Still sparking

14 days on the Spark diet website and I've lost 5 pounds so far.

I can't really tell you why it works, but I guess the calorie-counting (and I am not exact by any stretch of the imagination) helps see how big a portion you can eat without going over your maximum every day.

The fitness page also helps. Once I figured out how many miles per minute I was walking it was really easy to convert that to calories burned. Because I don't have a pedometer, it was through an intricate calculation off Google Earth and using the beats per minute on the ipod.

I've also been drinking a lot more water than I'm used to, which has done a number on my skin - it feels like the water is pushing out all the imputirities out through my face and it's breaking out all over. But if it's getting the results I want, I can live with a few spots on my face.

Hair Follies

A friend from Adriana's class at school was having her 40th birthday on Saturday, and the invite said "Think Audrey Hepburn" for how to dress for it. After hearing many of my other friends saying they were going to have their hair done up for it, I thought I could try the same.

It wasn't until they saw how short my hair was at the salon that they began to express doubt as to whether putting it up was even a remote option. Luckily, I had a girl who was game for it, and said my hair was a challenge to overcome. (I felt like the Himilayas at that point.) Several pins (48 various hairpins) ranging in size and ouch factor later, my hair was glued into place, so that not even the damp British weather was going to make it fall down.

So the party was great fun; everyone agreed that I clean up nice, and thank god nobody had any magnets on them, cuz I would have gotten stuck to them head first!

I'm sparking!

Or maybe barking?

Funny name for a website, but check out www.sparkpeople.com It's a free diet site that allows you to load in your data and help you determine an appropriate weight loss plan which includes nutritional guidance and fitness routines.

(A note of warning to my British friends - this is an American site, so there are lots of meal plans based around stuff that's popular in the U.S. For example, I had to load all the dietary info in myself for Yakult because they've never heard of it there.)

So this is it, I've finally decided that something's got to budge (not bulge) and I've been on it 3 days. My goal is to lose (not love - which I typed out in error - Freudian slip) 30 pounds before my birthday in January. Right now it's been great and I've lost 2.5 pounds already, but Christmas is just around the corner with its endless partying and eating and noshing and nibbling, and so on.
Lord, it doesn't bear thinking about! Is there any way to skip the holiday season altogether?

Larysa's birthday

For Larysa's 11th birthday, I wasn't sure quite what to do with her. She wanted the Rainforest Cafe - too expensive, then she wanted horseback riding - also too expensive. She'd already been to the bowling alley millions of times for other birthdays, so that was out.
As I trolled the internet for ideas, I came across a sound studio that hosts birthday party where you go in and record a song (everyone gets a copy of the CD) and then you do some dance moves too that gets recorded on a DVD for you as well. Cool! Larysa has always been a pop star diva in the making, so I thought it would be kinda neat to get it on a CD for her.
Once Larysa had settled on her guestlist - it was really important that she have a good mix of kids, I made these cool invites to look like CDs (if I had an extra few hours to spend I would have laminated them too) and then put them in CD cases for Larysa to give out to the invitees.

Well the day came and I drove up the 7 lucky children to the Sound Studio where they spent the first hour recording the song "Reach" by S Club 7. (Larysa had invited to boys, MacKenzie and Luke, it this seemed like the most appropriate song for both sexes to sing. Somehow I couldn't see the boys wanting to sing Avril Lavigne or Pink.)

Everything was going well until everyone piled out of the recording room and I noticed how ill Larysa looked. I guess the heat and lack of something to drink had dehydrated her to the point that she could barely stand up. But in true Ethel Merman-The-show-must-go-on style, she was able to come round and finish the dance moves for the DVD. Listlessly, but she did it. What a trooper!

So right now, it's 1:40 am, and the girls who stayed behind for the sleepover are obviously not sleeping. So it's up to me to keep at them until they finally drop off.

Nighty-night!

