Post-holiday mode

Slowly getting back into it.  I haven’t got back into an exercise routine yet but I’ve not been feeling well (and, before anyone mentions it – it’s NOT the swine flu, I’ve had a sniffly cold for weeks that I can’t shake off).  I figure I’ll not put myself under too much pressue and just start this week by walking to work every day then building up from there.  I’ll be back out running etc in no time. 

Still feeling the cold.  Apparently Kathmandu has a 3 for 1 offer on thermals.  So very tempting, if only I had the cash.

I’m also getting very frustrated — I mentioned a while back that I joined up with the new Virgin Active gym.  Well they’ve delayed the opening date to mid-July.  No good, I want to go to my shiny new gym NOW! 

I might start doing making up some exercise circuits around the house too – got to make use of those nasty steep stairs.

Btw if anyone wants to see my holiday photos, they are all up on facebook now.  You don’t need to be my friend on facebook or even join to look at them.

Home

Got back to Melbourne last night.  It’s so freaken cold here. 

I’m so broke but I start a new contract on Monday (ot all that sorted while overseas, go me) so should be okay once I start that.  Still I’m a bit annoyed – I had to loan money to my sister while we were away and she was going to pay me back when we got home but now she can’t for various reasons (that she’s done nothing about sorting out).  I’ve got to pay rent next week and I’m suddenly the one with the worries about not having the money.  It’s not really fair.

Tell me – what do you do when you are travelling with someone with money issues?  Like if your travelling companion is broke and you have carefully budgetted your own money – would you loan them $$$ and go without yourself or would you go out eating fancy dinners and leave them to fend for themselves?  It’s a hard one.

I don’t want to do a big “this is what I did on my hols” post because it would go on forever but, since my post holiday advice from last trip helped me this time, I’m going to try it again.

• Staying in Shinjuku is great.  It’s so convenient and easy to get to everywhere around Tokyo and so much going on, but it gets tiring because it’s always busy.  Just walking home from the train station is an effort.
• Next time I travel, I need to check out transport options.  We used a SUICA (automatic card that you just swipe over the thingo on trains, subway, buses etc – you don’t even have to take it out of your wallet, how awesome) but it cost $$$.  The first few days we caught the subway to the train station but got wise because there is a minimum ticket fare (around 160 yen) and it was only a 20 minute walk – all those short trips add up.  Plus I think there were some daily ticket deals we could have used.  Transport took up a huge chunk of our budgets.
• Even though I packed light, I still took more than I needed. 
• Only taking a carry on bag is a cheaper option when you fly budget airlines like Jetstar but it’s only saving around $20.  I reckon we spend that buying stuff we couldn’t take in our cabin bags like tweezers, nail file, decent sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner (we were there for 11 days, we need more than 100 mls).
• If you go to an all-you-can-drink bar, it might seem like good value for money to drink shooters.  It’s not.  It’s really not.  Also if there is a language difficulty and the bar staff get butterscotch schnapps mixed up with scotch whiskey, drink something else.  Whisky and kahlua shooters – JUST SAY NO!
• If you don’t wear it at home, you won’t wear it when you travel.
• Paying 2,400 yen (around $AUD30) to go to the Yokohama port celebrations is a waste of money.  Even if they have giant robot spiders.  Well okay the robot spiders were cool.  But the rest was boring.
• A 5 hour stopover in Cairns on the way home is just wrong!  Better to have gotten a room somewhere and flown home the next day.
• Check and double check flight bookings.  If you book to have checked in luggage on the international flight (we did on the way home for all the shopping) make sure you do the same for your domestic flight or you’ll get stung a whopping $80 at the airport.  The girl did feel sorry for us and gave us the exit row seats for the flight home though… mmm leg room.
• For some reason I can eat my own body weight several times over in chocolate and other sweet foods (yum, pudding) while on holidays and not gain weight.  I need to find out the secret of this and apply it at home.
• Take laptop or stay somewhere without ultra-expensive internet charges.
• Sort out work shit before leaving country.  I did a short (3 day) contract the week before I went overseas.  On the last day I couldn’t get access to input my timesheet.  Normally I’d stay around until it was sorted but I had a heap of errands to run and my supervisor promised me she’d sort it out for me.  I rang my agency on the Friday before we left to make sure they reminded her it needed to be in.  My agent said he’d already emailed her but he’d try again.  So, come Wednesday – payday – no pay in my bank.  I had to use the very expensive hotel internet to contact him (actually using the generic agency email addy cos I didn’t have his on me and hope for the best).  Found a cheaper internet place to email him a couple of days later.  Got word he’d sort it out but it would be this Tuesday (we were leaving Japan on Wednesday) at the earliest.  I not only DIDN’T have my pay, I had no guarantee I’d get it before I left.  I ended up getting in touch with my lovely son and he put some $$$ in my bank but seriously that still meant a lot of running around and money spent on internet just because some stupid bitch couldn’t do her job properly. 

