I worked yesterday. From one in the afternoon to eight in the evening. I should go today too, but I am not certain yet. Tomorrow is a non working day and I was thinking of honouring May 1st by working today and not tomorrow, but I still have to decide this.

When I came home last night, I saw this beautiful picture:

He had fired up the bbq, and was cooking the following: 2 porkchops, a steak, a skillet full of tomatoes, a skillet full of onions, and a sausage. They I had one and a half of the porkchops, 3 pieces of the sausage, and he had the rest of the meat. The onions and tomatoes were thrown in the tomato-fresh oregano-olives-rye rusks-olive oil- and a bit of feta salad. The warm grilles tomatoes and the grilled onions ever so sweet made the salad a dream.

So then I decided to take a few pics of our balcony, which is still in progress, but will soon be done and turned to our little private oasis!

Have a look at our babies!

Those are some of my herbs. Four different kinds of basil, the name of which I do not know in english, 2 thymes, oregano, spearmint, and sage. Somewhere else among the pots there is my rosemary and a bigger oregano.

This is the smaller corner with our camelia, the greek jasmin (I have an italian one too) and my gorgeous bougamvilea (or whatever it is spelled). We need to put a trellis up there for her to expand. We have bought it and have yet to put it up. Oh, and in front of the bougamvillea you can see my bigger oregano. This plant is never ending, we use a bunch of fresh leaves every day in our food for 2 years now!

Mind you, it has taken blogger a good 30 mins to upload these pics, so I am going for some snuggling now and Ill be back later to post the rest of the pics and also the rest of the food in the other neglected blog of mine ;)

You know, there are times like this very one, that I so want to write something here, and yet, I still cannot really listen to my thoughts. This has been a very good description actually for me lately. I cannot even hear my thoughts. I am on auto pilot.

It is not the Easter weekend for us orthodox ones yet. Its next weekend. For me its just another working day. I just do not have to get to work before noon. So I have the chance to go do some grocery shopping. Next week, Good Week for me, it will only be veggies, legumes and grains. Oilless too. This is how we eat the week before Easter.

I have gained a lot of weight. I touched the horrific number again. Round 90 kg's. Scary. I so regretted buying new batteries for the scales. I am going to have to do something. I am going to have to put myself accounted again. I called and looked for a WW meeting near by work. There will be one held at Mondays at 9:00 am, about 15 mins walk to work. It will start on April 25 (a tuesday actually, since monday the 24 is an easter holiday for us). I called and held a place. If I am silly enough to have to pay for someone to weigh me and keep me accountable, then I will do it.

I cannot afford to gain any more weight. My smart idea of taking my clothes in every few kilos down has me suffering in my clothes right now. Not to mention the disgusting feeling in the morning when I go to get dressed and cant find something I feel good at. Not to mention that soon I will have to get our spring/summer clothes out and I willhave to go shopping for work clothes and i wont like the tightness of the 16 pants.

Our granny is at the hospital, in the intensive care since wednesday. She is Angelos mothers mom, and she is more than a mom for him, and even more beloved than my own grannies for me. She is 86 yo and things are not looking good. Honestly, I want her to be better so badly for so many reasons. And I am ashamed that one of them is that I cannot fit a loss in my life right now. I have no energy to deal with such a thing. No time. How horrible is this?

My husband had his birthday yesterday. I did not get him a present. I had no time. Yet, we spent a quiet sweet evening at home together. Which started at 11.30 that I got back from work.

There are so many things that I cannot deal with right now.

The toughest is the remorse I feel for taking back my resignation from work. I really should have left in March. Now the time is too close to even think about it again. But seriously darlings, it is not worth it. And this hurts. There is, of course, this very deep feeling of "whatever does not kill you makes you stronger" that has a peculiar kind of satisfaction attached to it. I am really looking forward to June 5, when the lights will be off, the event will be over, the bravos will be distributed. But I am scared of who I will have become till then.

We are going to leave with Angelos now, and go to buy pots and soil and new plants. And tomorrow I am going to spend the morning beautifying my balconies. From the estimations I have done, I will be able to be back home from work around 8 in the evening. And we will bbq fish and seafood and eat it with V and S and complaint about our busy lives, while planning our little Easter get away next week.

To all you beloved women that celebrate Easter this weekend, happy Easter!!! And many many thanks for your concern and friendship!

With me I mean. The ups and downs. The pinks and the blues. The firm decisions and the moments of weakness. The bold statements of here and now and the sentimental excuses of not doing it today. The countless times of restart ... just for a couple of days.

I try to do a bit of all. I try to be a bit of all. I fail with much grandeur in everything.

Example;

This time of the year, I turn to a green finger monster. Since early March I begin with the seeds. My usual ones are organic tomatoes, a special variety that comes only in Santorini island, arugula, parsley, dill, mint, oregano, spearmint, all kinds of different basils. Then its the flowers. I start some from seeds, others from bulbs, some from tiny plants I buy in the nursery and plan in huge pots expecting them to grow and fill them.

