Tuesday, September 15, 2009
written on the body
Shiny Yoga directed me to this beautiful blog - Superhero Journal - where a group of women recently held a weekend retreat where one of the activities was having words painted on you that you most needed to hear.
Whatever thoughts we have about ourselves to tend to manifest in our bodies and the way we carry ourselves. I understand more and more why people choose to have tattoos - they have something meaningful to them put somewhere that they can see and get strength from when they need it.
What words would you choose? And where on the body?
Mine would be stay true on my inner left wrist and keep going on my inner right wrist.
Friday, September 11, 2009
under the knife
Last night was the first Bad Idea Butcher's Shop since my last report - so as you can imagine, we were very excited at the prospect of a gin-filled intellectual firecracker of an evening!
Tom and I both, on a whim, decided to have a creative night last week and both write short stories (and I mean short, 350 words!) for the night in the vain, laughable possibility they might get picked to be "under the knife" as it were. The theme for this Butcher's Shop was "transhumanism", which is basically a cultural and intellectual movement which supports the use of science and technology to improve the human mental and physical condition and capacity. With the panel for the night featuring some respected thinkers and writers of science fiction, we'd have to sound like we knew what we were talking about!
Which I didn't! I don't do science fiction really - I'm a Jane Austen girl myself. Has anyone seen Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?! I've not read it, but that's my kind of science fiction!!
Anyway, we wrote our stories, read them to each other, had a laugh and emailed them off. heard nothing, so we just headed to the Old Operating Theatre Museum in London Bridge on Thursday night, expecting nothing more than to be entertained, enlightened, perhaps challenged, and get reacquainted with our old friend, Hendricks.
We were a bit late, as I had to walk slowly due to my knee being on strike (!) and only managed two gins (only, she says!) before being called into the theatre. We got our seats and gazed admiringly at the programmes before opening them. I let out an audible gasp when I saw the first page.
It was my story!!!
Needless to say, I was wishing I hadn't had two gins! Fortunately, I wasn't publicly identified by the "butchers" and didn't have to say anything! Phew! I just sat there smiling as my piece was read aloud, to futuristic music, and then critiqued by the editor of Bad Idea. On an overhead projector, my words were magnified and focused in on, circled and moved around, as they tried to make sense of my tale of a man who, after his third angioplasty, decides he's had enough and has his failing heart replaced with a digital one. I called it "The Angina Monologues".
The commentary and critique was kind and very useful - I must say, they made me sound far more in the know about the genre than I am!! A lot of conclusions were drawn that hadn't even occured to me, and I came away with far more insight and a sense of further potential with the piece that I didn't have before.
One thing I really did get out of the critique was how important it is for a writer to draw a clear and logical narrative between an event and it's consequences, and also to make the character's motivations clear. I know I often fall down in this respect with my work - for fear of telling rather than showing I sometimes leave out things that are obvious to me, but I forget that my readers won't be in the character's head, like I am. So it was a real "sink in" moment for me.
I enjoyed the second story too - it was about a master winemaker who gets the nerves from a dog's nose put into his own in order to gain a superhuman sense of smell to have the edge over his competition!
It was such an honour to be chosen for the critique - it really made my night!! Apparently my story hammered home a theme they wanted to emphasise during the evening - "dystopia is always a human decision"! Interesting - and true, I think. Do you agree?
Tom and I had an amazing conversation on the walk home - we talked about lots of things that had been raised in the panel discussion in the second half of the evening. We talked about the fallibility of humanity, this vertiable arms race between nature and capitalism, and how no one can ever really predict how life will be in the future. We wholeheartedly agreed with Ian Watson, one of the panel, who said "we're living in Utopia now. Enjoy it. Be happy."
What are your thoughts? Let's have our own panel discussion! Are we in a Utopia or Dystopia? Will human life truly be enhanced by the advances in technology, or is it only prolonging the inevitable?
~~~
More information about Bad Idea and The Butcher's Shop events can be found here. Maybe I'll see you at the next one!
Thursday, September 10, 2009
ms. bright side
I'm glad I didn't write this post yesterday, as I was very grumpy and fed up! I'm feeling much better today, as the title suggests!
For most of the last week I have been struggling with runner's knee. A delayed reaction to the half marathon perhaps, I don't know. I felt amazing after the half, as you all know, with no soreness or muscle pain at all. I went for my first run after the event four days later, and felt a slight twinge in my right knee but it went away as soon as I stopped running, so I thought nothing of it. Went for another run four days later, and this time the discomfort was more noticeable. My friend the GP advised a week off, as you know. So I did that, no running, just walking - but if you know me, you know I don't walk slowly, and I always take the stairs and walk down and up the escalators at the tube stations. So I kept doing all those things, and did lots of walking last weekend, with no problems.
