KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

When I finally got COVID-19 and home quarantined for the first time last year, I signed up for a month of free Woolworths online grocery shopping. I have not unsubscribed. The $15 monthly subscription for unlimited, free deliveries (when you spend over a certain amount) is worth the 60-90 minutes I save every Sunday morning.

It means more time with Boyfriend Pham to start my day and more time with Dad Pham who I used to visit after the grocery shop. Also, no longer walking around the car park to find an available shopping cart in Inala Shopping Centre has been a dream come true. The poor Woolies trolley team cannot keep up with demand there.

The convenience of adding items to the cart in the mobile or web app as we use them up during the week is great for people with short-term memory brain fart symptoms. You add it as items run out and it saves your cart, then when you go back later to complete your order everything you ran out of during the week is ready to go. Woo!

There are some downsides to online groceries. Sometimes, your items are out of stock by the time the team picks up your order. Other times, they may pick your order but the bag/s do not make it to you. Whether they were given to someone else or left at the store, I never quite know. I've only had one major mix-up where half my order was missing. Other times it has been only 1-3 items. The good news is Olive, their chatbot can pull up your order and automatically refund any missing items. No need to call customer service and wait in a phone queue. But the vast majority of the time, my order arrives as expected so I rarely chat to Olive.

There's also the choice of fresh produce. I personally prefer smaller bananas but I suppose because the app charges per banana instead of by weight, the picker feels obliged to pick the ginormous bananas that I eat in two sittings. But, you know, if that was a dealbreaker then I could just shop in-store or at markets for my fresh produce. I take giant bananas for the convenience.

I've online grocery shopped for over a year and can think of only two times when I had to dash to the shops as an out-of-stock item was critical for meal prep that day.

Another online shopping fail will only affect dopey folks like me who don't pay close enough attention and buy items based on photos. You see, an image of tinned goods doesn't give you perspective. For example, a 125g tin of corn looks the same as a 370g tin of corn unless you read the description or zoom in on the photo of the label. I've had a couple of laughs when I accidentally ordered mini-corn and mini-cheese and giant freezer bags.

Overall, I cannot recommend online grocery shopping enough to save you logistics and time!

Boyfriend Pham and I don't have much in common in our daily lives. We share core principles and values though how we enact them is worlds apart, we share a love of food though mostly different foods; and our favourite colour is green - I've never asked for details but I'd assume different greens based on our history of not having much in common.

Boyfriend Pham is not one to do things by halves so when we painted our downstairs feature wall midnight blue-purple, he also painted a feature wall in our bedroom. We've binged quite a few Never Too Small videos on YouTube during the 2020-2021 lockdowns when we started to think smarter about how we use our space. He ended up buying the Never Too Small book by Joel Beath and found inspo in a tiny apartment that had a dark green wall framing balcony doors. It framed the jungle beyond the glass doors and made the view pop.

We own a mortgage debt for a humble townhouse in Brisbane and, well, let's say the previous owners or original builders did a bit of a hack job with paint colour combos. Our bedroom has four different shades of cream and beige across the walls, door, frames and skirting boards. Why?!

Boyfriend Pham plans to repaint the whole house room by room but first, he wanted to learn how to paint by doing small feature walls. His first attempt was the desk feature wall downstairs. Our bedroom was attempt two. We used a grey paint base under the forest green. The dark feature wall instantly changed the feel of the space. It's now cosy and warm and snug as we fall asleep; not beige, boring and bright.

We got new curtains that look nice... so long as you don't look down and see how we hemmed them with double-sided tape. Regrets. We wish we'd sewn the hem instead because ironing the tape ruined our rug by getting bits of glue on it, and also made the curtain hem permanently wrinkled. We did not research curtains at all compared to the weeks and months of pondering the feature wall colour and painting. Oops. We'll replace the curtains in a decade or so, I guess. How long do curtains last? I might know if I researched them. 

I adore Steve Carell. The Office kept me good company while I worked in government and realised The Office jokes were very much based on reality. But one of my favourite Steve Carell moments is from Anchorman - the I love lamp scene. This post isn't actually about my love for Steve Carell. It's about how much I love the new desk lamp that Boyfriend Pham bought for me.

