And it's a last minute dash to the finish

So I'm making a last ditch effort to rescue what has been an abysmal month of mission undertaking and have managed to make some of the past few days  little bit different from the day-to-day.

Believe it or not, before Saturday I'd never had a manicure or pedicure. Sure I'd cut, filed, polished and painted my fingernails and toenails before but I've never ventured into the hallowed halls of a nail salon and let the professionals at them. A Saturday morning with the girls (and my somewhat reluctant hubby) before a mate's 30th saw me do just that when one of them commented she needed to get new falsies put on.

Not one to let an opportunity go to waste, I picked out a sunny, bright colour, cranked up the massage chair and left my digits in the capable hands of my - nailist? manicurist? pedicurist? - Vanessa. I enjoyed the experience immensely (even though the sound of Vanessa filing my fingernails made my skin crawl) and I think it will now be a bi-monthly event.

I also enjoyed the next unusual thing I did: watched the Oscars at work and practiced my own acceptance speech.

I had originally planned to spend the day at home on a flex-day having my own luxury pampering morning before the big event, but given the time I had off when hubby couldn't catch, I reluctantly plodded off to work before I had an epiphany...

Our Deputy CEO was on leave, and she has a TV in her currently empty office.

Taking advantage of this new development I made a hasty "back in 3 hours" sign to hang over my in tray (with directions of where to find me of course) and promoted myself to the leather-seated,TV-adorned, air-conditioned luxury where Billy Crystal's comedic genius filtered through the phone calls, minute typing and email responses of the daily grind.

It's a good thing I'm not addicted to day time soaps as there's a fair chance one of my bosses won't get their office back.

And today brought about one of the more spontaneous activities: driving home from work, it's pouring rain, hubby & I can't decide what to have for dinner and there's a car park right across from one of our favourite eating spots.

Continue driving in the pouring rain to get home where I have to decided, prepare, cook and clean-up dinner or pull into a miraculously free car park and have other people do all of the above for me?

Hmmm tough call :-)

A Grandma is just an antique little girl

Do you know what I did today?

I called my Grandma.

I don't do this outside of special occasions all that often, mostly because my mum usually keeps her abreast of the things going on in my life and vice versa, so it feels like I stay in touch even when I don't.

Today I called to see how she was getting on with the Christmas present me, my brother and our cousins bought her for Christmas after a message from my Dad told me I was close to being disowned.

My Grandma LOVES jigsaws. So much so that she can do a 1000 piece puzzle in less time than it takes me to choose which pair of shoes to buy in a Tony Bianco sale. But being the mischievous grandchildren we are, we bought her a jigsaw that came with 5 extra pieces and no border: did I mention it was of a multitude of tropical fish facing various directions?

My call came about 30 - 45 minutes in to the maiden assembly and although I may have been slightly cheeky in my intent, I got the biggest smile on my face when I heard the excitement and surprise in her voice when she realised her eldest grandchild had called to day "hi."

Then she preceded to tell me how disowned I was, in that lovable, not-at-all cranky way that only Grandmothers can.

It was great.

The call only lasted about 10 minutes at the most but it was small dose of the 'unusual' that left me feeling happy, warm and snuggly: even more so when I managed to convince her that he WOULD have the puzzle finished by the next time we visit....

... June.

It's days like this that make me want to rob a Mr Whippy van...

I used to tell myself that no matter how cranky, sad, stressed, happy or psychotic I got, I never reached for the lolly jar, chocolate bar, slice of cake or bowl container of ice-cream.

I'm starting to think there's an emotional eater trapped inside me.

It's only now with no sustenance allowed that I'm acknowledging their existence, but at the same time trying to silence them with a large green Granny Smith.

Why would people decide to make last minute changes to a meeting agenda that has been set in stone for a week, and then also decide that an additional person needs to tag along when it's on the other side of the country in ten days times and all the plans are already finalised??

Why would people interrupt my hectic day by ringing and asking "is boss-man in the office" five times a day when his daily whereabouts are available on the intranet for all to see?

What kind of moron rings me asking what day meeting papers are due when I spent 2 hours re-jigging the administration requirements calendar, adding them to the intranet and providing them to all staff in a colour-coded pdf only two days ago?

I should point out that although my dessert-inducing stressors did momentarily impact my ability to converse with colleagues in what would be called a polite, professional manner, they are:

1. Really just first world problems; and
2. Helping me understand my eating habits more

Although this month's mission has been a total failure from a successful completion stand point, I honestly think I'll get long term benefits from it. I'm learning that small amounts of sweets satisfy me as much as large amounts, that I really am full after finishing a tuna salad, and that no, the world will not end if I don't have a Freddo Frog.

