to do with door frames). They were pretty good guys. I say that because I have not yet found out where they fucked up. I am sure I will though, eventually. They always fuck something up. OH they also built a new cupboard around our boiler, so now it doesn’t sound like there’s a jet in the spare bedroom.

Our electrician was wonderful. Even though we likely paid him an entire monthly salary combined to carry out the work. We have spot lights! In the downstairs hallway and upstairs hallway, 4 each (making eight) that are on a dimmer switch! And there’s another switch at the top of the stairs, so you can switch them all on or off from either floor. When they were installed, it was not unheard of to see someone in the house giggling hysterically whilst switching these spotlights on and then off and then on off on off on off rapidly, as we hadn’t had lights in that hallway for over a month at that point. Also, the electrician removed the big scary, deadly, bunch of cables that hung in the sky between the house and the garage. Its a wonder why no one was ever killed by it. The birds were smart enough not to sit on it. And if the council had ever found out that it was there, all hell would break loose. It was indeed completely illegal. It’s gone now though! And we have light in the garage! LIGHT! And our 1930s coal storage with all the scary spiders and ancient coal inside is gone! And fuck it was a pain in the ass removing all those bricks! I employed child labour (my boyfriend’s niece) to carry those bricks on a hot spring day. I am a horrible person, but this is what house renovations can do to you.

Once the walls were all painted, and my mother-in-law decided to return from hiding, the work just kept piling up. I almost commited a very bad sin when she said all pouty “I don’t like the color of the walls”. I was all “then imagine they’re a different color because WE ARE NOT CHANGING THEM!!!!!”. Next on the list was flooring. Arguments had ensued for months on end of whether to go with laminate? or wood? or carpet? or laminte/carpet? or wood/carpet? In the end, our budget told us we would be installing carpet. Now, have you ever been in a carpet store during a recession? You can hear crickets in those stores, and they still won’t give you a fucking competitive price. I really don’t know how those idiots are still in business. We found a brilliant shop in Charlton, South East London (Carpet Smart, they’re listed on yell.com). They install carpets for free over the price of £250, which is amazing, because you will certainly spend at least double that, otherwise its not worth carpeting in the first place. Buy a rug. Anyway, they were reasonable, they negotiated, and they were friendly. Plus they have a fish tank, and are therefore animal friendly, and you must reward anyone who is animal friendly.

When the carpets were installed, the dogs refused to go on walks. They were more interested in rolling around on the new carpet. Finally, fucking finally, the bare floors were covered up. You would no longer need to put on trainers to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. You no longer risked stepping on (no not nails but worse) chunks of hardened plaster that sliced all the way through your foot. No more sweeping. Did you read those last three glorious words? NO. MORE. SWEEPING. It was a great notion until we found out that sadly, Dysee, our Dyson vacuum cleaner, did not survive the renovations. RIP.

Our house therefore, is a wonderful, enchanting, heavenly abode with carpeting, and paint on the walls that isn’t green, and walls without ugly OAP wallpaper, and our new doors actually close shut, and our stair case is beautiful, a masterpeace I tell you! And we have light! light! light! And as soon as the last builder walked out of the house, I turned to my boyfriend and said, with wild eyes, screwed up hair, in clothes that I’d been wearing for a week since we no longer had a wardrobe: NEVER AGAIN, DO YOU HEAR ME? (When he mentioned last week that it might be interesting to obtaina job in Vancouver, or Dubai, or Sweden, somebody almost died. Is it strange that I often come so close to comitting that particular sin?).

Within the 90 day period there were three birthdays all of which were pretty much uneventful. My birthday was the best, however, because my boyfriend got me a Mulberry bag, and every night I do obscene things to it. Worse then what you would find in a porn movie. It must be the leather.