I work from home 2-3 days a week and my desk nook is quite dark. It's not near the one window that would have shed light on it except for the part where it's west facing, doesn't get morning sun and the afternoon sun is blocked by our neighbours' generous garden trees. It keeps the house nice and cool through summer but also keeps the desk nook quite dark. Too dark for Zoom meetings because you can see my silhouette against a bright background and not my facial expressions.

For some reason, the downlights in the room are wired so that if I turn on the light over the desk, it turns on 3 downlights. It seemed excessive and wasteful to have them on all day while I worked on and off in Zoom. In my last role, I had a work Macbook that isn't a decade old so the camera was OK in low light. In the new and not improved Windows environment, the laptop camera and Logitech camera couldn't agree with Zoom to show my face in low light.

I mentioned this to Boyfriend Pham in passing one day and he went and found the Vivo vesa mount desk lamp that mounts to the back of the screen (instead of the cumbersome clip-on that blocks part of the screen or one that grips the desk). This means I can set and forget the lamp - it adjusts with the screen when I move the screen up and down, and doesn't block my view at all. Unlike the cat, who constantly gets in my way.

One of our favourite coffee spots is Passport Specialty Coffee in Northgate, Brisbane. They do divine coffee beans and, I, the person who can barely smell and has reduced taste due to constant congestion from hay fever allergies, can clearly taste the difference. Anyhow, this story isn't about their coffee. This story is about how Passport Specialty Coffee tried and failed to paint their shop interior the colour of Australian passport blue.

Boyfriend Pham discovered this place in a chance drive-by and was very excited to bring me here for a coffee date the following weekend. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the unassuming brick building was how warm and welcoming the vibe was. The place emanates quality and class without a hint of snobbery. They're keen to educate people who want to learn and serve delicious brew to those who simply want a good coffee.

I got a good chance to absorb the space and analyse why I loved the feel so much when we sat upstairs in the mezzanine space to wait for our coffees. I realised it was the deep purple-blue colour of their wall offset by the warm, wooden furnishings and coppery gold trims that made it feel cosy and classy. We spoke to Passport's owners about their wall colour, and they explained they weren't happy with it. It was meant to be passport blue but after five coats on a white base, the colour didn't come out with more purple than they wanted.

I became obsessed with their incorrect colour and have fantasised about having a feature wall in this shade for over a year. Christmas break 2022 Boyfriend Pham turned my dream into a reality after 6 months of research and sampling colours. I wanted Passport purple-blue for the feature wall I look at while sitting at my home office desk.

We got sample dark blue pots and Boyfriend Pham smeared patches on the walls but they were all too blue with no hint of purple. So we went back to Passport to learn where they'd gotten their paint. One of the owners, Aaron, kindly dug up the CMYK colour code on his laptop and even printed it out for us. He directed us one minute up the road to the local paint shop PaintRight Virginia. We went there to get the CMYK colour converted into a paint colour after some coaxing from Boyfriend Pham who luckily is a graphic designer and has done print production and apparel production and understands how these conversion things work. We got there in the end and came home with some sample paint.

Boyfriend Pham did more sample splotches and bingo! We'd found our colour. Over Xmas break, we got all the paints and undercoats and tools from the gentlemen at PainRight who stepped us through the items we needed and gave us tips. I then sat on the couch and offered words of encouragement to Boyfriend Pham who did all the sanding, washing, prep, painting and cleaning.

I think the main issue Passport Specialty Coffee encountered was their painter used a white base coat and because we were newbies to house painting, we didn't make any assumptions and asked PaintRight what we should use. The experts told us we needed to use grey and ordered it in for us since it's rare for people to use bold colours in their house - they only had 1L when we needed 2 for another feature wall upstairs. Our wall is a lot more midnight blue in certain lighting but still quite purple during the day without any unnatural light on it. I love the colour because of the way it shifts throughout the day as the sun goes up and down and we turn on our lights.

There are some experiences in my life that I don't fully understand, and this is one of them. I used to love supernatural, ghostly, ghastly movies as a kid, but at some point, I stopped being able to stand the creepy feeling and it's because I had my own unexplained paranormal experience. Horror movies, I can do. But paranormal especially when it's in the home or modern-day buildings? No, thank you. Nah-uh.

