Hazza Pottahhh

Well the seventh and final installment of Harry Potter is in. AND WHAT A FINISH! Being a literature major at uni its no doubt I was incredibly excited about this book release. I ordered my copy early to ensure that I got one but when I got to the store to pick it up I realised I had to line up anyways. AND there were loads and loads of copies sitting on the shelves there had not been pre-ordered.

Anyways, this line was long. It went from the front of the store in Borders at Carlton all the way to the back, nearly to Gloria Jeans. I lined up, picked up my copy and then they send me to the back of store to line up for my Hedwig toy. Why on earth they didnt have them all together is beyond me. So anyways. I get home and I had another two classes to teach so I decided to wait until I got home on the Saturday night to start reading. When I got home I started reading as planning and only managed to get three hours done. I was so exhausted from teaching three classes that day that i was falling asleep at the wheel. So I begrudgingly retired for the night and rose the next morning, picking up my book beofre I even got out of bed. I didnt stop reading till just before 5.30 that afternoon. I read the whole book. I'm sure a lot of people would have and probably did the exact same thing. Here's what I think (please note, spoilers ahead):

- J.K could have given Ginny a bit more of a pivotal role. She did end up marrying her and Harry and they had lots of offspring so I think readers might have wanted to see a little more of their relationship grow. I certainly did.

- I was incredibly surprised to learn of Snape's role. he was in love with Harry's mother? What the? Great, fabulous, sensational twist. I most certainly did not see that one coming.

- I knew Dumbledore was really dead. So many people thought it was a set up. I twas the bloody avarda kedavra curse people, come on!

- Ron and Hermione make sense but they are the weirdest couple together. Does anyone else agree?

- AND finally I think she has opened up a path for 7 more books. Albus Severus Potter and the hogwarts chronicles. I can see it now. We'll see if she thinks so too

The biggest question I have now is what the hell is she going to do next? Harry Potter was her first novel. Where do you go after that? I'm incredibly envious of her. Not of her money and her success but that she managed to create history with her own creativity. I would love to have that much talent.

Holy McGuiver life is lost!

Well here I am, weeks after my last post and I feel like it was just yesterday. My uni results have been returned to me and I did alright. I ended up walking away with a high distinction, distinction and a credit. I wasn't very happy with the credit mark but there is no use crying over spilt milk now is there? This semester (which starts on monday) is going to be massive, five massive subjects, 14 massive assignments over 8 different massive due dates. Basically i'm fucked.

So this is what i've been doing. Uni finished and then i had bodypump training the weekend I finished my assignments. I walked way from pump with a clearance to teach but also the sorest body on this bloody planet. So, i entered week one of my holidays feeling like a criple and I had four extra classes to take. So in total, in week one of my holidays I took 14 classes. No recovery for me, I felt like death. Then enter week two, I started out sorer than week one and again, four additional classes on top of my own normal load. This week I took two extras but I tell you, i'm only just now getting over the soreness from Bodypump three weeks ago. No doubt its because of all the classes i've been doing.

I wanted to really get some headway on my marathon training during my break but i've been so sore and busy with classes that I just didnt have the energy. Now uni is set to go back next week and I feel all cuffuffled again. MEH!!! life is just barrelling away from me right now. I feel like I dont have time to scratch myself let alone have any sort of sub-normal existence. Or, maybe this is what normal is supposed to be like in adult life. Maybe being happy and cruisy all the time is abnormal. Who knows. I like keeping busy thats for sure but right now I feel so busy that i almost feel like i'm suffocating.

I have another class to run off to, i want to write more so i'll have to log back on later tonight to blog the rest!

its official

I can't deny it any further, I am a yo-yo dieter. I go from wanting to be brilliantly buff, working out really hard and eating really well for several months, I get fantastic results and then I turn on myself and become all self righteous about my body. I go on this whole stint about positive body image and trying to accept myself for who I am. I try and tell myself that I dont want to spend my entire life in a gym and I end up putting on all the weight I lost and all the great effort I put in is reversed. And here I am again, at the tail end of a righteous phase about to become a gym/diet junkie again. Watch this space you'll see great things achieved over the coming months i'm sure of it. But watch again in few months more and i'm sure you'll all that great work gone again.

Now let's talk this through. If I only exercised three times per week and ate relatively well but still allowed myself to eat the things I wanted, I would be a fairly solid size twelve, possibly the bottom end of a fourteen. When I diet and exercise like mad I can go down to a low 10. I wonder if this ever stops? Do I go through my entire life like this? I dont know. I need to either learn to love myself as a bigger girl or I need to learn to maintain such a disciplined diet and exercise regime. There is a lot more at stake now too, i'm an aerobics instructor and I cant just get fat because I feel like it. Blah. Sometimes being a woman is incredibly hard. Sometimes its fanatastic, but sometimes its just plain hard.

