Adrenalin nightcap

Earlier this evening I was suddenly seized with a craving for serious chocolate. I had no luck with my attempt to send Adam on a mission to the Guylian Cafe before he came home so when he got here, after 11pm, I decided to head out to the supermarket myself.

Look, I wouldn't have gone if we hadn't also been in dire need of sandwich meat and fruit so it's not quite as bad as it sounds.

My hunt for serious chocolate was a success, I now have a box of fancy Lindt morsels and they were even on sale. I haven't opened them yet because I had to tell you all this story first.

Are you fascinated so far?

I got home, got out of the car, juggled 2 bags of shopping, 2 Macca's coffees and a Macca's sundae (for Adam), managed to lock the car and then started walking across the footpath towards our garden. I was anticipating the need to dodge the resident bug catcher at the beginning of the path when suddenly my eyes refocused on a point approximately 3 inches from my nose.

A point which was occupied by a dangling, wriggling, eight legged giant which I had come thiiiiis close to walking into nose first in the dark. She was twice the size of the lovely lady I photographed on Tuesday morning and was just starting to build her web. I stopped abruptly, recoiled, swore, did not spill the coffees and then continued on down the front path examining the air in front of my nose at every step.

And now I don't feel even remotely sleepy.

Ye gods am I glad I didn't walk straight into her.

Well, that was extraordinarily frustrating

Santa brought Guitar Hero World Tour for the kids this year. It was unpacked and set up with much excitement...and then nothing, the game wouldn't start up, we couldn't get the PS2 to read the disc. Great. We know it's not the player, all the other games still work just fine.

Rather naively, as it turns out, we assumed that we could simply take the disc back and have it swapped for one that worked. HA! Oh foolish ones!

We took the disc in to EB Games at Hornsby and explained the situation. We were told that no, they couldn't just swap the disc, we'd have to bring in the whole bundle and by the way we don't have any replacement bundles in stock and we won't have any for anywhere from 2 weeks to who knows when. With steam coming out our ears we went home, with 3 kids in tow, packed up the whole box full of tricks and took it back to the shops.

We were kind of hoping that when confronted by the ginormous box with the packaging all messed up that the staff would come to their senses and decide that maybe just swapping the disc wasn't such a bad idea after all. (Though I'm pretty sure they'd have been out of stock of the disc only versions of the game too, most places seem to be sold out.)

Nope, they couldn't possibly do that, there was no way to enter such an action into their system (um, so don't enter it into the system?). In the course of me trying to persuade the staff to think outside the box (and maybe act like they give a shit about the whole thing) one of them finally asks had we been in touch with Activision, because apparently if there's a problem with anything to do with Guitar Hero there's a slip of green paper in the box that says you're supposed to ring Activision up and they'll send you a replacement part (which they're doing because there's been lots of problems and they don't want the stores to have to deal with doing lots of replacements). Um, no. We hadn't seen any green paper, what with the kids unpacking the box and all.

I turn to the guy who told us to bring the whole box in and suggest that it might have been nice if he'd mentioned that in the first place. He says he assumed we'd have known. Bullshit, when I told him we had a faulty disc it should have been the first thing he asked me.

So we take the box back to the car. After finishing our other shopping we head home. Adam goes to the Activision website. Yep, we can ring them- at $2.50 A MINUTE. Fuck that. The links for Guitar Hero support in the Asia Pacific region lead to a dead end with a drop down list asking what country you are from but without Australia as an option. After a bit lot of surfing around the site he discovers the crowning glory of this whole saga.

If necessary, take the game back to the point of purchase and exchange it for another disc.

Eventually we do find the green slip of paper. It specifically says to contact Activision for problems with Guitar Hero peripherals. Not the games discs.

The only reason I was willing to go through the contacting Activision route in the first place was because we'd have to wait for the shop to re-stock to get a replacement through them and I hoped Activision might be a little quicker getting a new disc out to us. Right at the moment I feel like printing out a copy of the trade practices act and throwing it at somebody.

We'll be ringing EB Games in the morning.

