23 July 2009 – being ill could be a good diet move

Yesterday I was mostly looking inside my toilet

After a night spent tossing and turning, I woke up on Wednesday feeling dreadful and only just made it to the bathroom before I was violently sick. My first thought was that it was all the rubbish I ate the night before but then I was sick again and again and it became obvious that I had some kind of bug. All day I was either being sick or feeling sick. I had to phone Mac and tell him I wasn’t coming in. He was great about it and told me to take the rest of the week off but I’m not sure how much of that was because he didn’t want to catch whatever it was I had.

21 July 2009 – the lesson from hell leads to a chocolate binge

Eating crap and chocolate

Last night when I went to bed I had a feeling of dread about my driving lesson today. I kept waking up thinking about it. I would have given anything to get out of it to be honest but everyone seems so pleased I’m doing it, especially Commando.

20 July 2009 – fancy news scales

Monday 20 July

Fancy new scales

Over the weekend I bought some fancy new scales that tell you your BMI and measure in tenths of a pound. I thought they might be more accurate than the old ones, then again, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.  Even with the excitement of the new scales I wasn’t looking forward to the weigh in this morning. It’s not that I haven’t been eating well, I have (well apart from the post driving lesson chocolate the other day), but I feel like I’ve lost focus a bit. The driving lessons and thinking about them seem to be taking over my life and now I’ve got the travel blog competing for my time too. I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time sitting on my bum one way or another. Anyhow, I lost a pound this week so I guess, even sitting on my bum, I must be doing something right.

16 July 2009 – Driving in the rain

Driving in the rain added to the list of my least favourite things

I think the weather forecasters should be sued under the trades descriptions act. In spring we were promised a barbecue summer and all we got was one hot week in July and nothing but rain since. It poured down during my driving lesson today. It was horrible. As if it isn’t enough to have to worry about the clutch, the brake, the accelerator, the gears, the blasted indicators (although no one seems to use them once they pass their test as far as I can see) but today I had lights and windscreen wipers to add to the confusion. Turning them on faster, slowing them down and not forgetting everything else had my head feeling like it was going to explode.

15 July 2009 – web building in progress

Web building

Today I would have just liked to stay dry. Fat chance! It’s been raining all day. What is going on? This is July, it should be hot. As I was stuck indoors this afternoon, I created a website. Gosh don’t I sound techy. I’m not. I’ve been thinking about making a travel website for a while a kind of blog of all my travels and today I decided to have a go so I rang Mr H of Dream Factory fame. He was the web wizard there and we’ve kept in touch through the wonders of Facebook. He talked me through what I had to do over the phone and recommended something called Word Press.

14 July 2009 – why is it so easy to gain and so hard to lose?

A loss but why is it so slow?

Today Mike made me drive from home to Shirley. Out onto the main road! I know he has dual controls on his car but I think the man has a death wish. I managed to pull out onto the dual carriageway ok but Mike said I was driving too slow which threw me a bit. I was just so scared. All the traffic, I mean I don’t even like crossing that road never mind driving on it, and changing gear and traffic lights and being in the right lane. It felt overwhelming. There was a little voice inside my head the whole time saying, “I’m driving on the main road,” over and over on a loop. It was distracting. I think I did ok, apart from the speed thing. I didn’t stall at any of the eleven sets of traffic lights, although I was very slow pulling away from all of them.

12 July 2009 – race day has arrived!

Race day has arrived!

Today was race day! I can hardly believe I was in a proper race. Ok so it was only walking and I wasn’t trying to win but I had a proper race number pinned to my t-shirt and everything. The weather was ok although there were a few light showers but not while we were racing. It was amazing. There were ten thousand women taking part and the atmosphere was brilliant. Everyone was wearing pink Race For Life t-shirts and it wasn’t just stick insect women and athletic women either, some of them were my size. All the proper runners started off first and then the rest of us. I’m glad about that because at least I didn’t have to feel inadequate with sporty women flashing past me. Mind you some of the walkers were going faster than I can run. How do they do that?

9 July 2009 – knowing left from right and hill starts

How come it’s so confusing?

My driving lesson today was round some quiet roads locally after a bit of a warm up in the car park. It wasn’t too bad but I’ve discovered I don’t know my left from my right. At one point Mike said turn right at the next junction and I turned left. He laughed about it and said I need to write L and R on my hands. Apparently loads of people have the same problem but I’m worried about messing it up on my test and failing because of it. It’s one thing to fail because of poor driving but to fail for not knowing something that most five year olds can cope with would be a tad embarrassing to say the least. If it happens I’m going to have to lie about it and say I hit the kerb when I was parking or something.

8 July 2009 – laughter, an ab workout?

Coffee with a friend

What happened to the record breaking summer? Did I fall asleep and miss it? It was like November today, all damp and cold and dark. After work I walked to Alfie’s house and spent a couple of hours catching up with her and drinking copious amounts of coffee. She’s working part time too, although money is fairly tight because her boyfriend, Pete, is a builder and work is scarce right now, no one has any money so there’s just not as much building going on. Neither of us has seen much of anyone from Dream Factory and both of us wonder what became of Mary Elliot, the one who kept going into work as if nothing had happened.

7 July 2009 – who’s going to drive me home?

Bay parking was the least of my worries

Today Mike drove me to the other side of town to some quiet roads in Shirley. Then he let me loose on real roads again. First we practiced the reversing round a corner thing that everyone goes on about. That wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be and I never even went up on the kerb or anything.