Paragraphs that start with "I"

I am now feeling a lot better everywhere but my foot. Thanks for the comments (which I've answered within the thread).

I have been out on my bike again, and am beginning to get back into the swing of cycling. After a break, it's so hard, and you feel like you're never going to get up the hills, and afterwards you have sore places; once you've been out a few times it's fine. I would really love to get back to the point where the bike is my main means of transport, which I've never managed to do in Edinburgh before.

I have a job interview on Thursday - wish me luck! And I've come to the decision that if I get this job, which is part-time, I will join the gym again, because I would just about have enough spare time to go (and also to spend time with my husband, who is in a bit of a fragile state and who needs me around).

I would like one of these. But I have far too many T-shirts already.

Health. Again. And stuff.

I have no idea whether any guys read this dubious excuse for a blog, but - dear reader, if you're male, you have permission not to read this entry.

The older I get, the more I become aware of... my Cycle.

No, not the kind with two wheels. (I am hoping to acquire a new one of those soon, since my current one is fifteen years old and extremely heavy. But I haven't got around to it yet.)

The one I mean, of course, is the kind that poleaxes you once a month, if you're female. Mine's been doing that to me for about the last seventeen years, although it seems longer. Much longer. This is genetic; there's nothing much to be done about it (except take NSAIDs and keep warm) and I'm used to dealing with it.

Lately, though, the Cycle has taken to making me suffer before the main event as well.

I've noticed for a few years now that I get unreasonably weepy when premenstrual. Now I seem to get tired, digestively uncomfortable, and bloated as well. Oh, and hungry.

Most of the time, now, my eating habits are pretty healthy. We always eat balanced meals, with some protein, and avoid simple carbs; we eat tons of green vegetables. We don't keep snack foods in the house. However, there's a reason for that: I have no self-restraint whatsoever.

If you give me a box of sweets (for example), I will eat them much quicker than I intend to. This is not something I like about myself, but I've tried to change it, and it doesn't work*. I've got to the point where I can avoid buying unhealthy food, and that is progress: when I was at university, I was terribly prone to buy food when I was out and eat it, thinking to myself that it would be OK because I would eat less in the evening. And then I would forget to eat less in the evening. I'm fairly lucky in that I don't seem to put weight on as quickly as some people do, but over the course of time, that was basically why I needed to lose weight in the first place.

I might have no self-restraint when food is in front of me, but I have slowly trained myself to eat less by avoiding food when I'm not hungry. I don't think I could, physically, eat as much as I used to at college. And I don't usually eat any snacks at all these days.

Apart from last week, that is. I ate quite a few bits of toast and bananas and random pieces of cheese when I wasn't really that hungry, and if we had had more exciting instant food I would have eaten that. I don't really know what the trigger is; whether it's the tiredness, or feeling squishy and bloated (feeling fat has been a trigger in the past - yes, it's stupid, but it has) or what.

I'm not pleased with myself.

Oh, I know it's not that big a deal. Today the main event started, and the desire to eat things has gone. Vanished. (Probably because, as usual, I feel rather sick. I would love to think this was just my body's way of preparing for not eating very much for a few days, but I doubt my body is that intelligent.)

I just seriously dislike using my hormones as an excuse. And it's taken me so long to train myself out of bad habits that I really, really don't want to pick them up again, no matter whether there's a reason for it.

I happened to be in the doctor's office today and saw a handy self-help booklet on the very subject of PMS, however. Although a lot of it was fairly well-known stuff, it did reassure me that this stupidity most likely is PMS, rather than just me being pathetic. One tip that it suggests that I'm not doing already is to take vitamin B6 tablets, starting a few days before you expect symptoms to start. Which might take a little working out, but I'll give it a try.

Another thing you're supposed to do is exercise. Which, yes, did make me feel better for a while yesterday. All I can really do for the moment is walk and cycle, because my foot isn't exactly back to normal yet, which is a little frustrating - I think it's coming up for three weeks since I bashed it. It doesn't mind being walked on, but running puts too much pressure on the toes and it hurts. Might be time to consider taking it to a physio, but I keep hoping it'll just get better.

What other news? I've been mostly buried under a pile of job applications lately, or that's what it feels like. But! I have finally got a job interview. It's next Thursday, and I really like the sound of the job, so cross your fingers for me.

Travelling backwards through time, the weekend of my birthday (which was the 9th) I finally met up with Shauna, the illustrious Dietgirl! This coincided with a reunion with Rosemary Grace, whom I had met via Shauna's comments, only later realising that although she lives in California, we had gone to nursery school together when we were four. We met up in a coffee shop and talked of many things, including learning to drive, flats, writing, jobs and pets, but not really touching much on fitness that I recall. It was lovely to meet up with them - Shauna and I have been vaguely planning to meet for, oh, three years or so, but we've never managed to bring it off until now. I hope to see her again before too long, though. She is lovely.