I mentioned above that I have likely failed one of my university courses. I am not proud of this. In fact, I am utterly pissed off. When you join the Open University, they do mention that when you’re house has been destroyed, its most likely that you will find it difficult to study. So I will not defend my stupidity when I thought it was a good idea last November to take on two courses, when I damn well knew that my house would be in the state it had been. Now that it’s been rebuilt, I am doing ridiculously well on one course, but I’m afraid the other one could be history.

Work is awesome and busy as hell. And its work. So it sucks.

Right then, anyway, what I really wanted to tell you is about the new lifestyle improvements I’m making, now that I really don’t have an excuse to slag off anymore, or complain about how horrible my house is, or bitch about my builders. I was motivated by the fact that I have gained no less than 26 pounds over the past year. Which is horrible, disgusting, unblievable, horrifying and wow, you might as well call me a fat, fat, fatty. When is the baby due? Right? So going forward my next few posts will quite sadly be about my attempt to lose those 26 lbs over the next two months. Because whether I can afford it or not, I will go to a beach in September, and I don’t want people to lose their lunch when they see that small whale in the polka dot bikini attempt to roll over.

Lights! Carpets! Paint on the Walls!

Today is my first day back in the office, after 7 days spent at home. Great! You might think, but seriously, I feel like I’ve been living underneath my house for that entire period. And when I left my dude at home to look after the dogs, and whip our builder into shape, I felt elated upon leaving the house to an office with lights! carpets! paint on the walls!

All of the rooms in our house, bar the kitchen and bathroom are out of commission. There are no lights in the hallway, spare bedroom or office. There are no sockets for internet (hence my prolonged absence) or telephone. I must remember to buy an international calling-card to give my dad a ring later today. He arrived back in Canada from Trinidad on Tuesday, and no doubt has already booked a flight to London to check if I’m still alive. The dude’s mom actually sent the dude’s brother over to us on Saturday morning to check if we were still alive, as we hadn’t answered any of her calls. We had good reason. We were sleeping for the first time in 2 weeks!

When 90% of the house is out of commission, and you have a builder that works slower than a mutated snail-turtle-thing, you only have one option during the day: go outside. So I’ve spent the past 7 days outside, on our swing, which thank god is covered because London is notorious for shitloads of rain over the Easter weekend. Hence we sat, read more gossip magazines then I’ve ever read in my life, and contemplated how awful of a situation we’re in. I’ve never swept, vacuumed and dusted so much in my whole life. And when you turn around, everything is coated in dust again anyway. We change the sheets on our bed every two days. All of our possessions are in the garage, and it will be impossible to find some items again. Today, on the way to work, it rained. I do not know where my umbrella is. I am wearing green Puma’s in the office, with yellow shoelaces because my heels? They’re somwehere in the far right hand corner of the gargage, next to our Mac, which was smashed three times during the disabling of that atrocious spider-filled wardrobe. We will be buying contents insurance before we plug the poor thing back in, because I have a feeling we’ll need a new one. OH! And the spiders? They are not nearly as atrocious as the dust. Spiders? Puh! Dust? ARRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

Nevertheless, progress has been made on the house. The spareroom is nearly complete, with the walls fully plastered, emulsion added, and paint – ivory cream – which looks really really good. Our windowsills used to be polished wood, to which we sanded that down and painted them white, as the windows themselves were white – this has completely updated the rooms from 1900 to 2009. Our bedroom is also nearly finished. We moved our bed to where the wardrobe used to be, which has added an extra quarter in space, to the room. Our windowsill has also been painted white, and all looks lovely. I will try to stick some pictures up when we finally have internet up and running again.

By Tuesday, our snail-turtle builder is supposed to have the spareroom, our bedroom, and the living room all complete so that maybe, just maybe, we can live somewhat normally again.

Next Friday, we are going to Liverpool as the dude has a giant dinner/piss-up to attend. He booked us into a really nice hotel paid for by his company, which will be luxury compared to the state of our house. The dogs are going to stay the night in the kennel, and even that will be luxury for them, compared to the current state of our house. Max is so bewildered by everything that’s happening around him, that he’s started hiding his bones, because the evil turtle-snail builder might steal them and feed them to his children.