The funny thing is, looking fantastic for people isnt even an issue for me. Its all about how I feel and when I am bigger, I feel worse. But here's the thing, do I feel worse because I know I dont look as good? Or do I feel worse because the body naturally feels better when you're treating it well? These are the questions I ask myself a lot.

I have a girlfriend who is a little bigger than I am. She says she worries about her weight but she is so self confident that I often question whether she is worried, or she is saying she is worried because that is what most girls do... its the same thing as above, how do i really tell which is the truth?

I long for the day that I become completely and totally happy with my body. Or at least acceptance would be nice. I actually thought I was almost there, but as I see now i'm just going through a phase again. MEH!

Well I have my very strong coffee by my side and I'm sitting here thinking how the hell i'm going to muster both the energy, and the brain power I need to get my last two assignments finished. Postmodern literature is a crock and I'm just over it. I have absolutely no idea why I chose this subject. I think it had something to do with the fact that I didn't know anything about it and I wanted to learn more. Well the funny thing is, I still dont know anything about it but the only thing that has changed is that I no longer want to learn another single thing about it. I have never in my entire life come across a subject matter that meant less. Its completely meaningless. No one can define it, no one seems to know what it is yet EVERYONE is talking about it in the books. There appear to be several key theorists who have written most of the credible work on it and they write with such pretention that I just cant keep up. Whatever happened to plain english? Perhaps these people never actually spoke in plain english to begin with.

I'm doing remarkably well in all my other subjects but i'll be surprised if I get anything other than a pass for this one, which is a shame because I wanted my grade point average to remain as high as possible for the whole degree. How dissapointing. MEH!!! I somehow managed to swing an extension for over the weekend but as it turns out I now have Bodypump training over the weekend so its a complete and total write off. I need have these things finished by Friday or i'm going to be in trouble.

Paris Out of Jail

Ohmigod! So Paris Hilton was supposed to serve a 27 day sentence but after just 5 days she has been released. How lame. I cannot believe it. It makes me angry, its going to send the message that the rich are going to be able to buy their way out of anything. God, the American justice sysytem is so screwed up.

Spazzwood

Selwood is spazzing again. After he eats, just goes NUTS! He was also in his cage for quite a while today because I had a Bodystep class to teach. I'm really looking forward to the day that he starts coming to classes with me. I feel terrible leaving him in his cage. He gets these teeny puppy eyes that make me feel SO guilty.

We're not really having much progress with his toilet training and its starting to worry me. I have been taking him our hourly, as sugested and if he needs to go, he'll go while were out ther but if he doesnt he'll just wait till he does need to and dump it where ever he might be. I dont mind cleaning up after him, I'm just worried that he's not learning quick enough.

There are some things that he has learnt really quickly. Like how to sit. Unless he is in the middle of a spazz out (like now) he'll sit if you tell him to. He also has the feeding ritual down pat. He'll sit in front of his bowl and wait for permission to start eating. The stuff that he needs to learn in relation to his lead has kind of been put on hold because of his operation, so I guess I just want him to do well in everything else so that when he needs to learn that stuff, he's already in learning mode. I have two more weeks until everything with uni is due and then he and I are hitting the training big time. I'll shower him with training and love and then hopefully my guilt will subside.

He is chewing absolutely everything too. he can be such a terror but he is SO adorable that its really hard to stay mad at him. I just have to remind myself that he's only 8 weeks old. he's still an infant for goodness sakes!

The morning after

Well, this morning i'm feeling rather lousy again. I know I ate too much last night and i'm feeling terrible. I've been reading a fitness forum all morning and my god there are some incredibly dedicated people out there. These people's lives revolve entirely around diet and exercise. They are all much fitter, skinnier, toned than i am and they just participate in the industry - I work in the industry. For about ten minutes I found myself saying "I'll start dieiting and exercising like a madman again and i'll be able to look like that too". It only lasted ten minutes though. There are more important things in life than having a toned body. I know this now (though it took me several years to reach that conclusion). I do however need to stop eating so poorly. Not becuase i'm worried that i'll get fat, but because I'm feeling revolting. I teach three bodystep and five RPM classes per week so I do think i'm doing enough exercise. When I pick up bodypump as well, that is going to increase so I know for sure that the reason i'm feeling the way I am is because i'm eating badly.

Right now I just dont have the time to dedicate to 'getting buff'. Plus, my priorities are elsewhere at the moment. I've got uni for one, which is tied first as the most important thing happening with me at the moment. Tied first with Selwood that is :P He takes up a lot of time and energy. Once he gets a little older i'm going to start running again, but at the moment I cant leave him alone for too long so my exercise is limited to my aerobics classes.

