FAIL

That is what I am doing right now. Quite honestly this week is not going well as far as little changes are concerned. I was up until after 1 last night, I didn't get out of bed until almost 8:30, it's my week off the Pill and I haven't been taking my multivitamin, I am reading children's books that are not exactly on the list, AND we had Subway for supper last night.

I am an epic failure at not being lazy. The only thing I have done so far this week is shower and do my hair.

I really need to pull my socks up and get at it. I need to put down the books and SLEEP at midnight. I need to JUMP out of bed at 8. I need to make supper at home and take my vitamins. (Tonight will be speghetti and meatsauce and salad.) Luckily, I am almost finished my Anne of Green Gables books, and then I can move on to something a little more mature.

I can do these little things. I am capable.

(repeat mantra)

I can do these little things. I am capable.

By the way, Thursday is book review day. I have reviews for Jane Eyre and Anne of Green Gables in the works.

Little Change 5

Well, here we are. Week 5 already. And I have made very little progress on the weight loss and money saving fronts. In fact, I probably weigh more and have less money than at the start. This little change is meant to counter-act both of those facts with one fell swoop.

I will plan, prepare and eat supper at home every evening.

(Unless it is a special occasion.)

I decided to put that qualifier there because I know that there will be occasions like my birthday and anniversary that I will want to go out for a meal. And there is no reason that I shouldn't. I can afford to dine out, and I believe in all things in moderation. Plus, the point of these changes is to make my life better and healthier, and I don't think that it is "better" or "healthier" to deny yourself all the things you enjoy all of the time.

As I said, this change is important in reaching both my weight loss and money saving goals.

When you plan your meals and prepare and eat them at home you have greater control over what you eat and how much of it you eat. Restaurants tend to give you far too much food because it is cheap for them, but allows them to charge more without you feeling cheated. Also, restaurant meals can have enormous amounts of salt and fat that you probably wouldn't eat at home. Example, at restaurants I eat a lot of French fries; at home, I don't make French fries; but I don't miss them.

Further, I can feed my husband and myself on about $100 worth of groceries every week, but if we were to eat out every night (as we have been doing lately) it would cost FAR more than that. I predict the savings will be substantial.

Most of the laziness to be conquered is in the planning stage. I enjoy cooking and clearly enjoy eating. The major difficulty here will be planning the meals and grocery shopping once a week to buy all my necessary ingredients. A secondary difficulty will be that my husband is in charge of dishes and he has made no such pact to stop being lazy. I hate cooking in a dirty kitchen and he does frustrate me by washing only the EXACT dishes that we need to prepare and consume a meal.

However, that is a little change for another week. Let this week being with its evening meals full of promise. Tonight is a rush night, so we are having turkey sandwiches. Yum!

Pride & Prejudice

I really liked this book. Generally, I like most books, so I have a feeling a lot of my book reviews will start like this, but let's stick to the book at hand and why specifically I liked it.

I think the major reason I liked the book so much was that I really liked the movie version that came out a couple of years ago with Kiera Knightly in it. That version was fairly true to the events of the book, so I already had a grasp of the characters and the settings, which is sometimes important in a book from this era. It is not written in "modern" or "plain" English, so it takes me a little bit of reading to get back into the flow of understanding what they are all talking about and what is going on. The story is a little bit moony and over-dramatic, they fall so deeply in love but they don't even really know each other that well and it all seems a little strange, but I guess that is how they did it back in those days? Well, it is more likely in those days that very few people fell in love and decided to get married, most people married for money or "connections". I think the idea of meeting a rich guy and falling in mutual love is just a very romantic notion to novelists (especially female novelists); this is true even in novels today.

