|
|
|
So it's been over 2 months, nearly 3 months even, since we arrived back from our overseas trip.
Things have been trucking along slowly, but not completely uneventful.
One thing, that was actually announced before we went away on holiday, was my boss David, the owner of the store and the one who first hired me announced he had decided to sell up the store and take a break away from the optics business for a while.
The new store director who purchased the store is a lady called Katy who, like David, also has come over here from the UK.
I was a bit anxious about the fact she started while I was still away on holiday, because I had hoped to meet her straightaway and make a good impression, but in the end it turned out okay, as she only started a few days before I got back.
Katy is quite a different kind of boss compared to what we had with David. She's a bit more relaxed mostly. Less focused on making us get competitive with sales figures and such. And a bit more generous on things like allowing the staff to get free glasses once a year and stuff like that.
The other big thing with work is that Amanda discovered she was pregnant, also shortly before I went away on holiday. Her plan as it stands, is to take maternity leave sometime in October for like 4 months or however long she can. Whether she will stick to that plan and definitely come up after her maternity leave finishes is yet to be seen however.
At the time she announced it, it briefly crossed my mind about how her being away on maternity leave might affect the store, given she is the main store manager. It did briefly occur to me that maybe I could get bumped up from Assistant Manager to Manager when she leaves, but I didn't give it much thought at the time, because it was early days, plus I knew we were getting Katy into the store soon and I wasn't sure how things would change once she arrived.
But over the last few weeks, a plan has come together. Initially, Katy's plan was a joint management between me and Claire, the admin manager who currently is primarily based in the Lambton Quay store, with her focusing on mostly admin and some other stuff, and me focusing mostly on staff training and stuff like that.
But Claire was super not keen on the idea of actually having to be involved with customer service and dispensing again, as for the last couple of years David has been fine with her having a purely admin role. So she is now leaving.
It was actually while I was discussing this with Katy, that I mentioned in passing how I had always seen Mark as the unofficial third manager (alongside me and Amanda) for the last couple of years ever since me and Amanda got promoted to our manager roles. This was mostly because when that decision got made by David a couple of years ago, Mark had also been in the running to become one of the managers. but David had decided against it. But I think Mark had gotten used to the idea of being in charge and making executive decisions without consulting me and Amanda about it, and so for these last couple of years, being his superior has been somewhat difficult because he kind of just acts like he is on the same level as me and Amanda anyway.
So I figure, if he insists on acting like he is a manager, he might as well be a manager.
Katy must have taken this comment of mine into account, because we had a meeting earlier this week, and it was announced that me and Mark would be co-managers while Amanda is away. It works fine for me, I like the idea of knowing I have some help and it isn't all on my shoulders, plus me and Mark always get along well. It just means I need to focus hard on making sure me and Mark communicate a lot so things don't get messy, and so that he doesn't try to just take charge of everything by himself.
So that's the stuff happening at work.
Outside of work, there's home life. After getting back from our trip, me and Taina got straight back into the whole "trying to make babies" stuff. But still no luck there.
I've done a bit of research online, and so far I've found out about a few things that help with trying to conceive.
Taking vitamin supplements apparently is one, so I've been taking Elevit every day. Another is trying to track my cycles, like when I am ovulating and stuff. I haven't tried buying those expensive ovulation tracking things you can get in the pharmacy yet, but Jesse at work told me about this phone app called Clue, which is really helpful. You enter in data about your periods and stuff, and it calculates when you're next period is likely to be, and when you are likely to be ovulating and stuff.
And another thing I keep coming across is that apparently, being overweight can be quite detrimental to the body's chances of getting pregnant.
This was the one that really raised alarm bells for me.
I've been overweight since...well, since I was still at primary school. Since around or before the time I hit puberty. And over the years, I have made so many attempts to try and figure out why, and to try and lose the weight.
Most of my attempts over the years have been pretty fruitless. Probably the best progress I had was back in 2004/2005 when I got really into DDR and bought my DDR mat and started playing every single day at home. After several months of doing this, I lost a fair bit of weight then.
But the next year, I started my musical theatre course and was going into Wellington every day, and even though I was still playing DDR most nights at home, and doing dance classes as part of my course every day, the weight started to creep back on again.
I've tried other things: Zumba. Joining the gym and going there every day for months, but getting no progress. Wii Fit. Going for walks/runs every morning. Various diets: low sugar, low carb, calorie counting. But I never manage to lose more than maybe 5 kilos at best.
But I came to the conclusion in late June, that it was time to try again. To really, really try. Because I really want to have kids, and maybe losing weight is the only thing that will allow me to get there.
Down my street, about less than 5 minutes walk away from my place, is Curves Gym. A women's only gym, quite small, where they have a set circuit of weight machines and cardio mats that everyone goes around twice in a clockwise direction, doing each station for 30 seconds at a time.
So just before the end of June, one day on my day off I wandered in there to see about joining.
