the time squeeze

Time. Not enough time, too much time, time for dinner, time to waste, time for a change. I think about time, quite a lot, especially when I haven’t enough of it, or when I’m wasting it. It concerns me when time seems to fly by. This year, for example, has been a whirlwind. It’s coming up to my birthday in a few weeks, which also marks the year mark of my time at my ‘new’ job. The reason I’m happier, the reason I stopped writing for my old blog.

This year was also the year we started to (slowly) take control of our home, we went on holiday to Turkey (with the in-laws), and I’ve started to figure out who I want to be, in the years to come. This isn’t an easy transition, you know. Growing up (yes, I’m still doing that at 27, why do you ask?) can be either an accident or deliberate. I’ve been pretty nonchalant about it up to now, but I realise that who I become now very much informs the person I will be for most of my adult life. And I think that’s something worth being deliberate about, don’t you?

I want to be interested, active, the kind of person people ask to do things, an interesting person. I want to be the kind of person who re-upholsters a chair over the weekend, or paints the kitchen in an afternoon. At the moment, I’m much more likely to blow both off for cocktails in the sun, but it’s important to me to try, and if that means thinking about it for a long time first, I’ll take it. After all, I took a year to tell my friends that I was engaged – clearly I move at glacial speeds.

So, when it comes to time, it turns out that time is the most important thing there is. Actually.

Photo from flickr user.

the life-competition

It’s coming up to that time of my life, that time when the 10 year school reunions are happening. Since I’ve been to, nine schools across three continents, I’ve got more than one invitation to these reunions. So what’s the issue, I hear you say? Well, I wasn’t exactly what you could term a ‘cool’ teenager (hell, I’m still not cool, I’m just more used to it now). I still have a few friends scattered across the world, one or two from each school I went to, quite often none if I was unhappy there.

Why is this a big deal? Well, with Facebook, I already know who has gotten married, who’s had kids, and who’s unemployed and living in their mothers house. I’m still in contact with the people I still care about, and those I don’t speak to? There’s a reason people fall out of your life.

One of these reunions is in Dubai. Yeah. That’s awkward. The other is only a few kilometers from my house. Am I going? No. I was never that girl, that joiner, that one who missed high school. I was awkward in high school, and those girls who never spoke to me cut me to the quick. And no, I don’t want to go and play the ‘who-has-a-better-life-now’ game. That really doesn’t sound like fun. Instead, I will gather with my friends, the people I’ve cared for during the last ten years. I will help my sick friend to plan her wedding, and I’ll support my newlywed friend who has to live apart from her husband. I’ll focus my time on the amazing friends I have made since I left high school. The people who make my life better every day. What I won’t do is waste precious time and energy on people who have never cared about me, and who I have never cared about. After all, we weren’t friends 10 years ago, why on earth would we be now?

How about you? Did you go to your reunion? Do you have one you’re going to? Or maybe you’re the planner? Does it make a difference if you were at a school for more than two years?

*Sorry for the crappy quality photos, but those are a few screenshots of wedding photos.

the fat myth

If you tend towards the chunkier end of the spectrum, if you’re a bit of a butterball, or even if you’re carrying a few extra kilos around, you’ve probably thought about what you eat, and try to eat healthily, as a way of managing that extra chub. I’ve been a chub for as long as I can remember, carrying around a varying amount of extra self (more to love, I tell my husband). But it’s always worried me, in a vague kind of way. Why, if I eat healthily, do I not maintain a healthy bodyweight? It can’t just be that I don’t like to exercise, because even when I exercise, I don’t lose weight. So I did some investigation.

I still remember the first time I realised that fat doesn’t make you fat. Sugar does. It was like the world had upended. All that wholewheat, low GI bread, the wholewheat pasta, the careful avoidance of full-fat milk, yoghurt, fat bits on steak, it wasn’t ever going to help. As a sedentary person (with a distinct love for sitting on the couch reading my book), I was never going to lose weight on a diet rich in carbohydrates. That meant out with pasta, out with sandwiches. Out with cake, out with cookies. Out with so many of my favourite things! But. I could still keep ice cream, chocolate, steak, and wine, so there was that.

It hasn’t been easy, you know. It’s not just wheat that’s the problem, it’s carbohydrates in general. So, I’ve made a deal with myself. In return for an almost-no-carb (grains, wheat, starch) diet, I get to cheat occasionally. It does my system no good, but it makes my heart happy. So I can still have risotto sometimes (which makes my week).