… are that within one Down-Dog, you can see how dirty the kitchen floor really is 🙈😂
Tag: fitness
Iced water 🍋
Have you ever walked into a supermarket and realised you didn’t have your purse because your mind was on so many other things?
Not so innocent when you see that this small bottle of healthy-looking smoothie contains 10g of sugar. Dad and I looked up the average recommended daily intake of ‘extra sugar’ a healthy female should ideally not go beyond.
It’s 20-25g… or six teaspoons.
Now add the diabetes just-back-from-the-brink and we agreed it should probably be more like 15g for mother. Her doctors (as at Friday when they last came round) said drink lots more liquid .. meaning water and un-sugared tea and coffee… yet she is asking neighbouring patients in beds nearby for a sneaky cup of their family-delivered Tropicana “just for some flavour.. everything here is so bland”.
Least you’re still alive…
As son eats another dippy egg and soldiers, I recall some of the glass half empty illustrations which mother is once more displaying now her strength is returning.
“Thank you for the colouring pencils and book, you’ll see I’ve done one, but I can’t get the depth of colour I need with those. I need my (expensive) water colour pencils from home if you wouldn’t mind. Add that to the list.”
Dad – “did you like the Jacobs crackers and cheese I brought you yesterday that you asked for?” (bless him, lovingly wrapped in clingfilm and delivered during one of two visits a day he is making.
“Well, it was a bit bland, must have been cheap biscuits. Can you buy Jacobs?” Dad catches my eye briefly across the bed, “oh and can you bring in some cigarettes for when I can go out into the garden?”
Dad – “Er, you can no longer smoke outside the hospital. Rules have changed.”
“Don’t argue with me… I’ve seen people outside the front doors.”
She’s in the renal ward which speaks for itself, no longer on oxygen or a saline drip. I take my hat off to her for one milestone; she’s been receiving insulin injections in the belly for four days now, administered by the nurses, while dad sits worrying whether the instructions will come with a step-by-step manual.
🍋❄️🍋❄️🍋❄️🍋❄️🍋❄️🍋
A little while later, dad and I shared a lunch half hour in the hospital Costa and found ourselves studying all the labels on EVERYTHING! It’s astonishing how much sugar is in pre-packed foods and drinks. I’ve probably been getting my 20g per day by 11:30am for the last twenty years 🙈.
Last time I bought her a pot of specialist diabetic spread, about six years ago (typify thinking I was being helpful) she said “Don’t waste your money on that… I’ll keep eating my normal jam. I’ll just have less of it.”
The part I’m struggling with is interweaving the Duty of Care, with the empathetic side of me which genuinely wants to make her happy, with the knowledge that she is her own person and has a right to make her own decisions.
PS .. the purse WAS with me all the time, I didn’t stop long enough to look under the bag of bags 🙈
Dozing and dreaming… and flicking away earwigs ‘Get off my toast’ (#cancerresearch)
Gold dust moments; The Holy Grail?
I have my eyesight to watch light filter through leaves moving in a breeze, and my hearing that I hear that same foliage; a varying rush of sound as it’s tested against stalks.
A 737 high high above, a faint boomb at 37,000 ft leaving white trails across the blue.
Resting after a morning’s exertion. A ‘pretty muddy’ cancer research 5K run. Two days ago I decide to join my daughter (how hard can it be? I was running 2K quite happily without stopping this time last year 😀) and this is not a serious event for most. It is about getting round, walking if necessary, negotiating pink inflatable obstacles and being prepared to get caked in mud on the way round.
Didn’t want the two paramedics on their bikes to be bored, so I gave them something to discuss. Y’know, just to make sure they weren’t asleep on the job.
Twang. Definitely ‘felt’ it go. Right calf … 2K in. “ooooh, that’s not good.” I grimace, hobbling immediately.
As the minutes tick by, along with the majority of the cerise-clad ladies from our 10:30 start group, daughter sweetly walks alongside me.
“It’s ok. We can walk the rest!” She turns and notes my facial expressions with each step, “or we can finish now?”.
No bloody way.
I have known far too many cancer sufferers and even right now know three dealing with that shit. Cancer Research is doing wonders for them and our future, as the various strains of this disease are likely to touch someone we know in the future. Hell, it could even be me one day, so I am here to give my support – and support the volunteers who’ve given their day to throwing buckets of mud at us I shall.
I sat and massaged offending calf which basically said to me “WTF were you thinking? Didn’t you even consider a sensible stretching and warming up session before you started? You plank 🙄”
I missed out the cargo nets and watched daughter hurl herself over them, groups of women all shapes and sizes and ages running and walking past my seated position on the scorched grass of our county town’s showground.
I hobbled on to the 3K mark, by which time I won’t say it had eased. That would be lying. But I’d discovered a style of gait which caused me only mild discomfort as opposed to nausea-inducing movement.
I may have looked less like an athlete and more like a drunken Saturday night reveller mixed with Long John Silver.
But I got round!
Half hour frozen peas then half hour hot water bottle. Hot and cold – usually the best encouragement for blood flow to the damaged area.
I’ll give it a day or two then ask my Physio friend to come round with her ultra sound … I can’t be lame for too long, not when I work for myself! Man of the Woods has been luscious and brought me tea and crunchy toast with melting butter – my favourite snack.
(Hey – least it doesn’t stop me reading or writing! 👌🏼 I’ve even been doing some chapter planning but wanted to pause and share my day with you peeps) 🌸
Any suggestions from doctors or physios, shall be much appreciated!!
The strongest structure is often not rigid or angular in design
A brick archway, found here supporting a train track, and found all over Britain in viaducts, above doorways, in fact in all sorts of structures provides immense strength and support.
Smooth shapes have no sharp corners. I’m not an engineer or a scientist but I have kept horses in paddocks with post and rail fencing erected in straight lines with 90 degree corners. Guess which posts always failed first and betrayed the expectation of longevity?
Rounded corners, such as those found at expensive racing yards, mean less pressure on rails entering a corner.
Imagine all those bricks nestled alongside one another, each shouldering a percentage of the total weight of the bridge – a problem shared is a problem more than halved if you are really organised.
A relationship between two people, any two people, can be stronger with equal smooth support over time, as opposed to angular assumptions that one needs to be more strong than the other…
Anyway, check me out with my healthy walk today (are you going to explain you’re now collapsed on the beanbag and don’t have enough energy to move nearer a wall socket to plug your phone in before the battery dies? No.)
That number of steps, in wellies. (Yes, it started raining so we went back for boots). Birthday walk and ten of us. Sister in law’s 40th. I remember my 40th; seems like only yesterday.
Feel a poem coming on with this beach photo; stay posted 😊
<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/betrayed/”>Betrayed</a>
Answers on a postcard please..
Are any of you guys runners or joggers and know about times?
I’ve got a fit, healthy and competitive late 30s male (in my book; not stood sweating in my kitchen) who has just returned from a 4k morning stint to keep his fitness up and he’s looking at his wrist watch thingy and he’s quite pleased he’s just beaten his previous personal best.
I’ve got 16 minutes. Is that way out? Too slow? Too fast?
He’s been running regularly so let’s call him marathon-fit. A quick 4K was all he had time to do before work today!
So I just need a number on his wrist which will impress people who might read it and who run because there’s nothing worse than reading a piece in which the author has evidently not done their homework.
Research darling, research 💙
*****
UPDATE – going to choose a time of 17:48. This is competitive (but he is; he runs four marathons a year) so 17 minutes is really good, but we had to have some seconds for authenticity and it’s my book and I’m 48, so ta-dah 💃🏼🤣🤣
