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Yes, that is Constance J. Woodle  – but no, that’s not really me, LOL! Connie is in her full winter coat – I think next time she sees the groomer she’ll have a close shave – her hair starts to get knotty at this length.

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The bottom line that the scanner cut off says “I am really looking forward to bed!”

We see the doctor again in a fortnight and I’m determined that I will have lost at least a couple of kg by then.  I’m back to using the CalorieKing.com.au website to count calories and record  exercise: that really helped last time when I managed to lose weight.  I’m aiming for around 80kg as my final goal – heavier than Weight Watchers or CalorieKing recommend for my height and age, but more achievable than their estimate  – 60 kg? I don’t THINK SO!!Last time I was that weight I was 20 something years younger and caught any flu/cold/lurgy that was going. That’s when I got the glandular fever that is still effecting my life NOW.

And here’s a journal page I started at Social Cre8te at Tammy’s shop yesterday:

There’s some stamping in the background using one of the new ($4!) Kaisercraft texture stamps (the one called “Flourish”, CS759) – I’m looking forward to using the same stamp in wet gesso to give more texture to backgrounds – I forgot to take the gesso with me yesterday!  The buildings are made from a book I bought for $2 on British plants -  a very good buy because the paper is such beautiful quality, no foxing at all, and very sturdy, even though the book dates from the late 1930s (from memory). (No, it wasn’t worth anything as a book, but it’s lovely as art material.)

In other news: Mr Beloved hired a slasher (what a beastie!)

yesterday, and did the yard.  First time in about (mumblety… 5?) months, and the !@&*^!* kikuyu grass ( Pennisetum clandestinum – if you do a search on google images you’ll see just how invasive it is!) had grown into knee high, tangled mats that an ordinary mower  had no chance of defeating.  (And our mower still needs to go off to be repaired anyway…)  At least we can see the dog when she’s in the yard now!  We’re pulling up runners and trying to poison the rest of the kikuyu, it’s awful stuff.

And now it’s time to hang the washing  – such a beautiful almost Spring day here,  blue sky and the birds are turning over the drying “hay” left in the yard…

I had to buy new jeans this week (thank goodness Target had them on sale!) and since there was nothing acceptable in the fat chick range, I bought mens’ jeans.  BIG MENS jeans.  Actually ended up with a size bigger than I needed (or wanted) but things were getting desperate so I grabbed what I could.

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It’s always harder to keep the weight off in winter – yeah, I comfort eat, who doesn’t? – but this year has been harder with the Seroquel coming into play.  I know I’ve whined about this before, but it really does seem unfair that I have a choice of being mentally ok and fat or mentally screwed and maybe thinner.  It’s all very well for the psychiatrist to counsel not having any “bad” food in the house, but carrot sticks and celery are NOT what I want to eat on a cold and miserable day!  I’ll have to work out how to make long, slow cooked soup in the microwave – the stove is kaput, although the oven part still works  – it’s just the cooktop that is not working.

That said, I’ve stopped buying the bikkies (cookies) I liked, and am eating green apples like they’re going out of fashion. Nom nom nom.  I’m going to bake some bikkies or slice tonight (I’m limiting any baking to once a week) just so we can have something nice with our cuppas.  Without the palm oil and other strange additives of the commercial products.  A small treat while the rest of the food intake is so sensible … zucchini slice is a marvellous thing, lots of stealth veges and it lasts for at least 3 meals for the two of us!

Some of the stuff in my art journal has been too personal for me to post. I know, shocking – that I wouldn’t post something – it goes against my history – but there’s one issue in particular that is tricky and unresolved and I don’t want to expose it before things are sorted out.

(some info smudged for privacy reasons)

It’s been cold here.  I don’t sleep well when it’s cold – my bones ache.  Carrying all this extra weight doesn’t help that, of course, but July is always a tough month to get through.

I didn’t dust this week. I’ve only vacuumed the front and lounge and kitchen once.  There’s only so much fighting against the dust monster I can manage!

