NO EXPECTATIONS

I have been rather tardy on my blogging, I apologise to my few loyal fans (my mother in law, my aunt, my aunt’s friend, family friend and anon) sometimes I manage a run but not a blog and that is not really quite good enough.  I often find that I’m not really quite good enough.  Don’t you?  In smaller tasks like getting all the laundry washed, folded and put away at once, returning friendly fire emails in a timely fashion and never running out of milk for tea and coffee.  But I like to be equalitarian in these things, and also manage to be not quite good enough in other more complex areas too.  Coming close to, but not landing the gig is one.  As is being told you’re writing is witty and clever but still not being picked up by a publisher.  I could also mention my inability to earn money as another.  Not because I don’t work hard, I do, very much so, but I haven’t exactly chosen well-paid careers to begin with

This sounds perilously close to me having a whinge but it’s not.  Honest.  If I can’t cope with the way things are I can easily go and change them.

The one thing that doesn’t matter if I’m not quite good enough is running.  Yesterday I ran the same run I always do seven minutes slower than usual but the only person that knows that is me and there isn’t a single person out there including me that cares one way or the other.  And that, my friends, is the ticket.  Find something that you love and never grow tired of, where the outcome doesn’t have any significance at all.  Baking, gardening (though I suppose you want a result from those) sewing or lawn bowls, for example.  Something that is just yours and just for enjoyment.  No expected return or result, just a pleasant way to pass some time hanging out with yourself.

That is why I run.

A RUN A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY

Yesterday I had the sneezes.  Terrible sneezes.  All day long.  But, because I’m working on a new project (a play that’s been brewing in my brains for a few years now and is finally ready to come out I think) I was desperate to keep writing and not retire to the couch and feel sorry for myself which I would have done under normal circumstances.

By 4pm I was beat so I stopped writing and decided to run the cold out of me.  A risky undertaking to be sure as this can only result in one of two outcomes.

Either you do indeed run the infection out of you, or you send the germs flying around your body much faster than a normal tv-watching, couch sitting sick kid would, and bring on the infection full force.

At least that’s what my grandma always told me when I was little and I now use it as medical dispensation when I’m tired and can’t be bothered running.

Maybe I’ll just walk, I thought, slipping on my running gear just in case.

Nah, I feel better than that, I’ll run. But I’ll do the shorter distance instead.  7 k’s not the full 10.

So I set off on my plod, the snot up my nose managing to stay there for the moment, and realised I wasn’t plodding, I was running.  And I felt great!

Buggar it, I thought, I’ll do the whole ten k’s.  And I did.  And this morning I awoke with not a sneeze in sight.  Not a fat head, not a fever, not a cough or an infection.

Which just goes to show you that it’s not an apple but a run a day that keeps the doctor away.

IRRITATIONS

You know what really annoys me?  People who decide public transport is the perfect location to go through their selection of ring tones on their mobile phone regardless of how irritating it is to their fellow passengers.

This is what happened to me on the bus this morning and I almost, almost said something. 

But what if the offender doesn’t quite hear me and I have to repeat myself which makes me miss my stop, or I use my hands to gesture at his phone, the bus lurches and I land in an embarrassed heap at his feet, or he attacks me for protesting in the first place which sets the whole bus off in a discourse about the boundaries of the public’s interference in each other’s lives. 

And all of that just seemed like too much to deal with at 11am on a Monday morning, so I got off the bus and let the warm autumn sun burn the irritation out of me.

There are quite a few things that annoy me (as surprising as that may seem) and I think I’ll share them with you right here and now.

Another public transport misdemeanor (I am a huge advocate of PT when it works and is on time, which is generally never in the state of New South Wales) is people who clip their fingernails and let their discarded droppings tumble to the floor like seagull poo from the sky.  To be fair, this was a regular occurrence on the New York subway and I’m thankfully yet to see it in my homeland.

Automated voices when you call customer service are also up there, but who doesn’t get annoyed by that? 