It was definitely not sleep paralysis, which is a common scientific explanation for what I saw. I've had sleep paralysis where I knew I had been asleep and woke up and felt like I was sinking into the mattress and couldn't move. This was different.

I was wide awake reading the latest Wheel of Time book by Robert Jordan. It was 2-3 am in the morning (uni life, I didn't have to get up early unless I had a morning class) and ever since I'd gone to bed that night at about 1 am to read I'd had this creepy feeling that something wasn't right. At one point I noticed a gross, giant cockroach in the corner of my bedroom and thought maybe that creepy feeling was from that - I loathe cockroaches, I'm just glad even though they can fly that they usually prefer to scamper around on the floor where I can evade them.

I tried to brush off the feeling but it wouldn't go away. I was laying on the left side of my bed by the bedside table and lamp. I continued reading and at one point, something told me to look to my left to the open floor space next to my bed. That's when I saw him. Somehow I identified him as he. He had no definable features - no face and no hair. He was like a 2D flat black shadow figure that didn't cast a shadow. He had a clear outline that wasn't a hard line or blurred, instead, his edges seemed to shift with energy even though he stood completely still. I could make out a bald head and chin, and I'm not sure if I saw the ridge of a straight nose as my head moved angles.

I saw his black shadowy waist first standing next to my bed. My head and eyes travelled upwards until I was looking at where his face would have been. His head was angled and his neck curved in a way that made me feel he'd been standing there a while observing and assessing me. And I'd only just been able to see him now after sensing him all night. I don't know what he was assessing me for but I had a dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach that I did not want to match whatever criteria he was searching for.

We stared at each other for maybe 10 seconds before I looked down at my book and snapped it closed and hit him with it, but when I looked back to take a swipe he'd disappeared and the feeling of dread went too. It was like a weight suddenly lifted from my shoulders. I kept the book closed, only a little aware that I'd lost my place, shoved it on my bedside table, and dived under my blankets. I slept with the light on that night with my head underneath the blanket and peeped out now and then even though I felt he wasn't coming back I just wanted to make sure.

The creepiest part of this experience was later that week, we were chatting with my neighbour and her daughter, whose bedroom faces mine, had a similar encounter. This Shadow Man seemed to be moving from house to house that night hunting something - perhaps weakness? - in young people. A way inside to possess or influence us in a bad way? I don't know.

I've since learned that Shadow people are fairly common sightings. Though, other reports commonly include red eyes, hat and cloak or jacket. My Shadow Man had no apparel, no hair, and no eyes. He was just an outline and even though he was very still, the blackness seemed to be energised and moving. It's hard to describe. I can still visualise the shadow that wasn't shadow. It wasn't still. It felt like it was moving sharply and sporadically - there was no discernable pattern to how the blackness shifted.

I've been thinking about him lately after listening to the first episode of the Otherworld podcast and being reminded about Shadow people. I try not to think about this experience because I don't want to invite this type of energy back into my life. I like my world to be simple and not scary and unexplainable.

Written February 12, 2023: Oh boy. Did I have an un-fun lesson to learn in February this year. I thought I was doing so well looking after my health proactively, and then one day of back-to-back Zoom meetings in peak Brisbane humidity and heatwave - BAM! That itch on my chest, which I thought was just my sweaty tee rubbing my skin the wrong way turned into what I assumed was a heat rash, which turned out to be the beginning of a massive hives breakout, which could have been a lot quicker to recover from if I'd just made the time to go to the doctors instead of putting it off for work meetings. Ah! Why do I never learn?!

The first doctor looked at me and immediately knew I was having an allergic reaction to something. Most likely food because it started along my chest and neck. He sent me home with an order to get Zyrtec and an eczema cream for eczema that had started forming in my sweaty inner elbows.

That night, as if to punish me for not seeing the doctor sooner, my hives spread to my arms and legs and belly. The only safe zone was my back - thank god, I had an angle to sleep on even though it meant that I snored. Sorry Boyfriend Pham! I took a day off work to sit on the couch and feel terribly itchy and uncomfortable in my own skin but it kept getting worse. I tried to see my doctor again but he was booked out and not available for another 5 days. No way was I waiting that long!