I think I'm just having a bad run at the moment. The thought of spending EXTRA time in the gym is actually quite horrible. I love teaching my classes but I also love leaving at the end of class. I've been saying to people for some time now that I dont wnat to spend the younger part of my life slogging it out in the gym, and I mean it. I'm hoping that this passes soon!

Brad is in America right now for a work conference. I can't wait till he gets back. He always makes me feel better about this kind of stuff.

It's one of those days

I'm having one of those days where everything feels yuck. I got my period yesterday so maybe thats why :P

This month the thing that is bothering me is my body. So from previous entries its clear that i've had issues with dieting in the past. It wasnt until six months ago that I finally found peace with my body, but every now and then my female hormones turn on me and I have mini stress attacks all over again. I think the reason I stress about it like this is because I work in the fitness industry and I feel like I should be a better example of a strong fit person. I'm a great instructor, I just dont have the ripped, super skinny body. I must admit that in the last month i've just been eating terribly and this is probably the overall reason as to why i'm stressing right now. it was bound to catch up with me. I just need t focus on eating wholesome fresh foods during the week and then on weekends let myself eat a little more freely. That's what i've been doing and its been working, till a month ago when I actually picked up my weekend eating to all the time :p WHOOPS!

I've also been drinking a few glasses of wine about four nights a week lately, which has probably excaccerbated my mini stress attack. Actually *light bulb moment*, its a combination of the following
-consistent poor diet
-too much alcohol
-decreased level of exercise

For various reasons i've had several classes covered for the last couple of weeks and I think the lack of exercise has also contributed to the yuck feeling.

its important that I verbalise that this entry is not another false promise to cut back on bad food, pick up the exercise and just go go go so I can improve my body. its absolutely not about that. its about me venting, verbalising my problems so that I dont hit panic mode and head into that pattern again. I probably will get up early and go for a run tomorrow even though I have a class at lunch time but I have been lacking in the exercise lately so its probably warranted. I do however, want to recognise that it's probably not the best thing for me to keep drinking alcohol so frequently. I had a moto of drinking on weekends only, which was working fine. I think i relaxed TOO much and now the relaxed part of my brain is taking over the rest :P haha. I'm used to exercising like a madwoman. Not because I think I have to but because I absolutely love it. Your body gets addicted to something like that. lately, i've been so busy with uni and selwood that exercise has come last. I have two more weeks of uni before the semester break. its been a great learning curb for me, trying to juggle uni with everyday life. i'm picking up two extra subjects next semester so it will be interesting to see how my coping skills pan out :P

end of rant, I feel better. Thanks for listening!

Feminist what?!

I'm currently writing an assignment on the blatant antifeminist messages that young female protagonists are sending to their young female readers in contemporary young adult chick lit. fiction and its got my brain all ferhoodled.

According to my research/analysis the main characters in Chick Lit nowadays are turning their backs on the feminist movement, whether they realise they are doing it or not. I'm analysing "Vegan, Virgin, Valentine", "Does My Head Look Big In This" and "The Truth About Forever" for my paper and what astounds me is, that to the casual observer these books appear to be normal stories that teenagers read. However, apply some feminist theory to their respective narratives and you've got yourself a feminist's worst nightmare. All of these books are written by females and all the main characters are females, so my question is: do these authors think about these kinds of things when they are writing their novels, or are the literary feminist critics of today out of control?!

I'm in the process of writing my own novel at the moment and I can confidently say that I haven't once sat down and thought about whether the situation my female protagonist is in, is a blatant violation of the unwritten feminist law.

for my assignment, my arguement is that these young female characters are forgoing their own careers, goals and desires for the sake of romance. And it's actually true. The first time I read each novel through, I was captivated with each story because I thought they were great novels for a teenager to read. Then I started doing my research and read each book through again and tried applying my research as I read and I was appalled. These girls in these books really are giving up their own lives for their boyfriends. Its subtle but its happening. So should our teenagers be reading stories about romance and getting that guy, or should they be reading stories about academic success and career orientated narratives? Unfortunately I can't answer that...

Susan Faludi says that the feminist movement has come around and kicked women in the ass. A study found that depression and mid-life crisis' are far more common in single career women, than in married family women. Speaking as a woman, I can't imagine ever not having children. I'm actually craving to start a family. I'd give up any chance of a career for my 'husband and children' if it meant I could raise a happy successful family. But every woman is different. And anyway, who are we to decide what kinds of stories kids should be reading? How do we know that if we write these pro-feminist narratives, that someone else out there isnt going to come up with a crazy theory about how we're corrupting the minds of our teenage girls.