My husband’s work hours irritate.  As do pantyhose, though I’ve managed to construct a life where (unless I’m performing) they are an unnecessary fashion accessory.  Dentists are annoying, mostly because they yell at you for not flossing enough and you can’t retort because they’ve shoved a hard, cold metal tool into the back of your throat. 

I find photocopiers intensely annoying, (they see me coming and deliberately malfunction, doing extra copies or not enough, skipping pages and printing upside down) which is perhaps one reason I have never pursued a job in an office. 

An order of stale banana bread at a café when you decided not to go with the raisin toast, L platers on freeways (I appreciate RTA trying to give our young drivers a taste of life in the fast lane, but it is annoying none the less) and bikini waxes in Australia that provide forty minutes of pain in my life instead of the swift seven it takes in New York.

People who walk on the wrong side of the footpath and fail to move even though they see you from at least a hundred yards and you’re clearly running dead for them also elevate my blood pressure.  It’s not that I mind moving for them, but when I do, I then come face to face with a serious, much faster runner (usually a bloke twice my size) or worse, a kamikaze bike rider trying to break the national record for the city to inner west commute.  And so, because some nitwit chatting on her iPhone refuses to take one step to her right, I have to break suddenly to avoid hitting her, she doesn’t apologise and I am annoyed.

This happened yet again on my run today and I really wish I could see a way to stop it happening.  But I fear that for every person I scold, there will be one to tell me to quit my whinging, one to tell me it’s a free country, and another to tell me to run around an oval instead and then I wouldn’t face the problem in the first place. 

And for all my bravado and big talk in this blog, I really would rather avoid confrontation if you don’t mind.

Maybe tomorrow I should go to yoga.  No one would dare invade my space there.  That is against the yoga protocol, which means (providing I don’t get annoyed by the exercise itself) I could then pass the day in relative harmony. 

ARTICLE IN THE HERALD

I never did quite manage to work out how to upload the last article in the Herald onto the blog, but lucky for us all, my trusty graphic designer friend has put it up on the website.  You can find it under the 'news' tab.  Very exciting indeed!  Have a great weekend blogees.

AISLE NUMBER THREE

I have just returned from a lovely trip to the supermarket. 

Not possible you say.  I would have thought so too. 

When I lived in New York it seemed normal to buy your coffee and milk at two o’clock in the morning and do your laundry just before the sun got up, (there was a little beer garden out the back and a sign requesting you remove all bullets before placing your clothes in the machine) but that doesn’t appear to be the norm in old Sydney town. 

The closest to it I can get is a spin through Woolies at midnight and let me tell you, what a joyous shopping experience it is. 

You see, I get horribly distracted in a supermarket.  By the selection of lettuces and the variety of jams, by the babies screaming and the mothers joining in.  By the old men leaning on their trolleys because they’re too old to hold themselves up, and the barefoot uni students buying a loaf of white bread and a packet of skinny sausages.  By the horrible music they play that always manages to sound like a Christmas tune, by the Nutella spill in aisle three, by the choice of eggs (which took me a while to locate in the first place because in the US you’ll find them in the fridge) when all I want is an un-hormoned, happy hen that lays its eggs in a little straw nest and an old lady called Marge collects them every morning, pulls off the feathers, wipes off the poo and sends them off to the supermarket for people like me to buy.  By the number of items the deli calls sliced meats, by the frozen peas and my eternal debate about whether the name brand is of lower quality.  (They aren’t, I don’t believe, and I keep a packet handy in the freezer to mix with a mashed potato or put on a swollen post-knee run). 

By the time I get back to the checkout, I’ve forgotten half the things I actually needed (milk, oranges and peanut butter – absolute staples in my diet) but do have three different boxes of crackers, (something wheaty, something foreign and the standard box of Jatz) half a dozen fresh figs the price of which I gag at when the checkout person weighs them, and dryer sheets even though we don’t have a dryer.

Not the case at eleven thirty at night, with half an hour to go till they close, and the only thing to worry about is running over the deodorants left waiting to be stacked in the toiletries aisle.  There is no irritating music, no distraught youngsters, no one parking their cart sideways while they read the ingredients on every tin of Campbell’s soup, no overwhelming smell of all day cooking barbequed chicken, no kamikaze grapes to dodge in the produce section. 