Matt, Rosie's husband, took a picture of the three of us, but as far as I know this has yet to make it online. And Rosie gave me a fantastic early birthday present - a book by Lois McMaster Bujold. I am addicted to these, and it's all her fault, because she got me on to them in the first place...

I saw Rosie again pretty soon - the next day, in fact, because she asked my mum and me to coffee (Shauna had a prior engagement with a mountain). We had a very nice time, and I got to meet her parents and their cat. It is a pity Rosie lives halfway round the world, but next time she comes over Mum and I will return the invitation.

So I'm finally managing to get over my shyness about meeting other bloggers! Well, I meet my mum every week, but I'm not sure that counts...

(*There are exceptions to this. I'm quite good at resisting food that I have cooked myself, which is the only reason I let myself bake things. I do not know why food that others have cooked, or that's bought from a shop, should have so much more of an allure, but it does. So I can make cake or whatever for J and not eat it myself.)

I hurt myself

I had a busy time in London. We got off the train at King's Cross and then caught a bus to South Kensington and went to the Science Museum and then got a tube to Islington and went to our friend Dan's 30th birthday party and then got a taxi to Vauxhall and spent the night with Tom and then got a tube and a train to Hertford to have lunch with Dave, Becca and Freddie and then got the train back and another tube to Balham where we met Jon and Jonny in a pub and then got a train to Mortlake with Jonny to spend the night and then got a train and a bus and a tube to King's Cross and got on the train to come home.

So we basically spent the entire trip whizzing from north to south London and back again. We were a little exhausted by Sunday. But it was lovely to see everybody.

On Monday, running downstairs in my usual fashion, I stubbed my bare left foot very hard against the doorframe of the sitting room. I couldn't actually scream and fall on the floor - however much I might have liked to - as the flooring men were here to put vinyl on the floors of the bathroom and downstairs loo, and I didn't want to startle anyone who might be wielding a sharp blade. So I settled for silently hopping and clutching my foot like someone in a cartoon.

I stub my toes quite frequently, being a clumsy person, but usually the pain wears off fairly quickly. This time, it didn't. By the evening, my fourth toe was extremely purple and bruised-looking, and I began to worry that it might be broken.

However, it was less sore in the morning and I managed to walk and cycle with it (inasmuchas you cycle with your toes. You know what I mean). And the bruising is now less purple and it hurts only a little, so I don't think it is broken. My sister tells me they don't do much for broken toes anyway.

That was a non-story, wasn't it? Maybe if it feels better tomorrow I'll go for a run.

Pathetic excuse for a post

This is just me shouting hello as I dash past, because I'm about to go to London for the weekend, and it's been a very busy couple of weeks (academic work, then job application) and I have been slack.

Weight: slightly down - official numbers when I come back.

Exercise: not been running much, but been cycling.

State of mind: slightly frazzled. We're only going to London for two and a half days, and we're packing in the activities while we're there.

Back on Sunday!

Humph

So, after that very good start, my weight did nothing in any direction this week, and nor did my bodyfat percentage points. Humph. Well, OK, maintaining is better than gaining.

I am very good at maintaining, actually. My metabolism seems to be the kind that doesn't really care much what I do, because I neither gain nor lose weight very easily. Which probably means that I get away with nutritional negligence when I shouldn't.

Actually, last week was OK, food-wise, although Sunday included some chocolate which I rather regretted afterwards. But, I don't know... I don't think I was being as mindful as I need to be. No major dietary crimes, but I'd lost concentration a bit.

I've been trying not to eat bread, on two grounds: firstly, I don't seem to digest it very well (I get indigestion if I eat toast for breakfast). Secondly, in the absence of any actual snack foods in our house, I have a tendency to grab a slice out of the fridge mid-evening. Not that this is a nutritional crime, but I don't NEED it.

And I didn't entirely avoid doing that. I also made some muffins, but I don't regret that (and I didn't eat them all myself!).

The main thing about last week was that I didn't go running at all, although I have been lifting weights like a good little person. I went out on my bike a couple of times, and for walks, and I springcleaned the entire house (which feels like exercise, although I seriously doubt that it has any benefits). But evidently this wasn't enough. This would fit in with my previous experience: it doesn't matter how healthily I eat - if I want to lose, I need to do lots of proper sweaty cardio. As in running.