I feel like i'm actually studying sociology and not literature. Its incredibly challenging but I have to say, the challenge is always welcome. Except when I have assignments due and i'm freaking out about the due dates :P tehehe.

The Good Things in Life

Everyone has differing opinion on what exactly encompasses the 'good things in life'. Tonight, I allowed myself to indulge in just a few of them. Cookies and Cream and Honeycomb and Butterscotch icecream heaped onto arrowroot cookies being the first and foremost. It wasn't too long ago that I would have either not let myself eat something like this at all, or I would have spent the next few hours berrating myself for 'giving into weakness'. As someone who has abstained from eating icecream for the last four or so years I can happily say that my years of depirvation are well and truly over. I was standing in the kitchen smelling the very essence of the cookies and cream icecream float up from the container and a smile crept across my face. After such a hard day (which i'll elaborate more on another time) it was nice to unwind in the comfort of my own home without being uptight and stressed at the the calorie consumption occuring right in front of me.

Another of life's indulgences which I allowed myself to take tonight was a good glass of wine. Unlike the icecream, alcohol is something which I havent abstained from over the years but I have treated it with much the same disrespect as I approached eating in general. For so long I was so concerned with the amount of calories in each glass that I just wanted to get really drunk really fast so that I could
a) forget how much i'd consumed and
b) wash away the guilt of consuming said calories by just getting wasted.
Wine is an awesome part of adult life. Its aroma's, tastes and general culture is something that I totally bypassed until recently. So tonight I let myself slowly and surely have two and half glasses (probably would have had three but I ran out at 2.5, ha!)

I'm sitting here at the moment writing about the class strucutres present in both the traditional version of the Cinderella tale and how the ideology in relation to class in the modern variant, Ever After has changed. I've had icecream and cookies, wine, peace and quiet and now i'm writing an assignment topic about something that I've always wanted to write about: Literature. Until just recently I always thought literature was fruitless, that it wouldnt take me anywhere so it wasnt worth more than that casual read on the tram etc etc. Thank God above I pushed through that snobbery. Studying literature is one of the best decisions I have ever made. I enjoy it so much that I dont mind sitting down to writte complicated essays about class structures. I love what i'm studying so much, that actually studying is a pleasure. Go figure. The good things in life will always take you by surprise.

A friend of mine will disagree with most of the things that i've written about tonight. He doesnt like alcohol and he doesnt particularly find literature all that exciting either. To him, the good things in life are scary horror movies and things like that. I was sitting on my lounge today thinking about the diverse range of people ive chosen as my friends and realised that we dont really have all that much in common, except for the fact that we know that the good things in life are going to be different for everyone and we all accept it as just the way it is. We appreciate each other for who we are, not what we do and what we have. That, is one of the very best things in life.

As a writer, I feel its my duty to contribute to the world of blogging. I've had loads of fitness and health related blogs before but never really one dedicated to my personal thoughts. So here it is...

Where does one start with a blog like this? I guess the things which are pressing most upon my mind would be an ideal place to start.

I've just become a guide dog puppy carer and i've got my first puppy, Selwood, sitting on my lap as I type. I've only had him for five days but goodness me we have bonded already. I've had dogs my whole life but when you're a teenager I guess your parents kind of take care of all the hard stuff when it comes to raising a pet. This time, its all up to me. He's like a newborn baby, he wakes up in his cage/pen two or three times a night and cries endlessly. Sleepless nights are quite common at the moment. Not that I have any children of my own to measure this by, but I feel as tired as a new mother does.

He requires constant attention and supervision at the moment because he's teething and he chews just about everything he can get his little jaw around. Because he's a guide dog in training we have to make sure he stops chewing as soon as possible. He's also having some issues with the whole toilet training thing. He has to be taught to pee and poop on command and at the moment he is just going wherever he happens to be at that point in time. He is completely and totally dependent on me for everything.

My girlfriend came over last night and was so shocked that I'd actually gone through with the decision to become a carer. It was almost like she didnt believe it when I told her that I'd got the dog and when she saw it with her own eyes, she went into a state of shock. She asked me whether I'd thought about how much responsibility i'd just taken on. The thing is, i've been ready for something like this for such a long time. And the sleepless nights,the constant washing of pooped towels etc are nothing compared to the joy that he brings to my life. I adore him and I adore taking care of him. My life has obviously needed to be altered to cater for him, but I dont care. He's sitting on my lap right now all curled up and I look at him and all I can see is total love. When I look at him I realise there is nothing I wouldnt do to make sure he grows up a strong and responsive guide dog. Its now my job to ensure his success. More than ever I want him to succeed. When someone else is so completely dependent on you for the general day to day things they need in order to survive, you really get an understanding and sense of self worth. I feel like my own life is now so much more important because he needs to succeed.

It is however, going to be VERY hard giving him back...