Status report

Lego pistol - retrieved, the friend admitted his mistake without any need to produce the evidence.

Laundry - Mostly folded but not ironed and at least 3 loads waiting to be done.

Kitchen - pantry and tupperware cupboard exploded several weeks ago, it's been a losing battle ever since.

Groceries - I am so not adjusting to not being able to do the shopping when the kids are at school, we are out of most of the basics and used up the last of the frozen left-overs last night. Looks like I'll be shopping this evening.

Kid's homework - I'm conflicted about this, they're all outside playing happily and being energetic, I so don't want to to drag them in and have them switch to irritating each other while I end up yelling at them to "sit down, pick up a pen and bloody well do your homework!"

Christmas shopping - I've done nigh on bugger all, this has me a little concerned as by this time I have usually pretty much finished.

Sleep - in deficit by at least 6 hours. Must go to bed before 11:00pm tonight.

Work - I'm enjoying it, so far so good.

Friends - fabulous.

Husband - awesome.

Life - despite the inevitable frustrations of being a parent and the whole adjusting to the new way things are around here, is pretty bloody good.

NaBloPoMo - taxing my creativity :P

Kids and animals are a bugger to photograph

I started out this morning with the intent of having a decent photo of each of the kids and pets with which to illustrate the ever so fascinating story of my Sunday. I should know better than to make plans that depend on kids and animals behaving for a camera.

The short version of my day goes like this:

• Get out of bed several hours later than intended (must have needed that sleep-in).
• Flail ineffectually at the chaos in the house (Adam has done wonders with it today as I came and went).
• Take Clara to dog park, forget to take camera (this time she decided to wrestle with a doberman twice her size).
• Bring exhausted but happy dog home and make some lunch.
• Take Caitlin shopping so she can spend her birthday money.

She started out looking at Barbie and Bratz dolls but ended up with a purse and some clothes - my indoctrination program is working.

• Go check on Bren and Di's cats (they're not convinced I'm a safe person, they watch suspiciously from behind furniture).
• Take photos of Clara on front deck (we resort to trickery to get her to look at the camera).

"Dad, why are you putting my squeaky toy on Mum's head?"

• Go to Lowenbrau for dinner (take lots more photos nearly all of which are terrible).

Except these two, which I rather like.

• Come home, get kids ready for bed and read aloud a chapter of The Sword and The Circle by Rosemary Sutcliff (this is hard work, the sentence structure is NOT conducive to reading aloud).
• Decide to blog in preference to writing the speech I have to give about the P&C at the school kindy orientation sessions on Monday and Wednesday.

The cats avoided the camera all day, but here's one of Jack that I took a couple of weeks ago.

"Bugger off, I was sleeping."

Now, to speech writing and ironing! Bleh.

Good day

The beginning of my day:

Adam has been making me awesome breakfasts for almost 20 years, this morning I said I was craving pancakes and bacon and eggs. I got up, had my shower, got dressed...et voilà!

The middle of my day:

I took Caitlin shopping. She ended up with FOUR pairs of shoes. They were: school shoes which cost a bloody fortune, long black boots at 25% off bought slightly big in the hope they'll be good for next winter and 2 pairs of crappy flats from Kmart which cost $5.60 a pair and will probably do horrible things to her feet. She had ice-cream, I had an affrogato and no-one whinged about anything. (My last shoe shopping expedition with kids was an unmitigated disaster.)

The end of my day:

We spent a very pleasant evening sitting around chatting to a big bunch of Browncoats at Di & Bren's engagement party. Here they are doing the cake cutting thing.

They seem pretty pleased with themselves. Congratulations guys :)

Me and Dave day

I did something today that I used to think I never would. I let David stay home from the school swimming carnival even though he was in perfect health and hadn't actually asked to not go. In past years I've been well aware that Dave didn't really want to go. He was certainly never going to do anything so radical as enter an event, or, you know, get into the water or anything like that. But I was never much bothered by the idea of him sitting around all day doing nothing, not even able to talk to his friends (given that they're not in the same sporting house and the kids have to sit in their house groups), any suffering on his part was well worth not having him underfoot unnecessarily. Then last night I found myself saying to him, that if he'd rather not go he had the option of spending the day with me instead. Like he was ever going to choose to go to the carnival - HA!

