Nothing but fat

I'm still around, but not much is happening.

Except for me gaining weight, my mother cooking for 10 when it's 5 of us eating, and then nagging at me for my being fat.

Oh, and for forking out an advance payment of €280k for the flat - the purchase will be final at the end of February. The only one that seems excited about this is my nephew Luke, but then again, he's a sweetheart.

Back to black

Back in Milano

but this is not the Milano I craved, I loved and hated. No movida, no aperitivo, no skinny bitches around.

No drugs

No office life, and no after-office parties

In a way, timing is perfect. It may be time to quit the overgrown teenage way of life we've had so far, and live like adults. Might I find enough traction in this, enough desire to maintain a decent body?

We'll see.



Post Scriptum
6 months have passed from my knee surgery and I cannot stay on all fours. it is completely impossible. How can I explain my physical therapist that my (already modest) sex life suffers a significant impairment because of this?

because I'm going deeper and deeper, harder and harder, getting darker and darker

For some complicated and probably stupid reasons, I'm back in the city (illegaly, I might add, since we're still not allowed to travel) and alone (Husband left for southern Italy for work).

Perfect time for a little fasting by the way, and I went to bed all happy and excited, looking forward to my scale in the morning because the first day of fasting always brings incredible joys.

At 1.30 I woke in such agony that it took me 5 minutes to manage to stand. I felt like a hot piece of rod had been somehow inserted at the base of my spine, and my hips were pulsing in waves of pain. I felt nauseous from the pain, and I didn't even want to puke since I had not eaten in 30 hours and I knew it would not help anyway.

I managed to swallow some ibuprofen and ti lay down on my belly, with the pillow propped under my hips, since this somewhat helps with my back ache, but the trouble is it's not a position that fits well with my swollen nose from the allergies.
Tossing and turning, I made it till morning, when I saw my reflection in the mirror and I honestly thought "I've got it. I've got this fucking Covid and I'm going to die alone, like my father in law".
My face was so swollen and the pain so bad, I had such trouble breathing...
But no temperature, and trust me I almost cried when I checked.

Even the scale numbers dropping by 2.4lbs in 24 hours were meaningless.
In any case I had never been this heavy and fat before, so nothing to rejoice I guess.

The real trouble is, I don't have much to look forward. I've been relatively okay at home for the past few months (resulting in fat fat fat fat accumulating).
But then what?
Work will never be the same again. I've been through one crisis before, and even worse, I already knew before the covid that I was not going to make it to equity partner.

So I don't really look forward to the "back to normal". I am not so keen on everyone at work finding out I've become fat.

Last weekend it was Vivien's birthday, and she's been dead for almost two years - I can hardly believe it
I'll never forget you my friend. I'll never know if it was an accident or if you've simply had enough, but I miss you and I'll still do my best to carry on.

a time for changes

despite not trusting my father's scale, I gave in and stepped on it.
The number was the highest I've ever seen in my life.
However, this was a bit of a wake up call. I finally started restricting and despite everything I'm managing to stay positive.

we'll be spending a day at our place in the city over the weekend and then come back here, so I'll recover my scale.

Lockdown update: we are now allowed to go for a walk, but that's pretty much it. My office will probably be closed until OCTOBER. Not positive on that

Total fuck up

Things are so depressing I don't even know where to start.

Work is shit. I fucking hate working this way, all the empathy I always enjoyed with my team is not around. We used to understand each other without a word, and now it seems that, without a half an hour phone call, they can't even tie their own shoelaces.
The truth is, most of them have been living alone in a one or two rooms apartment alone for the past 9 weeks, going out once a week for grocery shopping, and by now they can't seem to focus if it's a matter of life and death (and honestly, who can blame them?).
This leads to A LOT of inefficiencies. I work 12h per day + 5 or 6 hours in the weekend and I'm still lagging behind.

In all this, my boss just asked me to take a day of paid leave (while working of course) for the next 15 weeks. In the end, this equals a salary haircut (as per our labour law, you get paid your unused vacation when you leave the company - so 20 days of paid leave accrued means 1 month of salary).
Also, there is no understanding if I'm getting my bonus, which equals my fixed salary. We close books at the end of June, and before CoVid I had already met ALL my targets for this year (including sales). I was the only one (and was still kicked out of the process to be made equity partner).
My bonus equals my fixed salary. So potentially, further haircut up to 50% of my total annual income.

Meanwhile, I gained a ton of weight. When I'll go back I need to fast for about 10000393048123847 weeks

Oh, and the flat for which we signed a cheque the day before lockdown? Who knows, they disappeared.

By the way, clearly I'm not pregnant, given I'm on a fucking period (couldn't you tell?). I swear I did not remember that periods were so fucking disgusting.

