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Hey loves,

Where did this weekend go eh? ...mine was OH-SO action packed, i dont feel like ive paused for breath! i actually intended to post this message yesterday when i got home but i passed out on the sofa, i was sooo tired! (if im totally honest, i also fell asleep on the train AND the bus home from london, but less of that embarrassment... and yes the driver did have to "excuse me miss" me, ohhhh the SHAME!)

i was a slightly classier version of this (only slightly tho)

YEAH, so my weeks been a pretty standard one, work work work. I had a big old grumble on thursday about the amount of time i get used for cover and how on a thursday that means i effectively have TWENTY minutes off during the whole day. urhhh unfair much!? Annoyingly, even tho i voiced my grumps (which im pleased i did) it only resulted in me having my duty swapped from thurs to tues, which gives me oooh an extra 20mins on thurs. wow, knock myself out on THAT.... hmpfh.

Anyways, friday rolled around along with a fair few "YEEEE its the weekend!!" -'s. But friday night i had to pack up some stuff ready for an early turnaround on sat morning. Ive been looking forwards to this trip down to my old school for a couple of weeks now... i always love going back to places with fond memories and this school is such an amazing place. even tho i didnt stay for the full 5years (i left after GCSE's to come home to sixth form, after boarding for the majority of my school-life, i felt 16-18 was a fun time to try being a day pupil... hehe, it most certainly WAS!!!) but that doesnt discount the fact that i was very lucky to have attended such a prestigious and well-thought of school... and going back just reinforced that! Altho i dunno if its just cos im bigger (or not!) now, but it seemed so much smaller?! Maybe its just cos ive grown up and seen abit more of the world than my 12-16yr old self... but it used to feel like a massive WORLD in a campus, now it just seemed like a very nice self-contained little community :-)

the main court of mi collegio... fancy no?!

So its quite a drive away, a good 3hrs, which would have been even LONGER had i had to catch the train over there. Luckily, the mumatron decided she wanted the chance to go down to see it too (part of me thinks this may have been down to a touch of the jellybags, since she knew it was a father/daughter day with my dad. but hey, im not judging... i got a free lift down!) We left at about 8am, which i did NOT like, as saturdays are my one day to lie-in during the week, but sometimes you gotta compromise :-) and arrived just after 11... i confess, i slept most of the way there anyways (this weekend featured ALOT of snooze-time, methinks my body is preparing to hibernate! :-s)

So I woke up in time for us to find ourselves stuck in massive road diversions cos there was a big fair taking over the whole high street. i was all, "COOOOL!" but in fact, not so much what with the trying to park! nightmare... but we made it (with some very jammy driving/manouvering skills) and walked through the fair upto the college campus. Since we were abit early and i didnt have to meet my dad till after the chapel service (i skipped out on that, i sat through enough of them when i was a pupil :-p) so instead i went to the new Art Dept and had a catch up with my old teacher (who is now the Head of Art!) i couldnt believe it had been 10yrs since i was a pupil... it seemed like yesterday. He was just the same and i think he was chuffed that id got back in touch to arrange a catch up, aswell as being proud that i was now a fellow teacher! I was one of the pupils in his first year teaching there, so it was nice for us to reminisce about the "old days" (altho i did apologise for giving him a hard time in his first year, we were quite a naughty group!!)

the fancy new glass art dept... its all about the natural light yo.

After this i went to meet my pops and the mumatron went back into town for some chill-time... i was actually quite pleased about this, cos she is always on-the-go, working and never gets a chance to just sit and have a coffee or browse in the shops... So i think she enjoyed the break, she had a couple of bags when i re-joined her later in the day, so ill take that as a yes!

It was really good to spend time with my dad, i dont see him as much as id like... firstly cos he still lives in london and secondly cos things between him and my mum are still abit weirdy. Its hard for me, cos he seems to want to cut her completely out of his life, yet STILL have access to me and my sis.... i believe that even though people may go their seperate ways, we are still a family and they are still my parents, BOTH of them. but it looks like we will have to do the separate thing, cos whenever we try to get together as a family group something goes wrong, usually ending in a fight :-(

the main reason for the trip? seeing my pops...

(excuse the crazy hair... it has a life of its own!)

BUT this was a chance for me and him to hang out at a place that is close to both of us (he went to school there too, yearrrrs ago!) so we wandered around the grounds, went to the reception and swapped our school stories before heading in for the lunch. OHMYGOD the lunch. i shudder at the memory! :-p

As you can imagine, i was more than a little apprehensive about the idea of a set formal lunch, im not a massive lunch-fan anyways, but have been pushing myself to go from just snack foods, to getting a sandwich to adding extras (crisps/puds etc) But the idea of a HOT meal, at lunchtime is totally foreign to me and more than a bit scary. Hot meals are at dinnertime, NOT lunchtime.... ED is very strict about that. So i was anxious beforehand, but i had consoled myself with the thought that the canteen must be alot better than in my day and PLUS even when i was there, there was a salad bar and a variety of choices, so surely there would be SOME variety for me to work with. OH how wrong was i!!! Basically, it was a set hot meal with only two options... one was a roast dinner type thing (im guessing the meat was beef but it was pretty unidentifiable to be honest, it was brown meat in thick brown gravy) uhmm PASS!!!! So moving onto option 2: we have a salmon fillet. okaaay, do-able... but wait whats this? drenched in a thick cream sauce?! NOOOOOO!!!! so both equally horrible, both served with greasy potatoes and bread and nasty cauliflower cheese and NO salad, NO veggies, just LOTS of stodge :-(

enter nasty ED thoughts and panicky tight feeling in chest....

