Tag Archives: work

Franno’s World and My Week in Instagrams

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I thought I’d start a new corner on my bloggage, entitled ‘Franno’s World’. This is basically all the bits about my life that I ramble on about each week, but it has never really had it’s own section and I thought I should probably make one as some people might be interested in what I get up to during the week and others might only come on here for WLB or whatever. So Franno’s World will be kicking off every Monday, with a ‘what I got up to’ post. I’m kind of using this as a bit of therapy to get out what I want to get out, to ramble if something’s bugging me. Just to be there to vent, I guess.

I have also decided to restart my ‘My Week in Pictures’ post, but to make it more interesting, I’ve decided to do ‘My Week in Instagrams’. For those of you who haven’t heard of Instagram, it’s an app for iPhone, which enables you to use filters on your pics, to make them look even more awesome. I loved the app when I first got it and then I kind of forgot about it… But my love of it has rekindled and this, not only encourages me to take more photos, but to edit them and make them more beautiful :) This will also be published every Monday for your viewing pleasure.

For now, I am going to do a joint post with both aspects of my world and my Instagrams. Just because I’m feeling lazy today. Firstly, I’m going to show you my pictures from the last week because, let’s face it, not everyone wants to read about my life, but everyone loves to look at pictures! Although I’ve not been up to much and thus, haven’t taken many pictures, I have taken a few that I’ve instagramed and would like to share with you :)

20120210-154459.jpgThe first pic is Ozzy and I napping on the sofa. I have been absolutely exhausted (again, I am blaming my being sick!) and during the week, I have got up for Ozzy, sat on the sofa under a blanket and we’ve both napped for an extra hour and a half. I do love this picture (even with the lack of make up…). I’ve got to get a canvas of Ozzy made up soon to go with our other canvases of our dogs. I’m a bit unsure which pic to use at the moment, and I don’t think it should be this one!!
20120210-154507.jpgNext is how I looked when I went shopping this week. I’m wearing my new ZOMG! lipstick (have you not bought your’s yet? Have a read on what I thought) and I actually quite like how I look in this picture. I never usually like how I look, which is a rarity for me!! I’m also sporting Beauty blush by BareMinerals (with BareMinerals foundation), my black Body Shop eyeliner and Rimmel Day2Night mascara with the Day applicator :)

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Here is Dave the Kitchen. He’s called Dave the Kitchen because he sells kitchens. You might be thinking, he looks like a nice guy, Franno, but why did you take a picture of him on your phone?! I took a sneaky picture of him in the pub on Wednesday night, because I was in the pub and texting Marie and Marie couldn’t remember who he was. This is him. It’s not even a clear picture, is it?! God’s sake!! And the guy to the right? That’s Murdock. I mentioned him before, I randomly take photos of him too when I’m drunk.

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On Thursday evening, we had a light dusting of snow and here’s our garage roof looking really pretty in the snow. I love the pattern and it’s just aesthetically pleasing. Haha.

I do have a few more pictures to put up here, but I have no idea where my iPhone cable is and I’ve been updating this daily to ensure everything’s on there. I’ll just include them all next week :)

Now onto what’s been happening with me. If you’re not interested, you can close your browser now! This week has been a bit of a weird and down week in the world of Franno. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’ve been feeling a bit down all week. I’d love to blame the snow as everyone blames the snow for everything, but I can’t figure it out. It might be a continuation from my being sick last week, so I’m trying not to dwell on it too much and trying to keep pretty positive. But it’s not helped that this week has also been pretty sucky.

From my last ramblings post, you would’ve read that Ozzy isn’t allowed to come to work with me anymore and I have missed his presence when I’m in the office on my own (saddo). I have felt incredibly guilty in that my Mum has been kind enough to take Ozzy during the day and look after him whilst I’m not able to, which is hard work when she’s got two uncontrollable boxer dogs as well. Just bleurgh.

