Day Forty One: Still a Foal

Somedays I think I need to remind myself I'm still just a derby foal. Not even a yearling yet, I still have six months to go before I hit that mark. Rushing ahead to take the jumps all the big horses are leaping is... well admirable in a sort of suicidal way I guess. One of the girls pointed out that sometimes I reminded her of a pony that just hadn't quite found it's hooves yet. That would be about right.

Faster than your average bear... but not a bear
I don't really know where I was going with that.

Admittedly, I want to be the best damn yearling I can be, so that really means busting some walls and pushing all my limits as a foal so that I start off my second year rolling at full speed. I don't want "But I'm new" to be an excuse, but I am, so there's a whole bunch of things I still need to figure out. There are nine games and two boot camps inbetween now and my yearling status, on top of training, public sessions and outdoor skatepark adventure times. Oh, the insanity.... Who knows. Maybe all this mindless devotion will be worth it. Did I mention previously I was going to pour everything into Derby for the year, and see what happened then? Well, that's what's happening. My Wonderbolts will train me as hard as I can take it, I'm sure.



Fitness: Gotta love Tuesdays. Two and a half hours of Aikido and two hours of skating. I can't really fit much around this sort of schedule. I'm just lucky if I get anywhere on time.

Aikido: Beginners class is actually a nice warm up for the evening, and it's interesting to see how people progress and assess if they will stick with it. Martial arts are attractive in their own way, but ask for years of training in return to get anywhere substantial. Fortunately, I've shaken off my casual disregard for the traditional fantasy and remembered to be a bit more respectful and adhere to the protocol again. I'm stoked that derby ended up being at 9pm, it's a brutally long, hard day but it means I get to go to a regular Aikido class. We did some sword work (good, because I haven't swung a sword for a while) and then some work on mental focus. If you look/focus at the completion while you are still in the middle of the act, you're likely to fumble the act. All it takes is putting your mind in the right place and bam. It all just happened. This was just to help with our iriminage throws, which is great, because I used to suck at them and now I'm just middling. I can't wind/concuss people with them like Sensei can, but I can dump people on their arses quite uncomfortably. Also Sensei used me to guide the beginners in rolling sideways. I have always thought highly of my yoki-ukemi so having them acknowledged as text-book enough for the beginners to use as a visual was quite nice! Guess we all gotta be good at something, right?

Derby: By the time I hit the rink, I was still feeling an aftermath of the weekend (who knew one could exercise to excess...), dregs of a headache (seriously? more neurofen) and just general over use of my quads. But our strategists are back! So my body got to rest a little as I engaged my only slightly hurting head to absorb information like a sponge thrown in a bucket of water. Of course we had to get through the Endurance first (sprinting, then jumping? then more jumping? Oh... sorry legs, c'mon, one more leap...) but as much as I'm enjoying learning the strategy I have mild concerns I will mind blank on the track during my first few games. On the flip side my teammates are fairly relaxed and I am really looking forward to playing with them. With such strong pivots and support my maiden game is going to be a cake walk in comparison to what it might have been.

Diet: A plum before I leapt out the door, weetbix/banana breakfast at work, tea, half a biscuit, Renkon (whenever I end up in Parnell it's sort of a tradition) sauce-katsu on rice, chocolate milk (between/after training) and salmon for dinner. Oh, perfectly cooked salmon. I'm eating it right now and it's delicious. 

Sleep: Nothing like getting home at 11.30pm, needing a shower, dinner, and... I hate to say a 'rest' before going to sleep but you might know what I mean. Some "me" time. I told my manager I was coming in late tomorrow (Wednesday) because I'll be staying late (Bitchin' Bingo) to balance it out. No point rushing out the door when I need a bit more kip. It's 12.15am now, I still have some salmon to finish and maybe an episode of the Simpsons.



All and all, I thought my headache running over would just be a kicker but it's finally all cleared up and I feel great again. Woop! This week is going to go from strength to strength... Bring on Carmageddon and Swamp City!

Day Forty: Waiting To Catch Up

Whoa. Again with the auto-save failure, but aside from that I rounded off the day with a highly demotivating headache. Probably highly avoidable if I'd had more sleep on Sunday night and drank significantly more water on Monday, but neither of those things happened.

Computers. Sigh.

Yesterday was going to be low key anyway. I was still pretty shattered from the weekend, had cleared entirely too many invoices at work and if I was going to do anything when I got home, it was going to involve placing things in the bin. Nothing exciting.



A brief summary! If I can remember back that far...

Fitness: Rest day! I needed it too. Not surprised I had a headache frankly, it's just a pity they take such a heavy toll on me when I get them.

