Progress +2, Setback +1

Hear me out:

Thu 2nd July:

• Trim and colour - hair is looking awesome.
• Fly to Queensland.
• QANTAS serves non vegan margarine with vegan meal, joke about composing narky weather.
• Upgrade rental car to awesome Corolla for free - nice one.
• Warm weather, crazy traffic, awesome apartments.
• Sleep at 1am.

Fri 3rd July:

• Up before 6am for all day martial arts camp commencing at 7am.
• 7:20am - step off the floor for water (damn nervous upset stomach, not enough sleep and not enough food in the past 24 hours).
• Graciously accept compliments on having lost some weight (booyah!).
• Feeling pretty confident on scoring and judging skills for tournament the next day.
• Social mixer goes well - eat half weight in rice paper rolls, have first McDonals in almost two months, loving new top and heels.

Sat 4th July;

• Nervous stomach continues.
• Yell at students who forgot to bring my weapon for the weapons round.
• Judge with pink and purple striped socks on as it is FREEZING in the hall.
• Place 3rd in both form rounds (both by 0.1), place 2nd in weapons between two of my students (by 0.1) - can't really begrudge them.
• Get primed for sparring, continue to battle nervous stomach, freak at having not sparred in at least 12 months, but doing my best breathing to psyche myself up.
• Kick to the midsection - one point to me.
• Punch to the head (no contact) - one point to me.
• Kick pull back as she was kicking at the same time.
• Hold kick in chamber position.
• Kick - in to her knee.
• Praise the lawd for awesome hardcore shinguards.
• Fall down like a moaning sack of sh*t as soon my leg touches the ground, images flash through head of shattered leg and foot facing the wrong way...
• Helped to back of the hall ('Do I have to move?'), icepack delivered, keep listening to everyone saying it's just a bruise, they always knew I had dainty turn of foot etc.
• Get a little teary upon realising that I would have placed 1st or 2nd had I been able to continue.
• Ask student to get me some crutches.
• Back to hotel, all of students spend night with me on floor of lounge rather than attend social mixer.
• Call my mum to ask if I should go to Doctor, want to take her advice as mums are always right.
• Don't get taken to Doctor as students continue to tell me it's just a bruise as I'd 'be crying if it were broken' and as soon as they saw me 'breathing really heavy, they knew it was worse than it looked'.

Sun 5th July

• After taking 45 minutes to go to the bathroom and back to bed, get up for day and nestle on couch.
• Visit doctor who charges $60 to tell me they think it's bruising and to come back for an xray tomorrow.
• Run into Adam and his little red rockstar in the doctors office - COMPLETELY RANDOM!!!
• Go to Sizzler with upbeat students, cringe as waitress walks in to foot.
• Go to martial arts event - mopey, headachey, not hungry, continuing to put up with upset stomach and hating having to move.

Mon 6th July

• Xray - Doctor says 'nothing obvious, but see a Doctor next door'.
• Assisting student tells me he's relieved it's not broken as that's bad, I tell him I'm angry it's not because the pain is unbearable for it to be just a bruise.
• See Doctor 'it's a fracture, 2/3 way through, see?'.
• Assisting student starts to look worried as he hears what's happened.
• Taken to nurses room out the back, tears ensue after they put a prop under my shin right where the fracture is to plaster it, THEN knock the prop out so my shin bangs on to the bed.
• Rattled, go back to hotel. Continue to 'manage' upset stomach, watch videos with two students (16 and 20) who stayed back with me so we could have a relaxing warm day of fun holiday. FAIL.

Tue 7th July

• Take 45 minutes to get out of bed to keep carrying on with upset stomach
• Call QANTAS to ask about getting space to put my leg up, told I can pay $600 to get an upgraded ticket. 'Um, that's completely ridiculous, forget it' 'The flight isn't fully booked, so maybe you can put it up on an empty seat' 'Right. Thanks'.
• Call AVIS to work out what we can do about returning hire car to Brisbane (over an hour drive away). 'You can't add another driver over the phone, you need to do it in person' 'How will that happen, I'm the only driver and physically can't drive' 'Well, someone else can drive but you'll be liable for the full price of the car' 'Can we drive to the AVIS in our town and do that?' 'Sure, as long as the driver is over 21' 'No, she's 20' 'No, she can't drive at all then' 'How will I get the car returned?!' 'You can pay extra to keep it longer' 'That won't help!!' 'You'll need to call some friends then'. RIGHT.
• Call my uncle who lives nearby for assistance - his wife has the car all day and is out. No help.
• Finally get in touch with one of the Qld martial arts students who lets me know about a minibus that can take us to the airport, she returns the car to the local AVIS.
• Trip in minibus is terrible, holding leg up in air for over an hour.
• Airport wait is a bit tedious, get wheelchaired into a chair and into one of my students. Have bag pulled out from underneath sore leg. Upset stomach continues, made worse by the fact one of the students needs to wheel me there and wait outside. Ugh.
• No spare seat on flight for my leg - swells up, throbs, then gets pins and needles. Ask the hostess for a spare seat PLEASE after an hour, she directs one of my students to first class, lady comes out of bathroom and yells at my student sitting in her seat, student gets moved across aisle from me courtesy of lovely lady in next class up with an empty seat between her and another gentlement..