I suppose it's something to do with him having turned into quite a pleasant human being whose company I rather enjoy. Who'd've thunk it? That and I'm a bit over the whole come along and cheer for your team/school spirit thing.

So he came with me to Weight Watchers (I lost 0.3kg, still heading in the right direction), we wandered in JB HiFi for a bit (he pointed out all the cool games he'd really like for his birthday and I bought a Whitlams CD), we had some lunch (KFC for him, beef pho for me) and went to Games Workshop and retrieved the paints he'd accidentally left there on the weekend.

Then we went clothes shopping. I made him try on a whole bunch of pants and tops and we found one shirt, one hoodie and one pair of pants in Myer that were ok but it was jeans we were really after for him and nothing in the Myer or Target kid's sections came even close to fitting. So we headed off to Just Jeans where he eventually ended up finding a pair of mens jeans that fit nicely...if you didn't pay too much attention to the 30cm of excess length in the legs. Then in a fit of being realistic I decided that taking them to a tailor to be altered was a really good idea, which we duly did and they were done within the hour which meant we could pick them up before we came home. Much better than having them sit in my sewing to do pile for 6 months. While waiting for the alterations I dragged Dave along to Target so I could try on some jeans myself, I've had one pair self-destruct and another looking like they're on their last legs this last week. Got 2 pairs and they were 20% off too which was nice. Next was a quick grocery shop, dump a bunch of stuff in the car and then dash back to pick up the altered jeans.

After all of which we had no time left to go home and had to head to the school to pick up Caitlin and Tom. I think maybe Dave was regretting foregoing the carnival by the end of the day. At least he got some exercise, we must have done the length of Hornsby Westfield multiple times - I can certainly feel the effects of all the walking tonight!

Caitlin was over the moon, she'd come 1st in the 25m kickboard race and 3rd in the 25m freestyle race, she reckons she'd have done better if she hadn't forgotten to take her goggles with her. The first ever sporting win of any kind for any of my kids :) Perhaps she'll consider entering some of the 50m races next year.

The afternoon consisted of prodding kids to do homework, taxiing Caitlin to dance classes and cooking steak and kidney. All of which went surprisingly well. The homework all got done without any yelling on my part, I fitted dinner preparation neatly in between car trips with Caitlin and my dad came to dinner and was suitably appreciative, none of the kids were rude about the meal (though Tom was the only one who ate everything) and there was just enough left over for me to stick a couple of lunch-sized serves in the freezer for later.

And now I am tired. Sleep sounds good....

No more mindless consumerism

Just before Christmas I was driving somewhere with the kids in the car and I began to talk to them about some thoughts I'd been having on the subject of stuff. The endless stuff we accumulate, buy, covet and horde. The stuff that takes over our home and gets in the way of living. The stuff that we don't need, don't use and wouldn't miss if it wasn't there.

I said to the kids that it was time for us to stop spending money at the drop of a hat, that we really need to get out of the habit of buying the things we want whenever we want simply because we can. I pointed out that by doing so we were left with nothing to ask for when birthdays and Christmas came around because we already had everything we wanted. My suggestion was that instead, whenever we came across something we liked the look of, however big or small, that we should put it on a wish-list and wait. The kids were kind of OK with this idea, though they did point out that what with Mothers and Fathers Day Adam and I would be getting a better deal out of the arrangement. I agreed that they would also be allowed to save up pocket money to purchase things from their wish-lists themselves.

The more I think about it, the more important I feel it is for us to make some big changes to our consumer behaviour. I don't like the entitled attitude my kids have, if there's something they want they believe they should be allowed to have it, when I say no - and I do say no plenty I assure you - it can be as though I'm violating some fundamental right. The older two are getting better but Tom can be a real nightmare sometimes.

