Change

The weekend just passed was hopefully our last weekend for a while in running around and getting stuff done.  One thing I (finally) did achieve was going to the RTA/RMS to change my surname.  I took a number, waited, handed over my marriage certificate, had my photo taken and five minutes later I was handed a new licence with Mrs J on it.

Hubby was beaming.  "It's official now" he said as we walked back to the car.  I held out my left  hand and asked if the ring that he made for me wasn't enough.  He said he was just happy that we now had the same surname.

This was a big deal for me.  When we first became engaged we had this conversation many times and each time I couldn't seem to win.  Maybe win isn't the right word.  I wanted both surnames.  Actually I wanted Hubby to take both surnames as well.  After all, by the time we were married I would have spent almost 30 years with my maiden name and I did not want to give it up.  For some people it is just a name, but for me I felt like it was so ingrained in my identity.   Hubby is normally so carefree, laid back, go with the flow, but with this conversation he became fired up and passionate.  It was tradition, it was his legacy and I think the word manhood even came into it.  

In the end, I did want us to have the same surname.  I wanted us to be Mr & Mrs J, and should our family expand, for our children to have the same surname as us.  Hubby wasn't going to take on mine so I agreed that I would take his, however I would be keeping my maiden name for work.  Hubby was more than happy with this arrangement.

Right now everything feels as it always has been.  Maybe it is just a name.  I do not feel any different as a person and in all honesty I am happy that we can now receive mail with Mr & Mrs J on it.  Now (on paper) we looked married, and I am excited to (officially) call myself Mrs J.  

Wow, I am a married woman, what on earth would Miss R have to say about that?

Found

After watching 2 hours of TV, with every commercial break featuring either a life insurance policy ad or a funeral plan ad, otherwise known as You Will Die, I decided to pop down the road to collect the mail.  I put Mr C in the car because he needed to get out and off we went.  About half a km down the road I noticed one of the houses had two recycling bins, and one of them looked brand new.  I turned around pulled right up to it and sure enough, the idiot had left our sticker on it.  I parked the car about 100m down the road, left the window open for the dog and went and got our bin.  I stood at the front of the house and shot them a very nasty look before hauling the bin.  This caper went on for about 20 mins and doing the car/bin shuffle about 3 times.

The vitamin D injection can only assist in my flu recovery.  D was outside his house and I went and popped over.  D is this lovely man in his early 70s who has lived in the area for 25 years.  He lived here before the house estates started to take over.  I told him what happened and he informed me never to speak to the man as he is dangerous and has been known to "go off" at any moment.  He is not surprised he took our bin as he has been known to take items before and he has so much crap (I noticed that the property looked like a junk heap) he needs the extra bins.  He also told me that "allegedly" he is a dope addict and he wouldn't be surprised if he was growing weed in the back shed.  Nice.

Our house is at the end of the estate so some of our neighbours are on acreage and this idiot lives on a 5 acreage trash heap (fortunately half a km away and completely out of sight).  As D said it is a great area to live but as with everywhere there is usually one or two idiots that feel the need to ruin it for the rest of us.  I just hope he knows never to do it again.  Hubby is getting spray paint on the way home. 

Theft

One of my biggest fears is the house getting broken into.  I do not fear losing our belongings.  It is the fear that a total stranger would walk into our private sanctuary, touch our things and learn so much about us, our likes, our family, our history, our future.  It is the complete invasion of privacy that I fear.   Having a no good person knowing me and my family so intimately.  It scares me.

When the house next door was near it's build completion, the hot water heater was stolen.  A week later, the day after the turf was laid, someone/s came along, rolled the turf up and nicked it too.  When we laid the turf Hubby was up ever hour checking on it.  It was fine.  The house next door was built by a very dodgy builder who had made a lot of ex employees very unhappy.  We knew it wasn't the area, it was a personal attack.

In fact this is a good area.  There are no graffiti hash tags lining the fences.  Never reports of drive by shootings.  It is a heavy family area, with kids everywhere, kids with responsible parents.  We felt safe buying the land and have felt safe since we moved in.

I kissed Hubby goodbye this morning and in under a minute he walked back in.

"You will never believe this."

"What"

"Someone has stolen our recycling bin."

Sure enough in the space of under 9 hours, the bin was gone.  Hubby even drove up and down the street making sure council hadn't driven off with it by mistake.  But it was gone.  Whoever did this had some balls.  The bin sits under a very bright street light, and you cannot smuggle it under your jacket.  He would have had to walk along the street or footpath with it.  He obviously knew what he was doing because he made sure he was very quiet about it.  I just hope he was stupid enough to leave our stickers on it so we can go hunting for it in a fortnight.  I also hope he took it in the middle of the night when it was full of rubbish.  

