bla bla, disjointed entry, bla bla

The better part of last week was spent in Speedos and in a pool, and if anyone ever tells you that aqua aerobics is for pussies, kick 'em in the nuts for me, would you? Thankyou.

While it's exercise in water, it's not swimming. Aqua aerobics uses the water for multidirectional resistance. It's bloody exhausting - and really, really effective training. You nnow what was really trippy? Each time I got out of the water, my stomach was flatter for some time afterwards, I shit you not, so for anyone who's worrying about belly flab, get into a damn pool and walk a few laps. That'll be enough to get your deep abdominals doing some heavy duty work, and you won't even now they're doing it!

On land, I've not been able to get my heart rate above 140 beats per minute, and I work pretty hard and at high intensities. In water, and in just one thirty second sprint, my heart rate shot up to 160. I can't wait to do more of this and I can't wait to begin teaching.

I've still got to participate in several classes and teach several more before I'm assessed and qualified, and I plan on doing that as soon as practical and possible. I mean, really, apart from everything else, aqua instruction is simply a much better look for someone in my condition. Currently I'm this soon-to-be land whale, jumping up and down in class and on steps yelling 'C'mon! Let's go! Wooo!'. It strikes me as a little incongruous, is all, and anyway, I LOVE how hard we got to work in water this week, and I LOVE how thrashed I felt at the end of each day.

Why yes, I am a glutton for punishment. Why do you ask?

Enough of the boring educational, let's talk about the gorgeous young man who woke me up yesterday morning. Unfortunately, it wasn't with anything more exciting than a knock at the front door and an announcment of 'Plumber!', but one can dream. Speaking of trippy though, and of ridiculously small cities, when I opened the door (looking like shit, I might add) the gorgeous young man is someone I've trained and treated with Bowen. How about them apples? He stayed for ages, chit chatting about stuff, and it looks like I may have another new client, once I get my PT qualification in order (if anyone asks me why I haven't yet handed in my final assignment, the one I finished ooh, almost ten months ago? I shall cry, so back off) (Addtionally, if anyone wants to know why haven't handed it in, I blame bad potty training. And my eating disorder.... *whistles innocently*) as his fiance (who, for the purpose of my erotic fantasies, doesn't actually exist) would only go to my classes and so, would probably go to me. He also thanked me as, while he now works out with Aria (small world much?) and receives regular Bowen with him, he said it was working with me that eliminated the chronic pain in his left shoulder. Shucks, eh?

Once I get my PT qualification in order, I can get insurance to work my own business, the future of which, while I've barely mentioned it lately, is looking pretty good.

in brief: Aria is moving his business down south and another personal trainer, Dom, is taking over the lease. Dom wants me to quit my job and get cracking with private personal training clients, as he said if it wasn't for the prospect of me working there too, he wouldn't have been so sure about taking over the business. Adding the the wahoo factor, as I already use the studio for my Bowen Therapy clients, Aria left me his fully optioned and totally bitchen electric massage table for me to use, while I, generously handed him my old, clunky and totally manual massage table for his new studio.

Working with Dom promises to be exciting, as, what with me being pregnant, we've identified a massive gap in the ante and post natal pregnancy fitness market, and with him being strictly into PT and me being into PT and Bowen, our clients will intermingle and our businesses thrive. He's already said he'll take over my clients when my pregnancy progresses to the puff, puff, push push phase, and will then hand them back once I'm ready to come back. Fortunately, this kind of work is something that can, in theory at least, accomodate a baby - particularly once we get the ante and post natal clientele interested. I mean, how much more confidence would you have in a trainer who'd been through what she's helping you go through?

Currently, any PT clients I have are limited to the gym where I work, as without my own PT insurance, I'd be foolish to take on any privately. I have a small following there, and at least two of them are keen to follow me to the studio, where they will become my clients and a part of my business.

Now, ask me again why I haven't finalised my PT qualification. Good grief.

And I kind of meandered away from the gorgeous young man, didn't I? Oops.

So anyway, the baby etc.

I'm almost, but not quite, nineteen weeks pregnant today.

obligatory picture of someone else's baby

Last week, after four consecutive days of waking up freaking the fuck out, and four days of spending the rest of the day calm and confident of my baby's survival, the freaking out got the better of me on the fifth morning, so I rang the Women's Assessment Unit at my hospital, and they told me to come in Thursday afternoon to have the bejeezuz dopplered out of my belly.