To quote from the phrase book sitting on my desk "give the dangerous drama queen her chocolate."

posted from Bloggeroid

Don't feel the need to judge me, I'm doing a good enough job myself

I honestly thought that this months "giving up" task would be easy. Not the easiest but having given up chocolate for the full 40 days of Lent last year, I honestly thought 29 days dessert free would be easy.

Yeah, I was w....mistaken.

The cricket-ball dramas of last weekend made for a hectic week of work, specialist visits, work from home, work, specialist visits, work from home, work, doctors visit, more work at home.. you get the point. In this time I've broken my dessert-free vow twice three times: and I feel terrible!

First it was on Tuesday and since the ungrateful so-and-so I'm married didn't appreciate his 'unusual' valentine's day gift, I made it my mission when I got home to prove that someone did and promptly ate two of the lovely wrapped gold stars before I realised what I was doing. So consciously I wasn't concentrating on what I was doing, but you'd think after 14 days my brain would have readjusted itself by now.

The second break was completely on purpose. After discovering the in-laws are bringing our nieces & nephews to visit over Easter, my mind turned (naturally) to what chocolatey goodness I could send them crazy with, while filling the car up and when I went in to pay, the single Cadbury Caramello Egg sitting in a massive bowl looked so lonely I decided "what the hell" and ate that too.

Last night brought with it the third leg of failure when after three glasses of wine and a night of solo chick-flick watching ahead of me - hubby was absorbed in the cricket - I surmised that you simply can't watch a remake of a Kevin Bacon classic (or really, any chick flick for that matter) without ice-cream so promptly grabbed straight one from the freezer without blinking, thinking, passing go or collecting $200.

I have ZERO self control.

Still, I have learnt two things:

1. I really don't need to eat as much dessert as I have previously. I could never just eat one piece of chocolate, or one scoop of ice-cream, or one piece of cake at morning tea, but now after having stumbled on small amounts over the past couple of weeks, I've realised that yes actually, small amounts are just as satisfying and don't leave you feeling like a bloated, sugar-overloaded mess at the end of it.
2. It's really not a good idea to give up dessert when you're also supposed to be overhauling your diet in general. I think this is the real cause of my issue this month. After a recent visit to a dietitian on some health-related matters for hubby, I made a conscious effort to overhaul our eating habits more than I had previously and I think doing that, coupled with giving up sweets may have been all too much for my brain to handle. 

So I'm entering the last 12 days of this month with new found commitment to my dessert-free life and also a plan to re-"give-up" dessert again in a few months time, once the rest of our lifestyle changes have kicked in and become habitual.

So yes, I've pretty much ballsed-up this month's mission but you can't win them all right? Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to drop and give me 20 for my sins.

It's not unusual to be loved by anyone....

... but it IS unusual for me to go along with the hype and celebrate the most commercialised of 'holidays' - Valentine's Day.

But celebrate it I did, deciding back on February 1 that this year I would surprise hubby at work with the delivery of a chocolate bouquet (Cherry Ripes and milk chocolate stars). A last minute call to the supplier yesterday to change the delivery address and my heart-felt surprise was delivered to our home where he was recuperating. Hubby's response when I asked if he liked it?

"It's nothing special it's just chocolate."

Let's just say I saw red and it wasn't the red of a Valentine's day heart!

I'll leave it to the people to decide: nothing special or sweet surprise??

Hubby gets the award for embracing the unusual this week

So I had half an update written on how hard it is to actually DO something unusual each day when the daily grind gets in the way, and also how I'm pretty sure I killed the taste of my first caramel mocha on skim with too many sugars, but then I ended up in emergency.

Or rather, my husband was a patient in emergency whereas I was the wife answering all the questions and trying hard to make it look like I HADN'T beaten hubby with the frying pan (which I didn't do in case you wondering).

So naturally my planned 'unusual-ness' got surpassed by other events: again. Only this time it was inflicted by hubby instead of mother nature. This wasn't a bad thing though as a number of unusual things got to happen instead.

Hubby got hit in the eye whilst keeping in his Saturday cricket game: this in itself is unusual because he's faced  thousands of deliveries over the years without a helmet and has never been hit before. I was doing the supportive wife thing from the sideline yelling "get up you wimp you'll be fine" before they called for a towel.

Who would've thought a world like 'towel' can you turn your day upside down? As soon as we heard that one of my fellow WAGs turned to me and said "you know what towel means don't you?" We both nodded knowingly and said in unison "blood." So it was off to the ER for some stitches before the planned comeback to score those final 15 runs to win himself a new cricket bat....

And then he lost his vision.

