Disasters

Home life has been quiet of late and fairly uneventful.  Harriet came round for lunch last Wednesday; Phil cooked her omelette and home-made chips which is one of her favourites.   As Phil and I were eating later, we decided to have a chip butty, definitely not on the diet but very nice. 

Speaking of NY diets, mine is going really badly.  I have been trying really hard and doing all my slimming tricks but nothing is working.  If anything, the harder I try the more weight I put on.   I am putting the effort into my workouts as well as doing exercises whilst watching the telly in the evenings but it’s not working.  I almost want to give it up and pig out but I am too vein for that plus the fact that I don’t really want to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe which is what is going to happen if I can’t shift this weight.  It is most depressing.  I can only think that I may be going through the menopause which is about right for my age.  This getting older is no fun.  I must loose these extra pounds before we go on holiday.

Speaking of our next holiday, Phil has booked us on a 5 night cruise in March to celebrate our 5^th wedding anniversary.  We weren’t really looking to book to go away when Phil received an email with holiday bargains from teletext.  This Costa cruise looked and sounded a real bargain at only £199 per person.  Phil read me the details and I agreed that it was good value for money and before I knew it, Phil was on the phone to the tour operator and was actually booking us on the ship.   We were really excited until the following day when Phil was looking for cruise reviews on Trip Advisor, something that perhaps in hindsight, we should have done before we gave out our credit card details.  When you type into ‘Costa Pacifica’ into Google, the first review that you see is entitled ‘Costa - Hell on High Water’.  I laughed initially but then got more nervous as I read through the reviews.

From doing some research on the internet, I then discovered that Costa Cruise operated the Costa Concordia, a ship that slammed into the rocks off the Italian island of Gigilo last year.  I went on to read that the captain abandoned ship and in the aftermath of the shipwreck, 32 people were found dead.  I was even more alarmed to find out via the net, that our Ship, the Costa Pacifica violently struck a piling in the port of Marseille last month causing an 8 metre gash, which luckily was above the water line.  Wow, this is some safety record for a cruise liner and no wonder we got a cheap deal.  I am sure all will be fine and the bottom line is we’re only away for 5 days!!

After Harriet went back to work, I prepared beef in red wine in the slow cooker which I later took round to Sue’s for our supper.  It tasted nice but wasn’t as tender as it usually is even though I used rump steak and let it stew for 8 hours.  Still both of us cleared our plates so it wasn’t a disaster.  Sue’s son Matt called in around 9pm to drop off some get well cards and seeing us getting stuck into the grape juice gave us BOTH a lecture.  I think he was surprised to see his mum drinking only 2 weeks after major heart surgery and disappointed at me for not being a responsible carer.  Unfortunately both Sue & I found it really funny which didn’t amuse our Matt.  Bless him, he’s a good boy and obviously is just worried about his mum.  Actually, it wasn’t a late night and we were in bed by 10pm.

I stayed at Sue’s overnight and got up to clear the debris from dinner.  I stayed to do a few domestics and got back to the flat just in time to cook Phil’s lunch.  It was easy, left over beef, mash and cauliflower which sadly I slaughtered.  In the afternoon I went to the gym although I have to say, that I had to force myself. 

I don’t think Friday was very exciting and I can’t be certain because I can’t remember for the life of me what we did in the daytime.  In the evening I worked on a job application for Harriet and it was a fairly early night.  On Saturday I went to the gym, lunch was leftovers and after wading through a pile of ironing, I went to Sue’s to pick her up and take her to visit her dad.  It’s been a while since I have seen her dad and in the interim he has had a fall and hurt his shoulder. Needless to say that he was thrilled at seeing Sue, especially seeing her looking so well.  He was also happy with his cream cake that Sue had taken round; I guess we stayed for a good hour and a half and then I dropped Sue back off at home.

Phil started moaning almost as soon as he got up on Sunday morning because we didn’t have any bread and also we’d completely run out of toilet rolls.   I sent him to the shop and went to the gym.  On Sunday afternoon we walked to the Ship Ashore to meet up with Jim & Shirley for lunch.  It was a cold walk but I figured it would do Phil good to get some fresh air and exercise.  We had invited Harriet & Billy but they cried off due to hangovers; they’d both been out on the town the night before so I wasn’t too surprised.

Lunch was good and fun and I was glad to get Phil out of the flat.   He’s been a bit down recently and not sleeping too well worrying about the legalities of fighting Daphne’s estate so it was good to get him out.  Unfortunately by the time we ordered, the roast lamb, the roast beef and the calf’s liver were sold out and Phil had lost his appetite.  Both Jim & Shirley ordered steaks, I had the roast chicken and Phil just had a starter and a sweet, oh and half of Shirley’s steak.  It was a nice afternoon and I was surprised that it was 6 o’clock by the time we got home.

I had meant to write and post a blog yesterday morning but I was late getting up and promised to be round Sue’s by half nine.   Sue had been up bright and early early doing her domestics.  She is able to do most things albeit cautiously, obviously no driving for at least another 3 weeks.  Hoovering is also not allowed so I did this for her; we changed Sue’s bed and then took ourselves off to MK1 for a bit of shopping.  I hadn’t realised that Sue hadn’t been there before.  Our first stop was Primark where I picked up a couple of bits and then after that we went to M&S.  I had a good scout round M&S and ended up buying a couple of pairs of jeggings from the Kids section.  Unfortunately despite me being overweight they are too big and need to go back.  The café upstairs was busy but we had a nice light lunch before returning home.

It was such a lovely afternoon yesterday I couldn’t believe when the news said that snow was forecast.   I suppose it is February.  Yesterday afternoon I was back at the gym and had a really good run so I was really FED UP to get on the scales this morning only to find that I have put on another pound.  It is most depressing because I hardly ate.  This can’t go on.