How do people meet, get engaged and plan a wedding in less than a year - how can they possibly know enough about each other to commit for the rest of their lives? I'm a romantic by all means, but it just blows my mind.

What is the point in airlines making one-way tickets just as, if not more, expensive as return fares? I get they want the business coming back with them, but we aren't returning in that same direction!  Now I'm buying return flights just for the sake of it, which seems incredibly pointless. I'm already feeling guilty that one day flights will be held up waiting for us to board the plane for the return journey, which we never wanted to purchase in the first place.

After two years of ignoring the clothes line, why has Oscar become fascinated with it all of a sudden?

Why does putting weight on take no effort at all, but getting it off takes every little bit of strength and then some?

Is it normal for wedding traditions to be completely unfamiliar to the grooms-to-be? Jase isn't really aware of, or interested in, pre-wedding events like an engagement celebration, a bridal shower, a rehearsal dinner. Is it bad that the thought of not enjoying these events before we get married is making me miserable?

How can Disney claim to be the happiest place on earth, when it's ridiculous prices are making me unhappy?

When the tube is packed to the brim of people coming home from work AND summer tourists, why don't people move down into the middle of the carriages instead of creating hot and sweaty crowds by the doors?

Why is it that the one thing I want more than anything right now {remember this camera?} is the one thing I can't have, as we have too many other expenses right now? And why is it that everywhere I look, people are purchasing said camera, taking awesome pictures and making me more than a little bit green with envy?

Why haven't I finished this holiday planning yet when it really needs to be booked already? Get on with it, woman!

London in the midst of grey and dreary weather is perfect - moody, full of history & like it's meant to be that way.

Since our flights have now been booked and our e-tickets are waiting patiently in our inbox, I can break the news:

Newly arrived in laws + super early starts + keeping people entertained + too many cups of coffee = brain dead Aly.

Instead, here are some snippets from my life, summed up in 140 characters or less. Twitter, I was late on the bandwagon, but I'm beginning to love you so. {Not enough to start using the hash tags though. Sorry.}

• Bought the cutest scarf today; I can't wait to wear it! Wait, how do I wear scarves again? 
• Got home to a little package from one of my Aussie girls. Mix CD of obnoxious 90's music!
• I hate when word verification programs are impossible read. Do they purposely want you to fail? I don't understand it.
• Walking along south bank and going to meet @emilyjv - if I don't tweet again in an hour, she was an axe murderer, send help!
• Help!!!! No, I'm kidding. Had a great brunch with @emilyjv and now headed for London Bridge. :)
• I'm not going to tell you how many Jersey Shore episodes I watched this weekend.
• So 90% of my Twitter friends are at Blogher. And I'm in my pj's geeking out on the laptop at 8pm on a Friday night. Are you jealous?
• Why does Twitter want me to follow Taylor Swift?
• You know what makes me unhappy? TECHNOLOGY THAT DOESN'T WORK. I hate this scanner/printer/devil machine.
• I just looked up and Oscar was quite literally sitting IN an open kitchen cupboard.
• Right folks; if all goes well, my updated domain should be live now. Test it for me, let me know if it works! http://www.breathegently.com
• I think Jason is trying to kill me. Every time he shops, he buys 'strong flavour' onions that leave me crying and puffy eyed when I cook.
• Just ate pineapple and now my mouth feels all kinds of strange.
• I AM SO EXCITED THAT WE HAVE JUST BOOKED HAWAII FOR THE END OF THE YEAR, WOO. /end caps

I was out of the house most of this weekend, spending quite a lot of time with a few visitors that have been in London recently. I was really excited to meet Emily {aka Emily Jane, awesome wedding-winner extraordinaire} during her whirlwind trip back to the UK with her fiancé, and we quickly coordinated a time and place to catch up.