I am grateful it was just a bin.  I am also grateful that I make a huge effort to shred everything with our name, address, personal details and to put all that info in the safety bin at work.  I hope he enjoys having to deal with smelly milk bottles, broken wine bottles, numerous catalogues and clunky cardboard.

It is just so random.  I do not know how I feel about it.  I think I am still in shock, I mean really, who steals a bin?  Now I need to call council and arrange another one, and this one is getting spray painted hot pink so if it does get taken again they wouldn't be able to put it out on the kerb.  The only thing that I am thinking about now is that maybe we need to get off the Pug baby list and get onto the German Shepard baby list.  Maybe 

Not Happy

Hubby was sick all last week.  I thought he was 90% better yesterday.  By this stage I was feeling quite smug that he had not passed it onto me and figured that the recent health changes I have been making had something to do with it.  Then after dinner everything changed.  I was sneezing and blowing my nose and tossing and turning for half the night before finally getting up in a hot sweat at around 2am when I realised that he had successfully managed to pass his "man flu" (now real flu) to me. 

I was sent home from work at lunch time today and have spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch watching bad TV and progressively working my way through a tissue box. 

Now waiting for Hubby to come home and take care of me, just as I did for him last week.

Welcome to Married Life.  Share the Germs.

Eat Real Food

I sit here with two massive bruises on my left arm.  One on the inside of my elbow and another the size of a tennis ball on my left hand.  Even though they only needed to take blood 3 times I was pricked 5 times.  

A few years back when I had my bloods done the pathology technician (?) told me (as they were trying desperately to find a vein) that I could never be a heroine junkie.  I just stared at her.  Seriously?  I didn't know if she was trying to make me feel better or if it was some kind of an insult for taking so long?  For whatever reason they always struggle to find a vein.  This time I was asked if we were thinking about having children.  I said "maybe one day" and she laughed.  "Good luck with that.  You will need a lot of blood tests then" she said as she wiggled the needle around in my arm.

Suffice to say I will get the results next week.

Last week the goal was to go walking.  We walked on Monday, Tuesday.  And that was it.  First it was raining and then hubby became quite sick which left me exhausted as I was unable to sleep.  I did manage to continue getting up early most of the mornings but I couldn't bring myself to actually leave the house.  Of course thinking about it now it may have been just a little bit silly to decide to start walking at 6am in the middle of winter.  I think I will come back to this at the end of September.

This week I want to eat real food.  Which means I have a bit of a confession.  When Hubby and I first moved up here we left the house at 7am and came home at 7pm.  We came home exhausted and neither of us felt like cooking so we developed a bad take away habit.  Even though we don't travel like we used to, the take away habit appears to be a little too ingrained into us, as a few nights a week we still find ourselves picking up the phone or popping into drive "thru" on the way home.  This needs to stop.

So this week we cook.  We bought lots of fresh food on the weekend and stocked up the pantry and have no excuse at all not to cook.  And we are cooking real food.  Which means no stir through sauces, nothing with ingredients we don't recognise.  It may take longer but if we are going to cook then we are going to use real food.  I did some reading on the weekend and it fired me up to cook with real ingredients.  As my focus is on health right now this is the way it has to be.  Which is easy to say in the morning, I might feel differently after a full day of work.  We will see.

Awake

It is 2:30am and I am sitting here wide awake with no idea what to do.  I have had about three hours sleep.  But then I just woke up, my brain started ticking over and that was the end of that.  So here I am.  Nothing on TV, nothing to do online and not much to do period.  I might be wide awake but I am tired, so even though I could tidy up, it isn't going to happen.

Mr C is up as well.  Whenever I get up so does he, he is such a mummy's boy.  Although he has decided to camp out in the rumpus with my blanket and I think I can hear him snoring.  Fair enough, it does beat sleeping on the floor.  

Hubby has been sick since Wednesday so I haven't had much sleep since then.  I wish now that we had sorted out the spare room but the spare bed is still leaning up against a wall waiting to be pieced together.  Although I am motivated now to get into it this weekend.

Maybe I am worried about getting my bloods done.  It has been on my mind this week.  MIL called up on Tuesday to advise it was FIL's birthday and they are having a BBQ lunch on Saturday.  In all honesty it is the last thing I feel like doing after 3 hours of sitting in a pathology lab but nothing we can do about it.  I feel as well that I just need a weekend to myself and one that is spent out of the house.  Ever since we came home from the honeymoon our weekends have been one of two things;  Spending time with our families or working on the house.  Both of these are great options for weekends but I need a break from both now.  I want to go to the beach with Mr C and soak up the salty air and get my vitamin D levels up with a little sunbaking.  Maybe on Sunday I can aim for that.  I just hope the sun hangs around until then.