But then I walked home on Monday evening, and started feeling very sore. I was going to put some ice on the knee when I got in, but it felt fine once I stopped and sat down, so I just took an Ibuprofen and got on with my night.
Monday night/early Tuesday morning I woke up because 1) some wino was smashing our recycling up (didn't realise that's what it was until I went outside the next morning and found our steps and part of the pavement covered in glass!) and 2) my knee was twitching! Twitching like nobody's business!
Next morning I could barely walk! But somehow managed to get through the day by walking very slowly. I felt like an old woman! Had to take tubes everywhere, instead of walking! Very grumpy. Tom took me out for pizza in South Kensington which cheered me up:
It was massive and we struggled to finish! They do pizza by the metre, so Tom's pizza was on one half (well, two thirds I would argue!) and mine was on the other! We love to share :)
If you're ever in South Ken and want amazing pizza, I recommend Da Spago. It was so delicious. I had had a few champagnes (we'd been to an exhibit earlier, with free champagne!) and that combined with my dismay over my knee made me look at the menu and think "stuff it, I'm getting the quattro formaggi!" I did ask for spinach on it though. Because you know spinach cancels out everything else ;)
Getting home revealed the knee was still swollen, so put my legs up on Tom who lovingly held an icepack on it.
Next day, even worse! I had a mini meltdown, if I'm honest, I was just so fed up! I thought I'd done everything right! Aargh. Was this my payback for quattro formaggi?! LOL.
Anyway, eventually I calmed down and stopped seeing my knee problem as an attack from the Universe! Sometimes things like this happen and there's not a lot you can do about it. As Liz would say, I have a "special needs knee"!
So, after far too much moping and "why me" moments, I decided to move over to the
The glaringly obvious blessing is that this happened post-race rather than pre-race - I would have been devastated if I'd got injured before the race and been unable to do it. So I'm grateful for that at least.
There also doesn't appear to be any major injury - ie: a meniscal tear - that would require intense physio or anything like that. All it really needs is rest. I'm just not good at the rest thing. I'm really not!
Also, this injury has given me an opportunity to practice what I preach. When you're unable to exercise it is crucial to keep up the healthy eating, and this is what I've always said to blog friends who've been unable to exercise due to injury. Ditching the healthy eating just means double the damage in the long run, doesn't it?
But, of course, it's not always easy to resist when you've got the runner's knee blues! Hence my quattro formaggi incident.
So, after arriving at work, and having decided I wasn't going to let this knee beat me, and that I was going to commit to eating as well as possible for the recovery period, I had my fruit smoothie for breakfast, followed by Ibuprofen(!) and settled in for a more positive, virtuous day. Having to hobble around still made me a bit grizzly though. Then, for some reason, this little things appeared in our work snack area:
I don't know if you've ever had them, but these are devilish little morsels of chocolate addiction, I tells ya. I love anything from Marks and Spencer, especially their low-fat hummous and antipasto items, but their chocolate/biscuit/cake treats really are in a league of their own! The chocolate mini bites are a regular fixture in my workplace!
Ordinarily I'd have one or two, knowing I'd be running later to burn them off. But with no run on the agenda, I knew it wasn't really a good idea.
When they first appeared, I gave them a somewhat lingering glance, but then consoled myself with my dried dates. After my lunch though, they became more and more appealing! Despite my efforts at positive self talk, I was still feeling so rotten about my knee, which was currently under it's third ice pack of the day. Surely it wouldn't hurt to just have one, to make myself feel better?
Well, yeah, if I could stop at one! But given my sooky state I knew I probably wouldn't, and live, self-flagelatingly, to regret it.
So, having decided once again that the knee was not going to beat me, every time I was tempted to go and bury my head in the bucket of chocolate mini-bites, I made myself a cup of herbal tea.
I had three cups of tea in the end :P Orange and mango tea is very nice, I discovered, and very good for assuaging a sweet craving.
Having said all this, I don't want you guys to think I was depriving myself, because I wasn't - if I had really genuinely felt like having these things, I would have. But I didn't genuinely want them - I just wanted them because they were there and I think all of us have contemplated chocolate as a remedy for feeling a bit blue every now and then! And I knew that those reasons weren't the reason to eat them. I only resisted - and had to work hard to resist! - because I knew I didn't really need them.