When this is all over, we’re not moving for at least 10 years. Because I don’t know if I’ll every be able to go through this again. I can understand if you were trusting enough to leave the builders to do the work while you head off on holiday or something, but actually living in this sort of situation is pretty much the worst experience I’ve ever been in.

DUSSSSST

A British comedy called Little Britian often has a sketch based on ‘Fatfighters’, a WeightWatchers joke, where the instructor, Marjorie Dawes,  advises her Fatfighters to eat dust in order to lose weight:

If you can’t see it, the link is also here.

I am not showing you this clip in order to incite laughter, or to talk yet again about weight loss or health issues. No. This is all about what I’ve actually eaten over the past three days (i.e. dussssst).

As I’ve written before, we are currently undergoing renovations of our lovely, 1930′s semi-detached house. Seriously though, I might actually stick a screwdriver in someone’s neck if they so much as show me another part of the house that needs to be replaced, rebuilt, or recapitalised. 

My boyfriend confinced me that we should have the house re-wired on the weekend. He had found a friend of a friend of his brother to do it all, as an expert electrician, within the weekend. Obviously, I thought this was great, but being my father’s child, I thought completeing a full house re-wiring in two days was optimistic. Especially with a mother-in-law around who flirted with the electrician constantly. She treated him like a king! Wasting, approximately, 6 hours of total time on the weekend, wining and dining him, and telling him about how horrible her ex-husband is. Nevertheless, he did the job on the cheap, as a favour to us, so I guess this isn’t so bad. The work however, consisted of him lifting floorboards where spiders live. And us moving furnature here there and everywhere, to such an extent that last night, we had rebel escape routes for things with six legs and eight eyes.

On top of this, my boyfriend decided it was high-time to take out our ‘custome-made’ wardrobe which was built by the previous owners’ son. It was quite the wardrobe, and I guess in 1970 it was the equivilant of Ikea’s Pax system, but seriously, this thing was fucking horrible: the sliding doors kept jamming, we couldn’t get to any clothes in the middle drawer system, there was 1930s wallpaper on the a wall, and 1930s linoleum on the floor – the underlay to which our Barney-purple carpet was set over, until Saturday morning. When he was done taking out the wardrobe however, there was so much space added to the bedroom. Like, a whole 1.5 feet. The only dimmer on this was the giant spider hole that was unveiled. Yes, now I know where all the spiders come from: I had a bit of a worry last night, that I would wake up this morning wrapped in a giant spider cocoon, shih-tzus and all.

At the moment therefore, our life at home is pretty much hell, what with the rubble, dust, naked floorboards, all of the rubbish now in the garden, and the understanding that this will take at least 2 and a half weeks to complete without floors being installed. Today, the boyfriend is destroying our 1930s coal-store that still has coal in it. I can’t imagine what we’ll do with all those bricks, but one thing is for sure, we’ll be bricking up the spider-hole, and the ancient fire places in both the master bedroom and the spare. I am still enquiring as to whether or not we can directly sell our coal to EDF or British Gas.

Tonight will be an evening of wallpaper stripping. My favorite after work activity.

How To Quit Without Feeling S**T / Gall Bladder Is Actually NOT Fucked

Even though it’s April 3rd, I will try to post every day this month, at the humble request of three good friends who are all doing the same. Should make for some good bored-at-work reading.

To bring you up to scratch with what’s happening with me, I can now confirm that in fact, I am not dieing. The whole gall bladder scare was indeed, just my body’s way of telling me to shut-up and stop worrying that my liver is about to disintegrate into little colourful bubbles. Bloodtests and ultra sounds showed that I am actually in perfect health. Which is shocking, considering my diet of 80 bottles of wine per night. Nevertheless, I still feel like shit, hence, the other part of this blog post title, which relates to one of the 700 books I’m currently reading, all at the same time.

