Overly domestic?

Yesterday I decided I wanted to make something in my slow cooker for dinner. I had tatoes, carrots, tomatoes (not tinned), onion, garlic and chilli so I decided to make a stew - all I had to do was buy some meat. I think that it is the best stew I have ever made! I put everything into the slow cooker with some water, tomato paste, beef stock and a splash of red wine and it turned out fabulously - I actually suprised myself as to how well it turned out. I am really looking forward to having some more tonight for dinner - Yum!

In memory

My house is now entirely clean! The whole lot! Well except for my bedroom cupboards where I still have to sort out my clothing from what to hang to what to put in my new drawers etc etc. I finished cleaning the kitchen yesterday and now there is no clutter and its great! I even re-vacuumed the entire house and did the bathroom and toilet yesterday and everything is shiny and white and great. Since I've put my flutterby's on the kitchen window, I have noticed how dirty the glass is on the outside, so I think I will be cleaning them in the next day or so.

Today would have been my Nana's birthday and she would have turned 84. It's a sad reminder about last August. Also it has actually brought home that I will never be back to the house in Rosebud ever again and that also makes me sad.

Making it my own

I spent this afternoon hanging pictures and prints around the house. I am actually making this my own place and setting everything up how I want it to be and it is the first real place that feels like home and no doubt that is because I am living alone and re-organising everything to be the way that I actually want it to be! Having the pictures on the walls really makes a big difference, but I can see myself getting up at 2am to go pee and scaring myself by seeing something on the walls and it freaking me out! I will get used to it though :)

On the improve

After spending an hour and a half cleaning my lounge room yesterday and putting things in spots that they belong, instead of just relocating stuff to somewhere else, my back wasn't sore! This is a massive improvement for me, because just a few weeks ago simply vacuuming on it's own would leave me in pain, let alone vacuuming and doing repetitive bending.

I have had my bedroom setting for 4 sleeps now and I am getting more used to the firmness of the mattress. It is extremely different to my old mattress in that with the new one I sleep on top of it and not sink into the bed as such - hard to explain but I think it is definitely helping my back. Each morning when I do my morning stretches my back is no where near as tight/sore so I know it is helping and as the day's pass I am adjusting more and more to the firmness of it. I need to buy a new pillow and I should have this weekend, but I just didn't get around to it - slack!

Now that I have cleaned up, I have decided I am actually going to hang up all my prints and paintings that I have in frames! I bought some of those sticky easy to remove command hooks and once I can get someone to help me, I will hang up the 10 or so pictures I have and the place will feel very homely! I have even put my stained glass flutterbys on the kitchen window :D



Yes, a day time photo would be better!

And yes, I have a corrugated iron back fence about 1 meter from the window!

Clean at last

Now that I have a shiny clean bedroom I decided that it was also time to clean up the rest of the house. When I first started living alone I enjoyed the fact that it didn't matter if I left things where I wanted to and well, it went a bit far. Then I was going to clean up at Christmas time and that's when my back really went spack on me and I wasn't allowed to do any repetitive bending or vacuuming etc which made it kinda difficult to clean up and when I did try vacuuming and cleaning up it would flare up my back.

Anyway, now that my back is stronger and I am back on the bike (on the indoor trainer) with no real problems, I figured it was time to clean up! It is soooooo awesome having a clean lounge room again!





*YaY*

It has arrived... finally!

I finally have my new bedroom suite! 6 weeks after ordering it I have it - YaY!! The mattress is a firm Sealy Posture Tech - Kealba mattress (not ensemble) and a mix n match of other pieces which results in a matching bedframe, bedside tables and tallboy. The mattress has firm edges too which don't squish down when you sit on the sides of the bed.

I have never owned a full bedroom suite before and I now have soooooooooo many drawers I seriously don't know what to do with them. I am sure I will fill them eventually, but for now it is quite a novel concept.

Here is the blank canvas after having thrown everything in my cupboard, moving my old bed to the spare room and vacuuming


Here is the bedframe with the bedside tables


Here is the matching tallboy


And here is the demo of the gaslift in the bed! The slat's part base of the bed lifts up with the aid of a gas lift and the base is fully enclosed so you can't see inside unless you know to lift the bed!


I hope I sleep ok on the bed and that my back benefits from the new firm mattress.