On Thursday, I read the news on Facebook that an ex-work colleague had passed away; on Friday, I later discovered that it was in the news. I wasn’t sure what I felt about this, really. I used to work with her quite frequently in swimming lessons when I worked in Plymouth, but I didn’t know her at all too well. I suppose you get a guilty feeling that you didn’t know someone as best as you could have done but my brain is conflicting and reminding me that you can’t get to know everybody you ever meet really, really well. I feel down about it all the same; she was younger than me and it’s all too vague what has happened to her as the details haven’t been divulged on Facebook (and rightly so). She was an intelligent, beautiful, kind and friendly woman, who will be missed by a lot of people and I’m thinking a lot about her friends and family this week.

On Wednesday, I had the day off and went shopping with Marie, which was really lovely. It was good to catch up and eat lunch and shop (haul post coming soon!). On Friday night, I worked and Jay was out, so I stayed in on my own. Boring. On Saturday, Jay promised he’d look after the dog so I could have a lie in. However, Ozzy is sooo sneaky and managed to outwit him and come and nap with me instead. During the day, we didn’t do much and enjoyed just hanging out at home. And on Sunday, back to work and we went to the cinema to watch ‘The Woman In Black’ (review to follow soon, but oh my goodness, did I crap my pants!).
The highlight of my week is shopping on Wednesday alongside my 2lb weight loss. I’m just so thrilled that I’m still losing weight when I’m poorly, as usually when I eat and I’m sick, my body’s like, gimme gimme gimme!! and I end up putting on weight. Bring on next week.On Friday, I did some research into what I was diagnosed with last week and discovered that fatigue is a symptom of what I’m going through. I felt completely drained on Friday during the day, even after I got a couple more hours sleep on Thursday night, so I think I’m going to actually have to start drinking some sort of caffeine, either with Red Bull or Lucozade. BLEURGH!
But that’s what’s happening with me anyways :) Be good and have a good week!

Rambling Post

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It’s Super Bowl Sunday and I’m tucked in bed. Jay is out at the o2 arena to watch the Super Bowl all night – yawn! – so it’s just Ozzy and I tonight, watching chick flicks and chilling out. I’ll probably schedule this to be published tomorrow morning, as I’ve just published another and I don’t want to crowd all your feeds or inboxes! Ha.

I fancied a bit of a ramble this evening. I miss Jay when he’s gone :( It’s not as if we would’ve done anything exciting this evening – who does on a Sunday evening, really?! – but I do miss his company and chilling on the sofa. Not when we’re watching Top Gear. I hate Top Gear.

So what’s new with me? Well, last week was a terrible week at work, in that I wasn’t in at all due to being sick after being out in London for the Bloggers Bash on Monday. I hate being ill; it’s the worst feeling in the world and I had to go and see the doctor to try and solve this particular problem. I’m better now (after the painkillers!), but it’s likely to come back every so often until I figure out what it is. Vague enough for you? As a result, I didn’t weigh myself this week, but I’m hoping for a good result next week. Does being ill make you lose weight? It’s most definitely made me more tired and I have actually been napping during the day, which sounds a lot more like student me than current me.

On Saturday during the day, I did boring household stuff, like going to Ikea to try and buy some breakfast bar stools (which were out of stock) and then headed to Tesco’s for some food for the weekend and puppy food. Boring day, really. Last night, we went out to celebrate my brother’s and my cousin’s 21st’s and we all got a little bit too drunk. It was lovely to spend time with my family – who are all completely awesome, by the way – and now we’re all old enough to drink, it makes it a whole lot funnier. Then, it snowed. Thank God I live so close to the pub, because I don’t think my heels would’ve coped if we lived much further. It was weird because it didn’t look like it was going to settle, but we woke up this morning and there’s about 7 inches of snow in the garden. I want it to snow some more, but I doubt it will, even if my Mum keeps telling me it’s going to.

Ozzy loves the snow. I took this lovely picture of him, when he wanted to come back inside after running around like a loon for an hour and a half. When he’s done, he sprints in and jumps up on the sofa, because he feels so cold on his little paws!