I have to say, I'm rubbish at making decisions and picking venues to visit. I do have one favourite place that I love to stop by every once in a blue moon; it's not in my neighbourhood at all and requires a bit of a journey, but it makes for an awesome brunch spot. It's located near Tower Bridge and it's on a little cobblestone street full of shops and apartments that are completely precious. How can you not love it; it's oh so London. {And check out that sky!}

One year ago today, I was in Prague.

It was a week after my birthday and Jason had planned the entire weekend away as a surprise - and it was amazing. The sun was shining, the crowds were slightly insane, but the entire trip away was just amazing.

Prague is one of those cities where it is impossible to take a bad photograph, even for point & shooters like myself.

• I've never done a thing to my eyebrows in my life. No plucking. No waxing. Nothing. Sure, they're kind of fluffy - but I know that once I shape them, I'll have to maintain them. Let's face it; I'd be awful at it.
• I'm embarrassingly fussy with food, mainly due to textures and scents. I don't eat seafood, because of the fishy-ness. I don't eat strawberries or kiwi fruit or any other fruit with seeds. Tomatoes make me gag. Feed me a piece of salmon and I may throw up on you. As such, I tend to enjoy foods when they're simple. Eating out with me is like eating out with a toddler. I apologise for this in advance.
• I have (blonde!) hairs on my chin, which make me incredibly paranoid and self conscious, but there you have it. When I'm a grandma, I'll probably have the makings of a fully fledged beard. I've been told that this is a side effect of having PCOS so there's not much I can do about it, but if you're meeting me in real life? Please try not to stare at my chinny chin chin.
• I'm a righty, but I can also write with my left hand - just not as comfortably.
• I'm directionally challenged and can get lost without even trying. I still have moments where I fet my left and right confused, and I'm not opposed to turning a map upside down to try and make sense of it.

Since July is long gone (well, four days gone..) that means that I've officially been on my healthy living plan now for four weeks; more than enough time to write in and share how things are going with it so far.

Let's start with the positives: in four weeks, I'm down  fourteen pounds. I'm pleased with that; despite only losing a measly 1-pound in the last week itself. It's a pretty consistent loss when you work out the average of around 3-pounds per week. I've become a lot more aware of my portion sizes; particularly with innocent meals like cereals and dinners - I was going completely overboard and not even realising, since that was "normal" for me. Now, I'm starting to find myself fuller for longer & I'm never really going without, which is important to me.

Another positive is that I'm being a lot more conscious of eating enough food. While I was busy spending May and June working out rigorously, I wasn't losing any weight. Looking back, I think it was because I was eating my meals all wrong, with big portions at set times each day and not many snacks in between. I'm now eating more - but smaller sizes and at random times throughout the day. I'm eating a lot more fruit, and finding good things to snack on that will keep me within my calorie "goal" (I hate the word "limit") each day. I downloaded an iPhone app called Lose It, and while it took a bit of time initially plugging in most of my regular meals, it's super easy to use now.

But of course, there are always downsides to a weight loss journey - if it was a quick and easy fix, I'd already be at my ideal weight and size. The most common gripe I have is about ME and how I carry my weight: because that fourteen pounds lost has not made the slightest bit of difference to my figure. Please don't think I'm complaining about how much I've lost because I know that fourteen pounds is great and I'm mighty pleased with myself, but honestly - where has it gone from? It's so hard not to be disheartened when you look in the mirror and see no progress, despite the numbers finally starting to budge on the scale. Progress is everything to me. I like to see results. I like to know that the effort I'm putting in is noticeable to others, but more importantly, to myself.

I'm a pretty critical judge.

Part of this intense need to really see results stems from my impatience; yet another thing I struggle with. I have a long way to go on this journey; let's face it, with the amount of weight I need to lose, fourteen pounds is a very small percentage of the whole picture. Mentally, I need to make sure I'm 100% focused on this as a long-term thing - I've learned from failed past attempts that it's all too easy for me to go from being a little wobbly with my commitment, to eventually toppling off the bandwagon in a spectacular fashion.

