Thursday Blues

Nearly the end of a very long, frustrating and boring week.

I have injured my ankle over the last couple of weeks. I think that with a combination of running training, personal training, and a weekly physio session to correct a misalignment in my right leg that my pt noticed, I have seriously overworked my right ankle and it is on strike. I have tendonitis, which is simply inflamation of the tendons running around the right-hand bump of my ankle towards my toes. So walking is painful, running is impossible, and getting down a flight of stairs is ridiculous.

I am not impressed.

This actually started nearly two weeks ago, when I ran a double Bay and knocked 4 minutes off my time, getting it down to 108 minutes. I was so chuffed with myself, and took the slight ache in my right ankle the next day in my stride (pun intended)! Then at the physio on Monday he got me onto one-(right)legged leg presses, which are a lot harder than they sound, and my ache got worse. Tuesday I had my personal training session, and the ache got worse. On Wednesday I ran speed intervals on the treadmill for half an hour, then went off to do squats and leg presses, and by Thursday I had a bit of a hobble!

I nursed it through the weekend we spent in Brisbane with Milord's mum, and by Monday it was mostly ok and I went to the physio again and he had me doing one-legged things again... and then of course I went for a run! Gillian and I ran for half an hour at lunchtime (she is now fitter and faster than me!), stopped, stretched, and as we began to walk back to the office I almost fell over because my ankle had siezed up. It was agonising!

Since then I have stopped physio, personal trainer and gym altogether. I have 9 days to go before the city2surf and I am determined to do it so I have to get my inflammation cured by then.

But it's so frustrating when you are used to at least four exercise sessions a week to have none! And when I am bored or frustrated, I eat. Comfort food. So now I am sore, fat and annoyed. Normally when I feel fat or annoyed I exercise... this is a vicious circle! Grumble grumble rhubarb...

I feel really really blue and blah.

On the bright side I have m'Lord home now for the first weekend in a while. He has a horrible cold that is driving me into the spare room at night, but that should be gone by the weekend. Ideally I'd go running on the weekend, but snuggling up to my honey is a good alternative!

Facebook

I read a statistic in the paper this weekend that the usage of Facebook in Australia has jumped from 2500 to 250000 since the beginning of the year (or something like that, don't quote me). It certainly seems like about once a week I get an invitation from someone to "become their friend" on Facebook.

So yeah, I signed up, linked to some friends and family, and have rather been enjoying it. I have a lot of cousins who are quite a bit younger than me and I didn't spend much time with them as they were growing up because I was studying and stuff, and then they were teenagers who never came to family gatherings, and then I left the country. They're mostly on Facebook now and it is great to be connected. I even found out one of them is pregnant today via Facebook - it's takes years for the family grapevine to pass that info along sometimes! Louise, if you find my blog - congrats!

Another funny thing about Facebook is how you can sometimes find folk from your past. The article I read referred to Facebook as "Stalkbook" because people were looking up old flames. I had to laugh aloud yesterday when I received a message from my first ever serious boyfriend when I was 17. If you read my 100 Things you may find a reference to him ;-). Wierd.

Milord is not interested in Facebook or blogging or any of the new open communication on the internet stuff. He's a bit older than me and I think the whole instant-messaging thing just passes him by. I guess I'm lucky he managed to write me all those emails that made me fall in love with him 2 and a half years ago! It's certainly not his usual style.

Evil Cat

Milord has a cat from his previous life. Her name is Portia and his friends call her Satan. She's a russian blue (probably), and is the unfriendliest animal I have ever met. Unless she's hungry, of course.

People who haven't met her, and who hear me talk about her, accuse me of hating cats. I don't hate cats. I'm not wild about them, and I have to be careful after petting them to wash my hands quickly because I am slightly allergic, but I don't mind them at all. In fact I can play with a kitten for hours, and have been known to pet a cat for ages if it sits in my lap while I'm watching TV.