I need to work on scheduling that, though. It's too hot to run on the local cycle path during the day, but if I go near sunset, J has conniptions, because it's not very well-lit. (He came with me once, but he got nervous and was bitten by midges.) I wouldn't run there myself after dark had properly fallen. But it's so much better than running on the streets, which I really don't like. I can never get into a rhythm in between dodging pedestrians, wheelie bins, and having to stop to cross the road. And most of the streets round here are pretty steep. And I suspect J still won't like me running in the dark. Sigh.

However! New week, clean slate! I shall go and skip in the back garden, and then I shall do some work for my paleography assignment. And later perhaps I shall go for a run. Wish me luck.

Endings and beginnings

What's ended? My job.

While I knew this would happen, because it was a temporary contract, I'm sad about it. I liked the people, I liked the work, and I felt as though I knew what I was doing. I like knowing what's going to happen next week.

So I've started (once more) on a round of phone calls and e-mails while I try to find something new and wait for a paid position to come up. Which I'm sure it will. I hope it doesn't take months this time, though.

Moving on: the serious disadvantage of this job was the commute. I am convinced that commuting is as tiring as using the same amount of time to do anything else, and I was very tired while I was doing this. So while I had many good intentions, I never really managed to get into an exercise routine that went anywhere while I was doing this job.

That is going to change. For the next little while, I will undoubtedly have more free time than I've had for months. And I'm going to profit by it by getting serious about fitness.

I don't like the phrase "to struggle with one's weight". Struggling doesn't sound much fun, does it? "Come and help me, I'm really struggling here". It sounds as though you're expending a lot of energy but not getting anywhere. It sounds like thrashing around and still going under in a sea of frustration.

I don't struggle with fitness. Either I take positive action and become fitter, or I do not struggle. Rather than drowning, I float. I do nothing. I let the tide wash around me. The trouble with floating is that you have no control over where you are going.

So. Enough floating. The weekend before last, I finally bought a scale. It was something of an impulse buy, and in an ideal world we'd have done a bit more research, but I am tired of not getting on with things.

Last week, I went running three times. I lifted lots of weights. I ate sensible things. And between Sunday and Friday I lost two pounds.

I also set myself a mini-goal: I'm going to lose ten pounds by my birthday, which is a month away. I'm including this week's loss, so that's eight pounds to go. My start weight was 187 pounds (38% bodyfat, according to my fancy new scale), and it's now 185 pounds.

Yeah, I know 10 pounds isn't that much. But given that I've been doing all this floating, I need to start with something I'm fairly sure I can accomplish. Without a struggle.

ETA: I tried to post this yesterday, and it looked fine, and then I came back and it had disappeared. Very mysterious.

Four reasons why...

I haven't posted very much in the last week or so:

These two little chaps have come to stay with us for a couple of months. Their names are Snowy and Snuggles, and we’re babysitting them while their owners are abroad. We’ve been talking about getting pets for ages, and of the animals I have lived with before, guinea-pigs seemed the most suitable option: they don’t make me sneeze, they don’t seem to mind living in a hutch too much, and they don’t need taking for walks. Also they’re cuddly.

Although he’s very fond of animals J has never had a pet of any kind, so this seemed a good way to find whether we really have the time to care for guinea-pigs, and whether he’s allergic to them. So far, the pigs have been a joy. They’re young and lively and chirp away to us entertainingly when we pick them up, as well as mowing the lawn for us (well, when it’s not been pouring with rain). And just to add to the excitement, my brother suddenly phoned me up last Saturday and made mewing noises down the phone. This almost counts as normal behaviour for my siblings, so I wasn’t too surprised. Then he announced that his cat campaign, which he’s been carrying out ever since I moved out, had suddenly succeeded when he least expected it: my parents were adopting two nine-week-old black kittens.

Here they are, trying to ooze out of the box in which my parents were taking them home. They are very cute indeed, but also extremely lively. The boy is called Sirius (because he’s black, obviously) and the girl is Cassiopeia, Cassie for short. Or Puss. Or Trouble. They’ve only been home a week and it’s already clear who rules the house.

I have not been exercising terribly strenuously, though, mostly because I have a cough – the kind which makes it hard to draw a deep breath. Although I’m hardly ever ill, I’ve had various little health problems over the last few months, mostly infections. Not major, just annoying: I’d like not to go to the doctor in July, if possible. The last thing was an infected insect-bite on my arm the week before last, for which I had to take strongish antibiotics (and was threatened with an IV if they didn’t work – scary biscuits!) That cleared up fine, but I have reason to suspect the pills killed off all my friendly bacteria as well as the unfriendly ones. I’m alternately eating live yoghurt and vitamin-C-containing foods and hoping to feel better soon...

