ptunarra

 Way back in November 2011 I posted about our visit to the site of future Derwent Valley Child and Family Centre.

It’s a project that I have a soft spot for because I (and Juniordwarf too I guess, because he attended the meetings with me) used to be a community member of the Local Enabling Group established to oversee the development of the Centre.

The Child and Family Centre initiative is a State Government funded project to “improve the health and well-being, education and care of Tasmania’s very young children by supporting parents and enhancing accessibility of services in the local community”.  Several centres are being built, or are already operating, across the state.

We were only involved in the early stages, in 2010, when the group was making decisions about the site the centre would be built on, and working on the philosophies, visions and objectives for the centre to ensure that it provided services that best met the needs of our community.

The vision that the group came up with for the centre was:

Healthy, happy children thriving in our community

Nurturing and supporting families

As a government employee, who has been involved in several exercises in consultation with stakeholders, I found it fascinating to be involved in a project as a community member rather than as "the Government".  I think that the consultation and level of engagement with the community in this project is something that the Department of Education can be very proud of.

Fast forward to three years later, and the centre is built. It will be open for business next week.

Juniordwarf and I went for a little stickybeak yesterday morning. I was surprised at how emotional I felt standing in the place that had been the goal of so many committed people over the last three years.

While I was taking everything in, I thought back to almost exactly three years ago when I was asked by Katrina, the now Community Inclusion Worker at the centre, if I was interested in being involved with the project. I felt overwhelmed that from the very first meeting in 2010, which at least 40 enthusiastic community members attended, the vision had become reality and I was standing in it.

I wondered if the centre we‘d imagined back then would be anything like the centre we see today. I don’t think the end result is anything like I imagined it would – or could – be. But I love it, and it’s a credit to everyone involved, especially Katrina and Suzanne, the Centre Leader, and all the members past and present of the Local Enabling Group. I feel really proud of what they have achieved and am glad that I was a part of it all, even if it was for just a short time.

I want to wish everyone at Ptunarra* Child and Family Centre all the very best. I’m so excited for you all and look forward to keeping in touch.

 

The building is very impressive. The play spine that runs through the centre of the building is really cool, and Juniordwarf loved it. I didn’t take many photos, but there are some more here to show you what the centre looks like. 

Juniordwarf checking out the upper level of the play spine

Out the front of the centre

The centre's vision on display

* The name Ptunarra and the butterfly logo was chosen in recognition of the Ptunarra Brown which is a vulnerable Tasmanian butterfly.

“The process of change and growth from caterpillar to butterfly is symbolic of the changes that we must embrace as our children grow and learn and develop. Without change there would be no butterflies.”

quitting sugar aaargh

 If I ever had any doubts* about whether I was addicted to sugar, they are well and truly gone now.

Last week I was feeling pretty good about cutting out sugary treats. I’d had a few headaches, but these were minor and didn’t last long. I didn’t find it too difficult to refuse sweet things and I didn’t really want them anyway.

This week is a whole other story. And we’re only two days into this week, so I’m a little scared as to how bad this is going to get.

Last night I felt like I was getting a cold. I had a sore throat and felt a bit congested. I wondered on Twitter whether this might be a sugar withdrawal symptom. Sarah Wilson (who wrote the 8 week I Quit Sugar Program that I’m largely following) suggested that yes, this could be part of the detox and suggested drinking more water and eating more veggies.

This morning, I felt lethargic, irritable, cranky (oh wait, that’s just my normal state) and headachy. I knew that if this had been a normal work at home day, I’d be having several of the shortbread biscuits (that Juniordwarf and I would have made on the weekend) throughout the day. 

Not today though.

I did, however, just want to eat and eat. And eat. And eat. David Gillespie (author of Sweet Poison) replied to my tweet that this could be the stage where things start to turn ugly and recommended non-sweet food treats to get me through it.

Vintage cheese and coffee. 

Not together, obviously and, sadly, not with my favourite crackers. It turns out that for all the ‘bad’ stuff they don’t have, they do have sugar, so for now they’re off limits.

Cue home-made water cracker recipe (do you feel a recipe blog post coming on?).