I can take my time in the cereal aisle (I have been known to live on breakfast alone and take the buying of such an item very seriously indeed) carefully reading the ratio of fibre to potassium though I don’t know how much I need of either anyway.  I wander down the miscellaneous aisle filled with tea strainers, pencils and paper plates and wonder – again – why I didn’t skip it.   

I actually read my list of essential purchases and have the patience what’s more to seek them out.

It’s me, the nighttime stackers, some lady in an aubergine dressing gown and a bloke buying enough cigarettes to supply a small village.

Peaceful, polite, late night shopping.  No queues, no madness, no nonsense.

And I tell you, my groceries taste all the sweeter for it.

Article in today's Herald!

If any of you get Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald, take a look in the careers section.  I know, not a spot you'd think to find me in, but have a read of this week's 'the office'.  It's written by yours truly!
I can't seem to find the online link unfortunately, but i'll keep looking!

A WAR OF ATTRITION

Today was not a good day in the life of Naomi.  The literary agent rejected me.  Nicely, but rejected me just the same.  The rejection came with a very helpful critique of my work and a tag in an email that said she thinks I am a talented writer of humour. 

And that, friends, is unfortunately enough to keep me keeping on.  Those few words are enough to encourage me to get back to the computer and try again.  That’s the problem with artists.  No matter how well aware we are of the realities of our profession, and how dreadful the odds of making our passion our career, every time we submit our work, or ourselves, there is a part of us that genuinely believes we’re going to get it.  Otherwise, why would you do it in the first place?  How could you do it in the first place?  Would you go for a job in HR if you really didn’t think you had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting it?  Probably not. 

And it’s that (so far) unyielding sense of optimism that won’t allow me to quit and find an easier path to take.  Don’t think I haven’t tried to talk myself into a full time career as a long distance truck driver, (though I have serious case of driving narcolepsy so that’s perhaps not the best choice) but there is nothing else I want to do. 

Just sing and write. 

And until that optimism, that belief in myself that somehow, someday I will make it all work, fails me, I’ll still be here, blogging and submitting, writing and editing, singing and dreaming…and running.  Because this is what I thought about while I pounded around the edge of our beautiful harbour and tried to cheer myself up. 

You put yourself in this mess Hart, so you can find a way out of it.

This is a war of attrition.  If I hang in here long enough, one day I will win.

GREGORYITIS

So I didn’t go to yoga.  I needed to run.  These last couple of weeks I’ve had a bit of Gregoryitis.  I miss my husband.  Just once it would be nice to have more than twelve minutes a day with him.  Maybe even have dinner together, watch a movie, go for a walk, talk.  You can see what type of mood I am in and ninety minutes of someone telling me that ‘this is today’s journey, just embrace it’ while I’m desperately trying to reach behind me and grab my left heel with my right elbow just wasn’t going to cut it. 

And so I ran...terribly.  Butch our thirteen-year-old dog could have done a better job.  But you know, with running and me, that’s just not the point.  Sure it wasn’t a run to be proud of, but it did clear my head, I wrote the start and middle of two new stories and had an imaginary conversation with my husband on our perfect night out.  This is why I run.  And this is why nothing else will suffice.  Dancing is glorious and it makes me feel free, swimming is methodical and fun for a change, walking is for old people and yoga for those who’s zen is far easier to locate than mine.  But running, running eases my soul.  

And now I can go to teaching without taking my gregoryitis out on my students.  And that, is a good thing to be sure.

WITHDRAWAL...