I went to another doctor and he also immediately knew I was having an allergic reaction to something. He speculated it could be something in my environment since it was my whole body and advised me to wash my bedsheets and cotton tees in plain hot water since it could be a change in the formula in my washing detergent that set me off. He then told me to ditch Zyrtec and go with Claratyne as that antihistamine is stronger (the first doctor said the same thing about Zyrtec... does anyone know? Or are they stronger for different things?). Anyhoo, the second doctor also sent me home with steroids (Prednisolone) to help reduce my inflammation and calm my immune system down.

I had almost instant relief with the steroids. A few hours after my first dose I stopped wanting to claw my way out of my own skin. The next day my raging red hives faded to pink and no longer burned hot to the touch. I am only on Day 3 now and am learning that I have to do everything I can to avoid feeling warm and getting sweaty because it triggers the dreaded itch and irritates the hives.

I have a week-long work trip to Sydney tomorrow. It's going to be an uncomfortable work trip and, while I wish I could postpone, literally everyone in my team is flying in for the event. I don't want to put work first all the time, but for the most part, I'll be sitting comfortably in air conditioning in a training room or an air-conditioned airport or plane or taxi. I will let you know how the rest of my recovery goes and whether I am forever like this once I'm off the course of steroids.

I strongly suspect my allergic reaction was to excessive sweating on that fateful Wednesday when I didn't turn on the fan let alone the air-con unit while I jumped from one Zoom meeting to the next without a break. My body has been running hotter and sweatier since I started taking thyroid meds and I think that contributed to this mess.

But boy, being allergic to sweat in humid Brisbane is not going to be a fun life if this is my new normal. Wish me luck!

April 22, 2023 update: So, when Doctor 2 asked me if I had any recent changes in medicine I didn't realise that 'recent' in health terms meant 3+ months ago. I'd started thyroid meds approx. 3 months before my hives appear and someone at work (in healthcare, he's not an unqualified mansplainer) said it takes about 3 months for meds to update blood levels. So, yup. I don't think I'm allergic to my environment. I'm allergic to whatever the thyroid meds triggered in my body. Fun! I am now off those meds.

Sometimes I feel I spend all my attention on detail at work and, as a result, my personal life descends into oblivious chaos. When I received my building pass for the new job, I knew the basic, pleb, navy lanyard was just not going to do. No, I had to get something bright, something pink, something that would make my office outfits pop.

And so I found myself on the Yarn website (https://www.yarn.com.au/) browsing their lanyards section. Yarn is owned by non-indigenous people but works to provide a marketplace for Australian Aboriginal Indigenous designers and producers to sell their wares. I fell in love with the Kangaroo Dance Lanyards by artist Charlie Chambers Jnr. (Aboriginal Jarowair man) and ordered one online. I took so long to publish this post that all their lanyards are now sold out. Here's a link to Alperstein Designs aboriginal art products including lanyards, which also support original Australian design. 

Lo and behold when the parcel arrives, I discover I have indeed ordered 1 pack of 10 lanyards. Oops. Faced with the fact I only have one neck and, therefore, only need one lanyard I decided to pimp the other 9 lanyards out to my team at work. I expected to get rid of a few but they were surprisingly popular and were gone within a few days.

Next followed a fun couple of weeks of trying to get people to deliver the lanyards interstate as part of their work travels. Some forgetful types carried the lanyards to Sydney and back to Brisbane. But eventually, with a little help from my work friends and Australia Post I got all the lanyards out to colleagues along the East Coast. It was fun to see people's faces light up over receiving a tiny gift, and the team bonds it built to have a cluster of us rocking the same pink and blue kangaroo art lanyards. We are our own lanyard gang, with an origin story that makes people giggle to remember I am a dope despite appearing super organised at work.

Once upon a time, my casual clothes were my work clothes because people in the fashion and music industries avoid having to grow up. I've since changed industries and gone from one wardrobe to three. Casual clothes, work clothes and Zoom video conferencing clothes.