When I think of the days when I used to consider myself powerless when it came to food, I look back now and realise that I wasn't really. I was still making choices. I just wasn't thinking about them. Everyone has a choice about the way they want to live and the trick is to make conscious choices instead of unconscious ones.
So, feeling very virtuous, after work I headed to my core strength class at Sweaty Betty. Sweaty Betty are running a wonderful campaign at the moment called Get Fit 4 Free, where you can try four different types of exercise every Wednesday at their shops. I signed up straight away!
The class was amazing!!! Just what I needed.
We started the class by talking briefly about what is considered to be our "core". Most of us just thought it was the abs, but it turns out the diaphragm and the glutes are also considered core! We did a series of exercises that involved strengthening these three groups of muscles.
I didn't realise how much I rely on my arms and legs for balance and for strength - when we were doing an exercise my arms were aching. The reason was, the instructor told me, because I was using my arms to hold me up, not the core! Switching the focus to the core was a lot harder than it sounds.
Fortunately all these exercises were low impact on my knees, so I was able to do them with very little discomfort. A lot of them were similar to yoga poses I do at home - Warrior II, Bridge and Cat. Check out the video link above for more ideas.
The instructor made sure I was comfortable in each exercise - I'd told her about my knee when i arrived - and she came over to me during one exercise and told me to lift one of the bones in my feet - I forget the name, but apparently this bone is connected to a muscle all the way up the shin and calf, and engaging that muscle properly in the pose would probably alleviate the pain in the knee. And you know what...it worked!
I came away feeling really refreshed, and I'm definitely going to make time for core strengthening in my workouts. I usually do pushups and tricep dips after running, but these are done more with the aim of toning up my fadoobidahs (bingo wings, whatever you want to call them!) than anything else! But I've also done some thinking about the importance of stretching thoroughly after working out as well, so that I can hopefully avoid knee injuries in future. Fortunately I am ok but it's been a wake up call, certainly!
And...my knee feels so much better today! I haven't needed an ice pack or anti-inflammatories today, so fingers crossed I am on the mend. Tom and I are going swimming every day this weekend to make up for my lack of running, which I'm looking forward to - something nice and gentle to ease me back in!
Being on the bright side is nice. Sometimes there's things in life you can't do much about, they just happen and you've just got to roll with it. Some time out will probably do me good - if anything, it's just forced me to slow down instead of rushing all the time. And that's got to be a good thing.
Ta-ta for now, dwellers on the bright side! :)
For most of the last week I have been struggling with runner's knee. A delayed reaction to the half marathon perhaps, I don't know. I felt amazing after the half, as you all know, with no soreness or muscle pain at all. I went for my first run after the event four days later, and felt a slight twinge in my right knee but it went away as soon as I stopped running, so I thought nothing of it. Went for another run four days later, and this time the discomfort was more noticeable. My friend the GP advised a week off, as you know. So I did that, no running, just walking - but if you know me, you know I don't walk slowly, and I always take the stairs and walk down and up the escalators at the tube stations. So I kept doing all those things, and did lots of walking last weekend, with no problems.
But then I walked home on Monday evening, and started feeling very sore. I was going to put some ice on the knee when I got in, but it felt fine once I stopped and sat down, so I just took an Ibuprofen and got on with my night.
Monday night/early Tuesday morning I woke up because 1) some wino was smashing our recycling up (didn't realise that's what it was until I went outside the next morning and found our steps and part of the pavement covered in glass!) and 2) my knee was twitching! Twitching like nobody's business!
Next morning I could barely walk! But somehow managed to get through the day by walking very slowly. I felt like an old woman! Had to take tubes everywhere, instead of walking! Very grumpy. Tom took me out for pizza in South Kensington which cheered me up:
It was massive and we struggled to finish! They do pizza by the metre, so Tom's pizza was on one half (well, two thirds I would argue!) and mine was on the other! We love to share :)If you're ever in South Ken and want amazing pizza, I recommend Da Spago. It was so delicious. I had had a few champagnes (we'd been to an exhibit earlier, with free champagne!) and that combined with my dismay over my knee made me look at the menu and think "stuff it, I'm getting the quattro formaggi!" I did ask for spinach on it though. Because you know spinach cancels out everything else ;)
Getting home revealed the knee was still swollen, so put my legs up on Tom who lovingly held an icepack on it.
Next day, even worse! I had a mini meltdown, if I'm honest, I was just so fed up! I thought I'd done everything right! Aargh. Was this my payback for quattro formaggi?! LOL.