How many kilometres is it from Town Hall station up to the Mint building for coffee, through the park to the art gallery, through the Archibald Exhibition, out to the café for lunch, back through the Art Express Exhibition, back across the park down to the bus station and home?  Because that’s what I did instead of running today.  I talked about running if that counts.  On national radio no less.  You can hear it if you like. And since today was such a lovely, low-key, hang out with my mother and cousin, look at art sunshiney day, I didn’t need to run as much as I normally do.  I’m a little antsy and taking the dog for a walk hasn’t quite cured it, but sometimes I wonder, if just like someone on long-term prescription medication often tries to reduce their dose, if that’s not a bad idea for me.  Am I too reliant on running for my sense of wellbeing?  Without it am I difficult and withdrawn because I haven’t had a chance to process the day’s incidents?  Do I find it difficult to relax if I haven’t worn myself out?  The answer to all these questions is unreservedly yes, but I’m not sure that’s healthy.  So, unadvised by any medical professional, I have forced a reduction in medication by not running today and deciding to yoga instead tomorrow.

This could be interesting folks, I’ll let you know how I (and anyone around me) fairs.  

POCKET SIZED POOCHES

Is it just me, or has the number of breeds of small dogs in Australia increased dramatically during my absence over the last seven years?  I don’t mind the occasional game of dodge the dog, but the smaller they are, the bigger the problem.  They’re harder to see, they dart rather than trot, their movements are unpredictable and they are NEVER ON A LEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!  I appreciate giving dogs their freedom – I would try with ours but he has no street skills and we live just off a major arterial road.  He would be free all right.  Or his spirit would be, as he took up his place in doggie heaven.

All I mean to say is, sometimes it’s a little frustrating to have to hop, skip, cartwheel, gallop and levitate to avoid squashing a dog the size of my sneaker under my pounding heel.  Truly this is not a rant against dogs, or dog owners, I am one and a lover of both.  But it’s a bit like when people are strung out all along the footpath and the person directly in your way refuses to move over to allow you passage despite the fact that footpaths are, as far as I’m aware, a two way street.  Dogs don’t speak English, so I don’t expect them to understand.  But presumably their owners do.  Does it not occur to them that their untethered midget canine is actually rather a nuisance?  If the situation were reversed and I was blithely allowing my pet duck to wander at will across a path, would they not find themselves frustrated?

Don’t worry, I didn’t let this issue with the vertically challenged pooch ruin my run, and it was a glorious one in the warm, fading autumn sun.  Owing to my article in today's Sydney Morning Herald, I had skipped Yoga out of fear that someone would recognize my name when I checked in to take class, but will be back again tomorrow.  I don’t normally do this many yoga classes in a week, but the tight arse in me is lured by the flat rate they offer you for the first seventeen days.  I guess they hope you’ll develop a yoga-addiction, but for me it’s purely mathematics.  This is a good deal and I’m going to exploit it.

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD DEBUT!!!

Look who is in today's Sydney Morning Herald.  It is curiously similar to a blog I wrote recently, but now it's in hard print.
Very exciting indeed!

I DID IT...DOWNWARD DOG AND DEODORANT

I did it.  I went back to yoga.  I know I vowed to weeks ago, but making it public really forced me to go…eventually.  And it wasn’t too bad.  Honestly.  I think the instructor designed the class just around me – all the stretches were the ones I should have been doing after every run but somehow seem to always forget.

Flatulence is an interesting problem in Yoga.  Perhaps it’s the positions you worm your way into, or maybe it’s the way the instructors foster a sense of sharing and togetherness.  “We’re all on a journey, supporting and encouraging each person’s individual path.”  Maybe so, but does that really include their bowel movements?

I always wonder what my fellow devotees (as we’re sometimes called) are thinking when the instructor is banging on about our journey.  If you’re lucky they let you get into child’s pose (though to this day I’ve never seen a kid actually pull this move) where you fold your legs under themselves, lean forward between them and stretch your arms out in front.  The instructor can’t see your face this way so I tend to consider it nap time and let my mind wander.  While they are busy telling me about the joy of a yogi’s spirit I am busy planning my next meal.  Baked beans or eggs, I think if it’s an early morning pre-breakfast class.  The good thing about yoga is, you can usually get by without talking to anyone so I tend to rush out of the house without cleaning my teeth.  I don’t deem undies essential either since you’re in form fitting clothes as it is, but I do consider my peers and wack on a bit of deodorant.  I wish I could say the same about them.  Yoga is often synonymous with vegans, being at one with your environment and dreadlocks. None of which I have a problem with.  Abandoning hygiene however, I do.  If you’re living in a hut, practicing your warrior three on an abandoned beach, go ahead, smell as much as you like.  But this is Australia.  We consider ourselves a civilized nation.  Deodorant is not a conspiracy, it’s a necessity.  Trust me people, nothing puts you further away from being ‘at one with your environment’ than filling the room with the stench of last night’s tofu curry.

