Procrastination

Dear folks,

How are you? I currently have the hiccups, but I am well. Do you spell them hiccoughs? I have had a cold for the last two days, but now am bravely soldiering on.

Well I think that just about wraps it up for the news for the last month or so, I can take another hiatus.

*****

Ok, so, I'm not the best at updating. Sorry. But that is due to a very good reason,

Extreme laziness.

So I am updating now, because I have something other than updating my blog to procrastinate from: Cleaning All The Things.

Yes, we are finally reaching the end of our stay in NZ. Do I say that often enough to be annoying yet? I do feel like I constantly update you all with fitful reminders ('last two months in NZ! last one and a half months in NZ! last month and a bit in NZ! OH GOD IT'S JUST UNDER A MONTH NOW.) Just another couple of days and we'll be winging it over to Wanaka to try and not break anything before the wedding. I'm so excited!

What has been happening recently?

Well, I'm now going to be working in Reading next month, not Windsor. I am of course thrilled, just as Ricky Gervais' mother would have been, for there are definitely parts of Reading I haven't been to yet.

I've been accepted as a trainee member of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, in one of the most brilliant suspense-building letters for the least-suspense-requiring-application I've ever received ("Dear Dr Han, we have carefully considered your request for membership in our annual meeting..." - it's just a trainee membership, folks. You don't need to carefully consider it.) Indeed, how much is there to carefully consider:

"Looks like this Dr Han person wants to be a trainee member."

"Goodness me. Well what are the requirements for being a trainee member?"

"Well, you must be a trainee."

"And is she?"

"Yes."

"Jolly good. What else?"

"And you must want to be a member."

"Oh. Well, does she?"

"Well she's sent in an application. So one can only assume she does."

"You know what they say about assuming, Wilkins. Makes an ass - "

"I think we can safely assume she does, sir."

"So what you're saying, Wilkins, is that she is a trainee, and wants to be a member, and those are the only requirements for being a trainee member."

"Quite correct."

"Don't we have some kind of recommendation system with old members and the like? You know, to keep the rabble out? Some kind of initiation ceremony involving pheasants and a naked steeplechase? I remember having to do something unspeakable to a foxhound in the basement of the RCP building before being allowed in."

"No, sir. If you'll recall, that's for full membership of the College. This is just for trainee membership. Those are the only requirements we have."

"Standards are slipping, Wilkins. Why, when I was young - "

"No doubt, sir. Shall I send a reply?"

"Just go over it again with me, Wilkins. Complicated stuff, this. What exactly are the requirements again?"

***

Back to my news.

I've finished my job and now am a full fledged huswife dawdling about the place waiting for tim to get home. I sort of imagined that when this happened, I would be at the pool, going to the gym, learning 3x different languages, and generally being as productive as hell. What has actually occurred is that I've read 3 entire detective stories and read a lot of Game of Thrones related news and contracted a cold, which essentailly translates to flipping f-all.

Life. It is ever thus.

So now we've all learnt that I cannot be trusted to rely on my own devices and that a hothouse upbringing and expensive education have only served to make me totally unreliable at motivating myself. I could at the very least be reading the latest guidelines on EYES or something but I've only read one article in the last week and I fell asleep while I was reading it.

I remind you I had a cold.

Wedding planning goes apace and I am very excited about the whole matter, except the matter of my dress, which I am beginning to fear I will not fit into, for reasons which I shall shortly explain (not pregnant, before anyone wonders).

So, basically, my BODY PLAN for this year has been to be become buff.

Seriously buff.

Oh all right, I just wanted to beat Tim at arm wrestling. Which I can almost do. So I've been reading MEN'S HEALTH (Australia) and telling everyone endlessly about how much I've been reading Men's Health Australia (which, to be fair, is a pretty amazing magazine - listen to me, ladies. It has lots of awesome work-out tips, which are hilariously unattainable - things like, "To get a hot bod, why not benchpress 2x your own bodyweight for 50 reps?" or similar. I don't even really know what benchpressing means, though I have a vague idea. I just love the idea that I am allowed to read something like that without a member of the police coming by and confiscating it with a, "madam, are you aware that it is illegal to read about shit like this as if you could actually, ever, in your entire life, do? Just let go of the rag quietly, madam."

Anyway so I think I can benchpress about 0.5 of my bodyweight, which is, holy mackerel, pathetic. And when I do it I cry a little bit.

If indeed benchpressing is even what I think it is.

I LOVE IT.

Women's magazines are all, 'have you considered doing this pathetic step exercise 100000 times till you die of boredom?"  Men's Health - "have you considered doing this impossible strength exercise which will break you in half? I promise you won't be bored, just in agonising pain."

Women's Magazine: "Why not eat less and be slender and delicate?"
Men's Health: "WHY NOT EAT AN ENTIRE DEER. IF YOU'RE HARD ENOUGH. Great protein, by the way."

Women's Magazine: "We have no gadgets, unless it's to do with monitoring how many calories you're putting into your sad little mouth."
Men's Health: "I don't know if you're ready for the technology that we're about to unleash, but I think we may have just made a robot lover who also doubles as a jet-ski."

Next great thing about Men's Health (AUSTRALIA - I have to highlight this because I have no idea if Men's Health UK or indeed USA or whatever is equally titillating, so I have to be very specific as I have no wish to mislead), is that it is full of pictures of hot men.

