positive

Noddie is off on a Proper Kinder Excursion (in a bus!!), and not being one of the in-crowd mums (too tall, too cranky, not related to anyone, would rather stick my finger in my eye than wear visible lip-liner) I am sitting in a silent messy house with a mountain of jobs to do before 1pm. This is usually the time I go to pieces and get all gloomy, waste a lot of time on the internet, then hate myself the whole rest of the day for not taking advantage of this window of No Interruptions. But not today. Today I have a List! I love lists! Lists save me from my scatterbrained waftiness and make it all about getting stuff done. They bestow satisfying crossings-out and silence the it’s not fair I always have to do everything mumblings. Mmmmmmm…….lists……
Item 1. Write a blog post.
Sometimes my blog is about what I think (usually the whingeing bits) and sometimes it’s about what I want to think (the bits pinched from other people’s blogs). Well, today I’ll lock in ‘B’ for $25,000 please Eddie.
Iron Geekgrl Misty wrote about patience, how you’re going to be a year older next October anyway so you might as well get started on things that will make your life better even if they take a long time. What’s the point of training when I’m always going to be slow and heavy? The point is that summer will come whether I train or not. Patiently building up my fitness and whittling away my lard will mean I have much more fun in February. Misty made another point about patience that any of us who race can take with us (you well adjusted types probably do this already. Smart-arses): the finish line will still be there whether you beat yourself up about your performance or not. And if you miss the cutoff or get injured and they pull you off the course, there will be other finish lines. Patience. It’s really a mindset of abundance, isn’t it? I like that. There will be enough. There is enough. I am enough.
The mighty Duane reminded me of something else. This winter I’ve been getting more and more negative in my self-talk (lazy, don’t try hard, so slow I wonder why I bother, lurgis my own fault because I don't take proper care of myself, a tragic drunk, a bad mother, terrible taste in shoes etc etc). I wouldn’t let anyone else put me down the way I have been doing to myself! Not wanting to get all 0prah on you, but words are powerful. They can serve me or hinder me. It’s time to be like Duane and get some positive statements out there.
I like getting up early.
I work hard.
I am the best mum and wife I can manage
I don’t eat chips or chocolate, or drink during the week.
I am a swimmer and a runner and a triathlete.
Come on summer, I’m ready! This is right near my parents' place. See why we want to move there?
More anon, manipulators of cosmic forces!

I meant to tell you, I bought a book about how to hear angel messages because the hairdresser told me to (as you do), then I couldn't find it so I thought the angels must have hidden it because I was so skeptical about the whole thing. Then the Spousal Unit found it under the couch.

duck broken

These are exciting times at Chateau LBTEPA. The RSPBEB* has cleared up at last; I've strung together a few weeks of consistent exercise and my word I am feeling better for it; and last but not least, I've finally overcome the siren lure of the doona and done an early morning workout. It was unfortunate that whiny LBTEPA came along for the ride:
I hate this, it's freezing
Be quiet, at least we got out of bed
but I'm reeeally collllllld
pedal harder. Isn't this envigorating?
Envigorating my lardy posterior. I wish I was still snuggled up warmly next to the Spousal Unit. We must be mental
No you don't. This is quite nice really....
no it isn't
...and we're half way there now, time to turn back
Holy smeg, this head wind! It's freezing!Since when do we have southerlies in October?
Please stop whingeing
(mutters sulkily) oh all right then.
I've broken my duck, and I can't wait to go out again.

More anon, keensters!
*Rotten Stinking Pig Bastard Everlasting Bronchitis

Told

Given that it has been pointed out to me* that I 'should look at the big picture' because 'it's not the end of the world' to miss out on a bike ride, and also how 'silly' it is to be so sad about the bike ride when the 19y.o. sister of a friend has come out of remission with leukaemia and has only weeks to live, I don't have much to say today.

My gratitude blog has been unlocked, yay! And our computer is fixed! I was ready to throw it out the window but seeing as all my friends live in it I couldn't do that. It wasn't the modem either, it was some weird code thingo that took the sensationally helpful and patient support person an hour to work out. I really cannot recommend our ISP provider highly enough.
For the next couple of years I am going to plan and train for events but not actually cough up the shekels and hope involved in entering them until the last minute.
I'm going down to the ride expo site this afternoon to cheer in Secret Sara, who as we speak is making her way around the Bay. You go girl! It's mild today but I am wishing the wind away.
UPDATE: Secret Sara blitzed it, riding so fast she finished before we even got there! Huge congrats, mate

More anon, blessing-counters
*the Spousal Unit is a bit of a dickhead sometimes

stranded!

