Fast and Furious

Our doctor has put Mister Fixit on the Fast 5:2 Diet, in an effort to break the weightloss deadlock with him.  He is not great with self-control, that Fixit. If you haven't heard of this program, basically you eat a tiny amount of food (500 [girls] or 600 [boys] calories) for 2 out of every 7 days, and eat normally for the remainder of the week. It claims to work because you don't live in constant denial, and you also train yourself to forgo instant gratification of the hunger reflex, so your stomach can shrink. It is supposed to have amazing benefits for your cholesterol, immunity and anti-aging. Anyway, I think it sounds perfect for him and I have started on it too, to encourage him, and to deal with 4 pesky kilos of my own.  Gotta say, my first fast day felt like the slowest, longest day of my life! Also, the day after my first fast was a disaster, owing to a bad reaction (too much acid on an empty tum?) to starting the break-of-my-fast with freshly-squeezed orange juice, the upshot of which was me vomiting my breakfast just before I was due to start teaching 4 hours of tap. You can't really say to the watching parents I'm sorry I won't be teaching your children very well today because I've put myself on a crazy fad diet, so I just plugged away, and nibbled at some muffins and recovered after a while. So we'll see if I stay on it for long. I kind of hate the way way fasting makes me think about food ALL THE TIME, whereas normally I really don't.  Meanwhile, I am encouraging and helping Fixit to enter his food intake into a calorie-monitoring app, and I really hope this will encourage a degree of mindfulness with his eating habits, something he sorely lacks.



Climber had his swimming carnival a couple of weeks ago, and came second in the breaststroke!  Just like his brother!  He competed well in several events, but not against just people his age, I'm not sure why.  In excellent timing on our part, Fixit and I were there to see him win his ribbon.



Cherub has gone of on school camp today. As always, I think the house will be much quieter without our singing, dancing chatterbox.  He was so excited, and pretty much sat ready, with his packed suitcase by his side, for an hour this morning, waiting for me to be ready to leave.



Climber has bought, with his own money, a Soda Stream machine. It is making me feel cranky, because I never buy softdrink for household drinking, it is purely a party or going-out treat. I have banned use of it to once-a-week. I feel mean about it, because I know half the attraction is the actual making of their own fizzy drink, but the other half is Climber's unhealthy need to feed his sweet tooth.  Anyway. It's a weird situation now. I feel guilty for denying him the fun of purchasing his exciting new fizzydrink maker and like the biggest spoilsport on the planet, he feels guilty for letting me down but also just really, really wants to make it. And drink it.  He is such a lovely boy.  I suspect many kids his age would just abuse their mean mothers for ruining all the fun all the time.



The house across the road has been slowly knocked down this week. It was the rental house of the street, the one with young people throwing parties, and it was in a terrible state: only good for party-throwing young people, basically.  Despite that, it sold last year for  three quarters of a million, as a knockdown.  We don't even live in a highly desirable suburb. I find that incredible. And rather depressing. I wish the real estate market would settle down. It never does though.