Changing It Up

I finally went for a walk this morning.

Not a long one, was just a wee jaunt around a couple of blocks, but it was a start.

A start of what, I hear you say.

Well...

It’s a start to me not creaking around the place and generally feeling like a geriatric sloth.

My body, as a rule, doesn't like movement a whole heap. But it also doesn't like sitting or standing or anything else for that matter so I've decided to ignore it for a while. It’s just being an attention whore.

The ironic thing about joint pain and other various maladies of a rheumatic nature is that they generally respond well to exercise. Exercise that you do not feel even remotely inclined to do because you are usually feeling like arse when you contemplate doing it.

But I figured if I didn’t shift my posterior soon it would seize up all together and since I like the thought of still being able to amble about the place (and also of not turning into a really tubby Tigress) I figured there is no time like the present.

Now here is Western Australia they don’t do daylight savings so theoretically you can be up and at ‘em at about 5am if you so desire.

I don’t.

So at 7am, or thereabouts, I arose, ignored the opinion my body gave about this action, donned my exercise gear and went haring out the door before I could change my mind. I did do the barest amount of stretching to loosen the stiff bits first but due to the fact that I am stretchier than most I thought it best not to overdo this.

Once on the move, things felt ok (I think my body was in shock to be honest). I wasn't able to go hilariously fast like I could previously but we'll go with the whole ‘baby steps’ approach on this one (though preferably without the staggering).

After a brief conversation with a few flies, I made it home again and sat, feeling not quite so broken, contemplating life’s vicissitudes. Not too bad for a first effort.

I will confess though that this sudden desire for movement has not come about in a vacuum. I have been researching various ways to get my body behaving a bit better (and to lose a bit of excess junk in the trunk) and there is no shortage of techniques to examine. Supplements, shakes, protein bars, eating plans, meal replacers....this list is endless and quite frankly, rather repetitive (not to mention very expensive in some cases).

I just want to eat well and consume as little amount of crap as possible...not rocket science but sometimes a girl needs a little help. You see my body has quite a fondness for sugar and lets me know about it on frequent occasion:

“Ooooh look, chocolate, you like chocolate, I know you like chocolate, let’s have some chocolate...”

“Let’s NOT have some chocolate, Jesus Christ I can’t take you anywhere!”

“But I want chocwit” *sad face*

“You’ll have to chat to pancreas, I’m sure she will not be impressed with all the crap you’re trying to feed her”

“Oh pancreas is an old fuddy duddy, never does anything exciting”

“No just sits there producing insulin that stops me dying when I eat chocolate...just SAYING”

“Meh”

And so it goes, sometimes I win, sometimes body wins. It’s a 50/50 chance on any given occasion.

Thus enter Cyndi O’Meara and her site “Changing Habits” (see link below). Now this dietician turned part-time activist has a simple philosophy: don’t eat any crap (that’s no dodgy numbers, no refined stuff, nothing artificial, almost no gluten) and shift your butt for 40 minutes, three times a week.

This, I can work with; food as nature chucks it at you. And I must say, after nary a week of this clean eating/paleo business, I can feel a difference.

So I have spent the remainder of my morning planning a couple of meals including a shopping list and generally being ridiculously organized (I'm almost concerned).

I will keep you posted.

And in the interests of furthering the achievement of my goals, I should sod off and eat something.

“I want chocolate”

“There isn’t any so f**k off”

“But I reeeeeeally need chocolate, let's go buy some!”

“Sure....but you have to walk all the way to the supermarket?”

*crickets*

“That’s what I thought”

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Check out Cyndi O’Meara’s website below J

http://changinghabits.com.au/meet-the-changing-habits-team/cyndi-omeara

I think I have this sorted...nearly.

*Stands nervously in front of group*

Hello, my name is The Tigress and I am a Pinterestaholic

*Sits back down*

I'm not even kidding

I've been on Pinterest about a month and have more boards than Busselton Jetty.

It wouldn’t be quite so addictive if it didn’t have EVERYTHING I COULD EVER POSSIBLY WANT IN A SOCIAL MEDIUM!

That’s like a platform for communication not a chatty psychic or something.

It has pretty pictures, funny things, information, a method for sorting them all and minimal requirement for contact with other people. It’s fabulous.

For those not familiar, Pinterest is place on the Internet where you can ‘pin’ stuff you see on other places on the Internet onto “boards” under titles of your own choosing. There is no worry of copyright infringement because the pin always leads back to its original location on the Internet regardless of how many times it is repinned.

A very ingenious little set up and this on its own is not so addictive, one can only spend so long gallivanting around the World Wide Web before getting somewhat over it.

However...

When you first log in to your Pinterest account you have a home page....with other people’s recent pins on it. Still not a biggie in itself except that they can give you ideas for new boards and then you might pin one of their pins to one of your boards and when you do that Pinterest shows the previous board the pin was from and THEN you think: “Oooh, well I'll just have a wee look.”

Aaand then you’re screwed.

It is not wise to give an OCD child a platform on which to basically sort the entire Internet.

Some of these boards have over 200k pins on them.