Zinta, the transducer driver, told me that my totally bitchen abs are the reason my belly hasn't grown AT ALL in the last week or so, and those same abs plus the wriggle-ablity of my child explain why she had to prod and push so much. Junior was getting a little pissy, what with all the interference going on, and at this young age, has already demonstrated a preference for being as far away from a transducer as physically possible. Every time Zinta got a heatbeat, we'd hear a whoosh or a sqeak and cottonsocks in there would scoot away, leaving her to prod and push some more to find it again.

In short, my baby has a heartbeat - and I have a fifty dollar parking fine because, in my eagerness to hear that groovy beat, I parked in a damn bus zone. (I'm not an habitual law breaker, okay? The damn bus zone I parked in is only a bus zone between 4pm and 6pm and the dual signage confused me, what with all these pregnancy homrones completely anihilating my ability to think. Fucksake. That fifty bucks would've paid for a third of the iPod mini (Yes, mini. I aim low) I do so covet, which would've been a million times more fun than the stupid parking ticket. As an aside, I toyed wth the idea of scooting over the Stef's house and putting the ticket on his car, cuz how much fun would it be to have him come out in the morning and be all wtf? My carport is a no standing zone?' Bwah!)

Question: has anyone ever got a speeding fine or a parking ticket and thought 'By golly, that was so much FUN, I'd pay the three hundred and fifty bucks I now owe all over again, just to have that much FUN again!' No? No one? No, me neither.

Speaking of totally bitchen abs, while they may be pretty, they're also the kind that are much more likely to split down the middle than the regular, floppy kind. Zinta was all 'It's all perfectly natural, so don't freak out when you get this excruciatingly painful burning sensation around your belly button that signifies your muscles are splitting and your innards are falling out and spilling onto the ground.'.

I think that's when I lost consciousness....

insert thought bubble here

I've been muted from the shock of Sunday's shopping expedition, which entailed lots of squeezing my fecund body into medieval torture devices trying on of Speedos in front of changeroom mirrors that are instilled with hate

Also, I'm deliberating on when compassion for one party becomes judgment of the other, and the irony of being judged judgmental. Pot meet kettle, or not?

Also, part deux, I'm in the middle of another episode of My Baby Is Dead, Part three thousand and forty two. That kinda keeps me quiet too......

the update in which I use a lot of parentheses (for a change....)

Remember this?

I'm taking some steps which won't do a damn thing othere than make me feel less like a sitting duck and more like...a sitting duck with delusions of immortality?

The next step is submitting my details to my home and contents insurance policy, which doesn't even cover public liability, but hell, it's more proactive than hiding under the bed.

The president of the soccer club in question is all about beating his chest with his fist and claiming to be 'working so hard on this aibee' to which I say, 'The fuck? Why? It's out of the club's hands and is being looked after by your insurance. That's why you pay insurance (the unverbalised subtext here being 'you idiot') so you don't have to look after the details. Capiche?'

Lesson time on how insurance works: Say you hit a car with your car and you need to pay for the other car's damages. You submit a claim form to your insurance company and *poof* it's no longer your concern because your insurance company has the details and effectively takes the rap for you. The exorbident premiums are not because the policy is so pretty and embossed, it's to avoid any possible headfucks. But the president has gone over all hairy chest and shit and is apparently Looking After Things.

So anyway, Joe (which is a codeword for 'moron') promptly freaked the fuck out when I called him to collate the (so not private and confindential) details of his insurance that I need to submit to MY insurance. (which, btw, is what the fucking lawyers for his insurance company suggested I do, as they'd like to sue me and without insurance? Blood, stone, and etc. Then Joe calls them 'my lawyers' which, guess what sunshine? they are not, because if they were your lawyers, you could instruct them, which you cannot) (also, I'm surrounded by idiots) A move which, according to him, puts me 'out there' on my own, which isn't news to me, and only serves to prove he and his three musketeer-esque speech was as full o' shit as I suspected.

In other news, I'm wearing a pair of jeans that are threatening to deprive my brain of oxygen. It would appear the 2% lycra in this particular denim isn't as forgiving as I'd hoped it would be. (if my brain functioned AT ALL on progesterone, this could lead to an interestng discussion about hope versus unrealistic expectations, but it doesn't so it won't)

the internet told me

so it must be true.

You are the Hermit card. The Hermit has chosen a solitary spiritual path. He shines light on his inner self and, by this means, gains wisdom. The Hermit's home is the natural world and it is by being in tune with that world that he learns the laws of nature and learn how they operate within himself. His path is a lonely one as he lives in silence and has for companionship only his own internal rhythms. But those crossing his path are touched by his light and wisdom. Though often alone, he manages nevertheless to instruct those who meet him and guides those who chose to follow him on a path towards enlightenment.

