Back To The Beginning.
Monday, October 26, 2009
I've had a confession brewing for a while. I've also had some really good intentions sitting on the back burner for a while. Today I woke up and reconciled the two.
I fell off the C25K bandwagon. I fell off over halfway though the program as I was ready to start week 7 of 9. I had worked up to a route that was about 4.5km. I ran a good portion of it. And then I stopped. I do admit, I was a little discouraged at the time. It had taken 8 weeks to get me to this point in the program and other than a bit of cardio-vascular endurance, I wasn't seeing too many benefits.
As well, I smashed my toe while trying to walk through an office chair. With all the swelling and bruising, I couldn't get my runners on. That lasted almost a week. Shortly after, I poisoned my dog. Not on purpose, mind you. But it was a month-long situation involving copious amount of puke and poop. Now, who wants to analyze my belief that I can only get some exercise if I take the dog along? Because if you understand the reality of taking the Skittish White Dog out and about, you'd understand that it is an undertaking all in itself. SO really, I make my C25K intervals frustrating as well as physically taxing. Clever, huh?
Fast forward to the recent future: Lately I've begun to feel fed up with myself. And I'm not just a little guilty for stopping all attempts at exercise completely. I read a timely message somewhere out there in cyberspace that talked about getting over yourself and just getting your stuff done. I am my own worst excuse. So I decided that before eating, before getting the kids up, before starting the laundry, putting the garbage out or pulling the day's school work, I just had to go outside and walk the friggin' dog already! I reasoned with myself: if you're walking the dog, then you might as well do the C25K thing again.
To cement this plan in my daily to-do's, on the weekend I went to the local Zeller's and picked up a sports bra, some yoga pants and a couple of layering athletic shirts. I was going for the 'now that I have it, I'd better use it' personal guilt trip. Last night I loaded up my Shuffle and prepared mentally for 8 x 30second running intervals. Only it wasn't 8 x 30seconds. It was 8 x 60second running intervals. Happy Monday Morning to me.
In summary:
- Most important thing: I got up and moving this morning.
- Most surprising thing: Noone I passed stared at my jiggling bottom.
- Most gross thing: the dog stopped running on the path and ate some bloody dead furry mass that I don't want to think about.
- Most encouraging thing: I'm going to get up and do it again tomorrow. Not the running part, just a nice half hour walk with some peppy music.
- Most inspiring thing: I really forgot how much I love fall. Great colours. One really should be outdoors some every day :-)
There was a man in my tree. Of course, 'my' is a term I have absolutely no right to use. It's not my tree. It's just situated next to my yard. Again, not really my yard, but for all intents and purposes, I'm Queen of this postage stamp. Back to the man in my tree...
The man in my tree was here to divest the tree of some of its limbs. You see, there were a few incidents this summer. Some of the local kids discovered they had attained the required height for climbing this particular tree. Not a problem. The problem began when a couple of them started running off at the mouth. Things heated up nicely when they argued that they were not staring in the neighbour lady's windows. Unfortunately, they were arguing with the neighbour lady who was sitting in her living room behind her six-foot fence. She wrote a letter to the building managers and copied the owners.
Mr. B and I got involved when we clearly saw unsafe things happening. 7 and 8 kids crawling all over each other in the tree ignoring my tree-climbing 'rules': stay off any dead branches as well as those thinner than your arm. Then there was the day I found a few of them using bricks to gouge the bark off the tree. Sure, they put the bricks down when I asked them to, but then they tried to rip branches off the tree...and proceeded to swing from them when they were only partly successful. I asked the building manager to step in because of all of this and I was concerned. The kids had stopped listening to me and it was becoming incredibly inconvenient to look out the window all day. Someone was going to get hurt.
So much to my surprise, the tree guys showed up today - a month and a half after the last kid lost their copious amounts of summer free time - and did a very good job at trimming the tree. I was surprised because there had been no response to my - nor the neighbour lady's - complaint. I'd like to say that the building manager/out-of-town owners are the proactive, pride in ownership, get-'er-done types but I'd be lying. They're more the squeaky wheel, bring along the property standards guy and then they start to wake up type of people.
On a more personal note, The Boy and The Girl both learned a thing or two about how the professionals trim a tree and then clean up after themselves. The Boy was quite intrigued by the ropes and harness. The Girl is responsible for all the photographs. And for talking the tree guys' ears off - from well out of the way - throughout the entire job.
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