There were some things I didn't really like about the book, but these are largely picky little things that are very true to the story and the era, but an annoyance to my modern sensibilities. We never get to know the first name of any of the men, even when they are to be married to one of the Bennet girls. Even Mrs. Bennet calls her husband Mr. Bennet (and vice versa) which seems unrealistic. They've been married for 25 years, and she can't call him by his first name? Also, and I think this might just be the edition of the book that I had, but a lot of place names and dates and things are blanked out. For example, it might say, "We went to the ---shire". This is terribly annoying. I know it is probably because the place names or dates were inaccurate, but I don't care. It takes you out of the story much more to see the ---shire than it would to see a made up place name, or even a name of a place that is wrong. How am I going to know? I (and most people I would imagine) am not familiar with the geography of all the small towns and villages in Britain. Finally, a lot of the plot revolves around Elizabeth knowing something about someone and keeping it secret, and then something terrible (and predictable) happens because nobody else knew. I know that proper manners and decorum counted for a lot back then, but, really, you would let your sister go off with a man you knew was a liar and a cheat without even a small warning to her or your parents? Knowing that this would ruin everyone's chances at "landing a husband"?

Anyway, I really did like this book, and I think it is definitely worth reading, but maybe see the movie first so you have a better idea what is going on. Or be smarter than me with a better vocabulary (not hard) and maybe you won't need to see the movie beforehand.

Little Change 4

Ok, ok, ok. I know I promised that I would post little change 4 last night, but I was still hella sick and fell asleep as soon as I got home from work. Today was finally the sick day I desperately needed. There was scrubbing and neocitron and sleeping and wonderfulness.

Anyway, little change 4. This little change is super duper weak sauce and you are going to think that I am super gross for even needed to make this change. Here goes:

I will shower and do my hair every morning.

This is very important now that I have the new "Peppermint Patty" 'do. Before when I had long hair I didn't really need to wash it every day. Nor did I have to blow dry it. Generally, I just threw my hair up in a ponytail and went on my merry way to work. This does not work when you have short hair and bangs. Short hair needs more regular washing, bangs require styling. All-in-all the haircut is working out pretty well, and so is little change 4.

I promise, next week will be something good.

I swear.

Ugh, or Welcome Sweet Death

With apologies again, I thought once I was at my mom's place and would have regular computer access there would be more posting, but, clearly, this was not the case. Also, the fact that I have felt like death warmed over for the last week probably hasn't helped. Today is back to work day and luckily I only feel like shit, which is a definite step up from death warmed over. Or at least I think so. I would most certainly call in sick today and scrub everything in my house (to kill the germs), OD on Nyquil and then sleep for six years if I could, but unfortunately I have an ass-ton of work to do today.

I will post Little Change 4 tonight when I have a little more time, also there are book reviews for Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre coming. I went book "shopping" at my mom's house on the weekend and brought back 40 pounds of books from "the list", but I did leave some behind, notably Charlotte's Web and The Wind in the Willows because I didn't think I wanted to read those right away anyway. The max your suitcase can weigh is 50lbs, so with 4lbs of clothes our suitcase was pretty freakin' full, and heavy. The other little changes are going well I suppose. I was up before 8 today, but because I napped for 4 hours yesterday afternoon I didn't go to bed until 2ish. Indeed, at 1 in the morning I decided that I NEEDED to unpack my suitcases and put all the books on the book shelf. I am still on the Pill, but I have been neglecting my multivitamin because it needs to be taken with a meal and I haven't had any meals at home in the last week; now that we are back, that should change.

Well, off to work! If I don't die in a coughing spell on the way there, I will consider today a success.

With Apologies

It seems it has been a very long time since I posted. I have been in Van City on holidays since Thursday, and haven't had much computer time. The little changes are going well, I have been taking my vitamins and my Pills every day, and I will finish Pride and Prejudice tomorrow on the plane (the book progress has slowed because I am too busy visiting). My sleep/awake schedule has gone to shit, but I think that is to be expected when you are on holidays in a different time zone.

My husband is not with me here, I am visiting a single girlfriend, so that is both awesome and sucky. It is super fun to have some girl time (we went for pedicures on Friday, and bought new purses, shoes and jewelry on Saturday) but I didn't think that I would miss him so much. We have been apart before, and for longer, but I think this time is different because he has become my best friend and I am not used to hanging out with girls all the time. Apparently farting and burping is gross for girls. Who knew? This provides an even stronger case for making lady friends at home. I will have more fun with my existing friends because I will remember how to do the girlfriend thing.