Aikido: No training

Derby: No skating

Diet: Weetbix/banana breakfast, three toffee pops, tea, mammoth sandwich for lunch (yes, they do look delicious, don't they?) lamb chops, mashed potatoes, omelette and salad for dinner, and fruit salad and yoghurt for dessert. I wanted to point out as well that I actually record 99% of what I eat, I'm not snacking on various things that I don't list. I used to snack considerably more but since I've made an effort to eat more meals (breakfast and lunch especially) I've found I don't so much any more. It never really looks like much looking back on it.

Sleep: I can't really remember, but likely, not enough given I crashed and burned like a champion on Monday night. Napped between 6 - 7.30pm, then went back to bed after family dinner night around 10 / 10.30ish. Slept terribly, but I got up around 7am still feeling like garbage. Normally I can sleep off a headache but they seem to be learning ways around that.



Good to get this rubbish sort of day out of the way. The days just keep stepping up this week so I need to be on top of everything - now I should be reasonably well rested, here's hoping everything comes together nicely.

Day Thirty Nine: And Then I Made Pancakes

Today was just all shades of summer, I wouldn't ask for more on a daily basis otherwise after three days I'd be all, "Nooo! It's just too much for one person to cope with."

Whenever I say "No" with more than one 'o', this is what I'm actually thinking.

Hmph, I've only just remembered we meant to tighten the suspension in my car this evening, but when I got home I desperately needed some food, which lead to needing a nap, which then meant it was sometime around 10pm and then I needed pancakes. This is why I couldn't cope with repeated instances - I'd just start to fall behind on essential tasks. I'll find some other time this week to look at the car. Maybe Friday.



Fitness: Today consisted of four hours of skating, then two hours of pooling. I can't say swimming really because I can't remember swimming any more than a few meters at most. Anyway we did 25 laps at the rink (untimed) but it would have been under five easily, but not too much else other than simply the extended period of time spent skating was too arduous, except for the jumping which my legs refused to play the game for as it was past the three hour mark and I was asking for them to power spring - they came back with a definitive, 'hell no.'. They weren't happy with the laps straight after that either but they held out. Then we had a short break before heading out to Westwave for hydra slides and water walking. Having never done water walking before it was highly entertaining and surprisingly demanding (compared to what it looks like) and then some spa and sauna time. It has been entirely too long since I last went swimming, but looks like it may become a more frequent occurrence.

Aikido: No training today.

Derby: Four hours of skills, agility and a little endurance thrown in there to keep us lively. Finally! My legs and feet have come back to me (metaphorically...) actually I think I found them at the end of the public session yesterday when I started attacking the cones with no appreciation for my limits to see what I could do. I packed it in straight afterwards yesterday, so today was the first day of having shaken off my funk and just had a lot of fun when we went through all the transition drills. Thank you, feet! It's also good to have found how to reset them if they start to give out on me again.

Diet: One might think I could have laid out some more jumps if I'd had breakfast before heading into training. Then because we were going swimming I didn't want to eat something straight before hitting the water, but had a chocolate milk straight after training. Came home and had salmon and carrots, passed out temporarily, woke up and decided I had to have blueberry pancakes and yoghurt for dessert. In retrospect I should have taken some fruit with me when I left in the morning. I thought I'd have time to go to the supermarket instead, oops, not so.

Sleep: Woke up at 8ish, probably could have done with another thirty minutes or so. I had a power nap from 8.30pm till 9.10pm as I wanted to do a few more things before going to sleep but I couldn't even keep my eyes open. It's just 11.45pm now, I need to have a quick shower and then that'll give me just shy of seven hours, but after my nap earlier I think that'll all balance out. We'll see, I'm sure everything will all work out this week.



Argh. I meant to tidy my room this weekend. Place is still a damn tip. I've given myself three weeks to make this place less of a disaster zone and I have doubts it'll be enough (laziness and a severe lack of spare time in which to do so play equal parts)

Day Thirty Eight: Small Achievements

I felt a bit foolish on a number of occasions today. The first being that I left my car lights on last night so it was dead when I went to drive somewhere. So I hooked up the charger (and the lights came on) so I took dad's truck and did a few chores anyway. Three hours later... yea. Those lights? Meant the charger had power, not that it was charging. Sigh. So I turned the charger on to "charge" instead of "sit" but by then I didn't even need the car.

Could have been worse I guess.

Fitness: I had to haul over $300 of groceries up the stairs. That's a dual flight, and the food was heavy. That kinda of counts, right? I did also go skating.

Aikido: No training today. Feels like forever since I was last in the dojo. Funny that...

