Tag: escapetothecountry

Why the mince pie diet might not make my fortune

The revolutionary new diet the fitness industry doesn’t want you to know about. What is the secret?

It seems my bid to conquer the world by inventing a new must-try diet has crashed and burned. The mince pie diet, despite being packed with tasty treats, festive fun and even a side of debauchery, didn’t seem to tick the boxes the diet industry was looking for. Herumph.

New diet craze?

I thought it had a chance. Maybe if it had been more like the Scarsdale Diet (which I tried when I was 16) – 2 weeks of privation and starvation punctuated by grapefruits, from memory. (There is some form of fruit in mince pie mince, so surely there is some health virtue contained beneath the pastry crust!)

The problem I encountered was that it lasted more than 2 weeks. Which I blame on Covid. Which I blame on the SA borders opening. And also my son snogging a girl in a nightclub. This might sound like I’m casting round for someone to blame. That’s because I am.

Cam got Covid as his early Christmas gift, (I guess I should be relieved – there are worse things he could have caught swapping body fluids with another teenager) and we got locked down with him. And then he gave it to Soph as a Boxing Day special offer, which meant I was locked down again. With a house full of mince pies. And brandy cream. And lots of wine. YUM!

Over 3 weeks of lockdown and inactivity. Eating and drinking like every day was Christmas became a teeny bit of a habit. (I told you I was good at building bad habits).

And slightly disastrous for the waistline.

I am adept at dodging a mirror (which may explain my interesting hairstyles on any given day), so had ignored any information available from reflecting on my reflection. And my brain is brilliant at deducting that any number it doesn’t like on a set of weighing scales is just a blip. Even if the blip is repeated persistently over a series of weeks.

Trend? What good is a trend to someone who is a dedicated non-follower of fashion?

There is a reason I stopped working in Finance.

I live my life in lycra (more fetchingly termed activewear, I know), which is a joy for someone determined not to notice changes of an expanding kind.

So the cancer malarky has exposed more than just my boob. Which quite frankly was more than I really wanted to put on show. However, hospital gowns have an unfortunate way of exposing not just boob, but everything from the waist up, which involves the generous extra layers of flesh that have morphed from morsels of deliciousness.

The tiny dragon was always very quiet and maintained a very low profile. If I had to have surgery, I would have much rather chosen a tummy tuck and a bit of liposuction. After all, my boob only started hurting after they began poking about under my armpit with their biopsies and popping out lymph nodes like they were pomegranate pips. I was absolutely unaware there was anything lethal lurking.

But what have boobs got to do with mince pies? Where am I going with this?

Well, my friend, despite all the literature and information that is thrust at you when you join the cancer club, the one thing that no-one really mentions is that you automatically get life membership. Because whilst cancer isn’t infectious, it seems to have a nasty habit of reinfecting parts of your body, given half a chance.

I prefer holiday brochures, thanks

There was me thinking that once they’d dug the dragon out, I was pretty much done and dusted. Radiation for a belt and braces approach. Embrace drug-induced menopause. But then I’ll be dispatched to life as normal. Right?

Wrong.

Breast cancer is like a pickled onion. It keeps repeating on you.

So my best hope of dodging the waft of a cancerous burp is to lose the excess weight. And start running again.

According to an article on the Garmin app, a study was carried out of around 1000 post-cancer peeps who took up regular exercise. Approximately 750 took up walking and the other 250 ran. And the running group had a lower recurrence of cancer. Look, I know that was just one study, but the results were such that it has piqued interest and hopefully there will be more research.

So I have joined WeightWatchers, which I’m liking so far. (I am always a fan girl of anything new until I’m not). I like rewards, and I get bonus points for eating veggies. And drinking water. And doing exercise. Which I can use to spend on the odd mince pie, if I must. (I might wait for the festive season to be upon us).

And we all know I like playing out.

So the god send has been an exercise studio in town called The Nourish Nook.