I never stood a chance.

So I now have boards for recipes, boards for health and exercise, Boards for crochet and knitting, boards for a ridiculous amount of different countries and boards for other shit that just looked pretty.

And I don’t even begin to imagine I'll stop there, because I can be rather.....anal.

I mean if you’re gonna sort shit, do it properly *twitches* None of this: “Places to see before I die” bollocks, or “Beautiful Earth”; I mean yes, the Earth is indeed beautiful, but it’s also f**king huge for crying out loud: “125k pins” oh you noticed!

You end up with the aurora borealis snuggled up to a zebra....it’s just not natural.

Don’t get me wrong I love variety as much as the next guy, but with these types of boards one minute you’re in Abu Dhabi, the next you’re playing stare eyes with a “Phantasmal poison frog”. My psyche just can’t handle it.

But this is not to say that attentive sorting is without its share of headaches.

As noted above, I have many boards devoted to specific countries. I also have one for beautiful moon shots, one for castles, as well as another allocated to delightful silhouettes.

So what does one do with a photo of a Scottish castle with an epic moon behind it...

that’s also a silhouette.

You don’t want to know the amount of mental turmoil that one caused me.

Sometimes I just set myself up for trouble, I swear to God.

In fact, I can imagine the Kevman now (he who has watched me organise groceries into their correct spots on supermarket shelves as well as categorize several thousand e-books on a hard drive into files by author)

“Look honey, here’s a nice picture, come check it out.”

“What’s it of?”

“It’s a black and white photo of a neat bridge in Japan, you must have a board that can go on”

“I have three damn.......wait, you’re smiling aren’t you?”

“Oh yeah”

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Go catch “The Tigress” on Pinterest, she’s been a busy lass ;-)

http://www.pinterest.com/thetigress1974/

The Tardy Tigress

Argh, I’m late...

Not like possibly pregnant type of late, just I should have had this published yesterday....but in my defence...I have a man.

While I can imagine all the women nodding right now without need for further explanation, this is no ride on the gendered: “Men are just like extra kids” bandwagon. Instead, it’s more to do with the fact that mine is only here one week out of three...and he is currently home...and a distraction (albeit an adorable one).

Just to clear things up, the Kevman would love be home 7 days a week but works FIFO, a common practice with Australian mining companies involving a ‘Fly In Fly Out’ roster to his place of work. While it pays handsomely it can be hard on relationships with some workers being away from their families for around four weeks and only home for nine days.

For us, the Kevman’s roster means 15 days away and six at home. We are luckier than most and like to appreciate every moment together.

Which brings me back to my original dilemma...

That of tearing myself away from joint activities to work on my individual writing pursuits.

You see, the Kevman and I love playing games together, going shopping together, going out to dinner and/or a movie together, sitting around having a drink and chatting together, visiting friends together...

In short, we’re enough to make even a diehard romantic puke, but when the alternative is 14 nights of Skype and 15 days of Facebook Messenger, you kinda dig the real life stuff that bit more.

But a Tigress has gotta do, what a Tigress has gotta do! 

The show must go on!

The...

Oooh, I think he’s waking up...

*Smiles deviously*

Look, there’s other stuff we like doing together as well ok.

See you next week! ;-)

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time.....

Now one of the perks of growing up way the hell down the bottom of the planet, is that New Zealand has some wonderful and unique native flora and fauna. Tracks and trails world renowned for their beauty and splendour....(and ability to make the occasional hiker disappear without a trace) are the stuff of legend the world over. It's rather a pretty place.

Don't get me wrong, my new home of Australia is chock full of wildlife treats as well, but unfortunately some of them try to kill you.....and very efficiently at that. This has made me a tad wary of exploring even the local park here let alone a hiking trail and does lend to me pining at times for the lush shrubbery and reassuring snakelessness of my native land.

At this point I would like to say that I have blissful memories of happily bouncing about in the bush, bonding with nature and being a prime example of fitness and health.

I would like to say this...but I can't

The most recent memory I do have is loosely summarized in the following and if you're looking for a motivational health piece, I can assure you, this isn't it.

Once upon a hiking trail....

My friend and I decided one morning, in the interests of health and well-being, to go and have a wee stroll through some of the local native wildlife (well the flora part of it - it's a bit hard to stroll through a New Zealand wood pigeon).

So we set off with a great deal of gusto to the local hiking track. Drink bottle in hand and sensible shoes afoot, we commenced our journey along the trail and felt right proud to be active and social and all that other shit we get told we should be on a regular basis.

This track, being a popular one, had several options available including going the whole nine kilometres, or settling for the more respectable three and a half kilometre loop track.

In the interests of still being able to walk the next day, we chose the latter.

Which turned out to be a very smart idea because while New Zealand forest is quite breathtaking, very little of it is parked anywhere bloody flat. About 10 minutes into the venture I was rudely reminded of how much my fitness has deteriorated in the last year.

My friend, also not the fittest, was faring little better. "Time for a stop I feel" she huffed, as we neared the first lookout. I thought this was a sterling idea and promptly took to briskly leaning against a tree.