So Happy

When I finally cleared out the PO Box I was thrilled to see the latest issue of Country Style was there waiting for me.  This is of course my favourite magazine and one of only two magazines were I keep all the issues. 

Even better is that it is "The Wool Issue"

 

Wool is my favourite material.  When we were building I insisted on 100% wool carpet much to Hubby's horror.  He was determined to talk me out of it, but once he placed his barefoot onto the carpet sample he was hooked.  We choose a lovely plush, dense NZ wool which although not cheap was cheaper than some 50/50 wool/nylon blends.  I remember when the carpet was laid, we walked into the lounge room and lay down on the floor.  It was the best feeling in the world.  Even now when I come home and kick off my shoes I still smile to myself as my feet snuggle into the carpet with each step.

So this weekend I will carve our some time to sit with a coffee and my Country Style.  I have booked in Sunday afternoon where I can sit in the lounge and soak up the afternoon sun.  So happy.

Carb Loading

Today is the first of a three day "carb loading" "diet".  I am having my bloods done on Saturday morning (where I have the joy of hanging around for 2.5 hours and having the needle go in three times).  For the test I need to consume a ridiculous amount of carbs.  I am not anti carbs, but since returning from our honeymoon I have made an effort to reduce how much I eat and now aside from toast and some rice I don't really eat that many carbs.

I am scared about Saturday.  18 months ago I had an ultrasound and the same blood test which confirmed I had PCOS.  I also was told I was pre-diabetic.  Just.  My bloods showed that I had only just crossed over to pre-diabetic land (insulin resistance) and with hard work, diet and exercise overhaul I can reverse it.  Once you cross over to diabetic, there is no going back.  

There was no time for hard work with all my energy going into the house and then the wedding.  It has only been in the last few months I have begun to make changes.  So I am hoping that I am still just outside the diabetic line and can go all the way back to normal.  I didn't want these tests, but my Dr thought it would be a good idea to have a starting point.  So here I am, eating toast with more bread for lunch and pasta for dinner.  I suspect by the time I get to the pathology lab I would have blown up like a balloon.  We will see.

Walking

I prepped myself last week and this week I go walking.  I managed to get up at 6am everyday last week except for yesterday, but in my defense we didn't get home on Saturday night until 1am and 5 hours sleep was not going to happen.  This morning it was up at 6 and even Hubby rolled out of bed with me to go walking.  We hooked Mr C up to his second harness as we discovered that he has had a late growth spurt and his first one doesn't fit.  He was never a "chunky" pug but suddenly he is starting to look more "pugish".  Even his little winter coat from last year didn't fit around him anymore.  So all three of us left to bare the cold.

The sun was just rising and it was cold but once we got started we didn't seem to notice so much.  It was nice walking around and having a sticky at the houses around us.  It was also nice for Hubby and I to just talk with no distractions.  Twenty minutes had passed and we turned around to head back.  Almost immediately the road was full of cars and trucks and it seemed that everyone was now out of bed ready to start their day.  

Walking is not so much about my physical health, it is a causal pace, it is more a case of developing a morning routine because at the moment it is so rushed, I just want to put some things into place and do it everyday, go for a walk, have a shower, have breakfast and then start my day.  Already I feel more like I am in control and ready for the day.  And I do feel good knowing that I have exercised already.  Whenever I say I will go for a walk 3 times a week I don't walk at all.  Because which three days will it be?  Every day I tell myself, tomorrow.  Well this time it is everyday so I just need to get up and get on with it instead of arguing with myself about whether today is the day or not.  Today is the day for starting my morning routine, and so far, I like it.

Hello Second Half of the Year

So here I am facing the second half of the year. I am now a married woman, 30, and after 2 years finally moved into our first house. The last six months has been so busy it all seems a blur. And now I am looking into the rest of the year and with no wedding to plan and no house to build, I suddenly find myself with a lot of free time. What better way to start blogging again. 

I am not sure where things are heading right now. I am the person who has to have a plan for everything but I have thrown them all away. I even pulled out of uni because I really didn't know what I wanted at the end of it. I need to have time out to work out what it is that I want and where I want to go and I am not putting any time frame on this either. So for now Hubby and I are enjoying the new house, slowly unpacking the last of the boxes and taking it easy. My only focus at the moment is my health. I was diagnosed with PCOS about 18 months ago and have done nothing to fix it. Frankly I didn't have time. Now I do. 

I am setting myself a goal each week. Huge massive health overhauls don't work for me as I always crash and burn in under a week. So this time I am taking it slowly and gently and making one small change a week. This week I am getting up at 6am each morning, including the weekend. I might add this is a solo effort as hubby has stayed nice and warm in bed till about 7, but I have been up having coffee and found time to read again. Life is better already.