Another art journal page waiting for the writing… my hair is reaaaaaaalllly bugging me but I can’t afford to go to the hairdressers – and so I’m just using a headband to keep it back off my face.  I’m so grey now!  (Even the vet commented on how grey my hair is when I last took Connie in.)  Connie has to lose 1.5 kg (from her 7.5 kg total weight) and I am not even game to get on the scales (although I suspect my GP will make me when we go to see her on Monday…) – I’m back to needing to lose at least 20kg, though, I’m sure.  I can’t afford the gym, so I’m trying to walk each day – even though so far it’s only for 15-20 minutes.

Another oddly proportioned gal, inspired by the styles of Teesha and Nancy B…

I’m very excited that my parents will be visiting for a couple of days in September!  YAY!!  And I was excited that I was going to be able to get some parts for my brother’s car from the local wreckers – except that when they quoted the price, we had to “tell ‘em they’re dreamin’!” – they wanted $260 for a coupla bits of trim!!  Dad reckoned that he could make them out of gold for that price.

Mr Beloved also finds Winter difficult – his old back injury often flares up in the cold, and he just can’t get away from the pain.  We move slowly in Winter.  At least we don’t live in c-c-c-cold Canberra anymore – we think it’s dreadfully cold when the temperature overnight is 2 degrees C, but there were nights when Canberra had – 6… and I don’t think the houses we had there were any better built against the cold!

As you can see from my Shelfari widget (over there on the right if you’re reading this on my blog) I’ve been doing some reading.   Thank goodness for the city library! I’ve really enjoyed “The Secrets of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel” series written by Michael Scott: the whole series (three books so far) takes place in just over a week – it’s action all the way.  I’ve also found some of the boxes of books that I moved with; some I’m probably never going to read again and can get rid of, and some books that I look forward to re-reading.  I recently read “Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit” by Carole Nelson Douglas – book SEVENTEEN of that series!  I used to re-read all the previous books before I read the new one, but these days I just read the one before if I can get my hands on it – I stopped buying this series at around book “K” (they’re alphabetical).

And now it’s getting too cold again for me to write.  Off to  the house for some art journaling before an evening of couch potato-ing – Monk, Doc Martin, and The Bill.

Oh, and the election? Let’s just say that regardless of all the sh1t that happens in the (drearily long) 5 week campaign, my vote will be going to another party for the first time EVER.  And it won’t be one of the major 2…

As you can see, I’m working in a spiral bound journal (A4 size) rather than making either of the book’s Kelly’s teaching; I’ll probably have a go at the books sometime but for now I’m happy with yet another A4 journal.  I’ve used a lot of scrapbooking papers in these pages – mostly because I have them and I’m trying to use them up, instead of being precious about them and “saving” them!

More pages to come…

So here’s one in progress. No idea where it will end up, but so far there’s acrylic paint, watercolour crayons, and that silhouette… I haven’t been doing as much in my journal as I was before the surgery because I’m still kind of  – well, crook.  I’m not getting all that much of anything done, even though I am getting more awake hours in the day.   Hopefully the balance will be better as I continue to heal.

In fact, I’ve been being pretty tough on myself: I haven’t been letting myself go back to bed once I’m up in the morning, and I’m tending to be up around 8 am.  This is a whole new pattern for me.

The not-napping has become somewhat problematic, because I really NEED to rest, and for some reason my weird bi-polar brain does NOT WANT ME TO.   I need to be gentle with myself and let myself read on the bed and just rest, but no – somehow there is this RESISTANCE that says I can’t.  It’s not being reasonable, there is no logic – an hour’s sleep would have little or no impact on my nightly sleep hygiene. I tried writing myself a permission slip: the psychologist suggested maybe I need to write a prescription instead: “Rx: Caity, have a little lie down! It will be ok!”

I’m getting back into my pre-surgery bedtime ritual of listening to Phillip as I do the dishes and generally wind down – taking my medicines, maybe painting a background in the journal, or just flicking through magazines for images, making the bed, setting up the CPAP machine.  By the time the 11 o’clock news comes on I’ve generally brushed my teeth, washed my face, and can start to read the very few pages I get through before I zonk out.