How To Quit Without Feeling S**t  (website is here) is so far, brilliant. I only started reading it today, and just feel like I want to eat the book, page by page, in order to absorb the information at the highest frequency. Basically, this is all about me wanting to cut out my stupid, relesent addiction to uber yummy wine, which I can tell you is born from my absolute obsession with all things sour. I might as well boil bags of sour candy to their liquid form, and drink that. However, one would wonder is this is even worse for the liver? (It’s not gall stones! It’s little sour kids!)

I read the introduction to the book, got excited and flipped straight to the alcohol addiction section. Altogether, the book promises a very high success rate of getting over your addiction (oh, and this also includes cigarettes, sugar, caffine, cocaine, heroin, etc. So really, we all could use this book right?), so I’m pumped to kick the habit, like, NOW. But it is all very confusing. For example, it says in the plan I need to take Basic Supplements and the Alcohol Prescription one week before I quit. This is the Basic Supplements plan:

• An optimum nutrition multivitamin and mineral where the multivitamin must contain at least 2,230mcg vitamin A, 15mcg vitamin D, 100iu vitamin E, 250mg vitamin C, 25mg of B1, B2, B3, B5, and B6 each, 10mcg vitamin B12, 200mch folic acid and 50mcg biotin. The mutimineral on the other hand should contain at least 200mg calcium, 150g magnesium, 10mg zinc, 2.5mg maganese, 20mcg chromium and 25mcg selenium.
• Vitamin C supplement in addition to the vitamin C in the multivitamin proving 1,000-2,000mg daily. Apparently, if you’re a heroin addict it recommends 10,000mg daily. Thats 5 to 10 capsules a day, depending on the potency of the vitamin C you’ve purchased. Also, there’s even more vitamin C recommended in the Prescription section, albeit in powder form which really varies the repetition up, don’t you think?
• Essential omega-3 and 6 fats. For Omega-6 they recommend a supplement that includes GLA which is the most direct source (you can also get this from eating fish that eat fish like mackeral and salmon. Although I didn’t know that salmon ate other fish and need to wikipedia this.). The book recommends I take 100mg of GLA daily, which is in evening primrose oil. Thankfully, this comes in capsule form, therefore allowing me to avoid any weird rubbing rituals. Then, for omega-3, I need to take 1,000mg daily of a supplement which includes EPA, DPA and DHA. Its biology all over again! Oh, and then they say that if you’ve been leading a brain-unfriendly lifestyle, like drinking, they recommend you triple your fatty acid dosage. So therefore I would take 3,000mg of omega-3 and 300mg GLA.
• A Phospholipid supplement which includes phosphatidyl choline, phosphatidyl serine and DMAE. This all helpfully comes in lecithin capsules. However, I understand that just by eating an egg, you get twice the  recommended phospholipid amount you need.

The above is only for the Basic Supplement. When I turned the page to the Alchol Prescription and was introducted to 5-HTP and other weird and wonderful supplements which honestly, might as well have been written in Japanese, I got completely over-whelmed.

Then there’s the whole idea that I don’t even know if this is going to be okay, to take 18 capsules per day. It’s more than my grandparents, combined, on both sides of the family, have needed to take in the morning. And this is all before reading about the stuff you need to take for liver regeneration, dodgy stomach, etc., and if for instance, you were a drinker and a smoker, and wanted to quit both, you’re recommended to undertake the smoking prescription 2 weeks after the alchol, taking your daily supplement amount to 5.3 billion pills. I can just imagine my boss’s reaction to me sitting there constantly popping pills all day.

Thus, while I am still determined to kick this naughty habit of mine, I might not undertake all of the advice at once. I think I need to read almost all of the book before I fully understand what is required, and save up a couple of grand in my bank account to fund my new addiction to vitamins. It is recommended that you completely abstain from alcohol for 90 days, whilst undergoing the programme, which is just fine as I go on holiday in August, so can promptly start binge drinking on margarihtas and listerine under the Spanish sun.