My best friend here has a new friend that she hangs out with all the time. She has an amazing model-type body (tall, thin, legs for days, nice boobs), but she's kind of a but-her-face, so that makes her more tolerable. My bestie and I are very similar in shape and size, so that works out great for us, no jealousy. The 3 of us went out last night. Somehow these girls talk about getting slammed every weekend and drinking all the time, but they were kinda light-weights last night; we all drank the same and I was totally fine and they were falling all over themselves. I haven't been out with girls like that for a while and I guess drinking with only guys can increase your tolerance. Also, I felt disgusting. I don't know if I'm just being overly sensitive, but it felt like every guy was looking at me and thinking how fat I was. At one point these guys came over to take a picture of us and the one put his arm around me and in the picture he is leaning towards me making a face and has his hand over my boob. Then while we were walking home some guys in an SUV said something along the lines of, "What about those thick ones?" and then starting hooting at us. I was not happy about that, but I don't think the other girls heard or cared because they were too drunk.

Also, as you note, I only mention buying shoes and jewelry, this is because I am enormous and nothing fits me. This is the major problem with the little changes, the changes in my figure are pretty little too. This isn't like a regular, change everything at once diet where you lose 5-10 pounds pretty quick, I have a feeling that I won't actually start losing weight until October or November. I have to keep reminding myself that this is (as hokey and "Dr. Phil-esque" as it sounds) a lifestyle change. I could lose 5-10 pounds and the celebrate back on 20 as has been my standard approach to weight loss, or I can slowly but surely change my habits until I lose 50 pounds, in like a year and then have all these fantastic habits just be part of my regular life and be able to stay 50 pounds lighter.

Until I have a baby or 2 and gain a bunch of it back. Lame.

Assorted Birth Control Stories, Continued

So, I went to the walk-in clinic to get some cyclen for little change 2. I swipe my health card at the "self check-in" kiosk and it says that, since I have never been to the clinic, I need to register with the receptionist. She is nowhere to be found. So I wait. And wait. About 5 minutes later, she appears, clearly busy with something else, and doesn't even notice me standing there. It takes a full 10 minutes and an elderly lady who has forgotten her umbrella in the exam room before I am registered, which should be an indication to me of things to come, but I sit in the waiting room and wait to be called. The 3 people that arrive immediately after me get much better service, but I get an appointment first, so whatever.

Once I am in the examination room, the receptionist/medical office assistant/nurse/I don't know her job title comes in and asks a million questions about why I am there and what kind of birth control pills and my health status in general. Quite a few of these questions are very personal, like when was your last period, etc. and she doesn't close the examining room door, so presumably all the people in the waiting room can her and me discussing it. Great. We reach a sticking point on which type of birth control I want. I say "Cyclen" and she repeats back, "Tri-Cyclen" which leads me to explain that I really truly want Cyclen and not Tri-cyclen and the differences between them, and I assume she has things under control.

The doctor comes in a little later, asks me a few more questions about my general health and when my last PAP was. He mentions that I can come to this clinic for a PAP and I can make my appointment online. This sounds fantastic to me. I love booking things online! He takes my blood pressure (which hurts a lot more than I remember) and sends me on my merry way with a prescription for:

3 months of tri-cyclen.

Unfortunately, I don't read the prescription until I get to the pharmacy, and by this point the clinic is closed and I am kind of stuck with what I got. Boo-urns.

After I get home, disappointed with my tri-cyclen, I check out the web page so I can book my PAP online and I discover that there is a consent form, which reads:

I, ___________________________, hereby give consent to having my pap smear and associated swabs and services provided by the:

___Registered Nurse

___Midwifery Student

___International Medical Graduate (Unlicensed Physician)

___Nurse Practitioner Student

___Medical Resident

who is working for the responsible physician in a delegation capacity in order to develop relevant practice experience in the office/clinic environment.

I understand that the above person is working under the supervision of Dr. _________________________, who may or may not need to repeat any or all aspects of my services as necessary.

So not only would I be getting my PAP done by someone who has potentially never done it before, I will probably have to get it done twice because the doctor will likely have to "repeat any or all aspects of my services". No thank you, I'll just find a GP and get it done all at once.

In other news, I got my hair cut yesterday so that when it falls out it isn't as long. Now I bear a very strong resemblance to Peppermint Patty. I think I have this year's Halloween costume all figured out!