Right so not just stitches, an ambulance ride to Canberra hospital, an ultrasound, CT scan and overnight admittance instead. Not a usual Saturday by any means.

What also made this particular situation unusual is that he was the patient and I was the carer. I've been in emergency three times since we've been together, only I had the audacity to be admitted two nights in a row in hospitals 5 hours apart.

This is why I had no problem sitting patiently by his bedside instead of cooking the 3-course meal from scratch I had planned. Though eavesdropping on conversations trying to figure out what was going on in the beds around us contributed greatly to my willingness to sit still for a few hours.

Before these events unfolded though I hadn't really managed to make too much unusual except that I made a decision to wear a dress to work every single day, including wearing my 'party' dress on Thursday - that was fun. I'd recommend it to anyone: work really seems so much better when you're wearing hot heels and a cute purple dress.

Oh, and the aforementioned coffee debacle: I won't become a coffee drinker anytime soon!!

posted from Bloggeroid

So only 2 days sober....

So five days down in my new mission and Mother Nature has screwed with me in every which way possible: three out of five things I wanted to undertake to make my days different involved being outside. Still all is not lost as I had to get slightly more creative with my 'unusual' tasks.

The first thing I did with my new commitment to change things up a bit was go from blonde to brunette: only one person (outside of hubby who helped me rinse) noticed. Well, I could say two but the second knew something was different but couldn't quite put her finger on it.

I just kept telling myself that this mission was all about making my life different and it didn't really matter that I'm apparently invisible to the world around me (cue the world's smallest violin).

The past five days have also seen me: ignore my morning alarm (felt so rushed all day), visited a dietitian (I found it informative, hubby now thinks he's in hell), went to cricket without scoring (not doing that again anytime soon), I'm about to go bidding in an on-line auction, and....

Broke a mission.

Yep, I'm ashamed to say it but I failed in my attempt to go 28 days without chocolate. It wasn't a conscious thing, I'd had a couple glasses of bubbly at a Trivia Night for cricket and after my fellow WAGs fought so valiantly to keep the gold coins away from our respective players - they wanted to waste them to wine a bottle of cheap-ass wine - for a mid-game chocolate run, I got so caught up in our success that I'd eaten three pieces before I realised what was going on - oops!

Still, in my defense once I realised what I was doing I stopped immediately. But then there was that last piece of Mint Bubbly.....

Variety is the spice of life...but I'm gonna miss Freddo

This is the month known collectively in some circles as "FebFast" the month where you give up alcohol (usually) for a good cause and to dry-out post Christmas and back-to-work catch ups.

Most people like giving up the grog in February because as we all know it's the shortest month: they're weak, I gave it up for 31 days! Having said that though, there is one thing that I'll find difficult to give up for a month and that's why I'm taking advantage of the two less days...

Giving Up: Dessert
Who doesn't love dessert? I'm not just talking about the traditional after-dinner dessert, I'm talking about the after-lunch dessert and the mid-afternoon dessert too: everyone has those right?

Ice-cream is my favourite. I love ice-cream because there's always room for it. Ice cream melts into all those little spaces in your stomach which are left by the food you ate earlier. Chocolate is my other favourite, but it's my favourite after-lunch dessert. Especially Freddo Frogs and Caramello Koalas. In the absence of those though I'll pretty much take anything.

Then of course there's Allens Lollies - particularly Racing Cars. They tend to be the after-dessert-dessert....

I think I have a problem.

Which is why for the month of February I'm giving up foods that can be classed traditionally as dessert of some description: chocolate, ice-cream, lollies, cake, biscuits, muffins, pudding, etc. I gave up chocolate for lent last year and jokingly made a sign to hang at my work station that said "Warning: I'm giving up chocolate for lent and cannot be held accountable for my actions."

I think I'll supply people working in my general vicinity with Kevlar for the next 29 days.

Taking-up: Making the usual unusual
I 'borrowed' this idea from an article I read on Ninemsn called "Ten unusual new year's resolutions" and it immediately took my fancy.

The idea behind it is to do one thing differently out of your usual daily routine each day of the week to reinvigorate your life - think of the possibilities! Hit the snooze button more than once, sleep-in, have cereal for dinner, wear your favourite dress to work and instead of wearing the faithful Bonds, bring out the lacy undies! Do I hear diamond earrings in a board meeting calling??

I'm also using it as an opportunity to try little one-off things that I've often thought about doing, but couldn't really do for a whole month - top of that list is getting my legs waxed (yes, I'm a sook and have convinced myself I have a low-pain threshold), and cooking a 3-course dinner from scratch.

Hubby has surprisingly jumped on board with this one and made a list of things he thinks I should do, many of which I've agreed to: see if you can guess which ones they are as the month progresses :-)