Everything just seems to be a total fuck up

The lake

When the night is almost over, she drops randomly, 

folding over and staining the horrors; 

but if you can just get lost next to the lake,

it will sooth you and calm you

until you can no longer breathe.

How beautiful the lights reflected on the water

fooling anyone

And if you want, you can cut it in pieces

It's then that silence throws on the water

the ticking of clocks that are rotting.

Down there you can find that girl, minding her breath and her skirt

As wide and open as floating flowers

She's dancing, she's burning bright, she's feeling

it's not worth it, life is not worth it

the crazy life of a financial advisor during lockdown

The morning starts well. By now (after 5 weeks of smart-working from my parents' place and 3 weeks of total lockdown) Husband and I have completely corrupted my mother's black cat.
The Panther (aka Mom) has two cats: Tigros - a smart huntress, intelligent, reactive and a bit of a tedious whore if you want my point of view - and Negus (which means black prince in Ethiopia).
Negus is the dumb brother, he's a black cat who only has (had?) one goal in his life: being petted by my parents. He's super-loyal and affectionate, but the Panther always had a thing for intelligent ones (see Bro and I, where I was treated like the accident daughter until my late twenties).
After these weeks, where we have been spending only on treats for Negus, he's finally moved downstairs with us (insert evil laugh here).
So in the morning he steps in from our bedroom window and plops down on our bed, right in the middle. Goodbye morning sex by the way - clearly gaining the cat's affection has become more vital.

Despite everything, two clients managed to close their transactions this week - I usually don't develop much on my job, but basically they have acquired other companies. Given the lockdown (and the recession), it's almost a miracle.

Fast forward through a morning of conference calls, lunch with the family and quickly preparing some bread (currently baking in the wood stove upstairs).
At 2.45PM I was preparing for a long videoconference when a girl rings our bell and frantically warns that, in the filed close to our home where we keep the hens, she spotted a dog chasing Mom's hens.
Now, the Panther is a bit peculiar - we are virtually vegetarian and she takes very good care of her hens that are more like pets then anything else.
Husband reached that part of the yard first - blame it on my knee surgery, but I still cannot run (not even a few steps) at the risk of stumbling down. By the time I got there, it was a mix between a will coyote cartoon and a zombie apocalypse movie. The hens are 14 and live a very large yard, with their coop (the fox comes every night so they must be locked sunset to sunrise) lots of grass, bushes and trees.
There were feathers everywhere, bloodied pieces of hens spread around, dead hens, hens running like crazy and in the middle, my beautiful, brave, big husband with a pitchfork, chasing a pitbull that was chasing hens.
Surreal.
He managed to scare away the dog while my parents reached the owner, and then we proceeded for the next hour in counting the fallen, the injured and grouping the scared healthy survivors.

All while trying to soothe the poor Panther, who was very grateful towards us, until I suddenly realized I was 30 minutes late for a conference call, and absentmindedly dropped an F bomb right in the face of my Mom. Aw, well, fuck it.

Fast forward through a boring call, more cat therapy, realizing that I screamed into the dog owner's face that he is a fucking moron who likes to butt-fuck his sister (and most important, realizing I dropped all this in front of the Panther but she was probably in shock or something because she did not flinch nor mention this), I finally remember to bake bread for dinner.

While the bread was baking in the wooden stove I was strolling through pant-suits on IG and started wondering if we'll really ever go back to the pant-suit and heels life (well if my knee does not heal I can probably forget the heels). Back to the city, professional version of ourselves?
I honestly don't know any longer, but meanwhile I took a mental note that I need to fetch more wood for the chimney tomorrow morning.

just want to go out

The older you get, the more you value walking. At almost 38, I already considered that the best part of my weekdays was when I managed to walk home from work instead of taking the tube. I live 3.5km from work (a bit over 2 miles) and whenever it wasn't too late and it wasn't pouring rain, I used to walk home, sometimes making calls to clients or my mother, sometimes just listening to audible and watching shops windows.

I seems like I'm talking about a long time ago, but we've been working from home since February 22, and in a total lockdown since March 7. Yesterday I decided to go for a walk in the woods (my parents' place is really next to wild woods by the lake) and in order to do that I had to wait over one hour: as soon as I saw a police car patrolling, I waited for it to be gone and crossed the road to get to the footpath in the woods.

That because if they stop me outside home, I can get arrested.

I so miss walking.

My father in law died on Wednesday morning. He had 4 sons and a daughter, all loving him and living close to him, and he had to die alone because we are not allowed to leave home (let alone visit sick relatives in the hospital). He was buried this morning with no funeral (not allowed) and no family (again, not allowed). On of my brother in laws is a priest, so he's celebrating a private mass via skype for the family tonight.

This gives you an idea of the situation I guess.