This one is different. I once asked m'Lord if he got her from a rescue shelter for abused cats because she dislikes being stroked so much, especially near her hindquarters, but he says no. Apparently many years ago a child knocked on his door with a tiny kitten, saying it had been found and had he lost one. An hour or so later the same child knocked again saying did he want it as they couldn't find it a home and m'Lord and his then Lady had cat already. So they took it in.

12 years later he still has an aloof, grumpy, fussy, unfriendly parasite in the house. Not the ex, the cat. She won't eat the same food two days running, she won't let herself be brushed, she doesn't play and she growls at our friends. I don't see the point.

Recently she developed an overactive thyroid or something, which has made her even more grouchy and she can't stand to be touched. She wind around my legs vocalising while I'm cooking, begging for attention, but the moment I bend down to stroke her she acts completely offended.

When my friends say they'd love to get a cat I offer them Portia, but they always say "Not yours, it's horrible".

Old News - Newsletter July 2007

Well here we are at the middle of July, and I don’t think I have much news, but I’ll have a go anyway!

Milord’s mum is really ill. Her lung cancer is growing in spite of the chemotherapy now, and it has come to the point where the treatment would probably kill her sooner than the disease so they’ve stopped it. She’s been given a few months to live and Milord and his sister are taking turns in being with her 24 hours a day at her home in Brisbane. She wants to stay at home for as long as possible before going into a hospice, but someone has to be there all the time. Milord’s sister has suspended her job to be there during the week, and Milord is flying up most weekends to take over and let his sister go home to her family. It is very hard on them all.

So I’ve had the house to myself rather a lot recently. At first it was rather nice to have some space, but I’m over it now and miss him terribly. That is, until he comes home and grumps around the place like a bear with a sore head. I know it’s my job to absorb it and be cheerful, but I’m kind of over that too! Some days I feel like moving in with a mate and letting him and his horrible cat grump at each other instead. Bad girlfriend.

The househunting has been pretty awful. We’ve decided that it is one stress we can do without at this time and are taking a break from it. I don’t know when we’ll start again, but hopefully at the end of the year. I really miss my little house in England sometimes, and I’ve been ever so homesick lately. Probably because I just don’t like the house we are in now, and being in it alone really brings home what I am missing.

Anyway, enough moaning.

As you know, my permanent visa came through the other day (yay yay yay!) and I have to go out of the country to get it. We have booked to go to New Zealand in September, for a few days of skiing in Queenstown and a hop to Auckland to get my visa and visit H. I’m a bit nervous about skiing as it’s been about 5 years, and Milord and I have started exercising to build up our thighs. Hopefully it will all come back once I’m up the lift looking down the mountain!

Speaking of exercising, I have signed up for a Sydney fun run called the City to Surf, which is a 14km run from the centre of the city to Bondi beach. The main reason I signed up was to have an incentive to get running to hopefully shake off some weight. Sadly I’m doing something wrong, because although I am fitter and faster I am actually gaining weight! Running isn’t supposed to build muscle, is it? I have also started using a personal trainer once a week, and she’s killing me. Lunges, squats, press-ups, all the things I really don’t like! Hmmm, maybe that’s where the “muscle” is coming from… On the positive side I have beaten my personal best around the Bay, at last! Tomorrow I intend to try to run the Bay twice, as that is pretty much the same distance as the City to Surf. I imagine I’ll be walking most of the second circuit!

That’s about it, not very interesting… We’re trying to pay off our credit cards so aren’t getting out much, it’s quite cold and surprisingly wet.

Mid July

Well here we are at the middle of July, and I don’t think I have much news, but I’ll have a go anyway!

Milord’s mum is really ill. Her lung cancer is growing in spite of the chemotherapy now, and it has come to the point where the treatment would probably kill her sooner than the disease so they’ve stopped it. She’s been given a few months to live and Milord and his sister are taking turns in being with her 24 hours a day at her home in Brisbane. She wants to stay at home for as long as possible before going into a hospice, but someone has to be there all the time. Milord's sister has suspended her job to be there during the week, and m'Lord is flying up most weekends to take over and let his sister go home to her family. It is very hard on them all.

