The (allegedly) hot, sick girl

Here is me hugging my medicine box - it's been an invaluable friend these past three nights and days.

Here is me reaching in for a squeeze of the Lemsip powders - all natural and they do work!


Here is me having a crazy, wackie time with my Lemsip box. Yes, I really enjoyed my Lemsip.


And here is me dropping my Lemsip box but catching it with the speed of light under my chin. Hilarity ensued.

It's just a party a minute around here, how do I contain myself?!

Fingers - is there nothing he can't do?

This ad was banned in Italy. Fingers, it seems, can be offensive.

Ok I got this off Mama Mia which is one of my daily reads...and I couldn't go past stealing the photo or the header.

I didn't know where the fingery man has been of late until I saw this photograph and now it is confirmed - he is currently in Italy working as a hand model.

Well done amigo!

frontal lobe thought processes

Everything still hurts, even the back of my eyelids. As Maria said, you never truly appreciate good health until it leaves you!

So we've all got the flu and I have declared this week a no-go zone for any comings and goings (except my kindly old dad who is doing chemist and supermarket deliveries each evening - my poor old mum is so sick right now she can't even leave her bed).

Being this achy and sore has made me not interested in food. For a foodie addict like myself, this is a big deal.
Because I am also bulimic and I usually throw up at least once a day - not eating crap and not abusing my body has done wonders for my skin, nails, hair and even my eyes.
Yes, even though I have the flu and I'm the colour of yellow I still look a hell of a lot better than I did this time last week when I was puffy, red and pimply with small, tired eyes. My skin has taken on a porcelain sort of look and my eyes are large - I forgot how big my eyes are.

For a flu patient I am actually looking quite shit-hot.

This morning I felt my rib cage. Haven't felt that in a whiles!



Because the idea of cramming food down my throat - especially anything with carbs or sugar or grease is at the moment totally abhorrent to me I have been able to step outside my own box so to speak and view my past behaviours with an objective eye.
Which is a fancy way of saying that I can't honestly believe that I engage in that shitful behaviour. What the fuck am I thinking?? I can't understand why I'd do that.

I've been at home nibbling on broccoli, fish, apples and bananas. I've been drinking water and flat lemonade. I've been sipping on lemon tea. It actually feels good to know that what I'm putting into my system is going to help and not hinder. It's treating my body with kindness and not disregard.

On Monday morning ( my last binge and throw-up session) I scoffed almost a whole box of Jatz crackers and a whole tub of cream cheese dip. Then I ate two large fund raising chocolates (curses be!) and went and threw the whole lot up. I can't say for sure why I did that. I can't say for sure why I do most of what I do when I comes to overeating. I can say however that I throw up because I start to panic that I'm going to get even fatter and it feels good to right such a big wrong.

I want to maintain this foreignness that I have for my pre-flu behaviour. I want to keep going with this healthy eating and watch my body and face change shape. There is nothing to be scared of (I can freak out when I start to see there is a chance I could be a socially accepted body size and therefore have no excuse for hiding myself away). That's just mind talk though, all of that stuff can be challenged - for I am the cognitive behavioural therapy queen. There ain't nothing I don't know about challenging irrational thoughts! (15 years of counseling appointments will do that to a person).

I guess the silver lining in all of this illness is that I can see really clearly, and with a shocked sort of expression, the craziness that disordered eating is. I'm wary though, of course. I don't trust myself completely to not go back into those ways, I guess it's like talking to a drug addict or a alcoholic - when they are down in rock bottom it's oh so easy to spout off promises for a new way of life.
Maintaining that determination is the hardest thing ever and it's hard because addiction of any sort is a behavioural habit.
When life happens as life does, it is just so so easy to slip back in robot mode and for me my robot mode is shoveling junk food in my mouth until I feel like a zombie and it all becomes numb.
I think we get addicted to being numb.

Anyway. I am not a fool, I know that when I get better and recover that this post will seem like another one of my "that's it! I'm doing it! I'm winning!" sort of posts. Everyone will clap and cheer and give me support. Then I'll slip off the wagon - and the shame and self-loathing will be just that much bigger to swallow I'll have to eat another round of pancakes to get rid of it.

It could go like that, or it could not...depends how badly I want to turn myself around and give life a red-hot go.

Miss Polly

If yesterday was the crappiest (pun intended) day of my life then last night was the absolute devil-in-hell. Everything hurt. My joints, my back, my knee caps, my rib cage - even the sheets hurt my skin!
Last night sucked buzzard pus and I was not a happy camper.

Today the kids and I are home again...all of us in our P.J's hanging out watching movies and sleeping and lounging about. I guess it's nice that we can be sick at the same time - and when we get better hopefully that will be the last of the winter flu.


There is something very humbling about being sick....you lie there and think of all the people who feel like this all the time.

I don't really have anything else to say today....brain fuzzy and can't think in a straight line.

woops.

I believe I just sharted. You know from that movie when Phillip Seymour Hoffman says to Ben Stiller, "We have to leave. Now," and Ben Stiller's character is all, "Why? We just got here.."
"Because I sharted."
"Sharted?"
"It's a cross between a fart and...


Ok you guys get the picture. I was sitting here mindlessly blog surfing, minding my own business when what I thought was just a bit of innocent gas has turned into quite a bit more.

But it's never happened to me before so before I go and change my undies I thought I'd share it.