Anyway, eventually I calmed down and stopped seeing my knee problem as an attack from the Universe! Sometimes things like this happen and there's not a lot you can do about it. As Liz would say, I have a "special needs knee"!
So, after far too much moping and "why me" moments, I decided to move over to the
B R I G H T S I D E !!
The glaringly obvious blessing is that this happened post-race rather than pre-race - I would have been devastated if I'd got injured before the race and been unable to do it. So I'm grateful for that at least.
There also doesn't appear to be any major injury - ie: a meniscal tear - that would require intense physio or anything like that. All it really needs is rest. I'm just not good at the rest thing. I'm really not!
Also, this injury has given me an opportunity to practice what I preach. When you're unable to exercise it is crucial to keep up the healthy eating, and this is what I've always said to blog friends who've been unable to exercise due to injury. Ditching the healthy eating just means double the damage in the long run, doesn't it?
But, of course, it's not always easy to resist when you've got the runner's knee blues! Hence my quattro formaggi incident.
So, after arriving at work, and having decided I wasn't going to let this knee beat me, and that I was going to commit to eating as well as possible for the recovery period, I had my fruit smoothie for breakfast, followed by Ibuprofen(!) and settled in for a more positive, virtuous day. Having to hobble around still made me a bit grizzly though. Then, for some reason, this little things appeared in our work snack area:
I don't know if you've ever had them, but these are devilish little morsels of chocolate addiction, I tells ya. I love anything from Marks and Spencer, especially their low-fat hummous and antipasto items, but their chocolate/biscuit/cake treats really are in a league of their own! The chocolate mini bites are a regular fixture in my workplace!
Ordinarily I'd have one or two, knowing I'd be running later to burn them off. But with no run on the agenda, I knew it wasn't really a good idea.
When they first appeared, I gave them a somewhat lingering glance, but then consoled myself with my dried dates. After my lunch though, they became more and more appealing! Despite my efforts at positive self talk, I was still feeling so rotten about my knee, which was currently under it's third ice pack of the day. Surely it wouldn't hurt to just have one, to make myself feel better?
Well, yeah, if I could stop at one! But given my sooky state I knew I probably wouldn't, and live, self-flagelatingly, to regret it.
So, having decided once again that the knee was not going to beat me, every time I was tempted to go and bury my head in the bucket of chocolate mini-bites, I made myself a cup of herbal tea.
I had three cups of tea in the end :P Orange and mango tea is very nice, I discovered, and very good for assuaging a sweet craving.
Having said all this, I don't want you guys to think I was depriving myself, because I wasn't - if I had really genuinely felt like having these things, I would have. But I didn't genuinely want them - I just wanted them because they were there and I think all of us have contemplated chocolate as a remedy for feeling a bit blue every now and then! And I knew that those reasons weren't the reason to eat them. I only resisted - and had to work hard to resist! - because I knew I didn't really need them.
When I think of the days when I used to consider myself powerless when it came to food, I look back now and realise that I wasn't really. I was still making choices. I just wasn't thinking about them. Everyone has a choice about the way they want to live and the trick is to make conscious choices instead of unconscious ones.
So, feeling very virtuous, after work I headed to my core strength class at Sweaty Betty. Sweaty Betty are running a wonderful campaign at the moment called Get Fit 4 Free, where you can try four different types of exercise every Wednesday at their shops. I signed up straight away!
The class was amazing!!! Just what I needed.
We started the class by talking briefly about what is considered to be our "core". Most of us just thought it was the abs, but it turns out the diaphragm and the glutes are also considered core! We did a series of exercises that involved strengthening these three groups of muscles.
I didn't realise how much I rely on my arms and legs for balance and for strength - when we were doing an exercise my arms were aching. The reason was, the instructor told me, because I was using my arms to hold me up, not the core! Switching the focus to the core was a lot harder than it sounds.
Fortunately all these exercises were low impact on my knees, so I was able to do them with very little discomfort. A lot of them were similar to yoga poses I do at home - Warrior II, Bridge and Cat. Check out the video link above for more ideas.
The instructor made sure I was comfortable in each exercise - I'd told her about my knee when i arrived - and she came over to me during one exercise and told me to lift one of the bones in my feet - I forget the name, but apparently this bone is connected to a muscle all the way up the shin and calf, and engaging that muscle properly in the pose would probably alleviate the pain in the knee. And you know what...it worked!