Then at exactly this time, I go our hunting for the perfect paints for my easter eggs. The house gets off its winter gear and becomes spring-ish. The second thick layers of curtains and the carpets are put away, the red, burgundy, dark green items get back to sleep and the more bright colours get out to cover the beds, the sofa. The dry pines and pumpkins and the tons of walnuts and other wintery "decorations" get back in their boxes and the sea shells, the flowers, the colourful vases get out to yell the obvious: its spring and we are bright!

The cooking becomes lighter, meat is less, strawberries fill the house with their scent and become liquer, marmalade, spoon sweet.

The beast in me awakes and I suddenly see my husband and allI think about is how to take him to bed, table, sofa, chair, bathtub, kitchen counter.

Yet, as I was leaving the office last night at 11.30, I was wondering who am I.

I put my seeds on and forget to water them. My home is still in winter gear. I am not sure I will even paint eggs this Easter. The six days I was looking forward to for our little escapade in Sofia's village have gone down to 4. Saturdays become an official working day from now on with a full 8 hrs at least. I eat well one day and like 4 pigs the next. I get on the treadmill two days in a row and then I forget its existance.

My last weigh in has not been re-checked. The batteries of the scale died and I still ask myself if this is good or bad. I wonder if getting on them and seeing the gain I can feel on my belly will make me get back on track or make me even more depressed.

I want to write in this blog and yet I restrain because I feel like Ms Pettish more than I feel like Ms Hustler.

I have not been a control person most of my life. I like to know the abouts but never have I been a control freak. Yet, I am in a point right now that I have control over nothing.

Did I tell you I called my therapist on Friday and begged him to change our session to 9 in the evening instead of 7.30 we had sceduled it for? he had the flu and although he was not easy,he finally accepted to wait for me for an hour and a half so I could make it. And at some point, during a meeting, I needed some papers so I went to my office to fetch them, and I saw 8 rings in my cell phone, all from him. And I then saw the time and it was 9.40! So I called him and I was well told off!

Yet, my team despises me for making them work longer and like 5 yo they keep on sabotaging the project, making intentional mistakes, "forgetting" things. And Ms Boss is in total panick that it will all go into total failure and makes us all more crazy than required.

I spent the weekend with lots of chocolate again. Of the finest quality of course. Champagne custard with fresh strawberries. Coconut panacota. Milk chocolate mousse with fresh raspberries. White chocolate with levanter pastry. Bitter chocolate mousse with chilli pepper. Luckily, the last one was the cause of such intense moans that my whole body awake looking for more pleasure. At least, i got the wife part right this weekend ;)

Bear with me, will you?

Work is getting even more busy than I ever imagined it to be. I am never back home before 11 in the evening now. However, things are a lot better among ourselves and this makes the day go by faster and there is also some fun involved in the routine.

The bigger day has a lot to do with everyone's mood. More light, more energy. I just dont want it to get a lot hotter soon. I will have to make a very serious investment on office clothes again, since I dont have any spring/summer suits for work. And I do not want to make this investment in clothes in a size I do not want to be at any more.

My mom did her bi-annual tests. Everthing is fine. :)))

I had a very intense marathon in the weekend. Very very intense. The topic was love and sexuality. No need to list the ammount of chocolate consumed by all participants during the weekend. And Monday too!

But as of Tuesday, I manage to wake up at 730, I do not read blogs in the mornings anymore, and get on the treadmill for 40 mins. I eat my musli for breakkie, something fishy for lunch (sushi or tuna and tomato) and a good dinner (usually bulgur with mince or tuna and veggies). Have not weighed in in ages and I do not plan to. It is not denial. I can feel the couple of kilos in my belly, still sitting there waiting for my decision to let them move to the rest of my body or make them disappear. I choose the latter.

But today I decided to take a day off the treadmill and do some blogging. Mainly cos my shins ache so much. You know, the first thing I wanted to do when I got on the treadmill on tuesday was run. And I gave it ago. My knee killed me in 3 minutes :(

The treadmill decision had nothing to do with fitness and weightloss really. It is an attempt to regulate my sleep. Wake up earlier, get some action, hoping to sleep at a reasonable time. I suffer from lack of sleep lately. I get home, cook and eat dinner, and its already midnight. I chat with my man, watch some telly, he gets sleepy, I go to bed with him, cannot sleep, go back to the living room and watch telly, I get so sleepy almost ready to fall asleep in the sofa, return to bed, and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I am all awake again. So I turn the light on, get my book, read a little, then I get very sleepy, turn the light off, and get all wide awake again. I know its called stress, lol. But I got to fight it the most natural way, cos I tell you, I am so tempted to go back to the "un-natural" one and it will be a bastard if I do!

One thing that keeps me going is that we are going away for Easter. Our Easter is on April 23, and I have taken Thursday, Friday and Tuesday off, which gives me a full 6 days to rest and enjoy. We are going to Sofia's village again. The weather forecasts are gorgeous. I expect to return tanned!

Right, this woman has to get to the shower, and get dressed very pro cos she has a meeting at 10.30 with the president, managing director, executive director, legal advisor, and financial director concerning our project.I got a few battles to fight and I at least have to wear my war gear ;)

Why dressing the part some times is as important as doing it? its strange and crazy but oh so true!

I miss you girls. I really really do!