So you can guess how the last few days has gone.

I'm headachey and sedentry, stressed about putting on the weight I lost, clumsy and sick of crutches and just all round useless. I hate being a burden on others, but I also hate falling backwards up my parents deck when I try to be independent and helpful.

I've got next week of work, but not really sure how I am going to manage getting around the office - reckon a wheelchair is out of the question? Though they are setting up a network connection so I can work from home when required...

Should be getting full length fibreglass cast tomorrow, it will be on for 6 - 8 weeks. Wedding is roughly 15 weeks away, so plenty of time.

Reckon they'll let me get my cast in purple?

Hope all is well!

Progress +1

Ladies! Fellas! Hullo! How's things?

Things are going well with me. Work is good. Martial arts is going quite okay, with a tournament looming in Queensland (eep!). Home is really good. Birdie boys are just lovely. The Hun says hi.

I've been watching my fair share of tv (yay MasterChef - who'd have picked that?!), twittering and facebooking, playing with the birds every day, and continuing to obsessively stalk your blogs. And of course, wedding planning.

Where are we at?

• Dress is bought - lovely.
• Veil is ordered - cathedral!!
• Shoes are bough and propping up the tv antenna - I love them.
• Bridesmaids dresses have been ordered - very pretty.
• Photographer booked - friend at mates rates.
• Celebrant booked in - extended family member, good good good.
• Table deco's sorted - three cheers for IKEA!
• Hairclip received - you guys HAVE to check out Lulusplendor, she is just fantastic.
• Hair appointments booked - v exciting.
• Meeting with florist on Friday - can't wait.
• Paper flower folding is progressing - oh man.

That's where I'm at! Just wanted to check in and see if this thing was still on, and share the love a little.

TTFN!

Progress

So, it's been over a month now.

I just wanted to say that I haven't actually missed it. Yet?

But I am doing a lot of Twittering. If you're interested, send me an email and we'll see what we can work out (with the RL name et al). If not? I might come back yet.

And yeah - I found my wedding dress.

SQUEE!!

Lost that blogging feeling...

... I think I'm due for a break.

There's a couple of reasons.

Firstly, work is busy. I started in a new team a few months ago and I am doing more of the stuff I'm really interested in. I'm starting work earlier, sometimes finishing later, and I have no time in the middle of the day like I used to.

Secondly, I'm enjoying my leisure time. I've started taping a bunch of shows on the media PC and I like to watch then between work and martial arts, or work and the gym, while I get the birdie boys out of the cage for a stretch. This gives me only enough freedom for a quick FB chat, then the computer is off and I'm out of the house again.

Thirdly, a lot of the time on the computer is spent reading a lot of different blogs, but a lot of wedding blogs. I am researching and saving and thinking a whole bunch of wedding stuff, and I don't have much room left in my brain for thinking up stuff for my own.

Fourthly, the stuff that I do write is mostly read by a small bunch of people, most of who I have on FB and keep in touch with anyway. I've noticed it more lately, but I feel like I'm talking to an empty room. The more I sense that, the less I feel like participating, then the more you sense that, and the less you feel like participating - it's a vicious circle.

Plus I could just be getting too old for this. I remember reading a lot of blogs when I first started reading them, a lot of them were in their late 20s at the time, and very few of them are still around here. Perhaps it's just my time.

To be continued...?

Milestones Forever

Did you see So You Think You Can Dance on Sunday?

Don't let looks deceive you - check out this girl, 'Forever', she is just AMAZING:

I had goosebumps and was a little teary watching it (though, I got teary watching Madagascar 2 on Saturday, so perhaps take the tears with a grain of salt).

There was another girl on there, a lady who was self taught and funded in hiphop because they ddin't have the money for lessons when she was younger. She was 27.

I was looking at her face, and looking at how much older than everyone else she looked. I knew when I look at the younger contestants, like 17 - 21, that I look older than that. But when I look at the 27 year old, I think I look younger than that.

You guys - I turn 27 this year.

So yesterday, the second of February, I bought eye cream for the first time.

Let's see if I can't look as young as I feel for a while more, huh?

Tanty

I apologise for my tanty the other night.

If you did the maths with the weeks of the month you'd probably get a fair idea why, but I was also cranky because I had free tickets to a show and my guest suggested I bring The Hun (who had been nagging to come) instead and I agreed and thanked them and then when I told him he realised he had something else on and I emailed my family and only dadsy replied replied suggesting youngest bro, and then I tried three other friends and non could make it and then I double checked with my family and finally middle bro agreed but made it sound like it was a massive hassle and I felt grumpy and took it out on the internets.

The show was okay, but then today it's come to light we probably won't be doing anything for our five year anniversary, and I was meant to go to the movies and that fell through, and blah blah blah I'm obviously not feeling myself 100% again yet.

But how about this heat, hey?

...

... at least middle bro offered to copy me a CD...