Which App Is More Socially Acceptable?

Not mine for sure!

So, I told you good peeps that I was off to a BBQ at friends on Australia Day (I’m going to over look the fact that I actually screwed up and we drove 1.5 hrs each way on the wrong day and had to do it all over again the following day, completely messing up our long weekend plans*).

“Adventure” aside,  we had a lovely day (eventually!), our hosts were delighted to find that the bottle of wine was all for them. We proceeded to chat and eat the afternoon away.  Discussion turned, as it so often does with a bunch of middle to slightly older people sitting around, to health.

Crazy Cat Boy and I had explained that we were taking the year off booze**. He said so he could lose weight, that prompted fitness aspiration confessions from around the table,  within seconds phones were produced and fitness/health apps were flourished around and workout stats analysed (Boys!).

Apps are fabulous, but the thing that stood out to me is the boys (I was the only woman at the table, not unusual in my world) all had apps that were positive, they were providing their users with a “solution”… my app, a sobriety app, suggested to all that I had a “problem”.

I said so and that got a laugh from the group, but it got me thinking, is it a different mind set with guys when they set out to “improve” themselves?  Do women immediately go to a place where we decided that we aren’t good enough and that we have a problem that needs to be fixed? Do men look at things differently?   I never even considered downloading a fitness app. Do these even track drinking/non drinking as part of the overall health aspect?  (Dunno, haven’t looked and this was supposed to be a short post, I really have a lot of work to do today)

It’s an interesting concept to explore… I work with mostly men and don’t really have a whole lot of IRL interaction with women.  I do know that guys don’t do guilt, realising this and taking action to give up guilt myself has helped my mental health a lot.  Perhaps they don’t do imperfection either where they are concerned?

What about all of you out there? I know some of you good people are looking closely or actively working on your relationship with alcohol.  Thoughts on the female v male psyche on addressing this?

 

*Didn’t really, just wasted a day in travel. Thank goodness we weren’t hungover and cranky at each other, that could have been a long 1.5 hr trip home! LOL  We did go for a long walk and visit a nice garden that was on the “list of stuff to do”.  

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‘Stralia Day, The Booziest Weekend Of Them All

It’s Australia Day in my little patch of the world and along with all the controversy around the day itself, something I’m not going to get into here, it’s also a long weekend where getting blind (Aussie term for very drunk) is considered obligatory.  It’s downright un Australian not to write yourself off apparently.

We are off to friends for lunch and I’m writing this from the comfort of my bed, but on the kitchen table sits a very nice bottle of red wine.  I put it there last night to remind me to take it today as a gift for our hosts.  However, Crazy Cat Boy has been giving me weird looks and I can see his mind churning… “Is that for us, are we drinking today? What about this year off thing she was on about?”

The answer is no, I won’t be drinking today (I’ve got Kombucha in the fridge to take for me), and the great thing is that I also won’t get any stick from this set of friends about not drinking. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that my gay mates are always completely accepting of other peoples decisions.  I might get a polite inquiry as to why no booze, but I certainly won’t get grilled like I have been in other circumstances.

Last week I was staying in old home town with Super Sammie and caught up with a few friends for dinner…. one dear friend spent about 20 minutes hanging shit on me for not drinking and then pulled me aside later to seriously ask me if I was sick  –  Nope, not dying, just not drinking!  LOL.

I’m looking forward to today, for once I’ve got the right outfit, it’s no longer stupidly hot here and I’ll happily handover the wine to hosts and drink my Kombucha while eating too many sausages and possibly getting mildly sun burnt… it’d be un Australian  not to!  😉

Getting Your Ducks In A Row(ish)

Well good Internet people it’s week three of the new year, who’s still keeping their resolutions?  😉

I am, only 349 days left to meet my sober challenge (I’m a counter, what can I say!) and I’m making an effort to get my shit sorted nice and early in the year.

To this end, today I’ve booked a dentist appointment (to fill an annoying gap in my aging teeth) and to have my tax done next week. I’m also writing this at the same time as restoring my hair to its “natural” colour and removing that pesky lady mo LOL.

Ok, so none of this is very exciting, but it means I’m moving forward, something that I’ve been slow with in recent years.

So, this is me, gradually getting my ducks in a row, what are you going to do today to muster your ducks into whatever formation you’d like them to be in?

Back Fat & Booze

One of the “joys” of getting older is watching my body change… it’s doing stuff that I’ve never had to deal with before and I’m not happy about it.  Yeah, yeah, I know, age gracefully, be thankful that I have the chance, so many don’t, etc, etc… trust me I get all that but seriously, why can’t I just stay the shape I was?

I’m pretty lucky, I’m one of these people that have until the last few years been able to eat pretty much what I want and as long as I move a bit my weight doesn’t change a lot.

However, it was brought home to me by a young bra fitter recently that there’s been a change I really don’t like.  I was feeling a bit frumpy, as you do when you reach a certain age and decided that a new bra would cheer me up (why I thought this I have no idea. LOL).   So I trotted off to brand name underwear chain to get fitted.  All the bra’s I tried on provided me with a very sexy (NOT!) and unwelcome extra roll of fat poking out from under the arms and around the back.   “These don’t fit” I confidently tell the fitting assistant “They’re too tight, look at that bulge, let’s try another size”.  She casually looks me over and says “Nope, right size, don’t worry about that, everyone has them” she says in the comforting the old lady tone that only a retail sales assistant can carry off.

My first thought was – hey, I’m not everyone young lady! followed swiftly by, when did this happen to me, I’m not an extra roll of fat kind of person??!!

But you know what, I am now.  Years of booze (and brie)  have added an unwelcome layer of padding to my body.  It’s crept up gradually and I never noticed until I wasn’t happy with what I saw.

So, my existing bra’s aren’t uncomfortable because they are old, they are uncomfortable because I’m inhaling too much sugar and sitting around feeling hungover and sorry for myself.  Right then!

You know what, I’m tired of being tired and not being the best me.  So, 2019 is the year of “YES”, yes to opportunities, yes to new experiences, yes to no booze for the year and yes to recovering me.

PS: day ten no booze and I feel great… day ten is when the happy comes back… day 15 is where I forget what it’s like to drink and crack, so I’m on my guard!