Back in the saddle

I had a lovely time with my family in sunny Crieff. Here's the score:

Badminton - two sessions; got beaten by J a lot.
Tennis - one session*;beat Mum, got beaten by J.
Swimming - went every day; swam 1km on my best day.
Gym - went with L**; we ran for 10 minutes, stationary-biked for 20 (I think) and did some weights.
Dancing - one evening. Very energetic.
Climbed one hill (see pic).

So I'm feeling a bit better about fitness-type things. Witness that in the photo above, I am wearing my Great Winter Run t-shirt, which requires a bit of optimism and not feeling ridiculous.

Probably the thing I enjoyed most was the swimming, which must mean I have conquered my feelings of squidginess, especially as I was adding to my general unattractiveness in a swimsuit by voluntarily wearing a swimming cap. These were compulsory when I was at school, and I'd have thought then that it would require very large sums of money to get me ever to put one on again. They were ugly, they were uncomfortable, they didn't stay on, and they left corrugated welts in your forehead. Yuck.

But last time I went to Crieff, my hair got so chloriney I couldn't comb it. And I was assured (by various people in the know) that modern silicone caps are much better. Well... they are. Though still not exactly alluring.

J also likes to swim***, and we're investigating the possibility of making regular trips to a local pool. There was a time (when I lived five minutes from a pool) when I used to get up early to go swimming. I'm not sure I'm going to do that regularly, but there's no good reason why we should only swim at Crieff.

The other thing that happened while I was away: I found a scale (in the gym) and weighed myself. And if the scales were accurate, I am in fact only four pounds over my lowest recorded weight last summer. I must have a very forgiving metabolism or something.

I am pretty sure that I've swapped some muscle for fat, but nonetheless it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been imagining, and it gives me hope. I've been doing a fair bit of walking and trotting this week. Weights next week. (Decorating this weekend.)

Molly - thanks for the comment! Casting my mind back to 1986, I'm sure I never mastered proper Hula-hooping (though I spent a lot of time rotating it round my wrists and elbows). I do have a skipping rope which I use from time to time...

RG - It's Friday... it's not like it's a school night... (And I'm afraid most of my blogreading gets done around this time of night. I'm just not sleepy this early!)

And Mum, what are you doing asking if I regained my motivation? You were on holiday with me!

*It was rainy the other days. Tennis balls do slow down a bit when saturated.
** My sister, who also took the photo.
*** Although he did somehow manage to strike his chin on the bottom of the pool while doing so. As you can see in the photo.

Good news, bad news

Good: J went to work for some of last week, and seems to be feeling better.

Bad: But that’s still only four days he’s been feeling better. Fingers crossed.

Good: We are going away for a short break for a few days later this week.

Bad: I feel fat. The holiday will involve wearing a swimsuit.

Good: I have decided to buy a bathroom scale, so that if I am actually getting fatter, I can find out and take decisive action (though not before I go on holiday).

Bad: I have not actually bought one, or taken any action other than looking at pictures online and saying to J, “Look! The ones with body fat monitors aren’t that expensive.” J (if he has a fault, it’s a certain unwillingness to spend money) makes non-committal noises.

Good: I’ve nearly made up my mind that I’m going to do this 10K.

Bad: But I haven’t actually been running AT ALL this week. Or any other activity which involves moving faster than a walk.

Good: I ate fewer biscuits and less cake this week than I did the week before.

Bad: You don’t want to know about the week before.

And so it goes on.

If you have seen my motivation, could you tell me where I left it?

I can make excuses for myself. I have been busy, and work has been rather full-on lately, and there’s been stress about J. It’s too easy. None of those things is really to blame. I’m not unhappy; I just seem to have fallen back into a mindset I thought I’d left behind a long time ago. It goes “Nothing I do will make that much difference and I can’t be bothered right now.”

However. My plan is that the holiday’s going to get me back on track. This is not going to be a sitting-down-reading holiday. There will be some of that (I’ve got five new books! Five) but there’s also going to be tennis, badminton, swimming at least once a day, and – I hope – country dancing. I know it’s supposed to take 28 days to make a habit, but how about four to reset the system and remind me that I actually like exercise?

Keep on running?

Yes, thank you, we had a lovely time in Bamburgh, and we did indeed go on lots of walks: we felt very well-exercised. This is J setting out along the Lindisfarne causeway.

We also saw a lot of nice scenery


and birds


and went round several castles and historical sites, most of which I seem not to have photographed for reasons unknown. The weather was mostly good.