I think part of the problem stems from the time when Adam was traveling for work quite a lot. When he first started going "overseas" he would bring back gifts, as one does, and as the frequency of his trips increased the kids' expectations of presents on his return began to take on an unpleasantly mercenary aspect. It creeps up on you, that sort of thing. Once I realised what was happening I asked him to stop bringing gifts back unless he was away for a significant length of time - I should have said stop bringing them altogether but it was too hard to give up completely something that made the travel seem less onerous.

To be honest though, it's really just that we've enjoyed being able to provide things because we could, we do it for ourselves - if there's something we want we (mostly) go ahead and get it, if we want to eat out we do - so why not do it for the kids? Well, it's not good for the kids and it's not good for us. It stops now.

The idea of doing without shopping has been floating around for a while, everything from Adbuster's Buy Nothing Day to people who have made pledges to quit shopping for a year. One of my favourite bloggers, Chris has just begun her own no shopping experiment and is blogging the experience at A Year Off. As I read I wonder if my feeble little wish-list idea is enough. Maybe I ought to be taking it further? Maybe we could go the whole nine yards too? And then I think no, don't set yourself up for failure, it'll be enough to stick with special occasions shopping only. I do plan on keeping the principle of want vs. need in mind for general shopping too though. So that's what we're going to do.

Now I just have to tell Adam....

Random stuff

Tonight I hand fed the possum a slice of watermelon. A possum eating watermelon with great enthusiasm is a) noisy and b) so very cute.

I spent $400 on groceries today, I'd been buying only what we needed to get through the next day or so for the last 3 weeks and we were running out of just about everything. Now I shouldn't need to shop for non-perishables for another 3 weeks!

BBQ dinner on the front deck is a very nice way to spend the evening. Must do more often.

Caitlin is entering the school talent quest in the singing division, she plans on doing a rendition of Under Your Spell from the Buffy musical. This afternoon I found out the deputy principal is a Buffy fan, so at least one audience member will be appreciative :)

The kids have become very enamoured of Trogdor. I confess to a certain fondness for this particular Strong Bad email myself :)

Thatch-roofed cottage being burninated. By Caitlin.

Beware, content free post ahead

Ok, I'm not claiming that makes this one different in any way. I just couldn't think of a title :P

Hey, it's the 15th today! That means I'm half-way through NaBloPoMo. Have I bored you all to death yet? (Fishing for compliments? Never! Don't know what you mean....)

I took the kids shopping for shoes tonight. After Caitlin's ballet lesson. Which finishes at 6:45pm. And then we had dinner out. And got home at 9:30. I'm typing while they get changed for bed. Tomorrow is going to be interesting.

Kisses, cuddles and tucking in time, here I come!

It's too EARLY!!!!

My kids have taken to wandering around the house singing Christmas carols and when I got home last night Tom and Caitlin had dug out the animated music playing stuffed reindeer and Santa. I made them put them back in the cupboard till December because I'm mean like that. Besides, I have an unreasonable desire to hang on to my sanity for just a little bit longer and a dozen repetitions of "We wish you a merry Christmas" while I'm trying to make lunches and get the kids to eat breakfast is guaranteed to drive me barmy!

Other signs that Christmas is approaching:
Caitlin has started her letter to Santa. In fact I think the first draft is done and she's ready to do the good copy.
David read us Twas The Night Before Christmas tonight.
And my front hall has bags of fairy lights strewn about the place waiting to be put out in the garden.

Of course in three weeks time I'll be writing the post titled "Help, I'm not ready!", so perhaps it's not too early and I should seize the opportunity to get myself really organised. Wonder if I can get all my pressie shopping done by the end of the month....

Weigh-in week 13

I managed a loss of 0.9kg this week which brings me back to 8.5kg lost. I'm going to stick with Core for a couple more weeks at least, I'm feeling much more relaxed about my eating so it seems to be working quite well for now.

