27 April 2015

General life update

Hello all, sorry I haven't been doing any real blog posts lately. I was sick, and then it was school holidays, and then when the kids went back to school Grant was still around because of his shifts. I had three days where Grant was working too, and I went shopping on one of them, crammed too much into the second, and then didn't sleep that night (pretty much at all) so was a zombie on the third.

As an introvert who needs a LOT of alone time I really treasure the few days I get where I'm all by myself, and sometimes they can seem few and far between. It's on those days that I can actually think and work on blog posts without interruption. I can't seem to think and concentrate when there are other people around.

Anyway, I do have some blog posts in the pipeline that I'm working on, so I promise I will come up with some quality content soon.

In the meantime I thought I'd just post a general life update. Just a bit of chit chat so you know what's going on with me.



We are STILL waiting for Grant's transfer to south Taranaki. We really feel in limbo and we're all impatient to just get on with it. We have found the perfect house for our family, and we are afraid we will lose it if we don't buy it soon, but of course we can't do that while Grant's job is up here in Auckland.

In the meantime, our landlord raised rent for the fourth time since we have lived in this house (just over 2 years)! He is now asking $200 a month more than we signed up for!! We couldn't even afford the rent we were on, let alone a higher one. We actually looked for another rental house with a lower rent and applied for it, and we were offered it, and I had started packing, but when it came down to actually making the move and changing our address everywhere we just couldn't do it. Not with a transfer (hopefully) imminent. We realised that with all of the costs involved with moving it would be 4-5 months in the new house before we would actually be saving any money on our rent, and hopefully by then we'll be in Taranaki.

So we sold a couple of things to help pay the extra rent in the meantime and we are sitting tight for now.

All along I had decided I did not want to start packing until we were about to move (to Taranaki) because in the past I've started packing as soon as we had decided to move, as a way to spread the work out and feel like I was making some progress, but it can definitely make those feelings of limbo worse. But then when the almost-move happened I had started boxing up things we can do without for a while (books, photo albums, ornaments) so I've ended up in that position anyway. Ugh. It's SO annoying when you want something and it's boxed up. For example, Daniel and I were talking about my grandparents and how he hadn't met any, and I told him he had actually met my grandfather when he was a toddler, and I wanted to show him a photo of them together, but I couldn't.

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They say the secret to waiting patiently is doing something else in the meantime. So I've been working on producing more videos on my YouTube channel, as mentioned a time or two. I've been excited about some of my ideas, and it's fun taking on a new challenge and learning new skills. It's really helped to have something to be excited about in the meantime while we wait to move.

Healthwise I am doing better all the time, although it is slow progress. I am doing the AIP (auto-immune protocol) diet - just Google it, there are heaps of websites about it. The aim is to put my auto-immune disease (I have Hashimotos Thyroiditis) into remission, as well as figure out if there are other food intolerences that were holding me back.

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I've been doing it for about 7 weeks now and have definitely seen an improvement in my symptoms. The diet is extremely boring and it's been very hard psychologically to keep going. On the weekend I got so fed up that I decided to try cheese in the slim hope that I could reintroduce it, but sadly within half an hour of eating an inch of cheese I had horrible symptoms, so have to accept that cheese will no longer bring me joy in my life, probably ever again. Waaaaah!!! I was shocked at how much it affected me - my brain went so foggy I felt like I was drugged, I was exhausted and irritable, and have had a return of AI symptoms in the days / nights following. Just from one bite.

The one thing I cannot figure out is why I can't lose weight. I am eating meat, chicken, fish, vegetables, and a little fruit - that's it. No nuts, seeds, dairy, grains, potatoes, corn, nothing, not even nightshade- or seed-based spices. The only carbs I eat are sweet potatoes, and I have fruit once a day. Plus I exercise every day. And yet my weight will not budge one ounce. Oh wait, I lie, I've lost one pound this whole year. Ugh, it's so frustrating.

For most people who are overweight it's up to them if they want to make the effort or not. It's so demoralising to have made the choice and effort to eat right and work out, and to have zero reward for that in terms of weight loss. It's something that is just out of my control completely, and I'm really fed up about it. Not that I have hundreds of pounds to lose, but I'm not where I want to be (in a healthy weight range), I'm tired of carrying extra weight around (what a waste of energy) and I just want to see some results for my efforts.

Hey, sorry to turn that into a rant! Must have needed to get that off my (ample) chest.

So that's where things are right now. If you've made it this far in this post, then thank you for sticking it out! If you have any questions or any ideas for blog posts that you would like to see, feel free to send them along, I'd love to hear from you.


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