(Enough of my holiday snaps. But look at my nice Flickr mosaic thingy over there! -->)

Back to business: exercise, then, was good on holiday. Food, not so good. Although we managed to go to a different pub every night but one… that meant we ate pub food every night. Frankly, there wasn’t much else available. It was perfectly tasty, but we came home with quite a craving for vegetables (they usually make up at least two-thirds of all our meals). Maybe we will try self-catering next time, if we can find somewhere which is affordable with just two of us.

I hadn’t been terribly virtuous the week before, either, because I was writing an essay to submit for my degree, and J kindly provided me with various forms of comfort food. And although my diet hasn’t been appalling since we got back, I don’t feel entirely back on track. There’s been the odd random bit of toast and so forth.

I’m not very much given, these days, to wringing my hands over my bodily imperfections, but I’m not too happy right now. I feel squidgy. This is probably because I haven’t – not really – got back into a routine with exercise yet.

Irrespective of my actual weight/size, I feel good about my body when I’ve exercised vigorously within the last day or so, and less good when I don’t. Simple as that. So why the lack of routine? I don’t really know. I could do with being a bit more obsessive about it. Yeah, I’ve been busy. But we’re all busy. Yes, I’ve had other things to think about (J, mostly). But we all have other things to think about. Life doesn’t stop so you can catch up with it. You have to keep going regardless.

So: exercise over the last few days. I went for a run with J on Saturday morning (blistering my feet, but hey), and did my weights after that. On Sunday, I did some skipping (checking that none of the neighbours were in their gardens, because I don’t really want an audience. I know it’s good cardio but it makes me feel a bit silly). On Monday, which was a bank holiday, I went into town and walked around a lot (about four miles, according to Gmap Pedometer). Today, well, I had a bit of a stroll at lunchtime. Which doesn’t really cut it.

Another thing I did on Sunday, though, was go to Musselburgh to meet up with the legendary YP, fresh from running her second marathon that morning (and knocking an hour off her personal best!) This is the first time I’ve actually managed to meet someone from the fitness-blog community in person. I was more than a little nervous, because YP’s extremely focused, and… as I’ve just said at length, I’m not. However, she (and the other people there) were uniformly nice, welcoming and generally encouraging.

This had the salutary effect of making me remember that, although I might not be exactly a natural runner, I have done some proper running. It was only a few months ago that I used to run three times a week without fail, and that I was really beginning to get somewhere. I was hoping to do a 10K, and feeling good about the possibility (despite my feet). OK, life is busy. But life will always be busy.

So… shall I sign up for the Loch Ness 10K in the autumn? Or am I mad to think I’ll actually train for it?

Zoom

Just a quickie - we're going away on a short holiday, and I wanted to post before I went.

I've just had a very busy week - I had to submit the final essays for the module I was doing for my course, and then I kind of collapsed in a heap. Exercise (and, alas, healthy eating) went out of the window ever so slightly.

However. We are now going for a nice restful few days by the seaside, and are going to go on lots of walks. I will post properly when I get back!

Back

The weekend before last, while I was spending a lot of time with my family, my brother (who is wonderful in many, many ways) disappeared and came back bearing a set of very pretty shiny chrome dumbbells.



So now I can claim to have a home gym! I’m planning to follow routine 1 of Krista’s “All Dumbbells! All the Time!” programme. I have to work a bit on learning the lower-body exercises, though, as I’m used to doing those with a barbell. Learning is good. After all, eighteen months ago I hadn’t done anything with free weights, ever.

I had a kind of finding-my-limits workout with them straight away, and although nothing hurt at the time, my right bicep ached so much the next day that I had difficulty straightening my arm. However, it wore off, and since then I’ve managed not to hurt at all, even a tiny bit, and to work back up to the same amount of weight. I don’t know why it hurt. Maybe my arms were just protesting for the sake of it.

J and I have been having an interesting time, diet-wise. He has been on medication recently which has the side-effect of making him crave sweet foods, and I kept coming home to find him saying guiltily that he’d eaten all the cereal, or worse, the ice cream. He didn’t like this and is convinced he’s gained lots of weight*, something (one of the many things) he continually worries about.

We had made sporadic attempts to rid the house of trigger foods (such as cereal) but this tended just to shift the problem on to something else. So we bit the bullet and got rid of EVERYTHING that comes under the heading of snackable complex carbs. Essentially we’re both going to do a low-GI diet until his side-effects wear off (he’s now off the medication, thank goodness).

I’ve actually been doing this for a while out of sheer laziness. The local supermarket’s cottage cheese comes in tubs that are just the right size for lunch, and if it’s a choice between making a sandwich and grabbing a tub out of the fridge… I take a packet of soup as well, and the office provides fruit (something I will miss when I stop working there, I can tell you). So that’s lunch sorted.

