Friday 31 August 2012

Big Bird. Week Five. Food for Thought

“I would exercise but it makes me spill my drink”
You know when you just know something without seeing it written down, without being told about it?  You just know?  Kind of like, don’t touch that boiling hot thing, you’ll get burned.  The same as knowing if you don’t put the milk back in the fridge it will sour.  Being aware that if you don’t feed your kids, they will be taken from you.  That kind of stuff.  Well, my eureka moment this week was a little bit like that.  I knew it already, everyone does, but I still wasn’t doing it.  It’s the whole “if you don’t buy the bloody chocolate you won’t be able to eat it” theory thus it will naturally follow that extra weight will not be gained.  See?  Simple.  Everyone knows this. Simple yet so dreadfully hard to actually do.  Now, I can’t walk past Penney’s.  I am physically unable to do it.  It’s my idea of a pound shop that sells clothes. I even get a slight quiver about my person whenever I enter its hallowed ground.   Equally I am without willpower when it comes to ignoring those large I-will-in-my-arse share bags of giant chocolate buttons.  When the supermarket has them on offer at two for €4, well, damn, I have to be held back from loading up the trolley.  Once upon a time our weekly shop came in at just under €100.  Over the last six months or so it has been creeping up to €150.  This increase would have a lot to do with being shadowed by four kids and a Mister Husband.  Screecher Creature No. 4 has rapidly reached the age where he screams blue murder when he sees his older brothers get something and his isn’t forthcoming.  So he has to be included in everything now.   It’s usually a useless piece of brightly coloured plastic which is utterly and inextricably linked to their very existence and they simply must have it.  Mister Husband’s weekly toy treat alternates between yet another set of headphones and a manly tool of some description or other.  (If he would put away his many, many, many headphones after he is finished using them, the kids or Juno wouldn’t get their collective paws on them and eat them!) And one of the biggest expenses, it has to be said, are the treat items.  I buy treats for me, treats for Mister Husband, treats for the Screecher Creatures, treats for treat Friday in school, treats for group and oh look, I’ve never tasted those before treats.  So naturally the cost of our weekly shop was on the increase.  It was, in the words of all the best and Oscar winning drama queens, getting out of control.   So I decided to drastically curtail the junk food that liked to bungee jump off the shelves and into the trolley. Bring on the eureka moment:  if it’s not in the house, it cannot be eaten.  Ok, so I was climbing the walls looking for some chocolaty goodness to have with a coffee on Monday afternoon, but because there was none to be had, I just had to suck it up.   I did buy some chocolate.  Two things I definitely am not are (a) a lady and (b) a saint.  My beloved giant chocolate buttons came home with me but I also discovered the true meaning of the expression “puppy dog eyes.”  Not only am I in full on sharing my chocolate mode with the Screecher Creatures, Juno loves me to death. I accidently dropped a chocolate something or other on the floor and she pounced before I could.  Queue full on puppy dog eyes.  Every time I go to the fridge.  She knows this is where the melty stuff lives.  She’s only been in the house a couple of months and already she knows why I go to the fridge so often. It’s all good.   I’m thinking when the boys are back in school proper and all nicely settled down, I’m going to hit this potty training lark full on.  Me and a giant bag of Maltesers.  I’ll have her peeing in the garden and not all over the house in a week. Heck, I’d pee in the garden if someone was going to reward me with chocolate. 

01 August - eleven stone three and a half pounds.                                                                09 August - eleven stone.                                                                                                         16 August - eleven stone and half a pound. 
23 August - eleven stone and three quarters of a pound. 
30 August - eleven stone and half a pound.  (Smiley face!)


                                                                                                                                

           

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