I was at the school for half the day today. I'm getting a bit sick of that place :P I'm there most of tomorrow too but Thursday I get all to myself and I'm planning on doing some Christmas shopping so I've been working on my gift list, it's hard! I need inspiration. Anyone got a brilliant idea or two for an autistic 9 year old boy? My nephew has his birthday in December as well so I need double pressie ideas. The only things I know for certain he likes are Bananas in Pyjamas and Adam's little red convertible, when he comes to our place he collects the Bananas dvd from the bookshelf and, when thwarted by his mum in his attempts to watch TV, heads downstairs to the garage and sits in the car. Maybe he'd like a car racing type game. Hot Wheels track or something.

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest.

Adam got back from Amsterdam this morning so the day started early with the distribution of loot among the kids. The boys got mini remote control helicopters, no I don't know what that has to do with Holland either, and Caitlin scored a very pretty Swarovski crystal pendant. I got tea from the British Museum and there was also a haul of books on various things medieval - anglo saxon crafts, celtic and norse designs, and saxon and viking artefacts - and a set of dvds titled Masterpieces of the British Museum.

Breakfast followed, eventually. Tom had been promised maccas brekky so I did the drive through thing and brought back hotcakes and muffins. I do like the sausage and egg muffins but the hotcakes leave a lot to be desired, Adam makes much better ones, so I must remember not to make rash promises to Tom in future.

Dave and Dad headed off to join in the tail end of a Huscarls weekend camp while I took the other two shopping. Caitlin needed sleepers as I was not keen on trying to re-fit the piercing studs that I'd had some no small difficulty removing yesterday morning (she'd been tracking the 6 week count-down on the calendar and couldn't wait to change her earrings) and Tom had $50 birthday money to spend. We came home with sleepers and frangipani studs, a bionicle and a remote control dragon. Oh, and grocery shopping too, though that is not important of course ;-)

Lunch was downed in a bit of a hurry and then it was off to the school where I was co-ordinating a grounds working bee. As our very wonderful General Assistant (who is also a parent with kids at the school) was there to do the actual organising of people, all I had to do was unlock a few padlocks and delegate people to do jobs on the list provided. I swept and shoveled sodden leaves and mulch for about an hour and a half after which my shoulders and my still sore fingers (didn't tell you about hurting my hand did I? I fell and wrenched back the fingers on my left hand on Thursday, week before last, and well...it hurt...lots) were protesting loudly so I switched to wandering around chatting and looking busy instead. We were there from 2:00 to 5:40pm so there was quite a lot of looking busy going on. Anyhoo, the school has tidy playgrounds, lots of new plants planted and drains that will actually drain now, so it's all good.

I really didn't want to cook dinner tonight. I was thiiiisss close to begging Adam to conjure food from somewhere but from somewhere I found the reserves to grill the hamburger patties I'd bought this morning, cut up some tomatoes and lettuce and open a tin each of pineapple rings and beetroot. Um, yeah, it was such a production...epic I tell you! And we had hamburgers for dinner - YUM!

After dinner I made the executive decision that as Adam had missed so many bedtimes in the last 2 weeks it was clearly his turn to get the kids ready for bed while I watched The 4400 on dvd (yes, Brendan, you were right, I'm hooked). The last child was tucked in at about 9:35pm...only one hour past his bedtime...ah well, delegation doesn't always work quite as it ought!

And now I'm going to bed...

No, wait...bugger. I don't have the kids' uniforms ready for tomorrow yet.

Right, uniforms first, then bed.

G'night!

Quick! Look over there!

While I quickly document the stuff-up that was Friday...

Wait a minute, you're still here. Never mind I'll leave the confession till the end of the post. Perhaps you'll be bored by then and won't bother reading it, she says assuming that anyone bothers reading any of the food diaries...interesting question - does anyone read them?