I must start running again now the days are getting longer. Somehow my motivation is just not there, though. J is just getting back into running again: he ran two miles in 24 minutes this evening, and was gloomy because he used to be able to do it much faster when he was in training. I told him my best time for 1 mile is 11 minutes (which is true), so I would cheer him up by coming with him and being slower than he is. I hope he’s going to hold me to this.

Meanwhile, over at my Livejournal, there’s a food meme if you like that sort of thing, grabbed from Jeni. Bear in mind that if the question asks what I like, it isn’t necessarily what I’d consider a healthy choice…

*This is for J values of "a lot of weight". We're not talking anything visible to the naked eye, and I have told him so. But it's his body, poor boy. And if he wants to get fit, I'm not going to discourage this.

At peace

Grandpa died very early this morning.

I went to see him yesterday. He was indeed peaceful.

Peaceful

My Grandpa, who is 87, is very ill. He’s been in hospital since autumn, and for the last couple of days he’s been unconscious. Granny and Mum are with him. Mum's been in touch regularly and says he's "peaceful".

Everyone seems to think it’s just a matter of waiting now. I will go over in the morning, whatever happens.

He’s been unable to get out of bed by himself for months now, and he’s been increasingly confused and not himself. So… but… it’s really hard to think about. He has been a big presence all our lives: my grandparents live nearby and we’ve always seen them a lot.

Last time I saw Grandpa, he was fairly lucid and asking about my new job, and saying that we’d cheered him up by coming to see him (which is unusually gracious, for him, but would you be gracious if you were in pain and unable to get up and apparently surrounded by idiots who wouldn’t let you go home?) Which is something, I suppose.

Poor Mum and poor Granny.

I can’t talk about this any more at the moment.

Last Saturday. That was a good day. It was sunny and warm and I planted a lot of nice things in the garden, as well as the seeds for our vegetable plot. J helped and mowed the grass. Later I made a cake. It was a good cake.

Answers to kind comments on my rather trivial previous entry below. Thanks, people.

Circles and good intentions

I promised myself that when I got paid from my new(ish) job, I'd buy myself some weights. Of all the things I can't do since the gym became impractical, I miss weights the most. I've tried to keep myself flexible by doing the motions unweighted (especially the squats, since it took so long to get any depth) but it's not the same.

My brother bought some lovely shiny dumbbells with removable plates a few months ago, which seemed just the sort of thing.

So on Saturday I duly went up town to try to get some. Could I find any? No. I think I was looking in the wrong shops. Still, I got some exercise jogging along Princes Street in an attempt to go to as many shops as possible in the time I had.

I still seem to be able to run without wanting to die, which is lucky, since I haven't been running properly since early December. Stephanie, a friend from livejournal, offered to go running with me last Saturday, but we got our wires crossed and it fell through. Next Saturday. Maybe. If she's free.

The trouble is, my spare time for doing anything at the moment is extremely limited. I know this sounds pathetic coming from a twentysomething with no children, but it is. Here's my daily timetable:

7.00 Alarm rings.
7.10ish. Get up - unwillingly, because I am not a morning person - dress. Eat oats with muesli topping, bring J cup of tea.
7.35 Leave house. Catch unpredictable bus as soon as it comes. Read on bus.
9.00 Arrive at work. Work like mad thing to be impressive so they'll write me a nice reference when my contract runs out.
5 to 5.30 Leave work. Catch unpredictable bus again. Read on it.
Anything between 6.15 and 7.15 Arrive home. Cook tea with J, eat it.
8ish Start work for course.
12ish Go to bed.

This is slightly exaggerated - I don't have work to do every single evening - but not much. I don't feel I'm exactly starved of me-time, given that I get two hours every day in which to read, but I've yet to work out a way of exercising while on the bus. And I feel slightly tired a lot of the time because I'm not getting quite enough sleep...

There is my lunch-hour. I could go running then a couple of times a week, but the temptation not to is strong, because my workmates are pretty nice and it's more tempting to stay in and talk to them, given that the schedule above doesn't leave much time for a social life. And there are the weekends. During which I really want to garden. (We're trying to grow our own vegetables this year. Or rather, I am trying to grow them. J looks on with mild interest.)

I do like the job. But the next one I apply for won't be quite so far away. How do other people do it? I can't be the only non-morning-person who works nine to five, commutes and also studies...

Any ideas?

Whoosh

That was several weeks shooting past in a blur.

I started a new job on Monday last week. It is good. The people are nice, and there is also free fruit. There's also a dress code, but hey.

