day 22 of 183. 161 days to go.

Yesterday i forgot to mention that the reason one woman in our LL group had red eyes was because she had cried with dissapointment at only losing three pounds!

The first week she had lost ten pounds, and the second week she lost eight pounds. And this week she lost three pounds, and she was devastated! She consoled herself with the acknowledgement that she has actually lost one and a half stones in three weeks.

I am stunned.
I mean, what does she want?
Isn't that fast enough?

The other woman that was sitting with the booklet up to her mouth, was in that posture for her reason. Her body language gives it away really. She'd had 'a bad week' where she'd done the LL diet for 3 days, and then had food for 4 days. She hardly spoke about it, explaining to us that she felt so ashamed and at this time did not want to talk about it. It sounds like she had a four day binge.

Additionally there was another woman, with whom i was chatting to in the queue for the scales, that then admitted that she had done the same. While we were in the queue, she had not made any reference to it at all, and so i was taken by surprise to hear her announce this fact.

How odd that three women failed to keep to the regime on the same week.

Also, we heard that another woman, had withdrawn from the group because she felt that she was unable to do the diet at this time. And, yet another one, had done that the week before.

So, how many of us will go to the end, i wonder.

I want all of the women to suceed.
I want to keep our group together.
All on the diet correctly and all losing at least 3 stones and feeling wonderful at the end of the journey.

I'm not a total altruistic soul, you know. I guess i'm thinking of myself. I'm imagining getting down to my desired weight at the end of the program and feeling joy, and pride at the acheivment. I want this to be a nice warm feeling, and for it not be tinged with thorny feelings of guilt because some people didn't make it.

I want us all to make it.

Sucess is good.
Theres enough to go around for everyone.

Today i looked at my lounge and imagined it decorated.
I've seen the rug that i want, and i imagined that in there too, with its freshly painted walls and lovely satin stained floorboards. I think i might stain the floorboards black, and then put the varnish on, rather than try to match the colour of the wood to that of the skirting boards. Antique Pine isn't exactly in vogue, is it? I can't change the colour of the skirting boards though, because the doors are the same, and they are the same throughout the whole house.

The floor won't look funny a different colour will it?
I looked at my garden room. There it is amtico flooring, in a mock slate effect, and the skirting boards are the same colour as those in the lounge. Obviously we didn't ttry to match them up by having the same effect painted onto the skirtings! That WOULD look strange!

So, then i looked up at the lighting. I have high ceilings and in the lounge (which is really the sitting room and drawing room of a victorian house knocked into one room) there are currently two light fittings. One in each half of the room, coming down from the ceiling into the centre of its respective half of the room. They are five-arm chandeliers. Not the crystal type, more a slightly updated, less formal version, in an antiqued gold/brass type of colour.

The one in the part of the room where the sofa sits has three of its arms alight. Two of the connections have somehow stopped working, but i've gotten used to it and have just been putting brighter bulbs in for the last three years or so (that's student life for you, too preoccupied with academia and too poor to pay for repairs or replacements).

Anyway, i looked at them today and i thought, "you know what, they look old, and shabby, and out of style". They are just not my taste anymore (they are about 10 years old). "I'm gonna get some new light fittings".

Gleefully i looked on the net for retailers and this afternoon whizzed into town with my spare 2.5 hours to look at some new ones.

I am delighted to announce that i have made my choice. And i shall purchase them this week while the 10% sale is on that ends Saturday. (then i will check to see whether the sale really finished at that time).

The design is called, "Spider" and they are FABULOUS! I have chosen gun metal colour, rather than chrome or gold which would look ridiculous in my room because of the traditional multiyork sofa which has a contemporary shaped 'body' but traditional wooden legs on castors.

Spider is a ceiling light that hangs down and looks like..well, a bit like a spider? No, not really...well sort of i suppose. Actually it looks more like a lab model of atoms really. Do you know what i mean?

It is a centre ball with other balls out on sticks coming out like scary spice's hair! And some of the balls on the end have 20watt bulbs in them (12 of them) and some are just metal spheres.

Per light fitting - 12 x 20 watts is 140 watts of light (if you measure light output by watts). What i have at the moment is 5 x 60 watts = 300 watts. So its only half the output! (even though there are only 3 working and so i have been used to only 150 watts, it is a bit too dark in there really).

The guy in the shop today calculated that this new light fitting would be double the wattage - but he's got it the wrong way around, hasn't he? It would be half of what i have already. Oh dear! Silly man. I didn't notice because, as you well know reader, my ability to conceptualise anything in numbers and work with it is rather impaired. I'll phone up the shop tomorrow to see whether they do one with more light bulbs in it. I think there is one that is bigger - it has more balls on it. Obviously it will cost more. Hhhhhmmmmm, i did think they were a bargain price!

I noticed, as i walked down to the lighting shop, that my walk has altered a little. My shoulders were further back, i was more upright and my chest was sticking out forwards. In recent years my gait has become that recognisable with someone who is slightly depressed really, or perhaps someone who lacks confidence.

I always used to walk well. I decided to start doing it when i got to about age 19. As a child i had 'the low self esteem walk'. Looking down at the floor as i went along. Probably years of being pushed down and trodden on by mother. But as an adult, you see, i realised what I looked like and did something about it. In the recent years of my failures, frustrations and disappointments, through devastating betrayal followed by set-back after set-back, i think ever-so-slowly my walk has turned from a relaxed esteemed woman into that of a tense slouched woman that wishes she were invisible.

I'm glad that i am changing my walk again.
I'm going to change it more.
I want it back to how it was.