I also tend to get a bit distracted by the ujjayi breathing they try to make you do.  (Other names include ocean breath, hissing breath, or victorious breath, though I’m not quite sure what you’ve won or whom you’ve beaten).  Apparently we’re trying to constrict the throat to find a more powerful breath but the logic doesn’t hold for me.  I’ve tried it, but I feel like I’m gargling my own spit and everyone around me sounds like they are preparing to hock a loogie which makes me very wary to slip into a yogic state and find my zen.

Having decided to breath exactly as I’ve been doing for the last thirty years, I proceeded through the class and worked out some of the knots in my left quad.  The best part is the final move where you get to lie down, close your eyes and meditate.  I enjoy a little mini-nap here, and am about to go an enjoy a longer one in my waterbed.  Goodnight blogees.  I’m sorry I haven’t written more of late, life outside the yoga studio has been very far from zen.

EXCELLENT FRIDAY

I played another focus game with my students today, and decided to use Easter as the theme.  Again, they had to come up with words associated with the holiday and one of my students said this; “oh you know…excellent Friday.”

Isn’t that fabulous!  Close, but so much better than the original.  Don’t just have a good Friday, have an excellent one. 

And today is, indeed an excellent Friday.  One of those autumn days where you can pretend the glorious sun and gentle breeze is going to last all the way to September when it will start to get warm again.  My imagination is my greatest device but sometimes I wonder if it could also be my downfall.  Sometimes when I hear about a landslide, or an earthquake, and people are discovered alive under the rubble three days after the disaster, I wonder if I could be one of those people.  What would I do stuck in the dark for seventy-two hours straight?  No one to talk to, nothing to eat, nowhere to run.  Would I survive? Or would I do myself in?  I like to think my vivid imagination could transport me to an alternate universe where I forget that I’m lying under a collapsed building and am, in fact, at a wonderful party, or swimming at the beach, or running through the bush.  But I’m an impatient kid, always on the go, which could definitely work against me.  Gregory’s stubborn streak would see him prevail.  Ain’t no way a building is getting the better of him.  They're a bit macabre, these thoughts I'm having and I’ve got no idea why they are consuming me today.  This is not the attitude of Excellent Friday.  Time to change track, get out for a run and live!  It's Australia.  We haven't had a tsunami, we don't have volcanoes, earthquakes are a remote possibility.  The closest thing to dangerous on this run is me tripping and falling into the water.  Hope I haven't jinxed myself...

EASILY PLEASED

The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the grass is green.  There is a gentle autumn breeze rippling through the turning leaves and I am going to get out in it.  My two lily-white legs will carry me around the shores of our majestic harbour and I am going to love it.  Simple pleasures I agree, but if seven years in New York teaches you nothing else, it’s that simple also often means free, and that’s the best kind of pleasure to have. 

POUNDING AND PONTIFICATING

Are you meant to exercise over Easter?  Sometimes I can be discouraged by the feel of autumn in the air and wuss out.  Tomorrow, I think, as I snuggle into my slippers and bathrobe.  It’s such a lovely holiday, the Easter long weekend, and my first one home in eight years was even more so.  Family, friends, yummy desserts and Easter Monday takeaway.  Long walks, longer talks, crisp sunshine, bright cool nights. 

But I still awoke on Sunday morning far earlier than I intended owing to the extra hour we gained as we abandoned daylight saving.  Usually I love this day, and consider the sleep-in the only good thing about winter.  This year I didn’t even get that and by 8.30am while Gregory was still sleeping soundly, the ants in my pants were busy indeed.  So off I went, listening to my favourite running album and running my new favourite route.  Easter is about renewal, and that’s certainly how I feel living back in my old stomping grounds.  Everything has changed but it’s all still the same.  I’m still me, my family is still mine, Sydney still has bad public transport.  And yet, I’m now the me with my husband, we are our own family, an off-shoot from whence we came and the buses I catch seem to be running on time.