I came away feeling really refreshed, and I'm definitely going to make time for core strengthening in my workouts. I usually do pushups and tricep dips after running, but these are done more with the aim of toning up my fadoobidahs (bingo wings, whatever you want to call them!) than anything else! But I've also done some thinking about the importance of stretching thoroughly after working out as well, so that I can hopefully avoid knee injuries in future. Fortunately I am ok but it's been a wake up call, certainly!
And...my knee feels so much better today! I haven't needed an ice pack or anti-inflammatories today, so fingers crossed I am on the mend. Tom and I are going swimming every day this weekend to make up for my lack of running, which I'm looking forward to - something nice and gentle to ease me back in!
Being on the bright side is nice. Sometimes there's things in life you can't do much about, they just happen and you've just got to roll with it. Some time out will probably do me good - if anything, it's just forced me to slow down instead of rushing all the time. And that's got to be a good thing.
Ta-ta for now, dwellers on the bright side! :)
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
a day for wishes
Me in St James' Park, watching a group of friends playing their guitarsInspired by B and Susannah, I wish for........
my right knee to get better so I can run again
a happy wedding day and married life for my sister, who gets married next month, and two dear friends who are also getting married soon
mastery of the transition from chauturanga to upward dog
a kitchen that cleans itself
my tomatoes to turn red
more time to write
courage
the day when I will hold my book in my hands
the ability to let things be
a huge financial windfall (!)
the vacuum cleaner to miraculously fix itself
snow again this coming winter
the ability to play guitar
time with my nephews
an unending supply of these and this
good things to happen to those who deserve them
What do you wish for?
Update 10/9/09: one of my tomatoes turned red this morning.
Friday, September 4, 2009
thrill me friday
I love it! Goes so well with my new Sweaty Betty capris - these are seriously the best exercise pants I've ever had. For the price, they'd want to be!
Bit of a random post for you all today - starting with some link love, as I've been reading heaps this week....
I've recently discovered the Sydney Morning Herald lifestyle blog, written by Paula Goodyer, which has some fabulous articles on healthy living, including:
Kate from Go Faster Food brought my attention to this fabulous resource - 100 Essential Health and Nutrition Tips for Avid Runners.
Kate also put me on to the Up and Running Bristol site - heaps of fab tips for runners on there!
Of course, no Skinny Latte link love would be complete without a list of recipes that sound to die for! The following are some I've found on my virtual travels that I want to try soon:
"What?! Stop running for a whole week?!" I cried, with the same tone of a kid who's had her favourite toy taken away. "I can't do that! I love it!"
I don't like the idea if I'm honest! I'm in my routine and I like it!! Running lifts my mood big time, and I rely on it to help me when I've had a bad day.
"It's only for a week," my friend the GP smiled.
- How to have a social life and still stay healthy
- Hits and misses at the health food store
- First aid for food cravings
- Desperate dinners: food from the pantry
- Fruit bars vs real fruit
I also really enjoyed the debate from a few months ago about The Biggest Loser!
Kate from Go Faster Food brought my attention to this fabulous resource - 100 Essential Health and Nutrition Tips for Avid Runners.
Kate also put me on to the Up and Running Bristol site - heaps of fab tips for runners on there!
Of course, no Skinny Latte link love would be complete without a list of recipes that sound to die for! The following are some I've found on my virtual travels that I want to try soon:
- Semi dried tomato and basil focaccia
- Quorn cottage pie
- Daniel's chicken and vegetable curry (obviously will be made with Quorn!)
- Ma Po Tofu
- Carrot, yoghurt and millet soup
- Pasta with pangritata
- Wine poached pear and blue cheese risotto (I think I will swap the blue for goat cheese though)
- Zucchini soup with corn and cheese dumplings
"What?! Stop running for a whole week?!" I cried, with the same tone of a kid who's had her favourite toy taken away. "I can't do that! I love it!"
I don't like the idea if I'm honest! I'm in my routine and I like it!! Running lifts my mood big time, and I rely on it to help me when I've had a bad day.
"It's only for a week," my friend the GP smiled.
Meh.
But I guess by taking a little rest I am reducing the risk of being injured and that is what I want to avoid at all costs!!!
Right, so the routine for the next week is:
- Walking every day, to and from work
- Swimming once or twice
- Yoga as often as possible
Anyway, must dash - I've just walked in to the most beautiful bunch of flowers I've ever seen! It's our anniversary weekend. I'm a lucky girl ♥
Hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Thursday, September 3, 2009
inspiration from mother theresa
".....People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centred. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone may destroy overnight. Build it anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. But give the world the best you have anyway.
You see, the final analysis, it is all between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway."
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
two years
"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams"
Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss
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