When you get diagnosed with cancer 3 weeks after moving to somewhere where you know no-one (apart from the hubstacle, that is), it is amazing to be able to zen out in yin yoga classes, occupy your busy brain with pullies and springs on the reformer bed and today, officially 6 weeks post surgery, I braved a MetCon class. Cancer hasn’t killed me, but I wasn’t sure if HIIT would take me out. In case you were wondering, I survived.

And I am slowly finding my new tribe. Not a cancer crew. I’m just not convinced that’s what I want right now. But a bunch of fitness pals. Because I might identify as a “social” rather than an “athlete”, but I like being around positive people. The ones focused on living rather than just surviving.

Farm finances

Urban farming on the balcony is proving harder than expected, and a move to the country is expensive. A new business venture might save the day.

It’s officially the Christmas public holiday, but Covid has struck again, daughter number 1 was bored and the decs are therefore down. The only vestige of the festive season is that my diet continues to be primarily mince pie based.

With cream.

For balance

Very hungry caterpillars

The ones in my neighbourhood are NOT this cute… (but possibly this large)

The other part of life that has resumed is the ongoing war with caterpillars in the fruit bushes.

The fruit bushes had sort of survived life in the dry north. Battling the lack of moisture was struggle enough. Who needed pests to further highlight my lack of a green finger or thumb?

But the Big Smoke produces moisture: we get fairly regular rain. And when your whole acreage amounts to 2 balconies, it’s not too hard to remember to pop out with a watering can on other days.

So I became quite alarmed when the bushes seemed to shrink from one day to the next. Not height wise. Just one day there would be ample leafage, the next, a denuded tangle of stems.

WHERE ARE THE LEAVES??? THEY WERE THERE WHEN I LEFT THEM THIS MORNING…

It was only then, when I was bemoaning the phenomenon, that the girls casually mentioned the balconies are infested with leaf munchers. Bastards! (The caterpillars, I mean…)

Can’t get no satisfaction

Initially I gave them a spray with a solution containing dipel. Which had the satisfying effect of making all the caterpillars pop out of their hidey-holes and start marching along stems and looking like they were about to produce abseiling moves worthy of Mission Impossible.

I picked those bad boys off and taught them to abseil over the balcony. No ropes provided.

Job done I thought.

Only to come back a couple of days later to suspiciously fewer leaves again.

GRRRR.

It has turned into a daily chore. Spray – pick – chuck. Spray – pick – chuck.

Yesterday, I only encountered 2 tiny tyrants. Today only one.

Tell Mick Jagger I have found some SATISFACTION!!!

Escape to the country

So now the Grumpster has performed his biennial attempt to escape and moved again with work, he is intent on buying property in his new location.

I’ve found the perfect farm, and the good news is we’re only a million dollars short of the asking price.

We’ve asked the furs to turn out their piggy banks, but the puppies can’t remember if they buried theirs or spent it all on carob and peanut butter treats. And Garfield’s grumpy brother had to spend all his replacing his human sister’s computer screen when he accidentally (*cough*) nudged it off the kitchen counter…

But I’ve come up with a genius business venture.

Cat wool

Yes, move over sheep and alpaca wool. The next big thing is cat wool.

Much easier to sheer – in fact no sheering required. Simply stand still, preferably in dark trousers. And the next thing you know is the cat wool will have attached itself to you. Simply open a sack and brush the cat wool in.

Process diagram: Capturing cat wool

Daughter number 2 is a marketing guru, so I feel she owes it to the family to support the venture by creating the marketing campaign to drive this exciting departure into new territory.

Quilts across the country could be filled with this soft, floofy, environmentally friendly product!

Let’s just put those thoughts of allergies that immediately popped into your head to one side.

And focus on the delightfully soft and floofy comfort that could be coming to your home. With no annoying wailing at one o’clock in the morning because there is a door, somewhere in this world, that needs to be opened RIGHT NOW!!!

Elon Musk will be kicking himself!

So as this idea is more ingenious than anything Elon has come up with, and recognising that he never made any money with Tesla for years, I’m sure there must a nice bank manager or mortgage lender that is willing to finance my move to the country.

And bonus – I get to become a super crazy cat lady entrepreneur. I might even find one amongst the herd that likes me!!

2022 is looking bright already!