I will definitely take the Basic Supplements programme, the vitamin C and glutamine (reduces cravings)  starting from tonight, and I will let you know how I get on. But thankfully, we all know, that indeed, I am in perfect health.

Moe

Before

We are currently undergoing some renovations of the house, completely re-plastering all the walls, painting them, and then installing new flooring. It’s a massive project, which we have put off for two years preferring to go on holiday instead! But in light of the current economic crisis, and falling house prices, we’ve come to terms that we’re going to be here a while, so have decided to finally pick up the paint brush (although we’re both pretty awful at DIY, so we’ve hired a builder). Despite our horrendous DIY skills, we’ve removed all the wallpaper in the rooms ourself, which is probably one of the worst tasks I’ve ever undertaken. The previous owners of the house super glued the stuff to the wall, making it nearly impossible to remove.

The picture above is one of five all p.o.v shots I took of the dining room before our builder hauled-ass with the plastering. You can see the rest of the pics with descriptions here.

Gall Bladder is Fucked

Last night I felt the most unsetteling pain I’d felt in a long time, if not ever. A pain under my right breast, around my rib cage, that wrapped around towards my back underneath my shoulder blade. My first thought? LIVER FAILURE. I thought that I had finally drank one glass of wine too many, and my liver was shutting down. So I got straight onto the phone with NHS Direct – a brilliant service we have here in the UK, where you can talk to a nurse about your problems, at any time.  I was so nervous; thinking on the one hand, maybe I am being a hypochondriac, maybe my brain is telling me I have this ghost pain, in order to scare myself out of drinking.  Then, when I started talking to the nurse, I realised that the pain was there,  although it was a bit strange, sort of like a numbness. As an NHS nurse however, all she could really do is assure me that this wasn’t my liver, that it was most likely my gall bladder, and that I should take some parcetemol and see my GP as soon as possible.

When I got off the phone with her, I made an appointment to see the GP my company pays for, and hobbled home, now in agony. It felt like someone had stuck a knife in my back, that I’d forgotten about it, and just left it there. In the middle to the lower part of my rib cage, on the right hand side, it felt like someone had punched me as hard as possible, and this pain had radiated to my lowe back around my kidneys. For the first time, I watched Gossip Girl without interest. Which is dire.

This morning I woke up with the pain subsided a bit. I was actually a little happy that some discomfort remained as then I knew for sure I wasn’t batty. After a breakfast I uninterestingly stuffed down my throat without even a thought to taste, or hunger, I waited to head to the GP.

I hate going to the GP. I feel like, when I’m rattling off symptoms, that I’m complaining, and constantly quiz myself to see if the pain is that bad. Do I really need to be here? Am I wasting her time? And then the other side of me worries that I’m underestimating the pain, that my tolerance levels are too high and that really, I’m sick. Whilst I sat there, describing all my symptoms, I was as careful as possible not to over-exaggerate, under-exaggerate or be over-enthusiastic (read: ITS MY LIVER!!! I’M DYING!!!! DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY UNITS OF ALCOHOL I DRINK A WEEK??!!! MORE THAN THE BRITISH ARMY AT A STAG PARTY!!!!). When the doctor confirmed it was my bladder, I couldn’t resist double-checking the whole liver thing because seriously, have you seen House? Where every single patient of Hugh Laurie, has had liver failure? It doesn’t look fun, does it? The GP assured me that it was most likely not my liver, and referred me to a specialist surgeon from Monday morning.

And now I wait.*

*I was called earlier this afternoon by my surgeon’s secretary who offered me to be admited to hospital on Saturday morning. I nearly had a heart attack. She then called back to say the surgeon had changed his mind because there is no ultrasound equipment available, so I will have to wait for Monday. BUT! If my condition dramatically deteriorats, I should call him. Greeeat. Because right now, I feel like Satan is squeezing my gall bladder like a stress ball, and I’ve been shot in the back by….oh God, who cares, I feel like crap!!!

