At long last I have a shiny new laptop, which means (in theory) that blogging is back on the agenda. I was using a desktop PC that I built up when my laptop died on me, but it was awkward and I just didn’t feel the love with it, so couldn’t be arsed, basically. I’m a bit concerned that Twitter may have sucked the life out of my blogging mojo, but I’ll give it a go anyway.

The UK is in the middle of a heatwave at the moment. Up here in Scotland it’s certainly warm, but pretty much permanently cloudy which gives it all a strange end of the world feel. One up side of no sun is that I can sit while the boy plays with his sandpit and scooter and am able to see the screen of my laptop without a hand cupped over it.

It is the first week of summer holidays here in central Scotland, and I’ve decided we’re having a lazy week to ease us into it gently. The Boy has just discovered the joys of playing outside with friends, so I’ve been not been doing much apart from sitting on the steps in front of our building reading/browsing the net/gossiping with neighbours with brief intervals to make picnics and assist various children in dragging yet more toys outside. If this is what summer has to offer, bring it on! The only concrete plans we have made so far is Lazytown Live this weekend and a weekend in Blackpool with a huge group of friends and their children at the end of the month. We’ve made various loose arrangements to “do something” with various friends and their children at some point, but that’s as far as it goes.

I’m also having a bit of a detox at the moment. We came back from Spain 2 weeks ago, and I’ve just not had the motivation to cook properly. I’ve had far too much eating out, eating crap or skipping meals in favour of junk. I feel constantly lethargic and my skin is awful. My diet coke addiction is getting dangerously out of hand again too. So as of yesterday I’m having a few weeks of healthy eating. I’ve cleared the fridge of crap and filled it up with fruit, veg, salad, salmon, seeds, Muller Light and hummus. I’m forcing water down by the pint glass and limiting myself to one 2l bottle of diet coke A WEEK. I’m also only allowing myself 1 cup of coffee a day, as opposed to the 3 or 4 that I have been drinking recently. Day 2 and I’m feeling fine, hungry and peeing like a racehorse, but fine Well it’s 3pm, 2 hours since lunch and all this talk of food has made me hungry. I’m sitting in my mum’s garden at the moment, so will go and have a rummage through her fridge and see what’s healthy to snack on. She’s also doing a bit of a detox this week. She went shopping last night for healthy food and came back with a BOX of South African red wine. Gotta love my mum!

Well the Christmas tree is gone, the chocolate pile is depleted, and we’re back to nursery tomorrow.  Looks like the festive season is well and truly over.  I am not looking forward to getting back into the routine of having to be out the door at a certain time 5 days out of 7, but I think it’ll do The Boy a lot of good.  He has so much excess energy to use up at the moment, I really feel for him.  This freezing weather isn’t really optimum out and about “tire him out” weather, so we’re spending alot of time indoors being generally bored.  He’s even bored with painting and play doh at the moment, so I know he needs to get back to nursery!  Hopefully it will help his sleeping too, as he’s been waking quite a bit in the night over the last couple of weeks.  I’m sure it’ll take a few days for him to adjust but I’m hoping he’ll be back to his 7pm-9am sleep marathons again within the week.

I need to start a detox ASAP.  What with winter colds and being run down, and the excess of alcohol and  delicious but unhealthy foods that accompany the festive season, my skin/hair/waistline/sleep pattern and general well-being is not at it’s best, to say the least.  I’ve already ditched the diet coke for pints of water, and am using up the crap from my freezer so that I don’t cave in to the temptation of shoving some additive filled crap into the oven instead of cooking something vaguely healthy after I do my weekly food shop this week.  Midweek drinking is over too.  I was looking forward to the bracing walk to nursery in the cold tomorrow, both for the exercise and the energy boost it would give me, but my lovely friend called this afternoon and offered us a lift tomorrow as her husband is off work, and I could not refuse. The lazy bastard in me won over again, bah. Ah well, there will be plenty of other opportunities to freeze my bum off this week I’m sure.

I also realllllly need a haircut.  I’m growing it at the moment but it’s at that annoying stage where it’s just about to descend past my shoulders, so still needs some semblance of shape to it, but never keeps it because it keeps brushing against my shoulders.  I also can’t decide what to do with my fringe.  Grow it out and be a spamhead? Get it thickened? Argh, I hate my hair, and my forehead.

I think the depressive, lethargic blah feeling of January just magnifies all my flaws and insecurities.  I feel run down, so my skin is crap, making me feel ugly and pasty. I eat too much, leaving me feeling bloated and sluggish, making me feel fat and unattractive.  The weather is shit, leaving me with no motivation to go out and do stuff because I’m ugly, pasty, fat and unattractive and, well, the weather is shit!  Need to sort this ASAP.  Get off your arse Geek Mama and get some motivation!

Today is day 1 of me doing Slim-fast, in a bid to kickstart my look-gorgeous-by-christmas bid.  I’m planning on doing it for a month at least, with a break for a weekend away in Blackpool with some of my fab friends from OLM, then if I’m not totally sick of it, back on it until I am totally fed up.

Today hasn’t been too bad really, I had ordered my shopping online, and my rip-off diet stuff didn’t arrive until 11am, so I survived on a coffee until around midday, when I had a strawberry shake.  It was pretty nice (I’m aware the novelty may wear off soon) but I felt there wasn’t much of it - it only half filled one of my high-ball glasses. It turns out it was just enough, and it lasted me through until around 3pm, when I had one of the measly packet of cheesy flavour snacks. Tasty enough, texture of what I’d imagine cat litter to feel like, and not nearly enough to satisfy me.  Cue one large glass of Diet Coke with citrus zest.  I had a SF chicken and mushroom soup at around  5, which was surprisingly tasty, and another glass of coke. I’ll have a normal 600cal meal at around 8ish. I know everything is 3 hours ahead of what it should be, but I’ll be working until quite late tonight, so I won’t be going to sleep until a good few hours after my evening meal, so my metabolismshouldn’t get too screwed.

I also had a”brisk” walk this afternoon, which comprised of a half an hour walk to the furthest away park I know of, and then half an hour back. It’s all uphill for halfway, then downhill for the other half, so my leg muscles got a good work out each way.

Well, we’ll see how it goes….

*edit - Jesus, that post was littered with typos. I cut my nails earlier and cut into the quick on one of my index fingers, and my typing is suffering even more that it usually does.