It turned out to be more expensive than any other gym I've ever joined. $79 per month. But the circuit system is handy, because it means you have a set time and a set way to do everything, so there's no chance of stalling or mucking around and not working hard enough. Plus the gym is small and intimate, so anytime you don't use a weight machine correctly, you can guarantee the trainer will be over to set you straight.
My first day there, the trainer did a whole physical assessment: took my weight, BMI, body fat percentage, height, various measurements of different body parts, even blood pressure and heart rate. And they do these checkups free once a month so you can see progress too.
So I got into it and started going almost every day. The location is the main thing that keeps me going. Because it is so close, I get up super early (like 5.30am), go straight to the gym when it opens at 6.10am, do my workout, walk straight home and get ready for work and go.
This used to be a lot harder at other gyms I used to go to. I would have to drive there, find a park and then go in, and so if it was busy sometimes I couldn't get a park for several blocks and would end up just giving up and driving home. But having a gym within walking distance definitely solves this issue.
In the first month of going there, from working out 5-6 days a week, when they measured me at the end of July I had lost 2 kilos. The trainer was all congratulatory, and I knew it was good, but I still felt like I wished it was more.
But then a week later, the trainer mentioned about this 12 week program. The 12 week program is where you sign up on their website, and it gives you a complete food plan for the entire 12 weeks that you have to stick to precisely, as well as tracking your workouts and counting steps throughout the day and stuff.
The 12 week program was on some kind of promotion period where signing up was cheaper than normal, but the promotion was about to end, so the trainer talked me into signing up on the last day. An extra $119 on top of my existing gym fees, but I decided I had to give it a go.
So right now I am nearly at the end of week 2 of this. It's not one where you count calories or anything, it's more that it gives you very select foods and drinks to choose from, and you have to just eat those specific things, in specific portion sizes and not having anything else on top at all.
So far I've stuck to it pretty closely, but Sundays are tricky because me and Taina go over to Dad's place for dinner on Sundays and I don't want to get Dad to customise his meals to suit me, so I just go with the flow for that night.
The biggest difference I noticed from my normal eating patterns, is a lot of protein. Specifically protein sources that are also low in fat, carbs and sugar. So things like eggs, chicken, nuts and protein shakes. Due to having very minimal food preparation time throughout the week (I already get up at like 5.30am just to have time to do a workout before work) I haven't opted for eggs at all. It's been a lot of nuts and chickpeas for me, plus protein shakes, which is something I had never tried before last week.
I've been customising the dinner options to turn them into things Taina can cook for me in the slow cooker, which realistically is the only way to make nutritious dinners work in our household, given I am way too tired to cook after work, and Taina has limited food preparation time also because of classes every afternoon.
But so far the food plan seems to work. I've lost another two kilos, on top of the two I already lost in the first month at the gym.
Mentioning Dad before reminded me of another recent change in our lives.
It's been over three years now, since my Mum passed away from cancer. It still feels pretty fresh I guess. I remember so clearly those last couple of days we spent with her at the hospice in Lower Hutt. Yet I guess I always knew things would change at some point.
My Dad announced a few weeks ago that he has a new girlfriend. Her name's Jill, and he met her through his Labour party connections. I wasn't entirely surprised when he announced it. I mean, Dad isn't super young, but he's not exactly an old man either. It figured he might at some point want to find someone new.
Three years is a reasonable length of time too, even if it does feel like only yesterday sometimes.
Last Sunday I met Jill. Dad invited her around for dinner when me and Taina came over. She seems nice enough, she chatted to me a bit, I found out she has a daughter too, not sure what age, but an adult so probably in her twenties or thirties.
We played Trivial Pursuit. It was an edition Dad had that had come out in the very early 2000s, so the questions were a bit outdated and so we all didn't do very well. After playing like 2 hours, me, Dad and Jill each had one out of six triangles, and Taina and Nick both had none.
Funny though, that the question that earned me my triangle was a question about Snoop Dogg, of all things.
Because we all know how gangsta I am.
So I don't know exactly how I feel about the development with Dad and Jill. I'm not against it, certainly. I'm glad Dad isn't alone, I'm glad he is moving on with life. It's just...something to get used to.
Dad's house is filled, top to bottom, with memories of Mum. And that house is kind of a safe place for me. The place I grew up in, the place where the only people who ever could call it home were me, Nick, Mum and Dad.
And so I find myself wondering: what if one day Jill moves in there with Dad? Will it stop feeling like home because someone outside of my childhood family unit lives there? What if Jill becomes a part of intimate family events, like Christmas? Will everything be different and weird because of a new person in the mix?
I know it's way too early to think about stuff like that, and there's no point in jumping the gun and worrying about it.
But the fact is, time goes on and things change. And sometimes it's hard to take it all in.
weezieishness · Fri Aug 25, 2017 @ 10:02am · 0 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|