Not unconnected with this, I had occasion to wear the smart black trousers I bought just before Christmas. Now, when I bought these, they fitted quite snugly. Snugly enough that I had to try them on at home to check that they did indeed look OK. I have trouble buying trousers that fit - I have short legs but a really long body, so I can't wear anything even vaguely low-rise if I want to be able to sit down.

Anyway, when I put the trousers in question on last week, they were... roomier than I was expecting. They haven't been washed (they haven't been worn), so the only explanation is that I'm slightly smaller than I was at Christmas.

I was at a loss to explain this. Really. I haven't been doing much strenuous exercise, and I've been feeling kind of fat. It's been one of those stupid periods when you can't quite get into a routine - and not having any scales doesn't help.

When I think back, however, my diet has been overwhelmingly sensible lately. Not that that's ever had much of an effect before... but I'm not exactly complaining.

J had to stay home from work again for another couple of weeks, but is now back again. We're taking it as it comes. He has some new medication to take, so we'll see how that works.

How to hurt yourself

On Monday, I cycled 7 miles (round-trip) over a fairly hilly route, accompanying J to see his doctor. This possibly wasn't the best route to choose for the first ride in several months, because as well as the seat-ache I was expecting, the backs of my thighs were seriously complaining yesterday. Which meant that I didn't do anything terribly strenuous.

I can't help feeling it would be better if muscles let you know when you were doing something that is going to hurt, rather than saving it up so that you can't move the next day.

I did clean the oven, though, which ought to burn lots of calories if there were any justice in life.

The big news of yesterday: J went to work. And didn't have to come home. (And he went back again today. This is real progress, although he's only there in the afternoons until he's feeling a bit stronger.)

In order to cement positive feelings of achievement and what-have-you, we had a healthy salad tea and then spent some time looking at kitten videos on Cute Overload. Exciting stuff like that.

Something resembling a proper post!

OK. It’s now February. The last time I posted anything with any actual content in it was Hallowe’en. This is rather pathetic. Where have I been for the last three months? Nowhere much.

I think I’ve said in the past how difficult it is for me to write sad posts. Some people enjoy venting, and it gets it out of their systems. Others, like me, don’t like to put it down on the page, because then they have to think about it. So, the short version: I didn’t have a job, and I needed one for both financial and logistical reasons. J was off work with depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and general exhaustion. Grandpa and Granny both ended up in hospital over Christmas. There was general family stress. It was wet and windy and dark. I didn’t take any exercise to speak of between mid-November and mid-January.

If you read my mum’s blog (do I have permission to link to you, Mum?) then you already know some of this.

Archives is a small field, and because I can’t move or commute a long way away (I don’t drive) I was limited to looking for jobs in the Central Scotland area, and there weren’t very many to apply for. And those I did apply for, I didn’t get. But… a couple of weeks ago my luck changed, and I now have a job again, or at least a contract - I start later this month. This is good. It does involve about an hour’s commute, which is less good, but I can do it all by bus, so it’ll be do-able and I’ll get to read in transit. I won’t mention my new employers on here, but it is in a nice shiny new archive and I’m looking forward to it.

My grandparents: Grandpa has been in hospital for a few months now. He broke his hip a while back and since then has been unable to stand, and because he’s now confused, he doesn’t accept that he isn’t able to, which isn’t ideal. There’s no way Granny could look after him on her own, but he doesn’t really see why he can’t just order a taxi and go home… Which is really sad. He’s always been a very forceful person and until recently, was still very sharp. And while you can feel his frustration at (apparently) being surrounded by idiots who won’t do as he says, that doesn’t make it easier for those who have to deal with him.

Granny had a lot of fainting fits on Boxing Day and also spent a few nights in hospital, but she seems to be a lot better now. Which is good. Mum is staying with her for a while, though.

I’m sure my parents have been worrying about my grandparents for much longer than I have – but it does seem as though they’ve quite suddenly lost their independence. Which I suppose is inevitable, given that they’re both well into their eighties. But still sad.

J’s problems started a little before Christmas, when he had a flare-up of his OCD – it got so bad that he was having great difficulty leaving the house, because he couldn’t quite convince himself that the gas was turned off and that the door was locked. The trouble with OCD is that it’s often an exaggeration of sensible behaviour: obviously you SHOULD check if the door is locked before you walk away from your house. But not twenty or thirty or fifty times, because that begins to make you late for work, and then you can’t go to work because you can’t stop checking.

His psychiatrist prescribed antidepressant no. 10 (clomipramine), which does seem to have cured the OCD. Unfortunately, it has various side-effects, the worst of which was that it made J really, really tired. So he’d try to go in to work, and be too exhausted to think after a couple of hours, and have to come home. And it appears to have no effect whatever on his depression, which seems to be resistant to all the antidepressants he’s tried over the years.