I was exceedingly rubbish today and spent all day in the Hangover Chair, sleeping and feeling sorry for myself and my dehydration headache. Ozzy must’ve known I was feeling crap because he spent most of the day, laying on me and sleeping too after wearing himself out in the garden. I hate that I didn’t get to enjoy the snow that much today and that’s mainly why I want it to snow some more, so I can have a cheeky snow day and spend it making snow angels and having snow ball fights. So not the grown up attitude, but I know you’re all thinking the same!

So that’s life at the moment. Nice and boring, eh? I have an ‘informal meeting’ about my performance at work tomorrow, which I’m surprisingly nervous about. I have been trying to do my job really well to try and reach our target for our next term, but I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere near it, even with my leafleting plan for every week. Fingers crossed it won’t be too negative.

The office landlord has told me I can’t bring Ozzy into work anymore, which is a bit gutting but I completely understand. Jay has tomorrow off with him and Mum said that she doesn’t mind looking after him whilst I’m at work. It’s just a bit sucky for him to be passed around, but he loves people so I’m sure he won’t really care that he’s not spending 8 hours in the boring office with just me.

My Zumba classes were on hold last week because of my being sick and I actually feel really guilty for missing out. That’ll be the factor that affects my weight loss this week, I think. Because I have just been sitting on a sofa, under a blanket for 4 days and not been very active. I’m jumping straight back into it tomorrow and I’ll be at my Pilates class tomorrow night.

This week is a pretty normal week. Back to work (both full time and part time) and I have Wednesday off as holiday. On Thursday, I have to take Ozzy to the vets for his Advocate thing, to keep fleas at bay! On Saturday, I’m going to my second bloggers’ event, The Only Way Is Blogging in London, so that’s another thing to be excited about.

I really miss Jay tonight; this week, we didn’t get to have our Friday date night so I feel like I’ve not seen him much. We’re going to change the day because Fridays are being rubbish for both of us, with my teaching until late. It means that I might have to give up one of my exercise classes, but spending time with Jay is a lot more important :)

It’s been good to catch up with my blog and let you all know what’s going on in my little world. I hope everything is good with you – I can’t believe it’s February already and next week is Valentine’s Day! This year is flying by already!

AWOL – and I don’t even get to blame Christmas!

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Hey sports fans!

I am just writing a quick blog to apologise for the lack of good reading over here recently. I have been completely snowed under at work, running shops at all 7 of our pools across the county – literally – and today, we had someone from Head Office come down and help us set some targets. Just oh my! Targets are not full of fun. Because they sound like they are. Naht!

Also, as if that’s not enough, I officially start my part time jobs tomorrow and Sunday (not to mention, some overtime I’m doing for my full time job on Saturday and Sunday morning – argh!) and I am barely seeing Jay because of this whole ordeal! :( I promise I’ll get back into it soon – I have loads of stuffs in my drafts tab that I just have to finish up and it will be with you for your reading pleasure. But for now, I have to really concentrate on work and show them what I am made of. Which is obviously a whole heap of awesomeness. Obviously.

I think I need my own theme tune.

I haven’t even had time to weigh myself – lame excuse? – so I’ll be (hopefully) doing that this evening at my Mum’s for a weight loss themed post tomorrow. Rushy rushy, stressy stressy!

I hope your January hasn’t been too stressful! Back soon! Promises! x

Ozzy’s First Week at Work

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I promise I won’t blog about Ozzy all the time, but some people have been asking how he’s got on this week, as he’s started coming to work with me. I am extremely lucky that I have awesome bosses who have allowed me to bring my puppy to work :) But I’m also extremely lucky that Ozzy doesn’t get car sick, scared of new places and is very nearly completely house trained!

Ozzy started coming to work with me after the Christmas break, on the Tuesday after the bank holiday. I was a bit nervous, because I know he’s really rubbish at peeing in other people’s gardens (or in my office’s case, a big pile of leaves near the car park…) so I was just waiting for him to pee and crap absolutely everywhere. I had no faith in my 12 week old puggle pup.