Anyway it was an awesome holiday.  So very awesome.  Many precious memories.  I’ve started posting all my holiday photos on facebook.  I had major post-holiday blues yesterday (partly due to having spent 22 hours travelling home and no sleep).  Today I decided the only way to deal with this is to focus on the positive things about being home – my own bed, seeing friends, having internet access, getting back into a routine and playing with all my new toys I bought on hols (like my awesome bento box and cooking chopsticks).  Plus I got news just before I left – I will be working in Japan early next year!  Yahs!

Awake

Yah! I’m awake at 4.30 am.  What joy!  I’m off to the airport in just over an hour and half.  So why am I up so early?  It’s not the holiday excitement, it’s because the staff at the cafe downstairs decided to have knock off drinks until just a short while ago.  I’ve had about 2 hours sleep and figure if I try sleeping now I’ll do that thing where you get into a really deep sleep just as the alarm goes off.

Hopefully I’ll sleep on the plane.

Stuff

Packing: I’ve unpacked a heap of stuff including one pair of jeans.  As well as reading Phil’s wise comment, I took to heart the words of another wise woman: “My advice is to pack your suitcase, find a nearby flight of stairs, carry your bags up and down those stairs like 18 times then repack.  Suddenly that second pair of jeans doesn’t seem to necessary!” Oh yeah, that was me after my holiday last year.

Must fight the urge to buy NEW holiday clothes.  I don’t need them.  I don’t.  But I do need a pair of black fishnets since I can’t find my old ones (and I think they are full of holes… real holes not just the net ones).  I have a strong urge to buy some funky boots but they won’t be worn in and comfortable before I leave anyway.

Diet stuff:  I’ve put on about 5 kgs since the start of the year.  Not good at all.  When I get back from hols, I’m going to get my shit together and get organised.  Not much I can do before I go away, how much weight can you lose in 2 days anyway?

I went to a thing in the city at the adidas shop last night – a Women’s Health thing/event/whatever.  They had that chick from the Biggest Loser talking.  She was quite interesting.  They asked her about weight loss (of course) and she said, unlike most people, she doesn’t believe that it makes any difference whether you lose weight slowly or quickly – there is no correlation between slow weight loss and maintaining a loss.  Of course, she’d have to enforce that way of thinking, since the BL doesn’t exactly advocate slow weight loss but it’s an interesting point of view.  She said that you get a lot more motivation from faster weight loss because you are getting compliments and feedback all the time.

Then she said something that really resonated with me – losing weight is about science (calories in/calories out) but keeping weight off is about pyschology.  Interesting, huh…  I think that was the main thing I took away from it.  Okay, I lie.  The main thing was the big bag of goodies (I’ll go anywhere if they promise me a goodies bag).

Beauty, beauty:  I have eyelash extensions.  Woohoo!  Must get a photo of the stunning new lashes.  It’s a weird thing since I naturally have about 3 teeny little lashes on each eye.  Also getting hair colouring today.

Spazzy…

So, I’m going to Tokyo on Saturday … just in case I hadn’t mentioned it before.  Today I tried packing.  Now a couple of months ago I did a practice pack to ensure I’d be fine with just cabin baggage and I had heaps of room in my bags.  Today I tried again and my bag is crammed full.  I think a few things have to go.

I’ve packed my fabulous black cardi with fake fur trim (I don’t think I have a photo of it) but its very bulky and it’ll be late spring so maybe that has to be ditched.  I also packed two pairs of jeans – one standard denim and one grey pinstriped 3/4 length denim.  Is that too much for 11 days?  Esp considering I rarely wear jeans and am more likely to be in skirts.

Oh and I have three dress, but I think I need all them.  Maybe…

I can pack my stuff so it fits in heaps better but I think I might run up and down the stairs at home a few times with my bag and see just how much I love my clothes.

 

On top of that, I’m having last minute panic about things I need.

Stressy stuff

I wanted to go running tonight before I went to Japanese class but I’m feeling all tense and yuck and shaky.  I’m not sure if a run is the best thing.  It might help but I’m a bit worried about the shaky part of it.  I feel like some kind of weird science experiment on sleep deprivation or something.  Instead of resting over the weekend, I spent most of my time fitting into other people’s plans and doing things I didn’t want to do. 