Once our breath had stopped exiting our bodies at quite such a frantic rate of knots, and we had analysed the surrounding greenery and creatures therein for way longer than was necessary, we continued.

After what seemed like hours, but was possibly only another 10 minutes we reached the path to the first lookout point. This was where I encountered something that had been all but a foreign concept up until that point: downhill. This would have been just peachy if my legs wanted to cooperate. I think they had the climbing wobbles....sort of like speed wobbles but...slower. "Tell you what..." I said to my mate, "...how about you pop down and have a little looksee and I'll supervise from up here"  I kinda figured that this was a better option than risking snowballing my unfit ass down a set of very pointy steps.

Now supervising is hard work, so I sat down. I sat down again too when we hauled ourselves back to the track proper. And I had never appreciated sitting down quite so much in my life.

Another thing I appreciated was the apple I brought. Only this was no ordinary apple; by the time I got my hands it, it had morphed into ambrosia. I savoured every bite of it and probably took twice as long as necessary to eat it due to putting off the heavy duty act that would need to follow it, that of standing up.

But it was while we were lunching on the fruit of the heavens that we saw the most interesting creatures of the day. Now I am not talking about our furred or feathered friends here...no no no; these creatures were of the humanoid persuasion. Not only were they long and lean, but they had an unusual gait. I think it's called 'running'

My friend and I looked at each other: "They were running!" we spluttered in unison. 

I wasn't impressed. Here I was struggling to get enough oxygen when completing the most basic of human forward motion, while these clowns were leaping up the slopes like a herd of demented gazelle. 

Pfft, that'll be enough of that sort of carry on, I thought. It was time to complete this journey so we could both go home and die quietly.

The second half of the quest, at least, involved mostly gentle downhill slopes and a fluttering of birdlife...or maybe that was the angels coming to take me away because I'd died back at the previous corner...I wasn't entirely sure.

Either way we made it safely back to my friend's mercifully air-conditioned vehicle. I finally concluded that I must not have departed this mortal coil due to the fact that my arse was starting to hurt like a bitch and there was foreign matter in my hair...possibly from the aforementioned fluttering entities.

"Well that was a success" my friend chirped happily "Didn't we do well?"

I wanted to strike her with my drink bottle

"To still be breathing? Yes."

"Oh it wasn't that bad once we got into it...I reckon we could make the whole distance next time...the nine kilometres!"

......

Such a shame I moved to Australia before that could happen....I'm truly devastated

So who ordered the double dose of Monday?

Another Monday has come and gone in the Tigress household and I feel I have taken the Mondayitis concept to a whole new level.

Previously I have heard people whinge and bitch on regular occasion about the requirement to rise early and return to work at the start of the week. But for the most part this fails to impress me as a reason for abject misery.

My recent Monday however....well that’s a different story.

Now in this particular weekday’s defence, it is not its fault that my beloved Kevman (he’s like a Navman but with waaaay more features :D) flies out to work every third Monday, and to be fair, he does fly back in on one two weeks later....

But to add to my cause for snuffling on this particular Monday, I kinda bent the car.

I have my darling’s Holden SV6 at my disposal while he is away and thus it was what I was driving home from the airport on this particular Monday. But, it was wet...there was a roundabout....I had to change lanes mid turn.....

It did not end well.

In fact, after careening into a curb, then up and over it (ultimately entering the road I actually required) I was somewhat rattled...though extremely grateful that it was a public holiday and no other traffic was on the road at that time of the morning. 

I briefly entertained the thought of stopping, but after noticing the car was driving like a hairy goat I just wanted to get it, and me, home to assess the damage.

Miraculously it was only the wheels that copped it: two comprehensively flat tires and a nifty new wheel alignment. I knew I needed help....then the text came:

“Did you make it home ok honey?”

Crap.

“Ummm, sort of...”

He took it well really considering the bond most guys have with their vehicle. His only concern was for my welfare and within an hour or so his Dad was at my door to investigate the state of me and the slightly injured vehicle

Now the Kevman’s Dad is a lovely man but comes equipped with a rapier wit when the mood takes him, which is frequently. On this occasion, however, he behaved in a most concerned fashion and didn't even stop to tell me what a daft tart I was for launching one and a half a ton of motor vehicle up a curb

Instead of the acidic backchat I felt I deserved, he simply grasped my shoulders and asked if I was ok.

I detected possible overtones of: “Jesus Christ lass, my boy has finally found a woman he likes, quit trying to damage yourself.”

But I could have been mistaken. He may have just been incredulous at the efficiency with which I break things.

After reassuring him I was merely feeling somewhat shaky, he went about the process of changing the tyres and generally making sure the car was drivable to get said tyres replaced....there would be no fixing these babies, they were munted.

He also informed me that I probably had a slow leak in the left rear tyre which is what would have caused me to lose traction.

In other words, it wasn't really my fault.

Alrighty then...I'll take that. And you sir, are welcome here any time you like.

Overall, it wasn’t too traumatic an experience and things could have been much worse, but Monday? Really? Sometimes you just ask to be hated.