Tuesday morning, we got up and treated it like any other day. We had breakfast and went for our morning walk to the cricket green and back, which should usually take about 5 minutes (if that), but with Ozzy, it takes about 20 minutes because he wants to stop and sniff absolutely everything. Then came the tough bit. The travelling crate. Ozzy absolutely hates the crate and he will whimper and whine and bark until he’s let out to wherever we are going. I can happily report that, by Friday, Ozzy goes in his crate on his own when he is bored of my company in the office and will happily play there with all his toys. He’s still not sure about being locked in there, but he only whines for about 10 minutes in the car on the way to work.

Ozzy has only had 2 wee accidents a day, from my being on the phone and not paying attention to him, which isn’t bad considering when we first brought him to our house – and therefore, a new place – he was peeing and pooing absolutely everywhere and anywhere he wanted. He has been reasonably quiet, unless we have just been on a walk to our leave-pile and he’s ran up the stairs to my office and barking at me from the top stair. And he has not destroyed the office wires, products or furniture (well, he has been chewing my office chair and, when he’s on my lap, he will go for the desk). A lot of the time, because he’s so little and has little legs, he sleeps from all our walking to and from the cricket green, to and from the leave pile, to and from the post box. I am really proud of our little dog.

On Thursday, I had to cover some lessons in the morning and leave Ozzy at home in his bed for just over 3 hours. I think that’s the longest I have left him on his own and again, I was pretty nervous. We did our normal routine, with breakfasting and walking and then he had to go back to bed. I felt quite guilty on Thursday, but I needn’t have worried, because I came back and he was just as awesome as he has been all week! We went for our 20 minute walk to the cricket green and then came to the office and he was super happy.

Do I regret buying Ozzy? Honestly, no. He has been an absolute superstar so far and, although we still have to train him so that he is awesomely good, I think he’ll be quite easy to train. He already sits for a treat and goes to bed for a treat. It just seems like this house-training thing is taking its time but I think, as soon as he has the hang of it, he’ll be completely awesome at that too. And sometimes he bites really hard, but I think he just gets super excited and that’s how he’d usually play with his brothers and sisters in his litter. But other than that, I am really happy with Ozzy as part of our little family.

How has your first week back at work been? Hope you’re all back into the swing of things already! :)

Good morning!

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This morning, I took Jay to the train station, so I’m awake a whole hour and a half earlier than I usually am! So I thought I’d blog a little.

My wardrobe is semi-built. Tiny Hooray. Just because I have to drill the parts together and I’m not confident in doing that all by myself… So I’m gonna try and get my Uncle to do it for me!

I haven’t swam much at all this week. Only for one session. I have been super busy with work and my new Zumba obsession that the swim has kinda been on the back burner. I have now raised a crazy £4,090 for my swim. I am going to swim for 3 hours this Sunday. My first full session. Eek.

Jay is away this weekend. He’s doing a challenge in July which is all cycling and mountain climbing so he’s off cycling from his parents’ house to Norfolk and back, so I got a whole weekend to myself again.

Times like these, puppy is required. Although on Saturday, Mum and I are meeting up with Dad’s old secretary in London for lunch. I don’t know if I’m looking forward to that or not. I’ve only met her once at Dad’s memorial dinner. I dunno. It’s good to meet people who knew my Dad’s city life, I suppose. But it’s not really fun to see people you don’t actually know.

So, a busy weekend. I have sorted out my holidays at work and it looks like we can get the puppy on 10th December as I can take holiday for the rest of the year from Monday 12th. I’m waiting for my bosses to say it’s fine – then I’ll be counting down the months, weeks and days.

I have been working so hard at work and really have been trying to exceed myself. It would be awesome if I could get a bonus at Christmas but I doubt that it’s that kind of job with bonuses!

Time for a bit of a nap before work haha.

Channel Swimming and a catch up on my life!