I’m getting really sick of my life.  I have so much going on that by Thrusday I’m just burnt out every week.  Then I spend the weekend resting to get the energy to do it all again.  That’s no way to live.  Still less than a week and I’m off on hols.  When I get back, I’m only doing Japanese classes once a week – at the moment I’m doing 1 hour classes twice a week which wouldn’t be so bad except they are 8-9 and that means I’m always late to bed after I travel home and get my shit together.  Next term I’m doing 1 class for 2 hours 7-9.  That will be much better.  So much else going on too but I don’t really want to talk about it cos it’s just whinging cos I’m tired and run down.

I think I might axe the run but walk into the city to my class.  At least I’ll get some exercise.

I just want to get back to being the person I was – happy and healthy and full of beans.

 

Edit:  I did end up walking into class and about halfway I felt a huge weight lift off me (unfortunately only figuratively!).  I really think I need to be in motion to relax.  Now if I get a good night’s sleep, I’ll be even finer.

Stuff in My Life ATM (in point form)

• I got Yen today. The $AUD is strong and I don’t know how long it will stay that way.  Seriously I was stressing it would drop big time during my tram trip into the city to get the yen!  I’ve never worried about that stuff before when I’ve travelled but after last year, with the $AUD dropping from around 100 yen when I booked my holiday to 55 yen before I left – now I worry!
• The other night my son contact me – can I help him run… lolz.  He’s got a bet going with his friend – the first one to complete a marathon wins $250.  After I finished laughing, I said I’d train him.  Ha, he will know pain.  I did tell him it’d take at least 12 months and we’d start by getting him to 5 km.
• My mum is staying for the weekend.  Tomorrow we are going for a family bbq and Sunday we are going out for mother’s day lunch (and to watch the footy at the pub).
• Finished up my contract today, starting a new one (at the same place) for 1-3 days next week.  I figure next week’s work is bonus cash since I wasn’t figuring on working so I bought myself something nice today – one of the little Benefit Concealer kits.  Before I bought it, the girl did my face with their foundation primer then some concealer and a dust of powder.  It looked awesome.  I was way impressed cos I’ve been a sucker for free department store makeovers lately but mostly the makeup looks worse on me than when I do it myself.  The primer esp is great – it’s got brightening stuff in it.
• I also got something not so much nice as necessary – industrial underwear.  Specially the Nancy Ganz camisole.  It’s medium strength control (I think I could do more with Xtreme Control but what can you do?)

Internets are awesome!!!

Finally our internet is connected.  I can update more regularly – just in case you’ve been sitting around thinking ‘gee I wonder what crap Kathryn is whinging about at the moment’.  So, just to recap, here’s the good and bad of my life around about now.

Good:

• I am working at my current contract until the end of the week and then I have a couple of days work next week (same place, different department, less money though).  That is rocks because it means mo money to take away when I go to Japan NEXT WEEK!
• I pooed today.  That might not seem that exciting to some but, when you haven’t pooed for a while, you welcome that brown baby like the prodigal son.
• I am getting over my cold/swine flu.
• I have internets!

Sucks:

• my weight.  The scales are not my friends.  I think they might be in need of prozac actually.  I got on this morning and it wasn’t pretty so I took off my thick flannie pjs and I went up .5 kgs!  Scales are crap.
• my clothes.  All of them.  Everything I own is crap.  I went to my storage space on the weekend thinking I might have hidden treasures in there but then remembered I put half my clothes in storage because they are crap.  I can’t even buy new clothes cos everything in the shops are crap.  Tonight I went to Bridge Rd for a look – man the shops shut early though.  The last time I went to Bridge Rd was with Phil which must have been a good four years ago. 

Sick

I had a cold earlier in the week and thought it was all over.  Woke up yesterday with a really bad headache, body aches and very naueous.  Yuck.  All exercise plans out the window, I could barely get out of bed.  I managed to get up for few hours, eat something then fall back into bed again.  Am feeling a bit better today so should be good for work this week.

Less than 2 weeks until I go to Japan!

Stress

I’ve mentioned before about my freaky weight gainage which I’m pretty certain can’t all be blamed on me going on a peanut butter bender.  I’m jumping around the weight like a crazy woman! 

So yesterday I stumbled on an article all about stress and weight gain – and that lovely cortisol that mucks up our bodies when we get stressed.  I’ve surely been stressed for the past weeks – so much happening… crazy landlords then moving and having to adjust to all the cafe noise and wacky hours, my nan being sick, andrew not having anywhere to live, job uncertainty… the list goes on and on.  If I did one of those stress tests with the points system, I’d cane it.

So the plan is to get stuck into some major exercise over the next few weeks before going on hols and not letting the stress become a reason to overeat.  Also: drink more water.