I didn’t feel much like blogging for a while. I was doing a big project at work which was stressing me out, and was working late a lot and then coming home and feeling that I had no brain or energy left to blog with. Yeah, I know; I only work three days a week. There we go.
2009 has been a depressing kind of year in so many ways, which has probably contributed to making me feel that I want to draw my head in, like a tortoise. It’s not had too much of an impact on J and me; we still have our jobs, and we’re doing OK. J has been feeling well enough to go to work for much of this year, as well, which is fantastic, although tiring in its own way as he has needed a lot of support. We’re beginning to feel we might be able to do grown-up things like book exciting holidays and actually expect J to be well enough to go, but we’ve been so tired out by the daily round that we just don’t feel like it. Yet. Things are getting better.
What happened in the past three months? Let’s see. We redecorated the entrance hall/stairway/landing of our house, and hung some pictures up. I did quite a lot of work in the garden, mostly on the lawn (boring) but also growing vegetables from seed and some flowers.
We did a lot of cycling and fitted panniers to J’s bike so that he can carry more stuff on it – I’ve had panniers for a long time and they do make a bike a lot more useful. We visited my brother in Dumfriesshire, which was lovely and very relaxing. I read quite a lot of books and did some knitting.
I completed the six-month fitness course in the gym; at the end of it, I still hadn’t lost any significant weight, although I was running a good bit faster and lifting heavier weights. A couple of weeks later, feeling my motivation starting to sag a bit, I had a couple of sessions with a personal trainer. This resulted in a new programme which relies almost entirely on free weights rather than machines, and a different sort of interval training (much shorter intervals, but higher intensity).
The new programme is interesting, and I enjoy it while I’m doing it, but it is definitely more demanding and takes longer to do than my old routine. Instead of having different days for upper and lower body, I do all the muscle groups every time. I know that the old programme wasn’t having quite the impact I wanted, but sometimes the new one feels like a lot to tackle in one session.
For that reason, a few weeks ago I took a break from it until my big work project was finished. I know that exercise is supposed to give you more energy, but if I’m too exhausted to do anything else, then it’s not working. I’ll be resuming this week, but if it continues to be too difficult to keep up, I will think about following the same basic outlines but splitting up the exercises into upper/lower body days to make the overall routine shorter. It won’t be as high-impact, but it will have more impact than not doing it because it’s too much!
The piggies are in good health and are not suffering from exhaustion in the slightest.
Summer has arrived in Scotland and last weekend we went to the beach and swam in the sea. No photographs were taken of this. This is what the sky looked like that weekend, though. It’s not so hot now, but still feels like summer – maybe the second half of 2009 will be a bit more promising?
7 comments:
Welcome back!
Gorgeous flowers. What are they? I've started gardening for the first time in my life (never had a garden before I bought the house, and last year was more of a wait-and-see-what's-already-here kind of year, so...), and I'm interested in all sorts of flowers. Was that first one foxglove?
Yes...what are those pretty pink flowers? You must have inherited your mother's green thumb and love of gardening.
Sorry 2009 hasn't been very exciting. I've felt the same way. I think the title of your post sums it all up. Sometimes I wonder if we're all just sitting around waiting for time to pass to get to the next thing. Whatever that is. I hope you and J have a good summer and that your weather will be beautiful this year. Someday I hope to make it to Scotland in the summer instead of in the fall like our previous trips.
Oh, and good for you and your exercising. Exercise just makes me tired!
I love the pictures of your piggies but am NOT going to show my boys. It will just lead to demands for little piggies of their own, and not of the soft toy stuffed variety!
PS Nice to hear from you again!
Oh boy, that's a big Cupcake! Or is it your little hands?
Lovely to see you last week, after consulting with Matt, he said to go for the kilt pin we found, and he loves it, so it was a very successful expedition.
Hello my darling! Well done for posting again. Cupcake doesn't look like her self at all in the last piggy picture - much more pointy-of-nose and upside down than usual. The first photo captures her likeness much better (and yes, K's readers, she's a big piglet in K's dainty wee hands). See you for lunch tomorrow, L xxx
Everybody: the flowers in the top picture are lupins, and the lower ones are fuchsias (in a hanging basket).
Anna: Exactly. Sometimes I feel I've spent rather a lot of the last decade waiting for things to happen. I'm told that once you have kids, time suddenly goes fleeting... maybe it does for a while.
Loth: I'm not sure piggies would mix terribly well with opinionated cats. Though they aren't that much trouble as pets go. They definitely don't vomit on the doormat. (I'm not sure they can.) Your boys would be welcome to come round and stroke them...
Rosie: Yup, that's two pounds and sixteen ounces of Cupcake. And I do have little hands, clearly, but she's quite a big girl and fluffy with it. Glad Matt liked the kilt pin; he's clearly a man of taste!
Hello L - don't normally see you around here - is this the first time you've commented? (This is my little sister, constant readers.)
It sounds as though your time has been well spent. Sometimes one simply feels like living and not writing about it, I think!
Lupins, eh? There's something to look into.
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