So I’ve had the house to myself rather a lot recently. At first it was rather nice to have some space, but I’m over it now and miss him terribly. That is, until he comes home and grumps around the place like a bear with a sore head. I know it’s my job to absorb it and be cheerful, but I’m kind of over that too! Some days I feel like moving in with a mate and letting him and his horrible cat grump at each other instead. Bad girlfriend.

The househunting has been pretty awful. We’ve decided that it is one stress we can do without at this time and are taking a break from it. I don’t know when we’ll start again, but hopefully at the end of the year. I really miss my little house in England sometimes, and I’ve been ever so homesick lately. Probably because I just don’t like the house we are in now, and being in it alone really brings home what I am missing.

Anyway, enough moaning.

As you know, my permanent visa came through the other day (yay yay yay!) and I have to go out of the country to get it. We have booked to go to New Zealand in September, for a few days of skiing in Queenstown and a hop to Auckland to get my visa and visit Heidi. I’m a bit nervous about skiing as it’s been about 5 years, and Milord and I have started exercising to build up our thighs. Hopefully it will all come back once I’m up the lift looking down the mountain!

Speaking of exercising, I have signed up for a Sydney fun run called the City to Surf, which is a 14km run from the centre of the city to Bondi beach. The main reason I signed up was to have an incentive to get running to hopefully shake off some weight. Sadly I’m doing something wrong, because although I am fitter and faster I am actually gaining weight! Running isn’t supposed to build muscle, is it? I have also started using a personal trainer once a week, and she’s killing me. Lunges, squats, press-ups, all the things I really don’t like! Hmmm, maybe that’s where the “muscle” is coming from… On the positive side I have beaten my personal best around the Bay, at last! Tomorrow I intend to try to run the Bay twice, as that is pretty much the same distance as the City to Surf. I imagine I’ll be walking most of the second circuit!

That’s about it, not very interesting… We’re trying to pay off our credit cards so aren’t getting out much, it’s quite cold and surprisingly wet.

Personal Torturer

The gym I belong to gives you a free personal training session every month as part of the membership deal. Initially I thought this was rather cool, and I used my sessions to ask the trainer about specific exercises to firm my butt or how to use the weights or whatever. Then the trainer I had been seeing left the gym, and I was assigned a new one called Rene.

And Rene is out to hurt people! I had one session with her and several days later when I was walking normally again I determined to never go back, and I didn't for over a year. I don't like pain.

Now, it seems the gym has become techo-savvy and they have discovered that I have a backlog of a year's worth of PT sessions owed to me. Rene rang me up a couple of weeks back to arrange a session, and I was such a wuss that I went along last Monday. She hasn't eased up at all! On Tuesday I could barely make it down a flight of stairs, and on Wednesday night I was on painkillers and Milord was heating up wheat bags to put on my back because it was in spasm...

And guess what? I've booked in for sessions with Rene every Monday midday until the City2Surf run! That's 5 weeks of torture every Monday - and my next one is in an hours time... oh why do I let these things happen to me!? Today I will ask her to skip the exercise for the back and core muscles as my back is still not quite right - of course that means that she will be able to make me do something else instead.

On the positive side though, I broke 50 minutes for the first time around the Bay yesterday! 48:48 - fantastic.

The Last Time I Skied

Milord and I are now booked to go skiing for a few days in September while we are in New Zealand to pick up my visa. We're a bit nervous about it as it has been more than 5 years since either of us skied!

While browsing through some old emails I came across this account of the last time I went skiing in 2002. I'm going to post it for later comparison! It also recounts the passing of my 30th Birthday, always a major event ;-).

19 March 2002:

"A good friend of mine once stated that any woman who passed the age of 30 without being married was a lesbian. So you will all be glad to hear that I have now reached that significant age without the benefit of matrimony, and am awaiting the change with interest. I have had a very short haircut so far, but the ‘comfortable shoes’ have yet to materialise!

