Holiday...Celebrate (well starve)

Uh oh next Friday I go on holiday, now I know you are wondering why I am saying uh oh to the prospect of a week of doing nothing other than lying by the pool, basking in the sun with no bigger concern other than what cocktail to have next, so I shall explain.

The reason I say uh oh to the prospect of my holiday is because I know that the next few days are going to be hell. There are two reasons for this, firstly, whenever you are looking forward to something time goes ridiculously slowly. So what should be a few days at work will feel like weeks, maybe months. Secondly, and this is my main reason because the next few days are going to be a nightmare. Pure hell, a constant battle not to eat chocolate, to avoid so called bad food and to make my body a temple in a bid to look Kim Kardashian (my own personal body idol) in a bikini.

Why do I do this? The holiday was booked in February which is plenty of time to lose the last half a stone (it’s always half a stone), but no, rather than doing slow and steady every year I go into panic mode. To be fair I am wise enough to know that unless I starve myself (this will never happen) I am not going to lose half a stone by Friday. I also know that as Kim Kardashians’ body looks like it may have had a little help from somebody other than God, that unless I stumble across a few spare grand and a surgeon in the next few days my body won’t look like that. Even though I know this I still know that for the next week I will have salad for lunch every day and go to the gym excessively.

In addition to this I will suddenly start exfoliating (something I rarely do) moisturising all over and introduce the new ritual of checking my cellulite at regular intervals. I am always aware that I have cellulite, but I tend to ignore it on the basis of if I can’t see it it doesn’t exist. It is only when faced with the prospect of spending a week in a bikini (which let’s face it ladies is just like going out in your pants and bra, but deemed socially acceptable) do I decide to check on it and trust me it’s not pretty.

In addition to regular cellulite checks I will also spend time in front of the mirror breathing in to see if I can make my stomach look flatter and how long I can stay like that before I have to give up and breathe out. On top of all this between the not eating, gyming, cellulite checking and breathing in I also have to find time to pack, it’s a hard life. The irony is that even if by some miracle I lose half a stone in a week, I can pretty much guarantee that by the time I get back home with all the food and drink I will have put nearly all of it back on anyway.

I know I am not the only one to be neurotic around holiday time but the stupid thing about it is that after one day in my bikini it will feel totally normal to be walking around half naked, thoughts of cellulite will be forgotten and I will once again be able to go back to concentrating on the important things in life like what cocktail to have next.

Happy holidays

Bring me sunshine...

This week I am at a loss as to what to write about, so in true British style when in doubt about what to talk about I am going to talk about the weather.

Unlike most people I am not going to moan about the weather as although I hate rain, snow and cold I do accept that until I can escape to sunnier climes (for good) that this is my lot. No my gripe is that after only 5 days of decent weather people are moaning. “It’s too hot” they whine, “I’m going to burn” they moan (factor 15 people, factor 15). I say to these people “for the love of Mike stop with your moaning”.

Admittedly even though I am a hardcore sun worshipper there are some downsides to the temperature rising, these include smelly people. Smelly people always exist but it does get worse when the sun is out, if you have to ever get the tube in the sun the smell of BO can be nauseating. Another downside is the sun always comes unexpectedly, meaning that even though I know it is due I somehow never manage to shift that extra half a stone before it arrives. The final negative of a bit of sun is the fact that men with big beer guts always feel the need to remove their tops at the first sign. You can guarantee it’s never the hotties with the rippling six packs ripping their shirts off as soon as there is a glimmer of sun.

Saying that I will take all the downsides that come with sun because seriously, we get on average a total of about 5 minutes of sunshine a year (or that’s how it feels) compared to a winter that feels like it lasts for about 11 months.

I don’t understand how people can’t like sun. With sun comes suntans (admittedly I don’t need one, but I feel better when I get one) which make people look sexier, people are more flirty when it’s sunny and the best thing about summer.... beer gardens. Oh how I love a good beer garden, Sunday afternoons with friends soaking up the rays whilst drinking beer or cider or wine or Pimms, hell, all of them if it’s a bank holiday the next day. What’s not to love?

So come on people embrace the sunshine. Get your legs out (not guts), slap on some sun cream, pop on a hat and head to a beer garden and if you really hate the sun and heat then at least do me a favour stopping moaning about it, and let me enjoy my few limited (no doubt) days in the sun in peace.

What if?

