That sinking feeling.

If I thought the scales were groaning beneath my gargantuan density before our holiday you can imagine how distressed they were upon my return.  I wonder why it is that a sensible weight loss averages at approximately 1-2lbs per week yet my body is perfectly happy to gain that amount each hour whilst abroad?  Further confirmation that I am genetically flawed.  Not that I needed it.  Just one morning with either of my parents is evidence enough.

So my 'holiday'.  As appropriate a title perhaps as nicknaming Henry VIII 'Slim Faithful'.  I have to say (partially quoting a friend of mine) that the concept of a 'Family Holiday' is probably the definitive oxymoron.  There is nothing relaxing, leisurely or de-stressing about it.  I have come to understand that a holiday (for me) will only be just that if spent in absolute isolation.    All I need is a bed, a lamp, several books and silence.  Hence my intention to visit the all inclusive resort of Costa Del asylum just as soon as I can find a space in my manic schedule to have a nervous breakdown.   Thankfully I think I have a gap somewhere in February 2017.

This year's experience has taught me a great lesson though.  Well a few of them actually. 

Number One: never and I mean never cut costs by flying through the night with children.  Although it saves a few pennies,  having four extremely tired, whinging, crying, sulking, bickering brats all yapping at one another for twelve hours straight of travelling is a price you don't want to pay.  By the time we reached our destination I was practically delirious from lack of sleep combined with what had felt like psychological torture.  I am now considering offering their services to  Islamic Fundamentalists wishing to terrorise a few airlines.  Never mind tweezers and nail scissors......

Number Two: never share accommodation.  With anyone other than your immediate family that is (although in actual fact if you could avoid sharing with them too you would undoubtedly have a better experience).   There is a reason why, upon reaching adulthood, you moved out of home and got as far away from your parents as possible.  Don't forget it.   After all relationships are tough enough without having an audience to your idiosyncratic behaviours who then feel it helpful to proffer post-match like analysis.

Number Three: When you tell your three year old daughter it's okay to pee in the pool, make sure you tell her that it is not okay to tell Grandad you said that.

Number Four:  Don't swim with your mouth open.

Number Five: Baby wipes, baby wipes and more baby wipes.

I'm sure there were a few other things I learned but these seem to be the important ones.

On the subject of learning, I got my exam results whilst out there, and yes I am now a qualified Accounting Technician.  Frankly it's pretty worthless or feels that way after having  applied for numerous jobs and heard nothing  from any of them.  I am thinking that maybe a new approach is required.....something fresh and inventive which enables me to stand out from other candidates and get their absolute attention.  Like say attaching topless photos to my C.V. or death threats.

So for the next few weeks my focus will be on obtaining employment and sorting out this car crash of a body.  I did get straight back to the gym after we returned to the UK and have been a very good little girl in that respect (OK maybe not so little), I'm not however going to set any more unrealistic objectives because if and when they don't come in to fruition (as always) I will just make myself look even more of a **!"!.    Let's face it, the only realistic goal I could set is to get fatter. 

Now I know I could do that one. x

Broken promises...

Life is full of them and probably mostly the self-imposed-then-broken types.  I definitely made a pact with myself that I'd achieve a svelte size '10' by my Spain holiday,  which gives me precisely three hours and ten minutes to drop thirty pounds.  Of course this naturally has the knock on effect of creating within me a deepened sense of inadequacy, shame and guilt at not having met my objective, thus necessitating  drowning my sorrows in a shed load of sugary junk. 

In seriousness I have been on this journey for over eight months now and am barely a pound different to when I set out.  Something tells me I lack a certain level of commitment.  Maybe it's just that deep down I understand the world is not ready for a woman of my many talents to be toting a figure fit for a Beyonce support dancer.  Think of the havoc it would wreak.  It's clearly far safer for my wondrousness to remain hidden beneath this well cushioned exterior.

Thankfully for me as it happens (due to the wearing of a most inadequately supportive pair of wedges at the weekend) I am extremely cushioned and therefore bounce on impact.   My dignity however is not so buoyant and will remain permanently scarred at the recollection of the number of falls I had whilst out on Saturday night.  Heightened by the shame of having a perfectly handsome chappy walk up to me and say "what a delightful rack you have" only for me to fall flat on my face at his feet.   "Yes, but perhaps you can have a better view of it if I just go down here"......

And on the subject of views.....Chris has, this evening, returned from a trip to Amsterdam.  Need I add any other detail....probably not.  Suffice to say that it was not the tulips or scenic landscape that caught his attention. 

Anyway, I have exactly sixty minutes now before I depart this sad existence (though not heaven bound - or at least I hope not) venturing out to horizons new and a hell of a lot warmer, or in other words that was a rather elaborate way of saying we are (literally) about to leave for our holiday.  I can't quite comprehend the fact I shall be without the Internet whilst there, thus no blogging, no Facebook, no random searches on Google for miscellaneous solutions to problems (incidentally try that game sometime....it's a great boredom breaker.  Begin with tapping in the first few words of a question i.e. "Should I...?" then see what suggestions it makes.  "Stay with my transexual boyfriend", "buy shares in BP", or "end my life" being amongst three of my current favourites).  Who needs the Samaritans when you have Google?  In fact who needs the Samaritans full stop.  From the experience of my hypothetical friend, they genuinely aren't much help in an emergency.  "Hi, my name's Bambi's Hypothetical friend and I am seriously considering killing myself"  surely deserves a more prompt response than "Is there any chance you could come in the office a week on Monday and have a chat with someone then".   Well er no, because with a bit of courage and commitment I intend to be dead in the next few hours. 