It may sound all deep and mysterious and wise and shit, but I think the internet just called me an anti social ho.

Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

celebrating

17 weeks today, and muggins down yonder is a whopping 210 grams and measuring 18cm from head to toe. At least, I think that's what my obstetrician (who happens to be another Chris. Universe? Stop laughing, geez) said. I don't quite recall. Does that make me a bad mother?

Anyway, pish. Who cares? It's a baby!

See?

mine, mine, miney, mine, mine, neener.

Can you see a wee, little hand with a cute as fuck, little thumb type thingy doover appendage thingy? No? Oh. Well, try drinking three tequilas and looking again, because it's definitely there.

I suspect I can recognise my unusually flat head already, which, while unusually flat doesn't usually equal future ubermodel, it might mean that I won't be pushing out a reproduction of its father's big, giant head on Christmas day.

Speaking of the universe, it spoke to me the other day, in answer to my question about the possibility of having it all. The universe said 'Uh, no. I gave you a baby, now gimme your hair. '

Bitch.

Last Friday, it set about redeeming itself when I pondered on how in the name of Geebus Crisp I was going to afford the furniture I want. (I need a big arsed cupboard to stash all this *gestures expansively* officey type and totally baby dangerous crap in) The universe said 'I can't give you cash, but how about I toss a speaking engagement with a national - and totally hip and happening - furniture chain your way? They can't pay you in cash either but the manager did mutter something about 'furniture vouchers'. What say?'

Insert twilight zone music much?

I know shit all about public speaking, but big phat phooey. It'll be fine. I'll just wear a hat on the day.

tagged

by tazjia.

What were three of the stupidest things you've done in your life?

1) Loaned money.

Jiminy crickets, the amount of money out there that has my name on it but that resides, either in the ether because of bad business management (is it any wonder that his name was 'Rob'?) or in someone else's bank account is astounding. Well, maybe not astounding in the universal sense, but definitely when you consider that despite being burned, ripped off, robbed (*waving* Hi Rob!) , I kept lending money to people. Fucking doh! In retrospect, it probably had something to do with being young and alone (wah) and believing (hoping?) that trust could be bought rather than earned, and that friendships arise from trust, bla bla wank wank. Because of my years with anorexia, I never learned how to develop meaningful adult relationships. My meaningful relationships revolved around food, or lack of it, and as much as I wanted to belong, my time was spent making sure no one got close to me. I'm a complex little critter, you know, deep and shit. Or, I spend a lot of time blaming anorexia for stuff that didn't happen to me, but rather, I made happen. So anyway, in the absence of adult variety, friend making skilz, I lent money to people and hoped they'd become my friends because of it. To clarify, I didn't chase down strangers in the street and press fifty dollar bills into their hands or anything. These were sycophantic parasites people I worked with (Hi Rob!) and then, when I hadn't lost enough money, people I mixed with, obviously (now. Duh) on a superficial level.

With this in mind, I totally recommend developing a neurosis of sorts, preferably a really big one, cuz then you can work it, baby, and blame everything on it.

per essempio: I backed my car into a wall and dented the living shit out of the tailgate but it's not my fault because I have an eating disorder.

I didn't smash my car, but see how it works? I tell you, neuroses are a marvelous tool.

Moving right along....

2) Spending the rest of my money on really, really dumb shit. Shit which is too embarrassing to mention, and the repercussions of which will affect me for the rest of my life.

I blame my anorexia. (no really, I do)

and finally *drumroll*

3) Listening to my parents when they told me I couldn't run away and join the circus become a flight attendant.

That's my biggest ever regret. Ever.

At the current moment, who has the most influence in your life?

My baby (anyone else notice how I've gone from 'being pregnant' to 'having a baby?').

Aw.

If you were given a time machine that functioned, and you were allowed to only pick up to five people to dine with, who would you pick?

1) Nonno. We only met twice, and it was such a loss to know him so little. He was an Italian immigrant to Russia, who, in an economic merger, was married to Nonna so her poor, yet noble family, could reap the benefits of his peasant family's wealth.

Great plan, but it blew up in their faces when, with the emergence of the USSR, their assets became the property of the Soviets. They escaped to Italy, leaving in the middle of the night with only their young son, my uncle, in tow.

Sadly, this personal history was never documented or even told in great detail to anyone. Not only was this world history, it was my history, but more than that, he was my grandfather and in the brief time I knew him, I loved him with all my heart.

Nonno died about ten years ago, and I'm not sure how it is you miss someone you met only for the grand total of a few hours, but I do. I miss him a lot.