Our modem has turned up its toes and shuffled off this mortal coil. See you when its replcement is installed :)

Marathon Sunday*

aka if you can't join 'em, cheer for 'em
aka it's far better form to hand out refreshments and yell encouragement than to sulk on the couch at home feeling jealous and disappointed
If I'd been running, which I really really wanted to do - and which I WILL be doing in 09 - then I wouldn't have been part of the great Coolrunning cheersquad - our motto: what we lack in numbers we make up for in enthusiasm - and wouldn't have spent the morning with the lovely Secret Sara (sign painter extraordinaire), Pink Lady, Kylie and Davo, waving our streamers and yelling at people to remember, you're a marathoner! and think of the medal! Noddie wouldn't have been doing thisor this(or this)I really really wanted to go the after-race do and catch up with some of my lovely imaginary internet friends but I couldn't, especially after Noddie behaved perfectly the whole five and a half hours we were there but was asleep in the car within minutes of setting off for home. I had a brief Pouty McSulkfest but am over it now. Huge HUGE congratulations to everyone who toed the line on such a hot windy day. I hope the jelly snakes and icypoles helped.

More anon, cheerers from the sidelines!

Automaton

I started a new blog as a convenient spot to write down my 'ten things I'm grateful for' every couple of days - and blogger thinks it's a spam blog and has locked it until a real live person has reviewed it and decides that I am not a spambot!! I've never been perceived as a possible threat to the workings of the internet before. How thrilling.

Things have been a bit nuts here. Saturday really started when I worked until 11pm on Friday night - instead of leaping nimbly from the couch o' slumber to work out, cook, vacuum etc I slept in until eight o'clock (bliss) and then lingered over a cuppa and a magazine until nine, when it was time to pick Noddie up from her sleepover at Nanny's (see bliss, above) and go to J's Nan's 90th birthday brunch. The rose of the sleepover is not without thorns, however: Noddie always stays up late and is Over Excited, not the best for a crowded noisy gathering of rellies. The brunch dragged on and on and we got home again at quarter to three, giving me an hour and three quarters to transform the place from its usual squalor to a vision of loveliness in readiness for the gathering of the clan in honour of my Mum's 70th birthday. I also had to make and decorate a cake worthy of my esteemed mater, and tend to the horribly ill Spousal Unit (barking bronchitis. We expect to be quarantined by the Biosecurity Health Response team shortly. We are looking forward to it). It's a good thing daylight savings didn't start until Saturday night so no-one saw that I hadn't even vacuumed (shock horror). Guests: 12, including the in-laws. Drinks: several. Party: great fun.
On Sunday morning I hosed the place out, propped the Spousal Unit on his recliner in front of some car racing, and went out with Noddie to catch up with a friend of mine down from Sydney. After lunch and a bit of gazing at Art Deco masterpieces, Noddie hit the wall with a splat and slid down it with an ugly smear. To be fair, the exhibition should have been labelled "unsuitable for children": after all, what is a platform with a chair on it but an invitation to climb up? And there wasn't really any harm in her crawling under the jewellery cases, they looked perfectly sturdy.
Then it was Monday, and the work and kinder week began. I'm putting together the jigsaws of Masters applications for next year, which is taking a bit of time - I'm applying for three courses, which means getting certified copies of three sets of eight pages of academic transcripts plus my passport, plus three statements as to why I'm applying for these courses. Because I want to and you're near my house is about 291 words short. Good thing I'm an accomplished bumph-spouter, no? Then I had to line up academic and professional referees to sing my praises on multiple bits of paper (stamped addressed envelopes attached). Let's just say there's a lot of unfolded washing piling up. But I have been exercising. Every day. Go me!

More anon, folk in a flurry!

Doublethink

Now that the rotten stinking pig bastard everlasting bronchitis seems to have buggered off altogether touching anything wood within reach and I am back to regular exercise - yay! yay! - I'm having to manage a mad kind of doublethink. You see, I am currently as weak as an asthmatic kitten and as slow as a drunk slug. Let's not mention the Return of The Lard. All the gains from all that work last summer and autumn have evaporated. Gone. I'm frustrated and discouraged. *frowns/pouts/feels depressed*

ALERT! ALERT! Bleating and wallowing in self-pity imminent! Intiate evasive action! Activate doublethink!

But what is doublethink, you ask? Avoid those unsightly wrinkles, dear reader, and knit not your brow. Doublethink works like this:

1. Eradicate all memory of how effortless things used to be, how 2km or 40km or 15km were just ordinary swims, rides or runs. Pine no more for those dear dead days. That was then, this is now. Suck it up.

....while simultaneously.....

2. Remember how very good it felt to be that strong, and know, somewhere deep down, that I can get back there. Remember how consistent effort works. Remember that it does work.

See? Tooooo confusing - like a speeded-up game of table tennis that is only visible at the very corner of my eye. But it's helping me get out the door each day. Lumbering will change to ease, 17km/hr will become 25. 1000m will become a warmup. Patience, grasshopper.

Unrelated: the chappie who cut my hair today (whom I had not previously met, and who did a smashing job BTW) asked me if I believed in angels. He told me they have messages for me. He seemed otherwise perfectly normal. This is by no means the only angel-themed strangeness to happen lately. Hmmmmmm.

I've been writing a list every day of ten things I'm grateful for. It's changing me.

More anon, cherubim!