Max

 

After slaving away at the office all week, taking that blasted train there and back, and sitting in our half-built house, we like to get away – so we head to the beach! See more photos here.

The Black Widow

On holiday in Canada, I went out of my way to fix this whole problem I’ve been having with my sister. My older sister. The one who’s supposed to be more mature. And I can imagine how pissed she must be, having had to clean up my puke when I was three, but seriously, I cannot even fathom that this would be the reason why, when I met her, I might as well have been meeting E.T. who would, in my mind, have been more friendly. 

My sister hadn’t spoken to me for 9 months. She just all of a sudden stopped talking to me. Avoided my phone calls. And basically, dropped off the face of the earth. My aunt did pretty much the same thing. All because I contacted my cousin, who granted, she had asked me not to contact but hey: THIS IS WHY I HATE FACEBOOK SO MUCH.

My meeting with my sister was horrible. And I would have preferred to be a victim in the Saw movies, than to have to face her, after 9 months of WTF tension. We arranged to meet at Chapters, because there’s a Starbucks there. And nothing cuts through tension better than a nice cup of coffee. I had previously considered meeting her at a bar, so I could have consumed a bottle of champagne before hand and been, you know, bubbly. But for once, I decided to deal with a situation soberly.

Just before I was due to meet my sister, after going to the bathroom 3 times due to nervousenes, I received an email from my aunt. I read the first three lines of this email, and then had to seirously wrestle with my brain over whether or not I should delete it. I saved it in the end. But not for my own torture, I decided I would share this gem with those all around me. Oh yes.

The conversaiton that I forced myself to have with my sister, after taking serious consideration of burying myself into a German-language Vogue magazine, was, as I mentioned above, like subjecting myself literally to a torture seen in SAW. But thinking of it now, I think it was probably far worse than that. At least the victims in SAW have a choice. With my sister, I don’t have a choice. She is purely dominant over me. Like a black widow spider, and I’m in the web – her baby, who she’s about to eat. I must laugh at her jokes, be interested in her conversation, make an effort to meet her when I would rather jump off of an overpass…otherwise, all bets are off and she’ll eat me. As a ‘mother’ she paid for my coffee – even though I might earn more than she does, she’s the older one – the black widow – and she pays. Our conversation was worse then one that goes down in the office kitchen. The weather. How she told her husband that the road was icy, he ignored her, and then told her later she was right. Her horses. Her dogs. HER LIFE. Not a single question was asked about how I was doing. How my life was. And of course, the topic of why she has avoided me for 9 months did not grace her lips. When I got back into my boyfriends car, I felt more deflated then a blowfish in a Japanese dish. 

What she doesn’t know, is that I already knew why she hadn’t been speaking to me. And in all honesty, I felt sorry for my regal queen. The poor thing was upset that I didn’t love her as much as I love my dad – or so, this is what she told my faithful aunt (a non-psycho one) the previous night, at a family Christmas party that my boyfriend and I weren’t invited to. And thus, in all the shock and horror, you may begin to understand how my family works.

Half of them are complete morons. They belive that the world solely revolves around them. That the Sun God shines the sun on only their faces, and everyone else is in dark gloomy weather, unless they bring the gift of sunlight to them. This is where I get angry. Because seriously, who the hell do they think they are? And when my non-psycho aunt stood up for me at this Christmas party, I was pretty stoked because in all honesty, I have no idea what the problem is of these cukoo-birds. If my sister wants me to love her more than I love my dad, perhaps she should refrain from her black-widow ways. My psycho-aunt on the other hand should realise that indeed, I will never speak to her again. As per her email: As your mother’s sister… I mean, what a cunt, to throw my mom’s death in the first line of an email after not speaking to me for a year……she must have forgotten that she told me to fuck off in the first place.

One thing we need to figure out however is, why I still feel so damn compelled to call my sister. Deep down I think I want to laugh in her face and tell her what a cow she is. I just need to get out of her web first, I think.