When I'm in the office, I wear semi-corporate wear. Pencil skirts, blouses and brogues. It's not mandatory in my office; people wear a range of casual to corporate outfits. Semi-corporate is my preference after a lifetime in casual wear. It's fun to try new things. That said, I don't quite blend in with the rest of the work crew. A project sponsor introduced me to someone recently and explained I used to work in fashion, that's why when you look around the office I stick out like, "Bing!" he points his index finger straight up, with my colourful outfits and make-up. Glad you know you can take the girl out of fashion but you can't take fashion out of the girl.

When I work from home, I wear my Zoom outfits. Zoom outfits include mini dresses and skirts that I used to wear to work because I was into less modest fashion. Now I'm rounder than I used to be the same dresses and skirts ride up more than they used to, and I don't feel professional flashing my undies around the office. But on Zoom? People wouldn't know if I didn't have pants on so minis are good. They also don't know that this is Rei Pham's Zoom position. She will eventually lay down but she likes to start our day off blocking my screen. 

Some folks wear tees verging on pyjamas when they work from home but I did that once upon a time and after a while felt really frumpy. So, I wear Zoom work outfits where I look professional on top to work from home. The only time I've gone extra casual was yesterday when I was recovering from allergies and had all-over body hives and swollen face (a story for another time) - no way was I putting on anything but a loose cotton tee and loose gym shorts.

My casual clothes are now just casual for weekends and the odd weeknight evening out. Though, usually, weeknights are gym gear then PJs. 

The beginning

I started off on the wrong foot with 2022. I planned for chaos, if you recall. (I did not recall, I just went back through my blog. This year has been a blur). I did not take a break over Xmas, I did not pass Go, I did not collect some Me Time. Instead, I dived from hectic workload to hectic workload. Big mistake. Huge. 

I felt drained and completely run down. I felt so swamped with work duties and deadlines I kept skipping gym with Boyfriend Pham. Of course, that only compounded my problems. 

The middle

I did not anticipate a change in jobs after 7 years in the company, and changed industries after 17 years in entertainment, retail and e-commerce. The leap into healthcare was exciting because it'd been years since I'd learned new skills and knowledge at a steep and accelerated rate. 

I've been working to get my physical and mental health in check all year. I was seriously burnt out but in denial. I stupidly did not take a break between jobs so I went from one stressful situation to another type of stressful situation. Luckily, the management levels above me all prioritise personal health so it has helped me to make time for myself rather than ignoring my body and only feeding my brain. 

The end

I am on a concoction of supplements and medicines to help with a range of deficiencies. I think the thyroid meds have made the most noticeable difference though. I feel more energised and effective. It's like a haze that I never fully realised was there has lifted from my brain. I'd gotten so used to feeling exhausted, I thought it was just adulthood.

I started Reformer Pilates this year, thanks to a recommendation from a neighbour friend. I have kept up regular gym sessions with my gym buddy. I am hopeful I will start to feel and see results now my hormones, vitamins and minerals are in better ratios. I discovered at the end of this year that my blood pressure is on the high end of the normal range, so a goal for 2023 is to get my heart in better health.  

I'm at a point in my life (and mortgage repayments) where I can treat myself to healthy hobbies like gym and Reformer Pilates. Though, it took Boyfriend Pham to talk me around to forking out money for classes because my inner-stingy self doesn't like to part with any money.

One of our neighbour-friends introduced me to the local studio. She took me to induction class and showed me the ropes. Literally. Reformer Pilates is done on a machine with strappy ropes. I had always been too intimidated by the machine and the super fit people that are photographed on those machines. The actual people in classes range from super fit down to me - chubby office pleb with weak arms, bad knees and zero core strength.

Neighbour-friend and I went to a few classes together before her work hours shifted and no longer aligned with my office pleb schedule. I've kept up the classes and aim to keep them up so long as I don't make any stupid decisions that send me broke.

Reformer Pilates is expensive at Studio Pilates - 20-something dollars per class depending on the class pass you purchase upfront. I can afford it so I treat myself to classes in their really nice studio, with really good machines, and friendly attentive trainers. I did a trial class at a gym that was way cheaper, but the classes were triple the size, the machines were smaller and lower quality, and it was a drive instead of a walk away. That said, if budget was my top priority, I'd have sucked it up and taken classes at the gym instead of with Studio Pilates.

Highly recommend you do a trial class at a couple of different places to see what suits you! I feel strong and more flexible since adding reformer pilates to my life.