The passages of time slip by with great excitement and yet also great mundanity.  

This is the glory of life.  And I pondered it while I ran.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

You know those days where you would have been more productive if you’d stayed in bed…yesterday was one of those days.  I dropped things, it rained and I have no umbrella, I was running late but it was humid so I was sweaty when I got there, things fell out of cupboards onto my head, no one answered their phone when I rang, people gave me incorrect information.  It was a nightmare.  Even washing my hair was difficult – the shower door fell off its hinges and then the conditioner container was blocked and I couldn’t get any out until I forced it and then it globbed and blobbed all over the shower floor.  I had a huge fight with my computer and printer which lasted most of the day until finally in a stroke of genius (after I’d seriously considered buying a new printer just so I didn’t have to deal with it anymore) I realised all I needed was a new download.  Gratifying in the end but so frustrating I was ready to return to a notebook and pencil, the tools of writers old.  At 7.30 Butch (being far smarter than he looks) realised that since I hadn't managed to run, what I needed was a good long walk and he stood there staring at me until I capitulated, leaving the computer to find the download itself.  Down the street we walked, turned the corner and coming eye to eye with a view of our magnificent city.  Centre Point tower, the harbour bridge...a full moon.  A full moon!  That explains everything.  Full moons are always a nightmare in restaurants, people are particularly difficult and the evening seems interminably long.  My disaster day had been explained.

But the moon only comes out at night, so I should be fine for today at least.  It is one of those magnificent autumn days.  Still warm and full of sunshine but with the hint of change in the breeze.  This is the Easter weather I remember from my youth.

I am glad to be home.

NAUSEA TURNS TO NERVES

I had an audition tonight and it’s been a fair while since I’ve been to one, so I was disproportionately nervous.  I had replaced my nausea with nerves.  Excellent.

And so because I was nervous, I did exactly what I told you I wasn’t going to do…I ran.  I had to.  It was the only thing that could help me.  Up and down the stairs I trod imagining the perfect audition.  I would stride in, cool, calm and collected, greet the panel members without doing that weird awkward semi-acknowledgement thing where you always end up giving more weight to one person than the others, take my music over the accompanist without tripping over nothing, be sure to give the correct tempo so he doesn’t play it like a chipmunk recording, return to the centre of the room and stand exactly where the panel wants me to so I don’t have to do that even more awkward shuffle while they adjust you like you’re facing a firing squad and then sing…like a dream.

The problem with Australian auditions is that they are so few and far between that you’ve often got up to two whole weeks to stress about them.  In New York, you could do four - even six in one day, not to mention afternoon callbacks, and the only thing you’re stressed about is whether you’ll get out of the dance audition in time to get to your waitressing gig.  Over there it’s a well-oiled employment/rejection machine.  Over here, it is an agonising, drawn out, torturous affair that results in exactly the same outcome of either employment or rejection.  So I did what I could to help myself and imagined winning the role.  Any decent sports psychologist will tell you that envisioning success is key to actually achieving it.  I’ll let you know if it works… 

COMMITTED OR OBSESSIVE...WHERE IS THE LINE?

Yesterday I had a headache and felt rather queasy, like the hot cross bun I’d had for breakfast might make a return visit.  But since I hadn’t run the day before, I was itching to stretch my legs.  I am like a dog.  I need the outdoors.  I need the fresh air.  I need the exercise…even if with every step I took I was also scouting for the nearest garbage bin in case I had to make emergency use of it.  Still I plugged on, determined to do the 10k’s I’d started out for, even though my stomach was starting to cramp from the nausea and my head was pounding in time with my feet.

There is a word for people like me.  Obsessive. 

Actually there are several words…compulsive, fanatical, excessive, pathological all come to mind quite easily.

