Loving it - week nine

Well, it's practically week ten but I've said it before and I'll say it again- better late than never!

I'm trying hard to stay positive at the moment but the stress of having an uncertain job future lying ahead of me has taken a toll on my body somewhat and my pbs has flared up.  Having a chronic condition is a real pain in the ass.... like totally.  I have been pain-free for quite some time after months of prolonged discomfort and 'flare up' after 'flare up'. So as you can imagine, I was pretty upset when I was struck down on Tuesday. I ended up crying on the couch, pumping myself full of nurofen and hugging a hot water bottle. Ugh.

Anyway, the thing about chronic conditions is that you're stuck with them, so at some point you have to make peace with it.  I've spent too long envying other people their ability to eat anything and drink anything, to never have abdomen pain that feels like fire in your lower belly. Getting stressed about the situation only makes it worse, so now I try to be as zen as possible about it. But sometimes that's easier said than done.

Still, making my list of things I love serves to remind me that life 's not really that bad and of course they're all things that make me happy, so the stress levels drop and the pain reduces - score :)

The pics above are all of  a cake baking session Mila and I had when we hung out during the school hols.  We made a chocolate cake on Bastille Day in honour of my nana Sylvie, who died earlier this year.  July 14 is her birthday but I couldn't really think of anything particularly French that my nana would like (she was a pretty fussy eater). She did love chocolate cake though so that's what we went with.  A little bit of tweaking was required as I didn't have exactly the right ingredients (happens to me all the time) but Mila and I were pretty stoked with the end result. The cake we made was adapted from a recipe from the book Gran's Kitchen by Natalie Oldfield.

Other fun things we did on our day together, which I'm loving, include watching make-up tutorials for ages and trying to achieve a 'smoky eye' (we didn't) and also doing a couple of yoga videos thanks to the lovely Adriene from YWA (she's awesome, youtube her). So basically I'm loving the internet, days off with my daughter and chocolate cake!

The International Film Festival is on in Auckland at the moment and I've managed to check out two films so far. First up was The Lobster, which was the opening night film.  It was so good, but so weird. On the weekend we took the girls to see Enchanted Kingdom in 3D, which was an Our World-type nature doco about Africa.  It was pretty cool to and was narrated by Idris Elba (Stringer Bell from the Wire), which for some reason made me giggle.

On the Thursday we saw The Lobster, Ben and I also went to Little and Easy for an after work drink and checked out the Street Food Collective for dinner; a pretty sweet date night all in all. I'm definitely loving the Street Food Collective and am keen to head back to try some more stuff.

And well yep, I think that sums up what I'm loving at the mo.... onwards and upwards I say xx