So his doctor has agreed that he can come off it, slowly (as you have to) and we’re trying a combination of gentle exercise, sunlight when available, and Eating More Protein and Less Breakfast Cereal. (Another side-effect is a craving for sweet foods. Because we don’t tend to buy biscuits and sweets much, J found himself eating four bowls of Weetabix a day, which we agree isn’t a balanced diet or very GI-friendly.) He is not exactly cured. However, he’s currently playing his guitar downstairs, which is a really good sign – when he’s really depressed he doesn’t have the energy or desire to do anything.

J and I have been doing a fair bit of walking recently, and he has just fixed my bike, and the weather is improving. So I have hopes that the Time of No Proper Exercise is over. I’m still thinking I won’t rejoin a gym; my old gym is nowhere near my new work, and I’m only on a six-month contract. However, I’m hoping to spend some of my first pay on some proper dumbbells. At the moment, I feel weak and flabby and I don’t like that very much. I don’t know what I weigh either, so perhaps buying a bathroom scale ought to go into the budget too? In a month and ten days, this will be my two-year blogging anniversary. Blogiversary. Thingy. Let’s see if I can write some proper, accountable posts between now and then.

Back soon...

Ghoulies and ghaisties and lang-leggedy beasties

Happy Hallowe’en, everyone!

I am still alive. It’s just that this course I’m doing has eaten my life.

Well, that’s not entirely true. But it’s eaten the time I used to spend on the internet doing non-academic things*. Recently, it’s felt more urgent to use my down-time to cheer up J, who’s been going through a rough patch recently, mostly because of a change of medication. We’ve been doing gentle, calming domestic things. He’s painted the bathroom. I’ve made apple pie from windfalls, and banana bread, and yesterday I created the, um, work of art you can see above.

I like Hallowe’en. It’s one of the few authentic Scottish folk traditions that’s still going, although I notice that the guisers now say “Trick or treat!” when you open the door to them. They never did that in my day. I blame cable television.

Mind you, if I’d wanted to be really authentic I’d have carved a turnip lantern, not a pumpkin – but it’s terribly hard work, and they smell very peculiar when you put a candle in them.

This year, for the first time, I’ve really felt affected by the changing season, and the nights getting longer. In general, I enjoy autumn; it’s not so hot, and I like the windy weather and seeing the trees turn. But until the clocks went back this weekend, I was really finding it difficult to wake up in the morning. I’m not a morning person at the best of times, but this wasn’t good at all. Now that we’ve gained an hour in the mornings, though, it’s light (for the time being) and I feel better; long may this continue.

Exercise, recently, has been good. It was painfully obvious that if I wasn’t making the time to go to the gym often enough before, I really wasn’t going to have time once my course started, so I didn’t renew my membership, and five weeks ago I joined a running group. It’s a JogScotland group, it’s free, and most importantly, it meets at lunchtimes so I don’t lose any time that I’d be spending doing anything useful. And I get out in the fresh air while it’s still light.

Although I haven’t exactly been inactive, I hadn’t done much proper running since the Race for Life in June, when I was probably in my best ever form, since I managed a personal best and could run for 28 minutes on the treadmill without stopping (though I couldn’t do the same on outdoor terrain). After three months off, I felt I’d better start in the beginners’ group. It wasn’t too easy to get back into it, but I wasn’t the slowest - probably because I’m one of the youngest in the group, to be honest, but still – and I’m actually enjoying training with other people. I thought I wouldn’t, since I have awful memories of P. E. at school, but the fact that everyone is at much the same standard helps a lot. Two weeks ago we all moved up a group to “improvers” together.

Having the jog leaders set our challenges is helpful, too. When I was starting by myself on the treadmill, I now think I didn’t increase the time as quickly as I might have, partly because I didn’t want to injure myself. The jog leaders have been trained, and they’re all experienced runners, and so far they haven’t asked us to do more than we were capable of. While I’ve been running with this group, we’ve gone from running 12-minute legs to over 20 minutes without stopping, which I’ve probably never achieved outdoors before. My old friends the blisters are back. But it’s worth it to be running again.

So far I haven’t missed a session, except for last week when I had a mysterious pain in the arch of my right foot, which made it sore to walk, let alone run. However, I went out with the group again today and the foot behaved itself, so fingers crossed. Whether I can continue with this particular group will depend on where I’m working (I’m still temping at the moment) but it’s helping me to get over my aversion to training outside, and for the moment, it feels very good to be doing something structured again.

But now it’s late and I’m tired and I’m going to bed. Night night!

*If I usually visit your site, I probably still do. But I might not always be able to muster enough brain to make a coherent comment. I still like you!