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.