So, today, better than average, expensive though. Why am I such a sucker for indulging my kids when they so don't need any more STUFF!? Caitlin got her ears pierced (that was planned - early birthday present type thing). Then we had gelato...it was necessary, really. Next was buying a birthday present for one of Caitlin's friends. Then I was planning on grabbing some groceries and heading home for lunch. So someone explain to me how I ended up not only buying the birthday present in question but also: putting on lay-by a huge lego set for Santa to bring David (had to be sneaky about that one so Tom wouldn't notice); buying a Smiggle eraser (for Tom) and gel pen set (for Caitlin) that neither of them needed; agreeing to a free model painting lesson at Games Workshop (Tom painted Gandalf and Dave painted Gimli) and getting slowly worn down by the fact that both the boys had so much fun doing the painting and then joining in one of the games that was running at the time, such that by the end of the exercise I was walking out of the place having spent a ludicrous sum of money on small plastic figurines and painting supplies; and then finally canceling a lay-by at another shop and letting Caitlin spend the non-refundable deposit on yet more stuff we don't need.

On the up-side Caitlin declared to me today that I am the best mum ever. And I don't think it was ONLY her mercenary streak speaking....

The boys just squabbled over the miniatures.

Bored yet? Here's Friday's food diary.
Brunch
Smoked salmon, scrambled eggs, spinach and capers on an english muffin - 9pts
Dinner
Sushi and sashimi - 6pts
BBQ chicken and greek salad - 10pts
Snacks
milk for tea - 1pt
Muffin Break WW muffin - 3.5pts
McDonalds chip stolen from kids - 1pt
rice crackers and french onion dip - 10pts
low fat brownies - 6pts
bread roll with butter and vegemite - 3.5pts
Hot chocolate milk - 4pts
Water
no idea, plenty though
Exercise
Nil
Total points for the day: 54

Holy crap. Bad day.

Today on the other hand? Back on track and doing fine :) I'm not sure if this is the first time I've managed to come back from a full-blown binge and be back on track the very next day, I suspect it may be, anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about it!

Breakfast
weetbix, two fruits and milk - 3pts
Lunch
Pasta in tomato and herb sauce, low-fat roast potato, greek salad and a small piece of garlic bread - 9pts
Dinner
Crumbed fish, homemade wedges, peas carrots and tartare sauce - 8pts
Snacks
milk for tea - 1pt
low-fat brownie - 2pts
mango gelato - 1.5pts
Water
~2L
Exercise
Lots of walking at the shops
Total points for the day: 22.5

Yikes! I just remember the cats are still outside and have probably given up on dinner and gone for decimating the wildlife instead - bye!

Huntsman season is upon us.

Adam and the kids were in the lounge room watching The Two Towers tonight while I hid in the study. There comes a call summoning me, daddy is no good, this is a job for mum. What job would that be I hear you ask? Huntsman spider removal of course. Adam does cockroaches, I do the spiders in this family. And here comes the good part, I now know I'm a real blogger because I made Adam get the camera and document the event.

First huntsman of the season

Aside from pest control duties, today I have bought birthday presents for Caitlin and Tom, booked Caitlin in to have her ears pierced (much to her surprise, I'd been giving the impression I was going to make her wait till she was 16) and got my hair cut and coloured. It's shorter than it's been in a while, the colour is burgundy with blonde foils.

New Hair

I seem to have broken the kids, David has blisters and Tom was in tears with leg cramps at school yesterday, so I thought better of making them walk to school this morning and it turns out I must have needed a break too because I haven't done the resistance workout or the treadmill walking instead of the walk to school that I intended to do today. Which is fine, I'll get back into it tomorrow.

Wednesday
Breakfast
baked beans with onion and bacon on toast - 5pts
Lunch
Lamb casserole with couscous - 6pts
Dinner
Peppercorn meat company italian sausages, jacket potato with sour cream, corn on the cob, broccoli and carrots - 6.5pts
Strawberries & banana with natural yoghurt & maple syrup - 2.5pts
Snacks
milk for tea - 1pt
low-fat brownie - 2pts
chai tea with honey - 2pts
Water
2.75L
Exercise
60 minutes walk - 5.5 bonus points
Total points for the day: 25

