Oh...Welcome back

Hello pole bruises... I'd forgotten about you....

On Saturday, I started pole classes again. This time around, I'm not trying to take shortcuts - I've signed up for level 1 and 2, then I'm going to work my way back up through all the levels.

Admittedly 2 or 3 levels per term, rather than one at a time, but still...

The timing of these classes is very good for me - Sat am, 9.30 start and they are one right after another. Believe me, that doesn't normally happen. My old teacher, who now owns the studio, probably would have cancelled the level 1 class if I wasn't in it purely because the numbers are quite low, but thankfully, she loves me enough that she let it go ahead.

I can honestly say that I had forgotten just how much fun it is. I remembered it was fun, but I didn't remember - until I was actually there, doing it, that it was this much fun.

Totally worth the bruises.

The 2 instructors I had, I have never met before so they clearly started after I finished. Thankfully, they are both totally awesome - the first one is lovely and the second one is just crazy funny. I hope I get her through a few more levels. Fingers crossed for that one.

With a bit of luck, by the beginning of next term, I will be based in the city for work, which means that I will be able to go to classes in the evening, after work. I might even be able to fit in 3 levels, rather than just 2. I shall have to see how I go.

I do know that there's no way in hell I'm doing the hip hop routine. I think it's level 6 so I'll be skipping level 6 and going straight to 7, because not only was it written by the bitch I can't stand, but as my friend Chirpy says "White girls just can't pop and girl, you're whiter than most"

I know my limitations.

xoxox

Only 11 weeks until Angelina's wedding.

I've taken the week beforehand off work so I can sedate her if required. Hopefully it won't be, but I am prepared, just in case.

It's all rather exciting, really. Having said that, I have now reached a point where I just can't see myself ever doing it.

I'm not too sure how I feel about that.

xoxox

I am one step closer to being debt free.

It's taking longer than I ever thought it would, but I'm getting there. Persistence appears to be the key.

Best. Day. Ever.

Today, the following arrived:

1. My new Dior makeup that I had ordered online as you can't buy these particular items in Australia (they only make them for the European market).




2. My new Scanpan Coppernox saucepans. Hurrah!




3. 2 books that I shipped in from the US as they haven't been released here yet.

PLUS I also got a call saying I'd won a $1000 gift voucher.

I have to admit I am always slightly sceptical of these things, so I will believe it 100% when I'm actually holding it in my hands, but still! If it's true - best. day. ever.

Unless you're counting Monday, when my new Louboutin Zipito's arrived...

It's Been A While

And for some reason, the post that I typed up in Word won't copy and paste over.

How annoying.

I can't be bothered typing it in full so here's a recap:

• For the last 18 months, work has been incredibly stressful. Not knowing what is going to happen is very wearing and I'm really quite over it. Only another 6 months and then I will know for sure. Yippee. (<-Sarcasm)


• We need a sarcasm font.


• I may need to change my name - I'm not so giggly these days. I'm more Grumpy/ Stressy.


• I need to make new friends - all my friends are married with mortgages, little people or both and so are unable to or uninterested in going out.


• I don't really want to go out either - it's winter and it's cold! I'd much rather be on the couch under a doona, but that's not how I'm going to meet new people. 'Tis problematic. Someone needs to start a nightclub that has TV screens, lounge suites and doonas, so you can go watch TV in public and say you're socalising, when in fact, you're just watching TV under a doona at someone else's place. And that someone will fetch you hot drinks. And popcorn.


• Maybe not popcorn - I took on an unpopped kernel the other night and lost. I had to go to the dentist. He gave me a needle. It was bad. I do have a shiny new filling though, so that's good, right? Oh wait...

New Batteries

This post isn't as dirty as that titles makes it sound.

Sorry.

What I was referring to, was that I got new batteries in this thing (so to speak). How long they'll last is anyone's guess.

It is at this point I would like to say how totally friggin awesome I am.

I finally got to run my new 5 day training program the other week and it rocked. I am so very happy with it and really quite proud of myself.

My birthday fell on the last day of training and my trainees bought me flowers and Wagon Wheels (yum!), so that was very sweet.