I had a moment this morning where I felt utterly dejected after reading that 1-pound loss; where I felt like this was ridiculous and that I was once again wasting my time and energy into something that just isn't going to happen for me. I just felt awful, like a big, fat lump. I sat down on the floor in my underwear and thought about raiding the cupboards to make the worst possible food I could come up with. I thought about the fact that I had eaten out twice this week for my birthday - naughty Thai food, apple pie with ice cream and wood fire pizza, and figured hey, that explains it you silly girl, get off the floor and start over.

But then I got angry. Really, really angry. So angry that I would have punched something, except that there was nothing here to punch. Why? Because I'm bitter. I'm jealous and I'm bitter. I ate two small meals this week that were what I would consider a splurge, and my weight loss stalled because of it: yet why are there people out there who can eat terribly every day, drink cans of coke every day, not work out at all - and can not gain a pound.

Why is this such a hard journey for me? What did I do to deserve always being large? WHY? It's not fair.

I'm over that now. I got up and I moved on, and I indulged in a small portion of cocoa & granola with milk for breakfast. But you know, deep down, I am still all of those things. I am sad. I am angry. I am bitter. I am jealous. And to be perfectly honest, I don't think that anyone can empathise unless they have been fat themselves. And I'm not talking a few pounds over their 'skinny' weight. I'm talking about people who are well over a healthy weight range, who have a lot of weight to lose, and who have probably (like me) been heavy their entire life. I don't know if these feelings will change as this journey progresses; I hope they do.

But to end on a positive and to summarise: four weeks down, fourteen pounds lost.

This evening I ventured out to a new local restaurant to meet a few people for a dinner. One of them is a good friend who has been here on holidays but is heading back to Sydney tomorrow; so it was sort of a leaving-do for him as well as a catch up with a few other girls I used to work with. It was a lovely dinner & we all ate some of the most amazing authentic wood fire pizzas (my mouth is watering just thinking about it again.. yum) in London. It was a fun evening out, however it led me to thinking about personalities within groups.

You see, I'm more than able to hold a conversation of my own - despite growing up as a super, super shy bunny. I still find myself feeling and acting a little socially awkward more than I'd like to admit, and I do have some random quirks with speaking in public: one of those is phoning people I don't know. (Yes, at 26, calling up and getting quotes or speaking to people over the phone, really freaks me out. It's slightly ridiculous, but it's just me.) But as I've gotten older, I find that social conversations are a tiny bit less scary than they used to be.

There were only four of us out tonight and it was a fairly intimate restaurant. The two girls, one from Canada and one from America, are naturally quite loud and talkative - they're both the kind of girl who always has a story to tell, always have amusing things to relay to others, and always have a million things going on in their life to talk about. The guy, my darling friend T, is one of the most gorgeous people I've ever met, who always has adventure stories to share - the most recent ones being his travelling trips through Mykonos & Crete and his experiences as a club-goer world over.

And then there's me. Who, let's face it, lives a pretty boring little life! I love talking about travels, wedding planning and all that jazz, but compared to the amazing stories the others had ready to tell, those things just didn't seem so important - so I found myself sitting back in my chair and just taking it all in.

It's not like there's anything wrong with that, and I don't dislike being that person - but looking back, that always has been the way I function. I like to listen. I can interject here and there with a comment or a reply or some witty banter, but I've never really been the storyteller - unless it's a topic that I'm really interested in.

Sometimes people might mistake that quietness for shyness, but it's not. It can be awkward on occasion, yes, particularly if I really do have nothing at all to contribute. But tonight, I was perfectly content to sit, eat, drink and listen. While my cosy little life might be boring to some people, it's all I would ever wish for myself - to be happy, to love the ones you're with, and to be thankful for what you have!

What kind of person would you consider yourself to be in a group?

I'm still amazed when I'm reminded of the fact that blogging has been such a major part of my twenties.