Derby: So I locked and loaded my new Jukes and headed down to Skateland. Wow. Narrow wheels - I didn't realise I was carting around all this 'extra' wheel before, and now it's gone. It was great, less surface area and less friction made turning and sliding my axles around was a lot easier. Stopping though? Haha, with less surface area it took a little while to get a good Stop going, but I already know I'm easy to hustle, just one more thing to throw in the pile of stuff that need a bit of work. Still, only seven months into quad skating, it's not too terrible... I did leave a little early (15 minutes) as my foot started to give me grief and I thought best not to push it for the sake of some lazy circles as I was fairly tired by then. 

Diet: I had some tea and then became horribly distracted with some bearing work and forgot about getting a proper breakfast. And lunch? Jesus. I can barely remember this morning but I have the sneaking suspicion I didn't really have anything other than chocolate milk after skating and then a dish consisting of four cloves of garlic, an onion, half a tin of tomatoes and six sausages. So it was a little late but I did eat some food. Then I had half a takeaway roast for dinner. I went shopping and bought everything though, so no excuses this week. I have all the things. I'm going to damn well start cooking again.

Sleep: I woke up at 8am, and even though I was only after another 30 minutes when I went back to sleep, I awoke again at 10am. Which was fine, and also had me out of bed like a shot to make the most of the day as I didn't need any more nap time. But now it's 1am and I have to get up around 8.30am tomorrow so, totally sleepy times. 

I do struggle on the weekends with the lack of structure, but let's just see how Sunday goes... 

Day Thirty Seven: Aches, Pains and Determination

Normally on my work days I make a rough draft of my blog and spend hours gazing out the window thinking of witty one liners, set ups or what images to make these pages more visually enticing - this is practical because then when I rock home at about 10pm in need of snacks, a shower and ten minutes to myself before I'm supposed to go to bed, I don't need to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to remember what I did that day. All I really do is edit some poorly constructed sentences and make sure I wrote an accurate prediction of that evenings activities.

But this evening I get home and.... the auto save function didn't work earlier today. I have to write this from scratch, it's 12.15am, I'm trying to eat a burger, drink a coke and for some reason I just don't like Win7 Paint. 

Oh come on. I'm blatantly insane at this point

Aside from being grumpy about autosaves failure to restore my almost finished blog from before, I made this image. 

My point is I feel a lot better about yesterday now that I pulled the reigns in, and as hard as I drive myself, it's okay because I'm the one reaping the benefits. Maybe I should take it easy on myself, but then I have to wait longer for the results because I'll slack off, I'm inherently lazy. So, I'm both the insane slave driver and the guy pulling three tonnes of limestone around. 

Moving on.

Fitness: What did I do today? Nothing that I can recall other than balancing on one leg a bit at the train station. I had hoped to get some skating in this evening but then just enough moisture fell from the sky to make that a silly thing to do when I actually like my bearings. 

Aikido: No training today.

Derby: No skating today. Damn leaky clouds. Seriously. Then I totally screwed the pooch on going to open skate but had great fun times instead. I have to let socialising trump over activities or I'll forget how to be friends with people who don't skate. Ya'll who don't skate are just fabulous, and the rink will still be there tomorrow.

Diet: Weetbix, banana, biscuits and tea for breakfast, mammoth sandwich for lunch, more biscuits and tea, multitude of bar chips and a couple of beers, then a chicken burger from Wisconsin and a can of coke when I got home, (yawn) which I'm trying to finish before going to sleeps. So close. Just three more big bites. 

Sleep: It's now 12.50am (it doesn't really take that long to write the blog but I am a girl, so easily distracted by shiny things, random thought processes that need googling, or generally faffing around on Facebook) so I'll post this and start the sleep process at 1am. I have a list of a few tasks for tomorrow to keep me on track, which will help me get out of bed at a reasonable hour having things I need to get stuck in to. 

It occurs to me this re-write has little to no connection back to the title any longer (as it was the only thing auto-saved), but I think we'll all just cope with that for now. 

Day Thirty Six: Am I Slipping?

I can justify it if I choose - nine days straight in the dojo, why shouldn't I be easing back into things? Maybe just go a bit easy on the goals for a few days? Unfortunately I see right through my excuse, and don't believe myself for a second. I've been lazy, and I know it. Whether I've been in a workshop or a holiday or at work doesn't make any difference - today is today. I'm emotionally sound (as I can be), I'm not physically incapacitated (not much, the tendon along the top of my left foot is tighter than emo pants. But everything else seems to be working) so why shouldn't I hit all my targets?

The blog really does help. It's really obvious when I'm slacking off, and believe me, it's tempting to lie some days to try and mitigate how little I achieved.

Add some onion and garlic, done.

Example: You don't need to know I sat at my desk and ate biscuits all morning, I could say I tracked down my own prey and cooked that instead (and although unlikely, there's no empirical evidence either way). But there's no point. This is my reality and if I write a fantasy down, it achieves nothing and I may as well make up something more interesting. 