True story.

Women's Magazines: full of pictures of hot women. No objection to this - lovely women always nice to gaze at.
Men's Health Australia: rammed with semi-naked buff bodies. Of men.  It's like soft-core porn mixed with longing aspiration.  "I wish my upper arms were like, 1/10th of yours. Or if I had 1/20th of your ab definition. Also, wow. Just wow."

***

Sorry, I lost concentration. Where was I?

***

Ok. So the long and short of it is that I have this goal which is to beat Tim at arm wrestling, and as he is pathetically, adorably puny I think that I may actually win. However to be doing this I have taken on the MANTRA of Men's Health, Australia, which is to go to the gym like a loon and swim like a loon and also eat protein like a loon. As we're still trying to eat less meat, this means that I've eaten more soy that I've ever done in my entire life before.

And I'm Chinese.

I want to emphasise that's just a lot of soy, all right? And other stuff. Peanut butter. Quinoa. Whole deer.* So I am genuinely slightly concerned I am not going to be fitting into the wedding dress, which was purchased at a stage in my life whereof I knew not of Men's Health, Australia, and thus was floating around in a bubble of slenderness which I fear I will never attain again, through my devotion to BUFFING UP.


*So in the latest issue, they interviewed Hugh Jackman, which was like,

Interviewer: "Yo, Hugh Jackman, how'd you get to be so buff?"
Hugh Jackman: "So I just pretend I'm Wolverine, and then I can lift all the bad stuff."
Interviewer: "Wow."

So Hugh Jackman's Thing - in case you didn't get it from my elegant summary - is that he IMAGINES himself to be Wolverine when he's exercising, and that's how he does it! Genius. Madness. The mantra around our house now is, 'What would Wolverine do.'

Tim: "Connie, did you just drop a piece of toast onto the floor this morning?"
Me: "Maybe..."
Tim: "And you forgot to pick it up."
Me: "Dude, would Wolverine pick up a frigging piece of toast from the floor? That's not what Wolverine is about, man."
End of discussion.

And Wolverine would, I'm sure, eat a whole deer.

But we haven't.

Thanks for listening.

***

Ok so I'm going to talk about something else other than my Men's Health obsession (which Tim has now picked up on and is now trying to eat even more than me in an attempt to buff up faster than me. YOU'RE GONNA LOSE, TIM. I WORK PART TIME AND I HAVE A BIGGER MOUTH THAN YOU.)

So, what's been up?

We've been to Auckland to see the rugby, which was a truly exciting occurrence. The All Blacks haka-d like whoa, and England put up a pretty damn good game, and Tim wore an England shirt and we got heckled for it. And it was a bit like Men's Health but in live -

Ok, I'll stop.

I've also discovered a blog, which, everyone else has discovered for like forever, but whatever, I'm in New Zealand, so cut me a break, ok? 

It is here. Like all fashion blogs it is best taken in very small doses lest the chortling it turns you to turns into a dire despair at the state of the western world and WHAT HAVE WE DONEary, but small doses are quite chortletastic. I hope this is of use to one of you during any sad revision or work times that should come upon you. 

Sun's finally come out as well for our last week here, so I feel like I ought to go out and have a swim or something or whatever, enjoy this beautiful place for all that it's got. 

I'm getting really very, very excited about coming back to see all of you. And to do a whole load of shopping. New Zealand does that to you. I was talking about this to a friend who's also been over and she said, 'yeah I know. I'm not even a big shopper but...when I went back to the UK for a visit, I went shopping. In my own wardrobe. It was amazing. I was like, 'holy crap, clothes! Clothes that...fit...and....look nice. Shit.'' So if anyone wants to join me on an expedition, be my guest. I'm going to go a little bit CRAZY, given that the only clothes I've bought in the last year have been 2 white t-shirts.  I mean, I feel virtuous, but COME ON I am a housewife currently and if a housewife can't spend all day spending her husband*'s money** and then have something alluring to slip into later as per all the housewifery advice books tell me then she is GOOD FOR NOTHING. 

*not my husband

**I am also technically being paid to be a housewife, as I've just taken leave for my last week. So also not his money***. 

***PRINCIPLE STILL HOLDS.

Speaking of husbands, Tim referred to himself as my 'boyfriend' the other day .I found that weird, given soon we'll be eternally and legally bound as HUSBAND and WIFE and I also feel that 27 is perhaps too old to have a boyfriend, and perhaps we should be saying, 'partner' as if we were in a law firm together, which is what I do say most of the time, so why suddenly revert to boyfriend? Perhaps the clue is that he used it in a sentence in which he referred to himself as, 'maybe the best boyfriend of all time?' and I do feel that 'partner' in that context would not have been just as stylistically apt, though still linguistically sound. 

To all other boyfriends/people with boyfriends out there: I'm sure Tim wasn't making a *general* statement. Anyway, I agreed with him, in spite of the likely issues related to verifying his claim, and despite his use of the clunky 'boyfriend'. 

That's just what Wolverine* would do.

*(I want to make it clear here that I am Wolverine. Emotionally supporting my partner. Being loving. Deadlifting 220lbs or whatever. Beating him at arm-wrestling. All me.)

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See you back in the UK, folks!