Pumped on Ventolin and Discontentment

I am crook as a dog and my eight year old son is in one of his highly obnoxious, probably chemical-induced little bastard moods. I've got two little boys home from school today with colds and me, full of asthma and body aches and I want to drop kick his snarly rudeness right over the adventure playground.

Right. Now that I got that out of my system I can continue on with my day.... but is there anything more disheartening in the world than having your own child scream and call you names? -just because it wasn't his turn for watching Garfield 2. I am now fairly positive that yesterday he ate something that has triggered his headaches and filthy mood. I am also fairly positive that his Father's genetic pool has triggered his bad temper.

For joys!


I was all excited on the weekend because I was doing count-downs until it's Scouts night and I can talk to and see the nice Dad and you know, gauge if he actually likes me or just likes everybody. But now that doesn't even excite me. Chocolate doesn't even excite me! Blimey that is how sick I must be...

Maybe some of you are wondering what happened to poor old Kip and why I'm not down at Woolie's supermarket right now fluttering my eyelashes at him and shoving boxes of condoms and a tube of lube under his nose...
well. Kip is kinda off. He had a hair cut. It looks bad (David Bowie 1977 bad) and I am fickle and shallow. I cannot face him again until he gets over himself , loses the faux glam-rock look and goes back to being meek and pathetic. Just the way I liked him.

Haircuts really do make the person. When I had my hair short and spiky I looked like a butch lesbian. Now my hair is longer and foppish, hanging over my eyes, I look sort of unpretentious, lazy but a lot more girly.

My ex-husband NevinKevin went and got himself a mullet cut when we lived in Port Hedland. I was working at the K Mart refund desk and it was a Saturday morning - almost time for me to finish up my shift. He told me he was off to have a hair cut and I said yep, no problems. Cue about 30 minutes later and he walks back up to my counter looking like a maximum-prison inmate who got day release but should really have it revoked.

Holy fluffing chickens, by God it was a freaking horrendous hair cut. A true dirty blonde mullet cut. With his King Gee shorts (them be working man shorts) and white t shirt with heavy steel-capped boots I was mortified.
Yes, I knew he was a red-neck bogan. Yes I knew he was a blue-collar working man with a rough edge.
But no, I did not know he had the mullet in him, I truly never thought he'd stoop so low.

I refused to go home with me.
"You've got to be joking," I said under my breath in between serving sweaty, Pilbara customers. "You look like an axe-murderer."
He gave me one of those cutting stares and said, "Fine. Make your own way home." and walked off, the mullet head standing proud amongst the rush of shoppers.

He didn't drive off and leave me there...he did wait for me to finish my shift. He waited for me at the bar of a tavern across the street - the public bar, the one where they let (gasp!) the "natives" in. Shocking I know - how dare the Indigenous Australians have the right to walk in and order a beer!
There were no bar stools, no bar tables. No ashtrays, no jukebox, no pictures on the walls. It was a cement strip of concrete ( so they could just hose everything and everyone out at the end of the night). The actual serving counter was 5 foot something high - these publicans really did not want to be serving the Aboriginals.

He was there sculling a beer at the front bar when I met up with him and the mullet. The mullet and I could not make eye contact. The owner of the mullet was still sulking at me.

I vowed to not have sex with him until he got rid of that ridiculous hair cut and I kept my word for about, oh, four days.

"Hi. My name is Sparsely Kate and I am the girlfriend of a man with a mullet hair cut."

"Welcome, Kate."

"It's been four days now since I last had intercourse with my boyfriend. I just can't forgive him for the mullet."

*hushed murmurs of understanding and support from the group*

"I just keep asking myself why. Why did he do this? To me, to us, to himself? Why? What makes a man with everything go and throw it all away, on...on an image of Billy Ray Cyrus! The bastard! I'm so distraught!"


"And you know the worst thing? He won't talk about it. He knows its wrong, he knows what it is doing to our relationship and yet, he doesn't seem to care! It's like he loves the mullet more than he loves me..."

*a gentle 'awwwww' fills the room*

"Anyway. I know I have to make a choice - can I chose to still love this man and have intimate relations with him knowing that he won't give up the mullet and that I'm just going to have to accept it - or do I leave now and find a man with a number two buzz cut, one who will never hurt me in the way that the mullet head will?"

"Kate, this is your decision. But can I just say, we all here understand how hard it can be to love a mullet. Everybody in this room understands. You have to look deep in your heart and really try to come to scissor grips with the fact that your boyfriend still needs love. No matter that his hair cut belongs in a Texas boot scooting class in 1991 - he is still, underneath it all, the man you fell in love with."

"Will I ever get him back though? Or is he lost to the mullet forever?"

"Kate, I'm afraid I can't answer that. It's really between your boyfriend and his barber."

*runs out of the room sobbing*


So yeah, I did get over the shock and repulsion of the mullet. A month later I even had to introduce Nevin/Kevin to my parents. I'd pre-warned them of course, whispering down the telephone line, "Just try and ignore the mullet hair cut and look for the person he is on the inside."
His inside sucked like the rest of him though and it wasn't long before my parents were grimacing at my choice of partner...but what could they do? Their daughter had been lost to loving a man with a mullet - we still smile and laugh about it today.

Ok, this makes me happy!!

I loved the movie The Notebook. How original of me I know!

Now just like every other closeted romantic sap in the world who balled their eyes out at Noah and Ali's love affair, I also loved believing in the real life romance of its stars. Rachel McAdmans and Ryan Gosling are back together, hurrah!

Now my day will be happy and I can go and do things like bench presses and leg lunges in between folding socks.
Over and Out.