As I was in France skiing over my birthday, I had a party in London the Saturday before. Jon and Tara kindly let me use their flat, and 12 of my closest friends came along for oodles of snacks and much, much champagne. Cheers to everyone who came for making it such an enjoyable evening! (and to those who couldn’t make it, you missed a great time!) It was a lovely chatty, boozy, laid-back evening, and at around midnight we all staggered over the road to an indie club where the music was excellent. Then back to the flat at 3 for more champagne… I had one of the worst hangovers on record the next day! 9 of the 12 stayed over, and we limped down the road to the greasy spoon for a fry-up at about midday on Sunday. I had meant to produce breakfast, but was too ill to face it! I still felt terrible on the Monday, and work was a trial!

On Friday the 8th Paul, Tara, Jon and I went to France to go skiing in Les Arcs. We travelled by train, which is not bad – it means you get 2 extra days skiing, as the train arrives at 7am on Saturday, and leaves the following Saturday at 10pm. I managed to drink far too much far too fast on the train there, and was not feeling well when we arrived in Les Arcs. Paul and Jon had stayed up most of the night sponsoring the bar, and were not too good either! But as we could only check-in at 5pm, we bravely hired skis and launched ourselves at the chairlift.

I decided to try out snowblades (v short skis, turned up back and front) for the week, while the others took skis. They’re cool, you can get down any slope, no matter how steep or icy, as their turning radius is so small! On the downside they react to the surface a lot, and I never felt quite safe at high speed.

Paul, Tara and Jon are very good, and very fast, skiers. I had spent a large amount of time in the gym before the holiday building up my leg muscles, in the hope that I could keep up through brute strength. It seemed to work a bit, as I was not too far behind at each stop (and my legs didn’t get sore - bonus)! I will never be as fast as they are though, even on proper skis – my sense of terror kicks in too soon at high speed!

I’m a bit of a lazy, social, fair-weather skier, and 8 days in a row of 6 hours a day is a little too much skiing for my liking. I took a day off after 3 days, and an afternoon off a couple of days later, and towards the end of the week tended to head for home an hour or two before the others. Unfortunately there is not much else to do in a ski resort, and I was bored silly! If I go skiing again it will be in a big group, with at least one other lazy person to chill out with.

Les Arcs is a superb skiing resort. We were very lucky with the snow too, as they had a huge snowfall the week before, and the piste was still 1m thick at the bottom and 2m at the top. It was getting pretty thin at the bottom by the time we left, and I felt sorry for any novices trying to dodge the grass! There are about 4 villages that you can ski between, and one of them is very high up and always had excellent snow. It was very sunny for most of the time (we all got sunburnt on the first day, and now have sunglass-tans!) and surprising warm. This is the latest in the year I have skied, and the sun is getting strong!

I had a great birthday – I didn’t even notice it! The best way to spend your 30th I say! (or the beginning of your fourth decade as someone said – sounds even worse!)"

City2Surf

I need to do something drastic about my weight gain. I was heavy before winter started, and now that the days are short, and cold, and wet, I've gone into hibernation mode. Cue lots of eating and sleeping and long hot baths with a bottle of wine within reach. Slowly but surely I am packing on the blubber, and it must stop!

To this end I have convinced my friend Gillian to run the City2Surf Sydney fun run with me on the 12th August. It is 14km (about 9 miles), so really only twice around the Bay which I can do easily if very slowly at the moment.

Gillian is a petite, slender, energetic Irish girl with oodles of energy and the metabolism of a teenage boy. She has to eat all day long or else she'll waste away and faint. I, on the other hand, could probably forgo food for a month and not lose a kilo, my metabolism is so slow. (Milord has the same problem, and we joke that if we crashed on a desert island we'd still be wobbling around just fine after everyone else had died of starvation! And we'd have the resources to run away from them when they decided to eat us...)