Randomness

I spent this afternoon watching my brothers play footy, one in the reserves who won by over 100 points and the other in the seniors who played awful footy and lost by a lot and deserved too as well. It was so nice being outside in the sunshine for the afternoon, although I didn't put on any sunscreen - oops!

I was reading this article in The Age today about Federal Opposition Leader, Dr Brendan Nelson, and this quote made me giggle I am very determined, and I will keep fighting and standing up for everyday Australians. I assure you, I'm going nowhere," he said. - since when have the Liberal party ever stood up for the everyday Australian??

Another article I read at The Age today was this one and I really have to say that what Kevin Rudd has been saying whilst on China, on Tibet, is really awesome. You shouldn't not say something when you feel the need out of fear of their response - Go Kev!

Yesterday I had a serious case of hayfever - even after taking some drugs for it it didn't settle down. Sneezing so much in the one day really takes its toll and I ended up sleeping 10.5hrs last night - a massive amount!

I feel like getting Indian take out for dinner but I have food here I should eat instead...

Talk about touch parking!

I want a skylight

I don't want to be stuck in my office today where I can't see outside. I want to be out in the sunshine and in the warm air! The west side of our building has windows and I can see them from my desk, but they have these see through gauze blnds on them which are always pullded down. While I can see buildings etc through them, it always looks overcast and dreary even when it isn't. On the other side of the building to me they have big bright open windows and the people over there don't pull the blinds down and its great. The wall near me doesn't have any windows at all. It will be better once the kitchen and the front of the building is completed and the atrium is finished because there should be a lot of daylight come through there, but for now I feel like I am in a basement where I can't see outside and all I want to do is be in the sun.

I saw the physio last night and she poked and prodded me a fair bit. My TFL muscle is extremely tight and the only way to release the tightness is for her to put her body weight through her elbow into the muscle which is in my hip area - ouch! It hurts so much when she does that. All I can do is lie there, on my side, grabbing the table and concentrate on my breathing while at the same time try to relax while I am in a massive amount of pain. I just kept telling myself that it is good pain, that it will help and it has. The random nerve pain has pretty much stopped, but because of the deep tissue manipulation my hip and lower back area's are all rather sore to touch and I even have a nice couple of elbow shaped bruises.

It has finally begun

Last weekend, on the Saturday, I was in a world of pain from seeing the physio the day before. I figured it was due to the deep tissue manipulation that she did and even though it was really painful, I was hoping like hell the pain would just go away the in the next day or two... and it did! Sunday morning I woke up and was a bit sore and stiff, but after doing some walking while watching the SKCC crits it really losened up and it felt really good, the best it had felt in months! It felt so good that after getting home from watching some of the state masters track events at DISC I decided to setup the indoor trainer with the bike and the training wheel in the lounge room and give it a burl. After spending a bit of time fiddling with getting everything setup I decided it probably wasn't a great idea to then get on the bike, but would give it a go the next day, Monday.
Monday night I got home and did 5 minutes followed by a 18 minute walk afterwards and everything felt fine! Woke up Tuesday morning, did a 21 minute walk before work and my back still felt fine, little bits of discomfort but in comparison to the previous few months it was nothing. I decided that I would do 7 minutes on the trainer that night.
Unfortunately that didn't quite go to plan as I came down with a cold during the day which knocked me around for pretty much the remainder of the week to the point where I didn't even have the energy to go for a walk let alone get on the bike and also do a walk.

Saturday morning I had my energy back, so I jumped on the trainer and did 7 minutes followed by a 21 minute walk afterwards and again it all felt OK! This time while I was pedaling I was trying to focus on my core muscles and having them turned on while pedaling - this is something I have to try to remember everytime I get on the bike.

This morning I got up and did another 9 minutes on the trainer followed by a 27 minute walk before work and everything still feels pretty good.

This is the best my back has felt in MONTHS and its fantastic and riding my bike isn't hurting it!! I am however getting some pain from what I think is a pinched sciatic nerve, but it's not the pain I normally experience so its ok in a weird way - seeing the physio tomorrow about it though.

Over the past few weeks I have really beeing putting in a lot of time and effort with regards to remembering to activate my core muscles, so much so that now I think about turning turning them on and using them and I find that they already are on. If I reach for the iron at the end of the ironing board I was telling myself before picking it up to turn my muscles on so it doesn't hurt etc because if I didn't then it would hurt. While I am sitting at my desk at work I have tried to be more concious of not slouching and to sit up straight using the correct muscles, while I have been walking I have been trying to stand upright properly engaging all the right muscles - it has all helped.