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I am so aware that I haven’t written since Newquay. Sorry, readers! I honestly don’t understand how people are doing this post a day in 2011 thing, when I can just about post once a week!

Anyways. What I’ve been up to. I’m blonde now! Hooray! Not even a subtle blonde. Bright yellow, almost white blonde. It took Nikki 5 hours – nearly 6! – to do all of my hair and my scalp is actually falling apart because of my stupid eczema, but she promised that she won’t have to do it like that again, so I’m happy. It was so blonde, in fact, that I had to tint my eyebrows to make me look a little more normal. Jet black eyebrows and bright yellow hair don’t quite go.

Other than that, I’ve been working hard. I reached my target – yippee! – and we currently have 322 babies swimming with us this term. This might change, as we do have a cooling off period, where people can still join over the second and third week, so we might even get to 350! We even have tonnes of babies on our waiting list for our next term in September! It’s all going good in work and we have two to four new pools for our September term too, which means we can have even more babies swimming with us! Hooray! Problem is that one current pool keeps faffing around, but this will hopefully be sorted this week and we can carry on as usual. It’s so quiet in the office today and I’ve done my jobs, so that’s why I’m blogging :)

I have up-ed the training for my super challenge this year. I have been training in drips and drabs for the last couple of weeks, due to already made plans at the weekend and stuff, so I am swimming a mile every single day and will attempt a one and a half hour’s swim before my recovery week in a few weeks time. I have somehow raised a whopping £1,270.00 and I’m still hoping to raise some more, as not all my relatives have put in yet! Training is going well when I actually do it – yesterday, I swam legs only for a mile in 50 minutes, which is less time it took me to swim full stroke for a mile when I first started this crazy thing. Tonight is arms only, which I am dreading. I am still sporting an old swimming injury and every time I swim front crawl, it hurts. So back stroke or breast stroke, it is. It’s only for a mile, that’s what I keep telling myself. An hour out of my life. And think of the weight I’ll lose. It’s fine. Eep.

Budget has been completely rubbish for this month so far. Bearing in mind, I got paid last week, I am down to my last few pennies, so I’ve had to dip into the wardrobe fund to help me out for this month. It’s only because my Newquay payments all got taken out after I got paid. It’s fine. I’m fine. This weekend, we have a man coming in to install a Sky eye into our bedroom and to put the TV up on the wall. It’s not going to cost too much and it’s another thing to do with the house, so I don’t mind putting some wardrobe fund towards it. Plus, online bingo’s on in the background and the jackpot is £25, so that might save me!

I kind of want to move out of our house now and onto somewhere new and perhaps closer to work, so I have been looking around on the sly – my God, houses are expensive. I want to make sure our current house is perfect before we leave though, so that’s why I’m getting all these jobs done. Painter/decorator is in at the beginning of June – no, that is not a euphemism!! – to cut in the paint jobs that Jay and I didn’t do so well and to sort out Jay’s study and to paint around the recently fixed light switches. And then I’ll have to reassess what else needs doing!

Jay has agreed that we need a puggle in our lives, so we’re looking into getting one around mid-December, so I can take off the rest of my holiday and train it before I go back to work and have to pop back and forth off my lunch breaks to check he’s okay. I am so excited about this fact, we are currently discussing puppy names. We’ve gone through Futurama characters and Nickelodeon programmes from when we were kids. Considering we don’t know if we’re going to get a boy puppy or a girl puppy, we’re coming up with some awesome suggestions. Jay said if it’s a girl, we have to call her Lola after the Kinks song, but then I told him that the song was about a transvestite and now he’s not too sure. I have bought a book on puggles so I’m waiting for that to be delivered.

So everything’s peachy with me. Will keep you updated on whether my hair goes green due to all this training and any awesome puppy names we happen to come up with!

“And it’s go, go, goooo…”

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Last weekend, we went to Juan Les Pins. Literally, this is translated as John the Pins. Only joking, I don’t really know what it is translated as. We went for Jay’s Dad’s 50 something birthday and I really had a nice time with Jay and his family. We stayed in a real nice hotel, about a 5 minute walk from the beach (and beach bars) and actually spent most of our time in them!