I am not, and have never been, much of a runner. My heart rate seems to be faster than most folks when I run which means I have to run a lot slower than them or else I die. I wear a heart rate monitor and don't let my bpm go over a certain value, at which point I can sort of chat... apparently that's the sign of where you should be! It serves me well, I can go without stopping for ages and don't feel too awful afterwards.

Today Gillian and I went out for our first training run at lunchtime. There are a few parks near our office, so we picked a flat, roundish one and ran around the outside of it a few times to the great amusement of the blokes working on the new playground. I did my usual slow jog while Gillian sort of ran circles around me... she says she struggles to run so slow. I was having visions of "the tortoise and the hare". Be that as it may, she was soon puffed while I gently plodded on and we had to drop to a walk every so often.

We jogged twice around the park (in 20 min), then walked around it a final time. Including walking to and from the park we were out for 45 min. We're going to go again on Friday if it isn't raining, and then on Sunday we'll have a go at jogging the Bay.

By the 12th August we need to be able to run twice around the Bay without stopping! That's 7.5 weeks away and I'm sure we can do it ;-)

Mum's Visit Nov 2006 - Part 2

Mum's Visit - Part 1
Mum's Visit - Part 2
Mum's Visit - Part 3

Milord decided he fancied coming with us to the Hunter Valley (5), so we did a bit of sightseeing on Monday waiting for him to finish work, then travelled there in the evening. We stayed in his (and his ex’s) golf apartment, which is pleasant and quite central. It needs a bit of TLC though, so on Tuesday mum and I had a bask by the pool while m'Lord shopped for paint etc, then we all mucked in and gave the place a slight makeover. Most of the effort happened on the balcony, with pressure hoses, paint and furniture oil in full flight. Inside we had a spring clean and touched up paintwork – it all looked far better in the end although we were all covered in paint! It’s been on the market for over a year so hopefully this will help. (Update: the place sold within weeks of our make-over!) On Wednesday Milord volunteered to be chauffer and tour guide, and we had an excellent wine tour and lunch in the region. Everyone is so friendly, and being out of season we could have a good chat with the staff and try everything ;-). We also spotted a couple of galahs (big pink parrots) in a tree at the golf course.


On Thursday the 16th we all travelled to the Blue Mountains (6) via the scenic, winding back roads, and checked into a somewhat scruffy and grubby but very cheap cottage in Blackheath. Not m'Lord’s style at all, but he wasn’t supposed to be along on that leg of the trip so I hadn’t allowed for his sensibilities! Then a quick sightsee to the nearest gorge, before heading home to play with the log stove which made it all warm and homely.

Friday morning early Milord headed back to Sydney on the train to go to a birthday lunch/dinner/boozeup, and mum and I went for a glorious scenic walk along cliffs at Katoomba overlooking a vast gorge where we could see flocks of cockatoos flying through the trees below. We walked to where there used to be coal mines, and travelled to the valley floor on a thrilling almost vertical railway that used to carry ore to the top. We had very interesting roam around in the forest and saw a rare lyre-bird, then took a cable car back and walked back to the car. After a late lunch we went exploring in a vast rhododendron garden … being so high up it stays pretty cold in spring and they were just finishing, but we could still enjoy acres of colour.


On the Saturday morning m'Lord came back very hungover on the train, and after a fry up we headed off for the Gardens of Stone national park which I’d read about somewhere. We’d hoped to go walking but couldn’t find any trails so Milord ended up doing an extremely exciting impromptu 4x4 drive through some fantastic scenery. It’s the first time we’ve tested the car (big 4wd Lexus) off-road and we were pleasantly surprised! We were in the bush for hours, and it was fascinating to see the GPS showing us meandering around in uncharted territory… Then back to the cottage for a jug or two of g&t and a roast dinner.

Sunday was a slow start, with the smell of ash from the back-burning around a nearby bushfire that had been raging for nearly a week. The clouds of smoke over the ridge were truly ominous! We went out to do a walk along the nearby gorge, only to find it completely filled with smoke… we decided to head home to Sydney instead and had a quiet night in. I later heard that the fire jumped the back burning and entered the gorge, which is a shame.