NO. NO. NO.

i will NOT let this illness get the better of me

I realised i was gonna have issues anyway but as i uhmmed and ahhed about what to do, my dad hopped in and asked if there was anything without dairy, (they offered the veggie option, which was a stuffed mushroom, "oh great! whats it stuffed with...?" oh. CHEESE?! yeah great, THANKS!) the chef said he could get me a plain piece of the salmon, which was really helpful (even if i did feel like a fruitcake standing about as everyone else filed past with their lunch trays....) but it was basically a big batch of fish cooked so it wasnt too much effort for them to NOT smother on in the cream sauce! So still scary, but at least i wouldnt be ill with it! i also had some tinned cooked carrots and a bread roll, with some fruit salad for pudding....

OH MY GOD was i freaking out as i walked over to my seat, but i held it together... i didnt want my dad to get all worried and angry (he doesnt really know the extent of my eating issues, so i was not prepared to make it a big deal now) I sat my tush down and i ate my very crappy tasting meal. i mean, tinned carrot slices and overcooked salmon is not my bag, (not to mention the tinned fruit salad in nasty sweet liquor...) but i did it.

i didnt not eat, i didnt say "can i get something in town" (which i normally would have) i didnt just have safe foods (i couldnt, there werent any!) No, i stuck by my guns and i ate what i was given like a good girl. While all the time ED was screaming at me, but what could i do? i had to be strong, i couldnt listen... cos that would be exactly what it wanted from me.

Im proud of myself for that. even tho it pretty much swallowed up the rest of the day making me feel bad about it. added to the fact that i had spent most of the day in the car and not done my usual walking etc. yes i felt like a big lazy slob. but i had to do it. and i proved that i CAN do it.... but jeez, i wasnt happy about it and my head was literally BURSTING all the rest of the day and the car journey home. i realised i am far from being ok with eating more and walking less. this is something that i knew i had issues with, but i didnt realise how much it affects me cos ive never out it to the test by challenging it.

my and the popsicle :-)

spot the cheesy balloon fairground balloon!

Basically, i need to up my game dont i...?? challenges need to be challenging, how else do i expect to get through these feelings if i dont confront them. i CAN do it, ive proved that, but i sure as hell didnt like it!!! Surely if i challenge the ED more, it should get easier to ignore the guilty feelings...?

What do you think??

has anyone else gone through the feeling extreme guilt & if so...

how have you ridden it out??

I wanna set myself some challenges for this week. things that freak me out but i steer clear of. Here are a few that i think are do-able and want to tackle.

• Eating a PROPER packet of crisps... not a healthy packet, not a snack-a-jacks packet. Just your bog standard packet of walkers crisps.

• Having a fear food for each meal a week, like one scary breakfast (pancakes? waffles? any ideas?!) Lunch and Dinner. (tasty meal ideas welcome!)

• Letting my mum make me my dinner (this could be one of those scary meals)

• Choosing ing a 'hand-made-in-front-of-me' deli type sandwich instead of a pre-packed shop bought (calorie labelled) one.

• Only having ONE half hour walk a day. I dont walk in the mornings anymore, im only allowed to walk home with the dog after work... but lately i have been power-walking around town in my lunchbreaks again. ED doesnt count it as walking for exercise, but it clearly is.... last week one day i wasnt able to leave school cos i had cover and duties and my ED head was shouting at me big time. so clearly me thinking it wasnt a big deal to go into town and get my lunch, IS a big deal to ED, otherwise it wouldnt have been so pissed off with me only being able to nip across to tescos express to get something. Hmm.

SO, i have a few challenges to be getting on with... i have therapy on thurs along with a weigh-in so i will see what my weight is doing after 2weeks of less walking and maintained eating. I gained a bit last week, but not much. Even though i thought that not walking as much would make me suddenly gain loads, it hasnt. So the obvious next step is to increase the cals and keep the activity to a minimum. I dont want to obsess over my exercise anymore, it doesnt make a massive difference to my weight, so i want to cut back to only doing it when i feel like doing it. instead of still feeling like i HAVE to do something every day (tough, cos my mentality of control is based around having walking as my "feel better" coping mechanism)

Well, its high time i found a new way of coping then!

In other news, yesterday i had my haircut!!! i will try and take a pic soon, but as usual i have that "ooh new hair, what the hell do i DO with it?!?!" feeling, so i wanna take a few days to grow into it a bit first :-p

I think ive babbled on more than enough for one post, so ill cut the crap and say toodles for now!

Hope you've all had a fab weekend & ill be back with my progress

...later in the week :-)

x