Thursday
Breakfast
weetbix, peaches and milk - 3pts
Lunch
Sushi and rice paper roll - 7pts
Dinner
Lamb mango curry with snow peas, carrots and capsicum, rice and mango chutney - 12pts
Snacks
milk for tea - 0.5pt
pretzels - 0.5pts
miso soup - 0.5pts
lg skim cappuccino - 2pts
Water
2L
Exercise
Nil
Total points for the day: 25.5 (used my saved half point from Tuesday)

Note to self:

No matter now many times it is said, or how clearly or with what warnings of dire consequences the kids will NOT take seriously the idea that they should refrain from endless demands to buy things we don't need (or I don't approve of) at the supermarket. *sigh* The fact that they were only with me because it was grandparents day today and I was conned into taking them home with me after lunch - a 1.5hr early mark! - made it all that much more fun. That and the sinus headache which made bending over to put things in the trolley so enjoyable.

In other news, I've instituted a computer and TV ban for a couple of days with a view to doing some fine-tuning on attitude and sibling relationships. The boys have been in constant conflict, I am greeted most mornings by them screaming at each other while I'm in the shower and nearly every interaction between Tom and either of the other two seems to end with Tom in tears. David oscillates unpredictably between being helpful and pleasant or being rude, aggressive and sullen. Caitlin, well, aside from giving me the look of death every time I try to poison her with new food and the whole making Tom cry thing, she's been ok. With any luck they'll be human again by Friday.

WWC Wk3 Day3
Two serves of fruit and 6 of vegetables today.
Breakfast
Egg and bacon muffin - 4.5pts
Lunch
Wholemeal lavash wrap with extra light Philly, smoked salmon, grated carrot, shallots, capers, rocket and baby spinach - 5pts
Banana - 1pt
Dinner
2 Peppercorn meat co. Italian beef sausages, onion, mushrooms and zucchini sauteed in olive oil, mashed potato and mashed sweet potato - 7.5pts
Cadbury turkish delight ice-cream tub - 1.5pts
Snacks
milk for tea - 0.5pts
lg skim cappuccino - 2pts
4 fresh dates - 1pt
Water
2.75L
Exercise
Nil
Total points for the day: 23

Someone scored big at the shops today

Caitlin showing off her new skirt, top and completely inappropriate high-heeled boots.

Actually several someones, none of them me, did quite well out of the shopping expedition today. Caitlin ended up with 3 pairs of shoes including the boots in the photo which have heels much too high for her age (nearly all her shoes are either falling apart or getting too small) and a dress, 2 skirts and 2 tops none of which she really needs. All 3 kids got new bike helmets and knee and elbow pads. Dave and Tom got new pjs, sunnies, shorts and belts. We bought TMNT, Space Jam and a PS2 Buzz Junior robot game from JBHiFi. And all I got was some medication from the chemist. But I had fun indulging them and they were all very well behaved, particularly the boys sitting through interminable shoe trying on by their sister - the young guy serving commented on how good they'd been, at which point they of course started to poke each other and whinge, but up till then....

One last food diary:
WWC Wk1 Day7
Breakfast
Eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomato and an english muffin - 5.5pts
Lunch
Cape fruit and nut roll from Bakers Delight and a lg skim cappuccino - 6pts
Dinner
Crumbed chicken topped with ham and low-fat cheese, WW oven chips, corn on the cob and salad - 8.5pts
Snacks
milk for tea - 1pt
Banana mountain bread wrap - 2pts
apple - 1pt
Water
2x750ml
Exercise
Nil

Total for the day: 24

Weigh-in week ummm....

I think I'll call this week 2. I hit the highest weight I've been, since starting back in Feb '06, on Aug 14, but since then it feels like I've finally come out of some kind of fog and have re-committed to getting on with things. So, week 2 and I have a loss of 2.1kg to report, with which I am rather pleased. I tracked every day for the first time in months, I drank my water and I did a few walks plus a very energetic session of bowling and hey, guess what? It works! Who'd've thunk it?

Bought myself a new watch today as the old one needed a new battery, pressure testing AND repairs to the winder so in the end it was almost certainly cheaper to get a new one.

Still not getting enough sleep, need to keep working on that one.