On Monday 20th mum and I went for a little scuba dive off Shelleys Beach near Manly to brush up her skills as she hadn’t been diving in the sea for over a year. Shelleys is very sheltered and no deeper than 10m where we were so nice and safe, but very very boring to dive. It was good to be back in the sea though, and mum soon got the hang of things again.

Mum's Visit - Part 3

Mum's Visit Nov 2006 - Part 3

Mum's Visit - Part 1
Mum's Visit - Part 2
Mum's Visit - Part 3

On Tuesday we flew to Uluru (Ayers Rock) (7), got picked up by a “safari” outfit along with 12 others and headed off to the rock. It was very hot, about 45 deg, so we just did a gentle walk around the base before heading off to watch the sunset change the colours of Uluru. Turns out I’d found a rather, ahem, budget outfit, so we got to watch other tour groups sipping champagne from crystal while the 14 of us shared 2 bottles in scruffy plastic mugs! That kind of set the tone for the rest of the evening (rather blah dinner and no booze to be had), although we had the bonus of our own tent/hut with light and fan when most of the group bunked down in dark dorms. We were the only English speakers in our group, then rest being mostly young Germans and a couple of Japanese – pleasant enough but we didn’t exactly click!


The next day we woke before dawn and set off to watch the sun rise over Uluru and the Olgas (a nearby mountain outcrop sort of similar). We did a walk in the Olgas, through amazing deep red mountains and rock outcroppings. It was hot at 8am, and by late morning when we left the safari and checked into our room in the resort it was scorching! We gratefully collapsed in our en-suite air-conditioned room with a bottle of cold wine and two fresh fruit salads and had a much needed nap, before going to sit in the shade beside a very welcome swimming pool for the rest of the afternoon.

On Thursday we lazed around the resort until midday when we flew to Sydney airport, met Milord and flew immediately to Brisbane (8) to spend the night with his mum. She is in the middle of a chemo course (she has lung cancer) so was very ill, but managed to stay up quite late chatting to us, and our mums were pleased to have met each other.

Friday we flew to Townsville (9), near Cairns, and spent the afternoon in a pub/restaurant on the beachfront. It was so pleasant there that we had lunch, stayed for more drinks, and when the kitchen reopened we had dinner there too! Then boarded our dive boat and headed off to sea… It’s a somewhat slow boat so took 8 hours to get to the first mooring, through some rather heavy chop and swell. Mum gets seasick, so had dosed herself up for days to deal with it, but lying down in the corkscrewing dark was all too much and she ended up bent over the rail in the darkness with waves breaking over the deck for all 8 hours! When I found her in the morning it was all she could do to sip a glass of water, and she skipped the first dive of the day and instead had a bit of a snorkel.


Luckily the weather and waves were kind from then on, and mum recovered enough to get her appetite back and join us on the rest of the dives. It is definitely the best diving I have done in Australia, reasonable visibility and lots to see. We also did a night dive, which was not as creepy as I expected, and also not as interesting as most of the fish are asleep! Our final two dives were on the wreck of the Yongala, which has been in 25m of water since 1911 and is so overgrown with coral that she looks like a wreck-shaped reef! It’s an excellent site and we’d like to go back, but maybe on a faster boat for a daytrip ;-). We had a nice crowd of 10 other divers with us, from Sweden, America, Oz and England, and the crew were excellent. A bit no-frills, but I can certainly recommend them!


We spent a glorious night back on dry land in big beds that don’t rock with en-suite and air-con in Townsville on Monday night, and flew back to Sydney on Tuesday 28th where we collapsed.

The last few days were very relaxed as we were all exhausted. Poor Milord had to go back to work, and mum and I did some gentle sightseeing for the last couple of days including climbing up one of the Harbour Bridge pylons for amazing views. We had a mob of people over on Thursday night for a barbie to meet the parent ;-), and mum flew home on Friday night.