Day one wasn’t all that bad – we landed at 2ish and were in a beach bar by 3. I got so drunk, I can’t really remember it. Jay had to take me home, although I was all up for going clubbing and had told Chloe (Jay’s sister) that we’re all going clubbing about 5 seconds before it was decided that I should go home. Woops!

Day two, we went to Monaco. One word: WOW. Although I had a day-long hangover, the sheer wealth of that place did not fail to overcome me! Jay wrote down a list of rare cars that he’d seen that day (I know, geek!) and there’s about 60 of them on the back of a receipt. We walked the Grand Prix track – Jay was so excited and he had such a nice day :) I did not drink until dinner, as I was feeling so disgusting. Chloe’s friend, Mark lives in France and he came down to meet us. I had to take him back to the hotel as he’d reached his alcohol limit at around midnight after a strawberry daiquiri and a few glasses of wine!

Day three, we watched the Turkish Grand Prix on a sofa on the beach! And then went to watch Man United v Chelsea. Jay drank all day that day, as when I took Mark back to the hotel, he and Chloe went to the nightclub and got (what I like to call) uber-smashed, and he basically didn’t want to get a hangover. Logical, eh? We had some Thai food and drank outside a cocktail bar, watching Brazilian street performers. I still didn’t feel 100% – I’m not cut out for drinking anymore! – so I was on the non-alcoholic fruity cocktails, which were lovely and refreshing :)

Day four was a pack up and go day. We walked along the promenade, catching our last bit of French sun and then went to the airport :)

Work today has been difficult. It’s hard going to Dubai one week, the South of France the next and then adjusting back to work life! Such as life, eh? I’m in the office on my own again today and I have worked really hard. I’ve only enrolled one baby, but the rest of it has been dealing with emails and voicemails and other problems that we’ve had with our other pools.

This weekend, I am going to Plymouth. I am so excited! I haven’t been there since January, but it feels like a lot longer! I’ve got a house party to go to on Friday night to celebrate Cat’s birthday and then on Saturday, we’re going to Newquay. I have never ever been to Newquay before! It should be good fun – we’re going down with a few friends and partying the night away.

I feel bad as I won’t really be spending any time with Jay this week. I have made myself too busy, even for myself! Tonight, I’m going to dinner with Charlotte, for a much needed catch up! Tomorrow, I need to go for a swim in the morning before work and I have WW in the evening. On Thursday, I’m swimming before work and I have this dinner in memory of my Dad (hmm…). And on Friday, swimming before work in the morning, half day at work and then heading down to Plymouth! No Jay time :( Next week should be freer, and I’m only busy on Saturday night next week for this Mason’s dinner with Mum!

I have decided I am going to buy a puppy at the end of the year. Ha! Seriously, I have been persuaded that I want a puggle after seeing how frickin’ cute they are! Jay and I are talking about moving house, maybe somewhere more into town, so I’m sure all will be completely fine to get a puppy dawg :) I just have to finish all my projects in our current house in order to put it up for rent (Yay, more income! Well, fingers crossed anyways!). I’ll start putting up some jobs on that builder website in June time when I have a little bit more money to spend on it. It only needs painting and putting up my TV on the bracket and things like that – easy things, really, but stuff I really rubbish at. The cutting in on our paint jobs are completely hideous so someone will have to go over them – and at a weekend, which the most costly thing about it.

Other than that, things are fabulous. My swimming training is going okay – I’m trying to fit in as much swimming as I can, but there have been a couple of occasions, like this morning, where I felt completely exhausted and haven’t gone. That will all change in the upcoming weeks, especially if I feel like I’m losing more weight than I have been. My budget has gone quite well actually, considering the holidays we have been on! I think that will all change, as I did have some birthday money this month, so next month will have to be a lot tighter. I have saved £200 from this month’s pay, but my next pay day is this Sunday — I’m hoping I’ll be paid on Friday to cover for my weekend! I will be buying my wardrobe in June or July, depending on how much I’ve saved altogether, which will make a huge difference to the house’s state! Clean washing is absolutely everywhere as I’ve ran out of space on my Primark rails (not actually from Primark, but that’s what they remind me of…) and Jay keeps stealing my hangers (but thinks I haven’t realised. I’m onto you!!).

