Angelos is still asleep. It is the last day of my week off today, a public holiday too. Angelos and I had made so many plans for the long weekend, like spending our days in the beach, then come home and shower, and go out to see movies in the open air movie theatres we have here, the true celebration of summer for us: a morning and afternoon spent on the beach, then home for a long shower and lots of sweet smelling after sun body lotion, and then a good movie in the open air theatre, with a cold beer and a couple of smokes, smelling the sweet jasmin that covers the sides of the big screen.

But the weather had other plans. Surprisingly for this time of the year, it has been grey, windy, cool and rainy since Saturday morning.

I spent a lot of time alone last week. Angelos would not come home before 10 in the evening from work, and Id spent hours and hours alone, with a very clean and organised home and not much to do. Slowly, all the tention from the last three months begun to get out. And since the stress and tension were gone, more deep feelings begun to arise.

To cut the long story short, I went through a mini depression. I tried seeing my girlfriends, it did not help. I went shopping, it did not cheer me up. I bought more flowers, they made no difference. Where did I drawn my sorrow? In the kitchen ladies. I cooked and cooked and cooked. And then I ate and ate and ate.

It is naive to believe that I can go though such a hard period and be done with it when its over. The remains are still inside me and there is a sadness covered up in tireness and tension that now starts to get out.

There are things I need to accept and aknowledge and deal with again.

I grew away from my husband all this time. Strange mechanisms that are inside me... I guess I was missing him so much during the hard working months so in order to cope and be able to continue with the job, I sort of detached myself from him. Now there is again a path I have to walk to alone to get closer to him. He expects me to do this, I can sense it.

I stayed strong and did not succumb to food all these three months. Not that I was dieting. But I did my best to restrain most of the time and maintain, not gain that much.

After I returned from Thessaloniki, last Monday evening, I weighed in. A week ago I was 88 kilos, which was a loss of two kilos since my latest weigh in. Today I weighed in. 92 kg. I gained 4 kilos in one week, how hard have my jaws worked to acheive this you think?

Since last tuesday I have cooked and ate the following:

the langustine pasta, vanilla ice cream, anf garlic butter with fresh bread I made for the wednesday dinner were eatern for two days
then on friday i made stuffed peppers with rice and mince, lots of olive oil, garlic, onion and mint, and ate them all day through saturday lunch with plain yoghurt on top and lots of hot paprika.
then on saturday we went to my brothers house for a birthday bbq, and ate ribs and chops and sausages and fries and birthday cake too
yesterday I went into mega cooking and by the evening nothing was left from: pork chops marinated in yoghurt, with crushed garlic, paprika, and bbq spices, potato salad with home made mayonaise, tomato salad with roasted onions, zuccinis, eggplant, and feta, and the sin: homemade bitter chocolate and rum ice cream. This icecream was a killer really. It contained - besides the obvious eggs and cream - 2 Green and Black Cooks' 72% Cocoa bars, and half a box of Green and Black cocoa. It was sex on a spoon, especially with bits of maringue crashed inside the ice cream!

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So its Friday today. I saved the post on Monday to continue with it, but then we went to my gf's house for lunch, and then Angelos left to watch footie and us girls went to IKEA for bits and pieces to further "summerise" our homes.

And then on Tuesday I got my period, very early indeed, but totally normal, considering what I've been through the last month!

And my weight is back to 90, not cos I tried hard, simply because I got rid of the pre-menstrual bloat :)

I have tried to eat well this week. I cooked amazing dinners still. Of the most tasty and most healthy were my chicken the day before yesterday:

Take a whole chicken breast and cut it in cubes, bite - sized. Cut tomatoes, peppers, onions, zuccinis, and portobello mushrooms in same sized pieces. Take your skewers and put one piece of each making sure that the chicken is between onions and peppers for extraflavour. Put them on a tray, and add the following spices: hot and sweet paprika, garlic powder, curry, mustard powder, chicken bbq spice, and lots of garlic and lemon pepper. Roast them in the oven till the veggies have a bit of a burnt edge. Then take them of the skewers, in a bowl, remove all the leftover juices of the tray in a shaker, add the juice of 2 lemons, and 2 generous Tsp of good dijon mustard and shake this well. Pour this on top of the chicken and serve with a green salad of lettuce, arugula, and avocado, where on top you pour the fage 0% yoghurt you beated with 80 gr of blue cheese and half a cup of cottage cheese.

This week was all about dessert. And lunch.

How to substitute the every day icecream with something else. Luckily Im a watermelon maniac, and now Im hooked on my after - dinner - watermelon. Lunch is a bit harder. All this week I was trying to sort out papers and clean my office. Im almost done. Work will star being frantic soon. In a different way. The invoices will start pilling up. That was a 1.5 million project you see. Lots of paperwork processing, re-evaluating the budget, etc, etc.

You asked what the project was. I was a bit hesitant to say. I still remember Dooce...lol

But I guess if I use @ instead of a and 1 instead of l I can be safe, right?

So it was an @rts m@rket. 2OO exhibitors, 17O sh0wcases, 3OOO people, and a conference. In 4 days! I could give you the link in email and see the site we have on it, if you want.

I spoke with Ms Boss and she asked me to reconsider and stay. At least till February 07. She made all shorts of promises. I told her I will give her a month and then talk again.

I want to have a baby. I want to have one so badly I can almost feel it. I thought why not get paid till at least I get pregnant. Till the end of my contract in October, I have to take 20.000 euros. Why give them to them? If I leave now I will only get 5.000. It will be silly to give away 15 thousand, wont it? In Greece you can get fired and have no pregnancy benefits if you have not completed a year in a job. So that means that if I go now, I cant get a new job. And to tell you the truth I do not want to go back in times where money was a struggle. I would rather stay there a bit longer and save a bit more.

I dont like the normal, adult, and responsible way of making a decision. But Im afraid I have to follow it this time ;)

Right. I got to get to the shower now!

Soon I will be back for good, with normal posts, regular comments, and pictures, cos I have a ton of them, from the event and from most of the dishes I just described!

I leave work at 6 now. And go around 10.30.