Thankfully though my hypothetical friend is as uncommitted as me.

And so I say a fond farewell to you all, my international followers and global fans.  (OK so perhaps I'm getting a little carried away).  Once again thanks for tuning in and reading my blather......when I return I shall DEFINITELY get back on track with my whole weight loss campaign.

I promise.  x

I can't get NO

Yes, you guessed right, 'Satisfaction' is what I'm lacking.  Actually I'm lacking a lot of things it's just that Satisfaction is currently number one on my "things I am missing chart".  Closely followed, that is, at numbers 2 and 3 by My Sanity and A Libido (although I wonder whether those two are not so much missing in fact as long gone, disappeared, vanished, never to be found again).

I am dissatisfied with everything right now.  Including being dissatisfied that I'm dissatisfied.  I'm not going to go through the whole spiel of why however, suffice to say I am a selfish, self pitying, self indulgent self obsessed self-selfy-self-self type of person who will never be completely happy because I am always so busy admiring everyone else's lawns.  Not their actual lawns obviously  (which would make me both dissatisfied and an anorak of the saddest variety) I mean their metaphorical lawns, which are metaphorically far greener than mine, not difficult considering mine is a veritable wilderness - desert like, sand covered and with tumbleweed galore.  

Perhaps this whole gym thing is not such a good idea.  I have to confess that although I am loving the big  endorphin rush part (ie. the end bit), I am struggling with the concept of eight foot high wall to wall mirrors erected on every flat surface available.  This is designed, presumably, so that you can admire the wondrous changes the gym is bestowing upon your physique, or in my case, so that you can see every last ounce of chubby blubber wobbling as you bounce about, thus providing a huge reminder of why you need to be there.  Unfortunately for me it has the converse effect.  I feel gorgeous, toned and sylph like until I see my reflection and then my world comes crashing down, I realise the truth and it makes me want to dash to Asda and purchase as many Jaffa Cakes as I can ram in my gym bag. 

Tonight was a particularly bad session.  Usually I go during the school day, when the rest of the population are at work so the only others there are the staff, a few pudgy cake-stuffing housewives (myself included) and maybe a sprinkling of O.A.P's.  Nothing too intimidating.   This evening though I ended up arriving during the iron pumping equivalent of rush hour.  The place was heaving, and not with the usual lardy crinkle mix that I am part of......no these were the fitness elite, the Barbies and Kens, the steroid toting pea-heads with biceps the size of my thigh and girls with bosoms so enhanced they could take someones eye out.   

I began to exercise.....got on the running machine and started my usual programme, then caught a glimpse of myself in the evil reflection makers, cellulite and flab all wobbling around like a gloopy blamange dripping down my bottom half.  I glanced at the Pussy Cat Dolls to my left and the Cheryl Tweedy lookalike to my right and suddenly it dawned on me that I did not belong here, or at least not without a vacuum cleaner, dusters and cleaning fluid in my hand.   For a second I considered throwing myself off the running machine, head first at the abdominal cruncher in the hope I would at the very least cause myself a major concussion and have to be airlifted out of there......anything to release me instantly from my self imposed misery and humiliation......but then  I realised how short sighted my plan was.  Potentially impaling oneself on an exercise machine has got to be slightly more unbearable than a battered ego - and so I decided just to skulk off quietly and hope that no-one had noticed I was ever there.

I appreciate that there is something slightly ironic about feeling out of place in a gym because you're overweight.....and if I'm honest I didn't really feel as bad as I like to make out (for dramatic effect) but it was a little disconcerting being surrounded by such physically perfect specimens.  It wouldn't be so bad if I could wear a disclaimer, say a t-shirt emblazoned with "I've had four kids and chocolate is my only friend", thus excusing myself in part for letting it get this bad.    Not that having children is an excuse but it definitely makes hanging on to a figure a lot more challenging.    I do of course realise how unimportant looks actually are by the way, just in case you think me superficial, shallow and soulless as well as self absorbed.  I am reading a book at the moment entitled "Stan Cattermole, the intimate adventures of an ugly man".......a rather rude (but very funny) account of the love life of a hideous (by his own admission) looking chap.  Anyway the crux of the matter is that whilst reading it I've thought deeply about what it is that I find attractive.   I can absolutely, hand on heart say it isn't anything physical.  Although bad personal hygiene and/or a Morris Dancer costume would really put me off.   And as far as I'm concerned being told you are pretty or have a great rack is really no compliment considering looks aren't something you have much control over;  after all if it's a great rack he's after well there will always be someone somewhere with a better one.  But being told you're one of a kind, unique, original, irreplaceable and like no-one else, well that's probably what I yearn for.....

that and a pert backside.

And satisfaction of course. 

And a mirrorless gym.