Family dinner that night - chaos as usual but it was tremendous fun and I got some lovely presents.

On the Saturday I flew out to Hamilton Island for FD & VTG's wedding. The wedding itself was beautiful and the reception was awesome. Sometimes receptions are boring, but everyone kicked their shoes off (literally - the bride swapped to Haviana's (sic?) within 30 minutes of the ceremony being over) and partied. We got a great shot of VTG doing the Thriller dance in the middle of a circle of people. Classic.

I have to say that I didn't really get a lot of time to relax, but I did get enough time to decide that I really love Hamilton Island (golf buggies!) and I totally intend to go back there (and drive the golf buggies!) and spend some time at the swim up bar (after driving the golf buggy! ... Drinking beforehand wouldn't be very responsible, would it?!).

I then came home to work for 2 days before flying out to Sydney for MPDA (Miss Pole Dance Aust. for those that aren't in the loop). MILF competed again this year and while she did well, she didn't do as well as she could have - she's had a lot of trouble with injuries this year, which has had a serious impact on her ability to train.

We did, however, get to see Felix perform.....

.....

I have no words.

The woman is FREAK! God, I totally have the biggest girl crush on her, she's amazing. She's so bendy! She reminds of a Gumby figurine - remember them? /shakes head

Anyway, the Sydney trip was great fun and I really enjoyed every moment of the trip. Sadly, it was over far too soon though.

I am now back at work and now that I have finished the overhaul of the domestic, I am about to commence an overhaul of our CCI training....

Here goes nothing....

ARGH

There is so much happening at work, I don't even know where to start. One thing I CAN tell you is that my head hurts.

Another thing I can tell you is that most of what I am doing is stuff I love, I just wish I had a bit more time to do it in, but unfortunately, it has to happen fast (and of course, accurately).

It's a sad, sad state of affairs when I don't have time to blog at work, in fact, since I first started blogging, this is the first time that's ever happened to me. It kinda sucks.

I get home at night and I am just numb. I am suffering from insomnia becuase my brain isn't switching off, so in the last month & a half, I've been getting between 2 - 3.5 hours of sleep a night (this does not help me during the day).

The rest of the night, I'm awake, thinking about work, making lists of things I need to do, people I need to speak to, stuff I need to check... It's fucking exhausting, I tell you!

If I'm not thinking about work, I'm lying in bed with images - like stills - flipping infront of my mental 'eyes'. It's like watching a movie or you know when they show you a cartoon and flip the pages really fast so it's like it's moving? Well it's kind of like that except all different images flipping one after the other in front of my eyes. Some of the images are work related, some are not, some are recent and some go back to my childhood. It's like my brain is just permanantly wired to overdrive at the moment, so if I'm not thinking about work, I'm just thinking abotu any and everything I can to keep my brain going at lightspeed.

Thankfully, there's not too many hours of the day when I am not thinking about work (ye gods, that's so wrong!) so I don't have to put up with the flipping images too often. They're very disconcerting.

In addition to that, the stress is causing my hair to fall out (again! I only just got that sorted! ARGH!) and I've recently developed acid reflux, again from stress. Delightful. It goes nicely with the heartburn.

I know, I'm a bloody mess. Only a couple more months and then I'll know if it was all worth it. I just have to hang in there for a couple more months...


Apart from that, not too much else is happening - went to Sydney for a couple of days for work. Conferences are exhausting. This was one of the better ones though - some really interesting speakers, I also had to present (eek! It's quite scary presenting to your peers - and your superiors) but that went well, so that was pretty awesome. I was a good girl and didn't go out drinking until all hours with everyone else that was there, so I was probably the only person sitting in the conference room that wasn't in serious pain each day. It was quite gratifying. :-)

Oh! I am back in heels! Only low heels and I don't wear them every day as I don't want to push too hard and injure myself worse / permanantly, but I am in heels! Hurrah!!!!! It's amazing what a difference it makes. My heel height is so tied in to my perception of myself that I am just not 'me' when I'm in flats. I don't care if that's shallow.