So yes, I am back on the bike - FINALLY and I need to make sure I keep doing my daily regime of exercises, continue to do pilates twice a week and most of all don't go to hard too soon on the bike - I don't want to end back where I was. That last one is the tough bit, only increasing my time on the bike by 2 minutes a day until I get to a point where I can then increase the intensity. I am currently just literally turning the pedal's around and my cadence sits around 70-75RPM so hopefully by the end of the week I will be up over the 20 minute mark on the bike at a time and I can then increase my leg speed.

It is very exciting :D

Happily Unexpected

My PVR is a bit special. I bought it last July to upgrade from my existing PVR as it a) had a bigger HDD and b) was a twin tuner, however the menu and the control of the system really sucks! Most of the time to change down a channel I press the up arrow and sometimes when I press either the volume up or down or something else it will change the channel unexpectedly. While this is bloody annoying, I am finding show's on SBS and ABC2 that I am really enjoying that I wouldn't have thought to otherwise watch. I think they really need to re-think the names of some of their shows as they don't grab people's attention.

Why is almost everything on free to air commerciall TV in repeat mode!?!? ARGH!!

Oh and I love P Brosnan - HOT!! Mmmm Bond... Why did I have to choose yesterday for removing my TV from my bedroom while waiting the delivery of my new bedroom suite! Time to hit the couch

Do you have any lost??

Today I got a smail (snail mail) letter from the ATO to say that AUSFUND have some of my lost super - all those in AU would have seen the adverts on TV etc about locating your lost super. The letter gave me a phone number to call to find out how much it was and that if it was less than $200 I can get it paid out to me - sweet!!
I called them up, worked out which address I was living at at the time and gave them all my new details so they could send out the forms for me to get the money. Just as the call was about to end I asked how much it was... $1.65. I laughed. I laughed very loudly and asked 'is it worthwhile sending the forms to me??' His reply was that if I didn't reclaim it I would keep getting statements etc about the account. I have decided to claim the funds purely to stop the correspondence - all that cost and all that paper, what a waste!! The guy was laughing with me too!

Today Melbourne has been hit with the worst storm front it has seen in 6 years! Not only are there winds up to 140km/h, but there is a dust storm and possible locust storm or something AND when the cool change hits it is going to rain and hail and everything! the Fair field shops on Station St were blocked off by the police this arvo because 4 of the massive tree's along the street have fallen over and all over the road. The majority of the shops had lost power and quite a number of traffic lights in the area were not working.
The city has an eerie light with all the dust in the air and the dark clouds coming from the impending rain - it is quite interesting! I remember the massive dust storm from 1983, the sun turned red and the sky was orange and it left quite an impression on my 5-6yr old brain! I recall being at the back of a next door neighbours place and running home cos it was really quite strange and weird!

I am still feeling crap. I got up at 5:50am this morning cos I couldn't sleep, had a shower and washed my hair and was debating the whole time if I should go back to bed or not, but ended up going to work. Good thing I did as I had to approve a change before 9am! Not long after approving it I went home and I have literally spent the whole day on the couch, under my blanky watching dvd's. Even though I was tired I didn't actually have a nap, but my day has been very restful and what I needed.

I _have_ to go to work tomorrow for the morning for the CAB (Change Advisory Board) meeting so I can approve any changes that need to be done, if they have done what's required, but if I am still feeling this crap I will be going home at lunch time after the meeting. Being one of the CAB members has quite a responsibility as my yay or nay can impact changes going ahead. While I really enjoy this role, it does mean I need to be more attentive and if I am sick I need to attend the meetings OR hand it over to a colleague which would be more hassle than going into the office for a few hours - unless of course I was in serious pain like I experienced a few times at the end of last year. I really need to organise RAS access for home to the website so I can access more than just email.

First for the year

It's only March and I have my first cold for the year. I am all snotty and blocked up in the head and hoping like buggery it doesn't go to my chest. I was taking some cold n flu drugs today while I was at work but I still ended up leaving early - whenever I get a sinusy headache it makes looking at the computer screen painful. The drugs have worn off now and I don't want to take anymore in case they stop me from trying to sleep later - blergh! Time to get the energy together to try to cook something with lots of chilli for dinner.