OVER AND OUT

The time has come to change over to my new blog  here.

Adios amigos its good bye from Life As I see It and time for a slightly new direction. I hope to see you there.

Cheers

M

WHAT HAVE I BEEN UP TO?

Oh my poor neglected little blog. I've hardly paid any attention to you in well over a week. I guess I've just been out there living and enjoying life. Yes I have indeed and its been great :-)

On the first weekend in October we had a bit of a family celebration for my niece's 3rd birthday. This involved a day down south riding the Cockel Train from Goolwa, eating hot cinnamon donuts in Victor Harbor, having fish and chips by the beach in Port Elliot, oh and then ice creams too :-) On the public holiday Monday we had a one of the longest lunches I've ever hosted. My mum and dad arrived around 11.30 am and my ILs went home after 8.30pm. Needless to say, Tuesday's run was done at 11.30 am once some recovery had been undertaken.

I then had the following week off work as it was school holidays here. Oh bliss!! I enjoyed a hot stone massage and a facial, hosted an all-day play date for Mitchell and a friend, went out for pizza, garlic bread, wine and ice cream with Peter, pottered around home, taxied Mitchell to a friend's place for another play-date and then had one fun day with my boy. We had lunch out, played 20 Questions and Hang Man, saw Grown Ups 2 and laughed til we cried (well I did!!) and just had a great time together.

I even unleashed my inner Nigella and outdid myself with not one, not two but THREE culinary delights over the weekend. On Friday we had a Peking Duck Salad (courtesy of Taste.com). On Saturday it was Michelle Koen's chicken with asparagus and prosciutto which got a big TEN from Peter and last night I made a Korean dinner: Korean BBQed beef and fish, potato pancakes with dipping sauce, fried rice and stir fried veges. And the best bit is there are plenty of leftovers for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow.

I have trained regularly maintaining my running program every 2nd day and I went back to doing some more hardcore upper body work and managed to give myself some fierce DOMS including shoulders. Who'd have thought that??!! I've NEVER had shoulder DOMS. I've also had some pretty awesome runs (and some not so awesome).

But the icing on the cake has to be that after all this fun and food and wine, my weight has settled back to exactly where it was about 2 weeks ago. No crash dieting. No crazy exercise. Nothing sinister. Just a bit of balance with a few green smoothies last week and watching portion sizes and BAM, I'll have my 64 1/2 kilos or so. Thank you very much :-)

M  

IT ISNT ALWAYS PERFECT

Yesterday saw us send our boy off to Queensland as an 'unaccompanied minor' to spend the week with his grandparents. So for this week we are kid-free. We both left work early to get to respective appointments; me to the chiro and Peter back to his knee doctor. By the end of last week my neck was extremely sore and my shoulders were aching badly as well. Whilst that settled down over the weekend, my lower back decided to flare up in pain instead. I'm sure it all boils down to work and being chained to a desk and computer all day. Its a shame that this is what pays the bills and affords us a lovely lifestyle. However, everything comes at a price.

Peter's knee op doesn't appear to have fixed his problem so he was back for round two of whatever it might take to get him better. Recent bone scans showed serious wear in both knees and knee caps tracking out of alignment. Yet one knee hurts far more than the other despite the scans showing two identical knees. He is grumpy about having limited options for exercise. I'm struggling to find exercises that wont aggravate my lower back and neck/shoulders. I've been told to lay off the squats with the bar across my shoulders :-( 

So having got those whinges off my chest, I'll re-frame things into a positive mindset.

For several months I've been successfully managing my lower back pain and have needed very few chiro treatments. I may be in the midst of a minor relapse right now but it is temporary and I know that it will pass. My general lifestyle habits help me to manage this condition and they will continue to do so in future. One of the things I can improve on is to minimise my sitting time out of work so that might be a mini goal for October :-)

Even with a sore back and/or neck and shoulders there is so much I can do to stay active. On my daytime runs through my neighbourhood, I often pass a man in a wheelchair sitting idly out the front of his house just watching the day unfold. He always helps me put things into perspective. I may be tired, hot, sore or feeling a bit down but that quickly changes to feeling mighty fine and lucky that I can do the things I love.

Yep, I'm lovin life even if it isnt always perfect :-)

M