2) Nonna, for all the same reasons. She wasn't as warm as Nonno, and had a bunch of neuroses of her own. Like, she put herself to bed twenty years before she died because she was 'ill'. Thing is, she wasn't. Not then, anyway. What she was back then was a consumate hyperchondriac, but because she was bedridden, she became osteoporitic, so ultimately, she became the invalid she set out to be.

Unlike Nonno, Nonna never really felt like my kin. She was a woman I wanted to know, but who only met once. If I knew her, I'm sure I would have loved her too.

3) My child, as an adult. I know I'll get the oppotunity to dine with him/her/it anyway, but it'd be nice to get a glimpse of what is to be.

4) & 5) My sisters. They both died before we met, and I'd love to see who they would have grown up to be.

and if I could have a sixth, it would be John Denver.

Shut up.

God, I loved his music. When I was a young 'un, and my family relatively normal, we'd go to the Centralian Hotel to eat chevapchichi with barbecue sauce, and I'd pester mum to play and replay 'Leaving on a Jet Plane' on the juke box, over and over again, and she would.

The rest of the patrons probably all hate, if not John Denver then, that song to this day, but for me, it was the begining of a long and satisfying love affair with him (and I think I just explained my attraction to men in glasses), and I'd like to consumate that relationship over anti pasto and a robust red.

Also, I'd like to ask him how he could write such a beautiful song as 'Annie's song' then dump her to marry that slut Cassandra when he should have dumped her to marry me.

If you had three wishes not supernatural, what would they be?

1) A never ending barrel of money. (What? You wanted deep and meaningful?)

2) Creativity. I'd like to be an artist, a painter, a musician, an author, a poet. Anything other than who I am, actually. ;)

3) A normal metabolism and a healthy attitude toward food.

Someone is visiting your hometown/place where you live at the moment. Name two things you regret your city not having, and two things people should avoid.

We need a Roller Coaster, and we could really do with reclaiming our now defunct flagship, The Big Giant Poo. It was a mountain type amusement arcade thingy smack bang on the foreshore, and it totally looked like someone had taken a huge dump on the esplanade. It was demolished back in January to make way for new apartment buildings, which, while they also look like shit, don't possess the same joi de vivre as the BGP.

Visitors should avoid mixing with the locals and anything wearing flannelette.

Name one event that has changed your life.

My first inclination was to cite being pregnant, and it has been a life changing event, but it had to have been preceded by something even more influential. No, not having sex, that came later. It was, quite simply, choosing to eat again.

Tag five people.

Oh dear.

Sid? Mr Dabbles? veach?

Or...I know!

All you blogless fuckers reading this right now: Get a damn blog and consider yourself tagged. Hmmph.

moving right along

This baby isn't mine. You can tell because when I say 'fuck' , its hands don't immediately cover its ears.

Breaking news: Bastille Day and my 16 week and 2 day day coincide, which is exactly how I planned it when I had sex on the second of April.

*ahem*

Over the next few weeks, it seems my norks will be transforming from funbags to functional, so adieu, mes amies (and for the record? If my breasts start producing colostrum, I am SO not hand expressing anything from anywhere. Thankyou).

okay, okay. I'll update

I realise now that I'm still surviving more than I am living, and that I function more than I experience.

The high standards I expect from myself, the perfection (I suppose) I aspire to achieve, do little more than set me up to fail.

Yesterday, having had a meltdown of monumental proportions, I realise I am under a great deal of stress right now, regardless of my ability to deny the stress exists. By 'monumental' I mean, I cried. I haven't done that before about what's going on now. Then I pulled my shit together and went to work.

But enough of that deep and meaningful crap. Let's get to the reason for this entry.

I'm looking down the barrel of a lawsuit. Well, two actually. One from the dickhead who sat on an ice pack for an hour and gave himself frostbite, the other from the insurers of the sporting club I volunteered at the day I handed over the ice pack this nimrod requested. Dude must have rocks in his head, because before that icepack froze his sorry arse, rendering it numb and painfree, it would have hurt like the befuckers as it froze first, his flesh, and second, his nerve endings. But that's an aside....

'Wrong place, wrong time' is the phrase that sums up an event that now promises to affect the rest of my life.

In the eyes of the law, what is fair and just is irrelevant. A lawyer doesn't need to prove right or wrong. If he's doing his job, he finds a loophole, and in my case, apparently two exist and the lawyers have found them both: one in the Volunteer Protection Act of 2001, the other in the club's insurance policy.

No matter what, I lose out financially. I discussed this at length with a lawyer from Legal Aid, and while I was offered some sage advice, the upshot was that I do need a lawyer, and they can't represent me in a civil suit. I'll need to hire my own, and at upwards of one hundred bucks an hour, I'm fucked, regardless of what direction this case takes.