This growing up malarkey is somewhat of a challenge! So much to do and so much little time to do it in. But I’m coping, sports fans. Just need one more to do list on top of the five current to do lists that I have!

A bit of this, a bit of that…

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We had a pretty good weekend last weekend, considering the factors. On Friday, I started my tributes to Dad by wearing his hat that he wore to every Madness concert he went to – and believe me, it was a few as it was starting to become a Christmas time tradition!

On Saturday, we had a really good day. The sun was shining and it felt like we were wandering around the shops on holiday rather than in Covent Garden. The whole environment was buzzing – even more so when we went to the Mexican and drank several (very alcoholic!) Mojitos :)

Then it was time to go and see Jersey Boys. I think I was pleasantly surprised at the story and the songs that I didn’t have any idea that they wrote. Now I’m going through a whole Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons music fad. On Sunday, I even made the pub put on my Frankie Valli greatest hits that I’d bought after the show. The downer of Saturday was that the drinks were extremely costly when we were in the theatre – £54 for two rounds of drinks, a box of malteasers and two bottles of water! What on earth!

On Sunday, it was surprisingly happy and joyous. We had ham, egg and chips in the back garden of Mum’s house, because it was so sunny. Then, after the boys took the dogs for an extremely long walk, we went down the pub. I continued my tribute by drinking pear Magners with three ice cubes – not two, not four, but three.

It’s a considerably weird feeling, this whole year. It feels like it happened yesterday, but yet feels like it happened four or five years ago. I’m happy when I think of the memories, but sad with the realisation he’s no longer here. It just seems a whole bunch of contradictions of how I’m feeling. It’s hard to explain because you only ever lose your parents once and so you don’t know how you should feel. *shrugs* I don’t know, but I’m not going to dwell on it too much. I’m feeling how I am and there’s not much else I can do about it, is there?

A lot of people have noticed a change in my personality recently – that I’m a lot happier and relaxed. I think it’s the job. I did love the people in my job in the City, but now I guess I’m doing something I really and truly love and feel passionate about. I met up with some of my London friends on Thursday and had a really nice time, catching up and talking rubbish :) But they’re still talking about Internety things that I don’t get! Ha! I think I’ve mastered the whole “sitting and nodding” thing, whilst zoning out and thinking of girly things like shoes and nail varnish.

I think for me to become truly happy, I have to shed the weight. It still makes me increasingly self conscious and I suppose not as confident as 18 year old me was. So although the diet has been slacking (read: Mexican and ham, egg and chips!), I need to work a whole tonne harder to lose the three stone I have left to lose. And I will do it :)

I’m swimming tonight and I’m going to try and swim for a whole hour and a half – half of what I will be swimming a day in August! This whole swimming thing is a gradual process – I wish I could just bust out the 21 miles already! Makes me wish I didn’t give up swimming when I went to uni! Three tiny words. Bring. It. On. :)

I also need to budget this month and (probably) for the rest of the year! Last month, I kind of overspent, with buying pretty canvases and fixing my broken car window, and in the upcoming months, I have two new monthly outgoing: payment for my new car (thanks, Mum!) and car insurance, because I no longer live at home, and my brother and I no longer share a car. I figured that I could comfortably live on £100 a week. That’s more than £10 a day! In fact, screw it, I’ll live on £70 a week! I honestly just have to be good and not overspend. At all. Any money out of my £70 weekly budget that isn’t spent gets rolled over to the following week. And of course, any pennies go into our unbreakable money box, until we decide to break it :)

This week will be a good one :)

Swimming the Channel #2

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I feel like I haven’t written here for a while, so I suppose it’s best to do so. Not much has really been happening, but it’s good to offload some of the random thoughts in your head, right?