The doctors (and various websites I have checked in my anxiety-ridden state) all say that recovery from tonsillectomy takes AT LEAST 4 weeks, and from septoplasty a minimum of 6 weeks – with most people saying they are still recovering out to three months from surgery.  Even though I KNOW I’ve had fairly big surgery in areas with lots of nerve endings, I keep expecting myself to be better NOW.  I’ll say it again: I am NOT a good patient!

In fact, I had to contact the ENT surgeon again because “my nose feels weird (and now my left sinus cavity is hurting, too)” – I’m now on another course of antibiotics.  I burst into tears when I saw my GP this morning: WTF?  I felt like everything – the sore hand, the blocked up breathing, the pain in my leg which wakes me up during the night – all just got on top of me and before I knew it I was sobbing.

If you’ve made it this far you’re probably my Mum (hi Mum!) because anyone else reading has probably left the pity party by now.  But thanks for reading, anyway.

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Another page – I was tickled with the way Marie Antoinette’s top half fitted with a fashion magazine lower half. And isn’t that rose covered slipper chair (is that what they’re called? It’s definitely a “boudoir” chair, not a lounge room kinda seat) just so so pretty?

I am not a good patient. I am high maintenance and grumpy.

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Now that I’m on (the very anxiety inducing) new medication, my sleep patterns have changed significantly.  (Actually, they’ve become part of the anxiety, but that’s another post…)  Whereas previously I would read a book during the late hours of the night and then sleep ’til noon, I’m now crashing out after about 6 pages of reading. (I am waking up at least three or four times during the night, but I’m getting back to sleep pretty easily.)

As my psychologist said, “welcome to everyone else’s world.”  I now understand why the library loans generally run for 4 weeks – I’m just not getting enough reading done!

This ties back in with my earlier post about needing to have contact with people and find something meaningful to do when I have Good (or at least Not Too Bad) Days.

On Tuesday, I showed her my current art journal (you can see some pages from it on my Flickr Stream).  Here’s a sample page:

My psychologist, T, found the journal really useful: she could see a definite cycle of moods, and we talked about the repeated imagery I choose.  All of which was useful, but since I rarely look back at pages once they’re done, I later realised that doing so had left my feeling very anxious, feeling like I was out of my depth.  So I made a second appointment for the week (usually I try to keep them about a month apart, since they’re expensive and I only have access to a limited number of appointments).

So: we worked through some techniques to help with pain management and with the panic attacks.  Even did some scribbled drawings, which was a helpful way of getting in touch with some emotional stuff that was (literally) choking me up.  Phew.  Talked about ways of getting me connected back into my body instead of panicking about the stories going past in my head.  One of the tools  sounds super simple when I write it out (name 5 things I can see, 5 things I can feel on my skin, 5 things I can hear…) but it’s such a useful grounding technique.

Then I stupidly had a fruit based smoothie at the mall, made on apple juice, when I KNOW that apple juice puts too much sugar into my system too quickly and I get woozy… had to sit for half an hour feeling crook before I could move again.  D’OH!!  Talk about not listening to your body!

GLEE is back on the tv tonight -  I really enjoy that show.

And now I need a nice cuppa tea…

Credits: Art Journal Caravan Parcel 8 (Scrapbookgraphics); K. Pertiet Basic Journal Spots (Designer Digitals); brushes from A Rockwell’s CU grunged pattern brushes (Scrapartist); font is Academy Engraved

Chalkboard Book by etsy seller erinzam

(Seen on Poppytalk (who found it via SwissMiss)

Just too darn wonderful!

Note to self: Get out the Keith Smith books and learn how to do coptic stitch!  I mean, I bought Vol III Non-adhesive binding: Exposed Spine Sewings with the intention of getting this right… (although I bought mine years ago from Artisan Books – and their booklists have just been updated, yay!  [not that I'm buying anything. Nope. Not until we get some bills out of the way...])

(Although if I WAS in the financial position to be buying books, these two are definites:

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but sadly, boring things are eating up the small amount of discretionary income our budget allows.)

Exercise book: 39 cents; deeply discounted scrapbooking paper and cheap ribbons from Spotlight (and stash): $4;teeny weeny little bulldog clips $2:
Having a really fun journal to play in: PRICELESS!