So I went through the day feeling hungry not that long after I’d eaten, headachy and with a horribly dry mouth and metallic taste. According to Sarah Wilson, it’s all part of the detox.

Along with the physical symptoms, I’ve found that if I’m not actively concentrating on something, I’ve started to obsess about sweet food, and I think about cakes and lollies and biscuits constantly. I even hallucinated that the eggshells I could see through the plastic compost container were mini-muffins waiting to be eaten. 

I’m not really sure if I actually want cakes or lollies or biscuits. I don’t think I do. If someone put a peppermint slice in front of me, I don’t think I’d eat it. But I just can’t stop thinking about them.

All of this is happening while I’m still eating berries in my morning smoothie. There will be a point where I cut them out too (at least for the detox period) and, based on the last two days, I’m a wee bit terrified of how complete withdrawal is going to make me feel.

I honestly didn’t think I was *that* addicted to sugar. But what’s happening now suggests otherwise.

I just have to keep telling myself that every minute I get through this is a minute closer to when it will stop. I have to believe that there will be a point where I won’t want sugar and I’ll feel great. There are a lot of people who have done this and said it's worth it, so I'm hanging in there.

* I did. I didn't think that the occasional more often than not cake/bag of lollies/chocolate bar some most afternoons was something I would have to withdraw from.

quitting sugar - week 1

 

I survived Week 1 of my quitting sugar experiment and I’m keen to continue.

My aim for last week was to avoid sweet treats like cakes and lollies. My main problem was snacking on lollies and cakes after lunch – either picking up something on the way back to the office, a sneaky trip to the vending machine or sometimes, for a special indulgence, a visit to the bakery for a peppermint slice with my afternoon coffee.

This was a habit that had crept up on me recently and last time I let it continue for any length of time, I ended up being the heaviest I’d ever been, this time 12 months ago. So, regardless of anything else, this was a habit that had to be brought under control.

Week 1 wasn’t too bad. Some of the things I noticed were:

• my morning berry and banana smoothie tasted incredibly sweet, which I’d not noticed before. I’ve cut out the banana and am experimenting with substitutes. This will be important if I get to the stage where all fruit is cut out.
• not having a sweet snack in the afternoon made no difference to my post-lunch afternoon energy slumps. I need to investigate this more and possibly tweak what I have for lunch.
• I got more frequent headaches, mostly in the afternoon and evening. Yesterday’s was the worst and the longest lasting.

Although there were times I felt miserable, I didn’t always feel like I needed to cheer myself up with something sweet and when I did, I didn't have anything. I also avoided eating cakes and lollies that people offered me, TWICE! without making a fuss about it, which I was particularly happy with.

Juniordwarf had got some lollies from a trip to the lolly shop with his grandmother (I have to start working on her now . . . ) and he offered to share them with me. I was delighted at his sharing attitude but had to decline, telling him that I didn’t eat lollies any more. He seemed to accept that as something people do. 

Week 2 is going to be more of the same. I’m also going to start paying more attention to food with added sugar and start to cut that out as much as possible.

One thing I noticed when reading food labels is that the food that contains a lot of sugar also includes other highly processed ingredients that I don’t really want to be eating, like hydrogenated oils. So this sugar-free thing is also going to be a big step towards my goal of making sure my diet consists, as far as possible, of unprocessed or minimally processed food.

At this stage I don’t know if complete elimination of sugar (or for the purpose of this experiment, fructose) is necessary. There are arguments and counter-arguments and more counter-arguments, and there is a lot of information out there and a lot of questions. Is it the elimination of sugar that has improved people’s health, or is it the general improvement in diet due to removing a lot of highly processed foods? Do those people who benefit most from a completely sugar-free diet have an intolerance to fructose that the people who don’t benefit don’t have? 

What I’m doing is trying to find out how my body reacts to elimination of sugar (fructose) and then re-introduce small amounts of sugar in its natural state (fruit, for example) and see what happens. (As I understand it complete elimination is virtually impossible, but that foods with a higher proportion of fructose to glucose that can cause problems.)

It’s early days and, as I said last week, I’m keeping an open mind and trying it to see if it has any effect on me. 