Anyway, it's 6.20 and I need to get back to work - I have waaaay too much shit to do before I go home and the longer I spend typing this, the longer I delay my eventual home time!

I'm Not Dead

Just really friggin busy.

Today we got some bad news at work. I can't talk about it - even here - as it's commercially sensitive (wildly so), but it's not good.

Not insurmountable, just Not. Good.

So that was exciting. Not. We've got 6 to 8 weeks, so needless to say, the next 6 - 8 weeks are going to be intense for both MS & I. Our MOR will be visiting from Sydney once a fortnight to assist and the new girl (who i haven't come up with a nickname for yet) will have to sink or swim because I'm not going to have much time to train her.

I always preferred the sink or swim theory anyway. I hate babying people and I never enjoyed it myself, either.

Outside of work, not much has been happening - I've been trying to sort out what's happening with my move into Angelina's place when she and the boy move into the place they have just bought. That's been causing me a fair bit of stress and I really don't know why - it's not like I don't have enough other things to stress about so it's a waste of perfectly good worrying, really.

I should dedicate all that worrying to something massive, but I suspect I'm doing it this way because I would rather spend all that worry on something that I know is actually going to turn out ok, then I get the pay off of "Ahh, see, it was all ok in the end"... as opposed to getting to the end and going "Oh, the end really was nigh. Shit."

Small victories, my friends. That's what it's all about.

I have no shopping to report - except the pieces of Angelina's birthday presents, which for obvious reasons I can't talk about here. For some reason I thought it would be an awesome idea to buy her 1 present for every year (of her age).

What the hell I was thinking when I came up with this idea, I will never know, but now I have got a hold of the idea, I can't let it go.

WHY I would attempt to buy 20-something presents for a woman who has everything she wants (that is within my price range because I'm sure as hell not paying out her mortgage or buying her a car, which is about the only things I can think of that she really, really wants that she can't just get herself) I do not know. It's like someone attempting to do the same thing for me, although given my current shopping ban - which I am sticking to, thank you very much - that's getting easier by the day. I keep seeing things I want but can't have. I've even stopped looking online because it bloody kills me to see things I want and not buy them.

Sorry, back to Ange (I know it's not all about me but it's my blog, so suck it up).

So yeah, I am slowly getting together ideas for her presents. I will state here though - and Ange, it's ok for you to read this - but if I really do struggle with what else to get to make up the numbers, I'm going to frigging Office Works and buying you a pack of biros. They'll be fancy ones, but they'll be bloody biros purely to make up the numbers.

Actually, I just realised that given your stationery fettish, you'd probably be quite excited about that anyway.

Huh.

Hmm.. so what else is happening? Well my ankle still isn't better - my last physio appt, she nearly had to peel me off the bloody ceiling when she moved my foot a particular way. She then decided to stick acupuncture needles in it which hurt like a bitch going in and an absolute mofo coming out (I still don't understand how they can hurt more coming out than going in. If anyone reading this can explain that to me properly, I would be grateful).

Needless to say, I'm still in flats 99.99999999999999% of the time. The only good thing about that is that everyone at work has stopped giving me shit about it and they are finally offering me sympathy. Bastards.

My brothers 40th birthday party is this weekend, that's quite exciting. Sort of. It will eb good to see my sister and my nieces and it's nice to do the family thing. Not looking forward to the party itself very much because most of their friends annoy me and my sister in laws family are a strange lot.

The week after is the burlesque competition, which a group of us are going along to watch, I believe, so that should be good. Actually, I can't remember if I got tickets for that already. I shall have to check....

3 Years....

Me: It's my 3 year anniversary today.
SB: I thought you started before me?
Me: Why, how long have you been here?
SB: My 3 years was last week.
Me: Huh. Oh well, clearly I didn't!
SB: Yeah.... 3 years.... awesome...
Me: Indeed. You know, I didn't have any grey hair 3 years ago.
SB: Neither did I! I blame children.
Me: *gesturing towards the call centre floor* So do I!!!!


I discovered my first grey hairs the other day. To add insult to injury, there are 4 of them, all in a little clump.

It's a good thing I don't feel old!