So every day I recount events as they happened, some days make me feel proud, and others, not so much. Time to fill myself with some pride and self worth by really making a go of today.



Fitness: Who knows what the people at the train station thought but I went through some steps making sure my knees follow my feet when I bend / squat / walk. I need to take care of my knees a bit more than I have been so ensuring they don't flex incorrectly and stress themselves during movement is vital. I had a lot of personal tasks to complete at lunch so I couldn't fit in any other exercise than my Aikido and skating. Still managed to do some lateral jumps along the pedestrian walkways downtown. Screw you cars, I have the right of way, and I'll jump around like an idiot if I feel the need.

Aikido: Just the beginners class on Thursdays. It's a good opportunity to go through the techniques a little slowly, and a bit more concise, both for myself and the newbies. It's a compromise though, I'm not high enough to have the control I need to do the technique how I want to and not throw an unsuspecting new person into the floor. So I hold back a little so as not to break them before they've learnt to roll safely, but anyway. Mat time is still mat time. It lets me know what I need to work on.

Derby: Yay! Skating! It always feels longer between skates than it ever actually is. Also, gasp, new wheels have arrived. At first, I debated if I wanted to try them out at training. I decided to wait for public skate and find my feet in my own time. I get to training late on Thursdays so I didn't want to be fluffing around (or falling repeatedly) in the shorter time I have to practice. Admittedly I was not feeling it tonight... and honestly, I wasn't feeling it on Tuesday. There seems to be something funky going on with my feet. Hopefully they get out of their funk for tomorrow.

Diet: Breakfast success! Biscuits, weetbix with banana and some tea. Mammoth sandwich, snacked on blueberries, cheese and crackers during the making of said sandwich. Chocolate milk and then blueberries and corn for dinner (not together, but that's what I ate after getting home). So dinner was a bit light but I didn't have any meat good to go - will remember to grab something out of the freezer tomorrow morning.

Sleep: Started off poorly by continuing my short sleep cycle last night but it's 11.30pm now, and it's totally bed time. No Dune 2, no more cat memes, no more... whatever. Bring on six and a half hours of nap time.

Day Thirty Five: Up and Up

Emotionally feeling much better today, in fact, I feel well rested and engaged. I know my body's messing with me because I only got about five hours sleep last night so I have no right to feel so on top of things, but I can't complain.

Right back into it

Right. Nothing particularly exciting happened today. Wednesdays are my least favourite day of the week as they are unstructured and I have no set activities (I'm trying, every other Wednesday is Bitchin' Bingo...) and as a result I was generally unconstructive. Clocking Dune 2 with the Ordos isn't really an achievement.

Fitness: I was a lazy schmuck today. I considered venturing to the park but I became demotivated by the rain.

Aikdio: Day off today. I managed a half-awake daze for a couple of hours considering my body work though (contemplation of balance, connections, structure). It was extremely weird but possibly the closest to meditation I'll ever get. I've also forgotten most of it because I can't lay down memories when I'm half-awake (all those conversations I have before 10am? I never remember them)

Derby: No skating today. Basically I sat at my desk watching it rain outside thinking, "What am I supposed to do on days like today? Can't skate and offskates training would result in me getting cold and damp." It was around 1pm when it occurred to me I should probably do some work (joking for my work colleagues, I was actually surprised how much I attended to today).

Diet: I'm not sure why but breakfast fell apart and I had a selection of biscuits, a cupcake (thanks Gen-I), some cake (thanks Leoni) and several cups of tea. A poorly booked meeting pushed my lunch back till 2.30pm when I fixed myself a mammoth sandwich, then when I came home I had some garlic pitas, steak and a carrot for dinner. A pretty bloody poor attempt at trying to eat a reasonable amount let alone attempting to eat a well rounded diet. At least I nicked a lot of bananas from the breakroom so breakfast tomorrow shouldn't be an issue.

Sleep: I was a box of birds until I got home, when faced with the copious amounts of free time ahead this evening and the severe and constant mess my room is in I caved and had a semi-nap instead for 90 minutes (it was either that or tidy up). I didn't really sleep at all as I consciously directed my thoughts through motions, but it's probably as close to sleeping without sleeping as it gets. After the workshop I can see the benefit in contemplation and meditation - I think I may be able to do the contemplation but I have huge doubts about meditation. Aside from my mind noise I get a lot of constant feedback from my body as well so that's two things I'd need to silence effectively - it's hard getting 'out' of the clamour.


Plus because of my semi-nap it's now 1.30am - gonna hit the hay now and attempt to be more responsible tomorrow. I need to remember to plan my free evenings otherwise I let the lack of structure throw me off my game. Over all, a six out of a possible ten kind of day.