Progressing (and cat fat)

I really need to say a big thank you to those of you who sent me kind words and prayed for me yesterday as we had the social worker meeting that I was so unhappy about. It was so much better than I feared, for which I am really thankful. As is so often the case for things like this, I now feel like a big baby for how stressed I was about it.

The evening didn't start well though. First, I had to work later than normal (due to concentrating so badly during the day!) Then I got home. And first let me say that I have never ever had anything stuck in the plughole of our kitchen sink. Ever. That is, until yesterday, ten minutes before the social worker arrived when I was trying to get the washing up (from monday) finished (okay started). And it turns out that the plughole of my sink is exactly the diameter of a bit of kitchen equipment that I use oooh, twice a year but happened to use monday. Which got totally stuck.

ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH! So frustrating! And it turned out that I had exactly ZERO knives that were thin enough to get between the thing and the sink to lever it out, and I was beginning to consider unscrewing the U-bend. J came home and found me in a bit of a state, holding a sharp knife and stabbing away at the plug hole in tears. V. attractive. Fortunately not long afterwards my eight years of metallurgy training kicked in and I realised it was likely to be tin-plated mild steel, which is ferromagnetic - ten seconds and a trip to the fridge door later, we stuck a magnet on it and it lifted easily away.

Really wish I'd thought of that earlier.

But then, the meeting itself actually went really well and, as I said, I feel stupid for how worried I was. This meeting we covered 'relationship' and 'lifestyle', which wasn't too traumatic. In fact, that's an understatement - some bits of it were actually quite nice as we had to talk about how much we liked each other - it was like being back in marriage prep! Next time we're going to do 'childlessness' and 'health', which I'm not hugely looking forward to, but I do think I've learnt one small thing - various moments have made me realise that our SW is doing her best to respect our privacy, even though the process itself is very invasive. The next meeting is on Saturday, but I'm hoping I've used up my emotional trauma quota for the week and will glide effortlessly into it, smiling prettily. In a slightly odd twist, though, my parents are arriving for a four week (on and off) visit on Friday, and the SW wants to meet them - is this normal??? So that will be weird.

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In other, not-at-all-exciting-to-anyone-but-me news, today is my WW 'weigh in day' and the scales say I've lost nine pounds. This is as much as a whole decent-sized baby, which I find strangely pleasing. But babies aside, nine pounds is nine pounds! Before I started this, I reasoned that my body mass index was absolutely perfect - as long as I was wearing 3 1/2 inch heels. So my ultimate aim is to lose enough weight so that I have the same BMI in flat shoes as I used to in 3 1/2 inch heels. Roughly, that also translates to losing the full bodyweight of my cat, so that I weigh as much holding the cat as I used to with no cat (our cat is not petite). I'm hoping this will act as a good motivational tool - if I'm tempted to stray, I just have to look at the cat and imagine his entire mass turned into fat cells and distributed across my body. Nice image! Bet you're glad you read that. Feel free to try it on a cat near you.