Knife throwing class

Ok, not throwing...But it was still a knife class.
My friend Mary invited a few of us to Divertimenti, which is this lovely cooking school in Marylebone High Street. You had to walk through their kitchen shop to get to where they were doing the class, and I was itching to go shopping. It's one of those types of shops where you can buy mango slicers or something equally as useless, but it's supposed to make life sooooo much easier. I can't resist it somehow - it's having grown up on Ronco commercials on tv. Anything that slices or dices holds a certain fascination for me.

That's probably why I signed up for this course. I've always had the feeling that I've never really understood how to really use a knife properly - that's why I have these cuts all over my hands. Well, we spent 2 hours chopping, mincing, julienning and (not sure if I have this one correctly...) chiffonading, which I think means shredding. (But with a knife of course - which is doubly strange!) In fact, we spent so much time in the preparation, I almost didn't have time to eat the products of your time-consuming work.
I was enticed, however, to purchase a brand-new (read:expensive) knife - after spending two hours with the Global knife, I fell in love with the feel of it. When I got home, I promptly unwrapped it, used it and sliced my finger in no short order.
So I still don't know what I'm doing, but now I'm doing it with an expensive knife and feeling good about the pain I'm inflicting on myself.

Mooncake Festival in Chinatown

This Sunday we took advantage of having nothing to do in the afternoon to go down to Chinatown and have a family lunch.
Unbeknownst to us, it was the Mooncake Festival time, so when we got to the main drag of Chinatown (the only drag, actually) we were greeted by a parade of dragons and paper lanterns to add to the already colourful atmosphere.
The meal was lovely - finally, some decent Chinese food in London! But Adriana was forced to eat nothing by steamed rice and a sliver of bbq pork, since she wouldn't try or eat anything else.
Although we asked our server what the festival was all about, her limited English made it difficult for her to describe in detail what the festival was all about, so we didn't press her.
I've since looked it up on Wikipedia, which describes the 8th month of the lunar calendar was having the brightest moon, and the Chinese having an autumnal festival at the same time to celebrate the end of the harvest. The mooncakes refer to an ancient tale of the Chinese's struggle against the Mongols and using mooncakes to communicate an uprising to rebels on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month.
Interesting....even more interesting was the oriental family sitting across from us, a youngish couple with 2 young boys. They ordered things I had never seen in my life before, but bound to be more authentic than the sweet and sour chicken we ordered. I'd always been jealous of these families that can go to restaurants with young children and manage to be so quiet that you forget the children are there - and oriental families are a prime example of this. With my brood the decibel level seems to increase in public places - it's as if they think that the minute we step outside the house, I've gone deaf and need to be shouted at continuously. Anyways, there's a lull in noise at our end of the restaurant, when all of a sudden, the Chinese Mum yells at one of her small sons who's slipped under the table: "SIT ON YOUR CHAIR, NOW!!" I was so shocked, I looked around at my kids to make sure it wasn't one of mine who'd slipped under their table.
But no, it was definitely hers, as she stood to haul him out from the floor and place him squarely on his chair.
Somehow it made me feel a bit better about my children's behavior until:
"Mama, do all China people have lines for eyes?" (Could she have said it any louder?????????)

Keeping up appearances

Still along the same vein with Larysa....

She was sitting in the office chair behind me trying to give me a head massage when she announced in a horrified tone:

"Mum you've got lots of grey hair! When are you going to colour it to match the rest of your head?"

I was a bit disappointed, because, after years of colouring my roots to disguise my greys, I thought it time to abandon all pretenses, and go 'au naturel'. This was not a split-moment decision, but carefully thought-out based on: economics (I'd save myself at least 200 pounds a year), truth (it's time I faced the fact that I'm no spring chicken) and health (all those chemicals must be having some sort of effect on me).

I tried to explain as gently as possible how I was thinking of leaving it as is, but this just induced an even more horrified repsonse:
"Mum! You can't show up in the playground at school looking like my grandmother!!"

My God, she's just added about 20 years to my age and has now put me in that dreaded category of "parents who mortify their children". We're ready for our own Jerry Springer episode, complete with half-dressed young girl and her blousy still-more-undressed Mom duking it out on national tv - expletives bleeped out, of course.