I got my new car on Friday! Hooray! It’s so girly and I love it! I will post some photos up when I get a chance to take some. I’ve been fairly busy these past few days… well, busy and hungover.

I have been drinking quite a lot in the pub recently. I wouldn’t say I was an alcoholic, but defo a glorified binge drinker! I don’t like how it makes me feel the next day and it even ruined my weekend this weekend – I was meant to go to Jay’s granddad’s 80th, but I was so poorly, I couldn’t even look at the television screen for hurting my eyes.

It will be a year since Dad died next week. I honestly feel like rubbish when I think about it. I think, because I’m very conscious of when the date is, my emotions are all the more heightened. I cried twice today: once when I couldn’t open my door and had to drive to Mum’s, the second when I’d finally got in my house. It may have something to do with me, feeling so tired. I’m not sleeping very well and I’m having the weirdest of dreams. I woke up in the middle of the night which is rare for me, as I sleep through anything. I don’t know. I think it’s going to be a difficult week.

I’m going training tonight for my swim and I’m going to swim the mile 5 minutes faster than what I did before. I trained once last week and my recovery period took two days. Two days. I must learn to recover faster, particularly as I won’t have the two days in between swims to recover. This week, my aim is to swim tonight and tomorrow night and I would like both miles to be under 45 minutes. If I’m feeling alright, I might even have time to do another on Wednesday, but I don’t want to push it. Even after my first swim, I’d aggravated an old swimming injury in my right shoulder, which seems to be fine now. I don’t think my brother is actually serious about doing it, which is fine. I came up with the idea, I don’t mind doing it on my own and I’ve already raised £380.00. Please donate if you haven’t already here. Seriously, every penny counts. And even more so, as more and more people become affected by cancer. If not directly, I’m sure you’ll have known someone who’s had cancer, survived cancer, had a cancer scare or died from it, so why not put something towards it to try and prevent it?

I’m at work and I’m taking bookings for our next course which starts in May. I’ve booked two people on so far. Hooray. We need, roughly, 200 people more to enrol onto our course to meet targets. Fingers crossed, eh? I figure I need to market some more. If you know of any new mums in Essex who might be interested in swimming, please forward them to me :)

Anyways, that’s all for now! I’ll write again soon.

Online Bingo.

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So here I am at work, in the office on my own again. I’m still meant to be leafleting, but today, I am waiting for Ikea to deliver our office furniture into our new office and my other boss (the one who hasn’t had a baby four days ago!), well, her son’s got chicken pox and she can’t find a sitter.

There’s only so much one can do when it’s not nearly enrolment week and that’s stock take, or as soon as anyone calls, make sure they get onto the waiting list for the next course. I have done all of these. And I’ve answered all the emails possible and there wasn’t a single message on the answering machine this morning.

I started playing Online Bingo about a week ago now, just to pass the time. Seriously, if I’m bored, what’s wrong with trying to win a little bit of money? I deposited £20 and now I’ve used that all up, I’ve promised myself that I won’t deposit another £20 until next pay day. I won £31.95 and I’ve put that straight into my account. So I’m officially £11.95 up. Woop!

You wouldn’t have thought it to be so mesmorising. In fact, it’s not really – it’s just a bunch of numbered balls flashing up on the screen. But oh my goodness, is it addictive!

I currently have bingo on in the background at work, and it’s been on for about two hours now. I have been at work for three and a half hours. I’m on the game where you play for free, but you can win up to £15.00. I haven’t won anything yet, but I’m hopeful! I paid off £20.00 of my credit card bill today. If I win £15.00, I’ll only be £5 out of pocket!

I’m one of those people who never win anything as well. I have played the Lottery for about two years now and I have only ever won £2. The fact that I’m over a 10er up has spurred me on.

Definitely have an addictive streak in my personality…