The club committee members are all mumbling about us 'all being in this together', but that's the biggest crock I've heard in a long time. If I'm sued the $300,000 the insurers want, plus the fuck knows how much Hopalong Frozen Leg wants from me, none of them are going to mortgage their house to help me out. Conversely, if the universe tilts, resulting in one of them being sued, they're not going to get a cracker out of me, and that's how it should be. We're not the three frikkin' musketeers, we're individuals who need to watch our own backs. That point aside, this lot have failed to appreciate the distinction between their club being sued, and me, the person, being stitched up and nailed to the wall. Their club isn't themselves. It's where they go a few times a week to kick around a soccer ball and then get drunk. Their club gets sued? Their insurance company pays out, the club continues and life goes on as if nothing ever happened. I, on the other hand, am me. Just me. If I'm sued, it's me on the line, my financial future at stake and my career shot to shit.

All for one and one for all my left nut.

this is my baby

Clickenzee on the images to expandify.

June 14

my mummy used the f word. I do this a lot because she does that alot.
Also, I look v. cute when I cover my ears.


July 4

I am skeletor! Fear me! Ha!

musings

Having spent a life time being concerned with what I 'should' do and who I 'should' be, and only a few short years learning how to value what I want to do and who I am, it's little wonder I've been so conflicted about telling my family about my baby. Telling mum is reverting to the me that tried so hard to be who I thought I 'should' be, and who failed so miserably at being her. Telling her is ignoring what I want, and doing what I believe I 'should' do. Telling her is telling all of them, and while it may not be so, telling them is allowing myself to feel judged.

Because there's one versus a multitude of others, it'd be fair to assume that the single oddity was surrounded by a sea of functional blood relatives. After all, I'm the constant and they are the variables. That concept has occupied my belly button contemplating time for several years, that they're normal and I'm the freak. The truth is though, and it's one my logical self can grasp with ease but that my feelings cannot, is that I'm the functional one and my family is fucking weird. Somehow, and truth be told, it was probably by virtue of the journey taken into and then out of my eating disorder, I escaped the destructive narcissisism that defines virtually all of my family members. The only other one who escaped our family's madness was a drug addict, for as long as I was anorexic. I don't think that's a coincidence, by the way.

I want to be in a family, I want to be a daughter, and because I believe families are defined by sharing these things, I feel I'm defined by everything we, as a family, are not. If one's own family doesn't value you, then who will? The reality is though, that I do have value and I am lovable. I need to remember that my worth lies not in the eyes of others, it simply is, because I merely am.

I am, therefore I am worthy.

Nothing I do or say makes me more of less so.

procrastinate much?

I have a neatly wrapped parcel to send mum as a late birthday present, and with it is a card with a beautiful photo of a baby on the front and the word 'Congratulations' on the inside. My message will be 'You're going to be a grandmother' with exclamation marks and stuff to keep it upbeat and exciting, and to distract from the dread I'm feeling at telling her.

I'm stuck at Step 1 though, which is the writing the damn message. Step 2 is actually sending the present, and given that mum's birthday was a month ago and it's taken this long to take the card out of its envelope to write on it, it will likely take twice as long to shove the parcel into the mail slot at the post office.

wah, poor me, and etc

I'm having a lot of trouble coming to terms with the loss of someone who called me his friend. He left this friendship with such ease though, that I know now he never was what he claimed to be.

Maybe then, the difficulty lies more in realising that everything we shared was based on his lies and my hope, and less in the ache of loss.

One explanation for his distance is his claim that I'm angry with him, but as our last communication was a Welcome Home e-mail I sent on his return from hospital, I don't understand how he can honestly come to this conclusion. I've heard nothing from him since, not a word, not even when, two weeks after that day, I shared the news of my pregnancy.

Earlier still, shortly after I began writing these pages, I gave him the address and asked him to visit. He came by once or twice, and never came back.

God, I feel so stupid now, as I should have known then that his lack of interest in my writing reflected a lack of interest in me. More than that, I should have known his lack of interest in my wonderful miracle reflected the same disinterest. I should have known because there had to have been many other signs that I was pursuing a friendship that lay only in my imagination.

I do feel anger now, because rather than admitting his boredom with me, he's blaming this rift on me. I think my anger lies less in fury though, and more in the pain of being reminded I'm disposable.

this week

in summary:


Am working hard.

Saw baby. It weighs 128 grams. I've gained considerably more. Am pissed.

Am tired.

Am bodacious.

Am wondering about the whereabouts of my grey matter.


The end.