In my living room I have a plaque that I purchased in New Zealand that says,” life is precious, make it count.” Now, this is something that I try to live by, which is why after 32 years on this earth I am still surprised by the amount of people around who live their life’s as what if people. You know the type, what if this, what if that etc? Focusing on what they think could have been instead of living in the here and now and making things happen.

Personally I am more of a doer, more of an if you don’t like it change it type. A person who believes that you get out of life what you put in and that yeah sometimes shit things happen that we can’t explain but it’s how you deal with it that counts. So although I am not a what if person the realisation that so many people are got me thinking about some of my life’s possible what ifs?

For example what if I had carried on dancing instead of stopping at 13 when I realised I would rather spend Saturdays with boys, make-up and friends (not much has changed there) than in a dance studio? Would I now be a successful dancer? Ok realistically with these boobs and this bum once puberty hit there was little chance of that happening, so the answer there is no.

Alright then, so what if, when I was 24 and went to Australia to see the then love of my life I had decided to stay out there. Would I be happily married to him, living there now, surrounded by lots of bambinos with Australian accents? Realistically, given that I called him the then love of my life I think we can all establish that no, I wouldn’t be. In fact in reality the chances are one of us would be dead (it was that kind of relationship, I think then I called it passionate, in hindsight I think it would be considered dysfunctional at best).

What if last Friday when I was talking to the man that I liked, if I hadn’t been drunk (see last week’s blog) would we now have been on a date? This one is a maybe, given that he had seemed keen up until the point of drunkenness it is a possibility, but, my view is it probably wouldn’t have worked out, due to the fact that in reality I sometimes get drunk and if he couldn’t handle me a bit tipsy he definitely wouldn’t be able to handle full on drunk Becky. So as the saying goes take me as I am or watch me as I walk away (or maybe stagger in this case).

Finally what if when I was younger I had worked harder at school and university would I be better off than I am now? Would I be running some big national corporation? I doubt it. Plus I think success comes in many forms, I have a job I love, a brilliant family, my health and amazing friends I wouldn’t swap any of that for all the national corporations, husbands in Australia and dancing stardom in the world.

So this week I challenge you that every time you want to think what if, try and think instead about what you do have and if the what if is so big that it keeps niggling away consider doing something that makes it into a ‘remember the day I did’ instead of a what if?

Oh the Shame

Does anybody else have moments when they feel like somebody else has taken over their mind, body or mouth? I know that this makes me sound a bit strange, I am not talking about voices in my head or seeing dead people. I am talking about doing things out of charecter, saying inappropriate things or just generally behaving in a way that you can’t explain? This is something that is happening to me more and more frequently and I feel it is getting out of control.

In the past few weeks alone there have been several ocassions where I have done, said or thought things that make me cringe. The ones I am prepared to share include, flashing my underwear to the neighbours, admittedly I work for a lingerie company so my underwear is always good, but I don’t think the people over the road needed a full view of me in my bra on a Sunday morning.

Another one, which I do quite frequently is remembering things that have happened in the past and laughing out loud in public. I am aware that this makes me look slightly unhinged, but it happens without me having any control over it.
Last Friday night whilst out, I got an attack of the giggles just because somebody told be his name was Nicholas:
1. That isn’t a funny name
2. The way he said it wasn’t funny
3. I don’t usually make a habit of laughing in people’s face

For some reason on this ocassion the laughter got so out of control that I had to excuse myself and go to the toilet and calm down. This left me not only worried that poor old Nicholas would think I was a total bitch, but also concerned for my sanity how could somebody saying a name get me that hysterical?

This weekend I managed to shame myself by speaking to a man I like in a nightclub and being so drunk that I don’t actually know what I said to him. I remember laughing, but whatever I said I don’t think it’s good as the silence has been noticeable ever since. On this ocassion I will blame not only whatever has recently possessed me but also the copious wine and shots of sambucca.

My mind has also recently been overtaken with inappropriate thoughts, for example whilst in my body pump class wondering whether men’s gym faces are also their sex faces. Is this normal or am I a sicko? Should I even be confessing to such thoughts in public?

Finally the most cringe worthy event of the week was pulling a face at a man on the train that looked like I was offering him a sexual favour. I won’t go into too much detail and I don’t even know how it happened, all I do know is that the man smiled like I had made his day and I had never been more grateful to get off a train in my life.

Please people tell me that I am not alone and that you too are sometimes possessed. If not maybe it’s time that somebody makes a call to the men in the white coats before this gets out of control.