So far, the effects have been headaches and, if my bathroom scales can be relied on, one kilo lost.

project life 2012 - the home stretch

I really wanted to get the rest of the 2012 photos edited and printed for my Project Life album by the end of January, so I kept going with it this week. Since my last post I have:

Finished the October 3x4 journal cards.

Printed some more title and 'month in review' cards.

Edited and printed all the remaining 2012 photos.

Started thinking about my 2013 album.

 
And realised that this album is not going to be big enough to hold the whole year's photos.

(This is up to August.)

So I've got too much for one album, but not enough for two.

While I'm dealing with that problem, I also have piles of photos from the last four months and a whole week off work to gradually sort them out and put them into page protectors.

And then I can get started on the journalling. And the January 2013 photos.

I wonder if Photo-free February could become a thing?

quitting sugar

I've tried to write this post several times, but I can't get it right. So I'm just going to cut it right back and go for it.

I am taking steps to remove sugar from my diet.

I've done some reading and I'm getting a clearer understanding of the chemistry behind what happens when we eat sugar. Some people claim that the fructose part of what we call "sugar" is incredibly bad for us to the extent that they believe sugar is poisoning us. Others think that view is completely over the top and that there is no need to cut out sugar at all.

From what I've read, a lot of what the sugar-is-poison crowd says makes sense. But that doesn't make it right, so I'm keeping an open mind about it all.

What I know for sure is that sugar is in a lot of processed foods, and one of my 100 things to do this year is to further reduce my consumption of those products, so a reduction in sugar will naturally follow.

But I'm also interested to know if total sugar withdrawal will make any difference to my health, my weight and generally how I feel. Some people say it has significantly improved their health, whereas others have said it's had little effect.

So with that in mind, I'm setting myself a goal to cut out sugar (the sugar in question being fructose) as completely as is reasonably possible. I'm not sure how far I'll get. I'm just trying it to see what happens. I'm sort of following an 8 week program that was recommended to me called I Quit Sugar. It recommends the try-it-and-see approach to start with.

This week I'm tackling a really obvious source of sugar: the afternoon lolly and/or cake break. Regardless of your views on sugar, I don't think anyone would seriously argue that regular snacking on lollies (or peppermint slices) is good for me. And in my quest to cut back on processed foods, it's something I would have got round to doing anyway. I'm just going to start now. No time like the present.

I intend to do a blog post once a week on how it's all going and will probably spend a lot of time on Twitter complaining about how badly I want chocolate bullets. So if you want up to the minute news, follow me @realsleepydwarf.

And I can report that Day 1 was a total success. 

organising the 100 things

A few days after I wrote my list of 100 things to do in 2013 I went back over it to work out exactly how and when I'm going to do all those things.

It occurred to me that I could look at the list in several different ways.

There were lots of things that related to improving my health, and lots about getting organised and staying on top of things. There were things I could group as (for lack of a better term) sorting my head out, others about keeping records of my life, exploring my world, creating, gardening, doing stuff with my family . . . and the categories go on.

Some of the things I want to do are one-off jobs. Do them and they are crossed off the list. Others are habits I want to get into over the year and others are multi-step projects.

So I spent a bit of time this week sorting the list. Because, despite outward appearances, I like things to be in order and logically sequenced. It doesn't mean I do them. It's most likely a procrastination tool that stops me getting things done. But that's another story.

Anyway, I thought that a lot of what I want to do could be worked into a resolution (or commitment) chart, which I first came across when I read Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project.

I picked out a couple of things that I wanted to start doing every day (the "habits" from the list) and have made an all new chart for 2013 in an attempt to keep on top of things. The idea is that once I've started to make the first couple of things into habits that I actually do, I'll gradually add in some more things from the list so that by the end of the year I will have all the new habits I want to develop. Or at least some of them.

It's a bit more structured than what I'm used to, especially for my personal life. But I've felt very unsettled ever since we started the moving house journey back in July, and I feel like I need some structure so that I can get back some control over my life.

And, just so this isn't an entirely photo-free post, last night I started work on my One Little Word project. I cut, I stamped, I washi taped and I bradded (if that's an actual word). I also managed to drip my stamp cleaner fluid into one of my ink pads, which I don't think is particularly good for the ink pad.

Also, this is what happens when you give your six-year-old your phone.

wordless wednesday