Is this sort of behaviour really necessary? If I were training for the Olympics I would commend my commitment.  But I’m not, so it just makes me seem like a weird, overly focused individual with no ability to mediate my own behaviour.

I am not normal. 

But today I’m striving to be so.  I still don’t feel great, so rather than reenact yesterday’s woeful performance I’m going to stay right here at my desk, drink my fresh ginger tea and write.  The muses usually get released with the endorphins of my run, so I’m going to have to find another way to entice them out.  Conventional methods, like persisting with my block, forcing myself to stay strapped to my chair, completing writing exercises till the floodgates open.

Wish me luck…this is unchartered territory…

THE HOSPITALITY WIDOW

A lady in my writing group told me about a funeral she went to the other day.  The deceased was an acquaintance of her husband’s and my writing buddy got talking with his widow.

“I knew he was going down hill the last couple of days,” she told my friend.  “One day he was lying in bed calling out to me, ‘Help, help’ he kept saying.  And I said, I can’t help you, you’re dying!”  And then she said… “Do you think this means I can join RSVP?” 

Grief affects us all in different ways I suppose.

I am a different kind of widow.  To borrow a phrase from my friend who owns a bar with her boyfriend, I am a hospitality widow, though I’m not considering joining an internet dating site.  Instead, I spend 6 days and nights a week waiting for that one twenty-four hour period when I might get some time with my beloved.  That is if he’s not too tired or distracted to notice me. 

I am being rather melodramatic.  It’s really not that bad, and I’m often the one with my nose at the computer madly typing anyway. 

Or running. 

You’d think since he only has one day off a week I could manage to control myself, but ofttimes I can’t.  Out I go, promising to be back in forty minutes, so we can settle in for some quality husband and wife time.  Except the other day, when I was struggling and my run took me a good ten minutes longer than usual.  Isn’t it incredible that your pace can vary that much?  As an amateur.  I doubt that happens if you’re a professional.

I do keep silly hours to try and see Gregory – up early for me and up late for him – which I think attributed to my poor run.  I was tired.  Simple problem, even simpler solution.  But since I didn’t manage to get any more sleep last night, I skipped the run today.  Which means I’ll be itching for one tomorrow despite the fact that it is, of course, Gregory’s one day off.

Is this what marriage really boils down to?  Whom do I please?  Myself or my beloved?  Sacrifice and compromise.  Forsaking ones needs for the betterment of others.  

To run or not to run.  That is the question.

YOGA IS LIKE DENTAL FLOSS

Yoga is like dental floss. 

It’s annoying but necessary, and I wish I had discovered its benefits long ago.  All this running means I have hamstrings tighter than a struggling actor’s purse strings, calf muscles shorter than my list of Broadway callbacks and joints so stiff, if you smoked me you’d be high. 

I’ve been doing yoga on and off for the last ten years now, more regularly than not, as I bargain with myself that if I do one class a week I can run as much as I like.  So far back in Sydney this hasn’t happened but I will start again as soon as I find a yoga mat for less than the $80 they’re selling them for at the local Yoga studio.  Are they serious?  It’s a thin piece of rubber.  My one in America cost $7. 

I know it’s good for you, but I find it very difficult to take Yoga seriously.  Firstly they call you a warrior.  What am I fighting?   A couple of tight tendons and a knot or two.  Secondly the outfits.  It’s like being at a semi-nudist colony - everyone decked out in their high-waisted lycra short shorts, so that when they bend over in a stretch, the personal behind them – usually an unfortunate me – gets a close up view of what makes them the gender they are.

Then there are the phrases they use – “full appreciation of the pose,” and “engage the body, learn to reach and recede.”  It’s a bit too up in the air for me.  I need definites.  “Stretch till it hurts,” or “hold till you shake,” would work better for me.  Tangible objectives that I can actually determine.

This is why running is so much better for a personality like me.  Distance, time, rate of breath and level of discomfort, these are all easily determined in a good old fashioned run. 

And since I am still boycotting expensive yoga mats, it is still the only form of exercise available to me.  And that is just the way I like it.