I’m still struggling with my weight. I’m fighting in my own head about whether I love food more than I hate my body and I seem to be switching side several times a day. Its hard work and I’m trying to get over the fact that I need to actually do something about it rather than just whinging about it constantly. Its not good for Meghan to see me looking at my body in the mirror all the time and covering myself up so I can’t see what I look like. My mum said today that if I feel that way, I have a problem and I guess I do but only I can fix it. I was looking at the best weight loss supplements the other day but they all say that you need to be on a calorie controlled diet and have exercise which is basically what you have to do so why take a tablet along side it if your doing the right thing anyway? I think I need to get back to the gym. I’ll feel better then. Plus I think Meghan misses nursery so thats a good enough reason to go back if any!

Its Alex’s last day at work tomorrow. He’s been made redundant like we were expecting. He’s half happy about it and half panicking because it means him coming home is further away than it should be. He got a redundancy settlement which is already all called for. Most of it is going to pay a debt off so its out of the way and the rest is going to training courses – he wants to do a plastering and tiling course – and passing his driving test. One of us really, really need so learn to drive. Its getting so pathetic now. I can’t rely on the buses and my mum any more and we just need a little bit of independence. It means we can go out at the weekends with the kids to somewhere decent and he can take me shopping when I need to. I’m looking forward to him driving and I can’t wait to start my lessons once I get myself a job sorted! He’s going to start up his lessons again after he’s passed his theory test and then he’ll need to look into getting a car and things like tax, MOT and car insurance. I hope it doesn’t take him too long. He’s confident in his driving so I think he won’t need that many lessons to pass.

I’m still looking for a job. There really is nothing out there and everything that catches my eye, the company is asking for all this experience and these qualifications and I just don’t have either of them. Its quite hard to get work experience without having work in the first place! I don’t really know what they expect you to do. There seems to be quite a few jobs in call centres at the moment but I can’t do that shifts that they ask and plus, the few times I have applied for jobs like that, I have been turned down after the telephone interview. I just don’t know what they expect from you anymore. Its been four years since I last worked and its getting longer and longer as time goes on. I really want to get back to work because I’m so bored in the house and I’m sick of struggling for money week after week. I need to get some training behind my back; sales training for example but I don’t know where to go. I have an appointment at the local adult learning centre on Thursday afternoon to discuss some free computing courses that are available to me. Hopefully they will help me a little in my job hunt.

When I was in Spain, with all the stress of one of the kids not sleeping (Meghan) and the other one being ill (Emelye), I really wanted to just be at home. But when I think back I really, really enjoyed myself and I want to go back so bad. I loved the sun and the fact that I could do what I wanted all day without having to worry about what was for dinner or whether the kitchen was clean or not. I loved the beach and even though we complained about the food every day, I couldn’t fault the full English breakfast I had every morning. No wonder I need to lose weight! I loved the confidence I had over in Spain. I walked around in a bikini top and shorts all day long where as over here, I’m covered up in hoodies and jackets all day long because I feel huge. I guess because the weather was nice and because I was really relaxed that I didn’t see my body the way I usually do.

Me and Alex really want to go back but the price has gone up by around £1000 for the same holiday at the same time next year. Not that we have the money to go back again anyway. I definitely would want to go back to where we went or at least somewhere warm and sunny and with a beach. The sea is so relaxing. That day on the beach that we had was the best day out of the whole week because I was just really relaxed and felt great for the rest of the day. I understand why people go to places like Las Vegas with the casino hotels like the Stratosphere hotel but for me, I just want to be able to relax and have the peace and quiet. I think somewhere like Las Vegas would definitely be too noisy for me.

I really need to sit down one night and do a big back-up of all my files. A couple of months ago, I tranferred everything from my external harddrive onto the computer but I haven’t done a new back-up since. A good idea would be to back-up all my old photos onto disks – you know, the ones that I won’t be using again for a long time. Thats the worst thing about digital over film. When you use a film camera, as soon as you have used up all your roll, you go and get it developed so you actually have them in your hands. With digital, you just transfer them onto the computer and I don’t know about anyone else but I rarely get mine printed out. I think I’ve only ever done it once and I still haven’t got them put into a photo album or up on the wall. I have been thinking about getting a new memory stick for a while too. I used to have one and it was so handy. You can pick them up fairly cheaply now too. I’ll have to make time in the next week before its too late. I remember within days of me buying my external harddrive and putting everything onto it from my old computer, the computers harddrive died. I was so lucky.

I really want to go back to the gym. I haven’t been since the week before I went to Spain so its been over a month now. I just haven’t had the money to go and its going to be the middle/end of this month before I can afford to pay my membership again. I know Meghan misses going to the playgroup too so I’m really going to try my best to save some money aside so I can go back again before June. I’m not very good with my eating; basically I just love my food too much and although I don’t eat a stupid amount, I just eat a lot of bad foods. And I’m really not up for trying any diet pills but I know exercise will work and it will also make me feel better about myself. I love going to the gym for an hour or more and really pushing myself to the limit. Its a good feeling when you get out of there. I can’t wait to get back again.

I’ve never had to worry about health insurance. Living in an National Health Service country, medical bills are mostly covered by paying your national insurance which comes out of your wages automatically. I have thought about buying seperate health insurance at one point or another, especially after having Meghan because if I had another baby, I definitely don’t want to be having one in an NHS hospital. If I was thinking about getting any insurance I guess I’d look up some health insurance leads online but for now I can’t even afford to think about it. Thankfully I’ve only ever had to go to stay in hospital once and hopefully I won’t have to do it again for a long, long time.