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Health and fitness
I’m pleased to share that I’ve made it to one of my longer term goals on my fitness and weight loss journey. I started back in August, I think, and I’ve lost just over seven kilograms which is pretty significant. I am not rushing the progress and trying not to get too tied to rigid routines because that seems to cause my downfall most of the time. My biggest improvements have been in my diet because I’ve been able to restrain myself from overdoing it a lot better lately than in the past few years.
My exercise has also been going pretty well too. I’ve been mostly cycling and walking for exercise up until now. I find I have a lot more stamina for climbing hills doing either and I can sort of keep up with the Scientist when walking with him. He walks really fast so I am still slow next to him even at my fittest….so he slows down for me and I speed up for him as much as possible.
I notice a couple weeks ago that I have a lot of sagginess in my arms so that motivated me to finally get on to doing some strength work after all this time. It’s still early days on this (only done it twice) but I started out using the Wii U Fit for some cardio work and then moved on to various other exercises including some using light weights. I’m mostly using a .5 kg dumbbell and it’s sad to see how even that is a bit of a strain after a couple of sets. Hopefully I will sort that out soon and be a bit more balanced overall.
My clothing size has definitely dropped in this time. I still need the same size tops but I can see it won’t be long until I move to the next size down. I’m just rather top-heavy so the fit isn’t quite right yet. On the other hand, the shorts I’ve been wearing have been just about sliding over my hips with almost no movement so I went out and got a couple pairs of shorts that are one size down. I do have some smaller ones here but I haven’t gotten down far enough to wear those yet.
I did have a couple instances in the last couple of months that seriously could have derailed my efforts. On one occasion I started out fine and I even felt as though I was exerting little effort for the first fifteen minutes. But then my heart started racing while climbing a hill and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to come down until I completely stopped riding when I stopped at some markets about half an hour from home (by bike). I walked around there and got a drink and then bought another drink along the way. I had made the mistake of forgetting to take water but that shouldn’t have caused the problem. Anyway, I started to feel better so decided to carry on with my ride and went to another suburb where I was again struggling with racing heart and struggle to get to the shopping centre there to get more fluids. I did feel a bit better but not particularly great to ride home. Fortunately the most direct way is a mostly downhill ride so I was able to coast most of the way and then go slowly the rest of the way home. I’m not quite sure why I had such a bad time of on that day because I didn’t feel unwell before I went out and I did feel unwell for a day or two afterwards.
Interesting thing is the next ride was totally opposite and was a good experience all around. It took me a few days before I tried to cycle again so it was a relief that it went so well that time.
Last weekend I bought an Apple watch, in part so that it would be easier to look at my stats while riding or walking instead of constantly looking at my phone. I’ve used it for cycling twice and it worked really well except for the fact the app I use somehow switched my activity to walking. I was able to change this before I stopped the app and it seems like it shows cycling as it should. I think this happened when the activity tracker accidentally started on the phone, which sent it to the watch, where something must have moved the digital crown and changed the activity there…and that made the change on the phone…sigh…will just have to be careful in the future about that. I don’t think there’d have been an issue had the app not started by accident.
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Happy New Year
My intentions of writing more frequently haven’t quite caught up yet. I see it’s been nearly two months now, not to mention the Scientist made comment on it recently too. That’s probably a really poorly worded sentence but it will have to do.
It’s a new year and I am hopeful there will be more positive to come out of this year than last. The Scientist started a new job last week so life at the Lorikeet house has been considerably changed from the everyone is at home model. The job means a considerable increase in income for him but there are some concerns that keep it from being anywhere near an ideal job. Hopefully many of those can be overcome so that he has a more satisfactory experience there.
Meanwhile my increased hours as a carer have gone back to the two hours a week from before. The other carer returned from his holiday and is back to usual. I didn’t mind the extra work load but it wasn’t exactly ideal to spend nearly half an hour to get there for a mere 2.5Â hours most of the time.
My driver’s licence was due to be renewed by tomorrow so I decided it was time to get a haircut. This is the first one in well over a year and my hair was down almost to my mid-back. I went yesterday to a less commonly frequented shopping centre that has two hairdressers. The first one I came to had someone free so I had my hair cut by about 3-4 inches. It’s still long enough to go past my shoulders but quite short in comparison to pre-cut. I had the full works done with shampoo, blow dry and style and it looked pretty good when I finished. I rushed off to the post office to get my licence renewal done. (Here, you just go to the post office with the renewal form and they handle the payment and photo for you…no updated eye tests like back home though.) It was just before closing and I lucked out by getting someone free there too and it was done and over with in a matter of a few minutes. It will be a couple of weeks to get the actual licence but I have the renewal with me in case I need it.
There are a few things I wanted to write about so I might just put them here to remind me…
- Lego Lover becoming turning 18
- Christmas
- Sadness for people we know
- Health/fitness
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Saturday at the park
Yesterday I took G to Whiteman Park as has been usual for the past several Saturdays. It’s a good way to kill four hours, far better than I expected. Also it doesn’t cost very much, mostly just a drink and a ride on the train is required.
On this occasion, the Scientist had walked from our house to the park and met us in the village café not long after we arrived. This added a new dimension to our visit. We walked between the village and the Mussel Pool which is about a ten to fifteen minute walk for most people. We stopped into the Children’s Forest on the way and looked at many of the natives planted there. After the Mussel pool, e were on the way to a third trail that we haven’t tried out at the park when we ran across a kangaroo and a joey hopping along. It was incredibly exciting because we’ve never seen a joey with the other kangaroos. This was pretty close to where people were hanging out so I guess they are fairly tame, even with the little ones. I just wish I’d had my camera ready to take a shot but it was still in my bag.
We found the trail we wanted and headed off into that direction. It started off well enough, passing through a couple gates and then into a field but we hit a bit of problem once we started going through the more wooded area. There were spider webs everywhere and we kept running into them. It was close to noon and the light was quite strong, making it difficult to see the webs and spiders along the way. We eventually had to give it up because we were getting spider webs onto us, not to mention a few spiders. I guess this particular trail doesn’t get a lot of use because I find it hard to imagine there being so many along a well-travelled path.
We walked back to the village and left the Scientist while we took a ride on the little railroad there. I have noticed over the three weeks we’ve gone on the train that it’s gotten more and more crowded by the week. We had to wait a while for the train to take off. It’s hard to complain too much as it’s run by volunteers but it’s often five or ten minutes past the departure time which sometimes makes it hard to plan accordingly for things. There are two different loops the train takes and it’s possible to take them one after the other but time was limited and we had to get going after the first loop. The Scientist had meanwhile walked out towards the entrance and stopped at the lookout. We picked him up on the way out and took G back home.
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Still stewing
It’s now eleven days post-election and I am still stewing about the result. I remember when Al Gore was robbed of the election in 2000 and I don’t remember feeling anywhere near this mad. My stomach is churning quite as much but it is still churning. Part of me is so glad I am not there but I think if I were there I might feel more equipped to take an active part in things.
Fortunately there’s not nearly as much garbage being posted as there was. But there are still jabs at Obama, which aren’t in the least bit warranted. I don’t get the hatred. I like Obama and always have. He has been somewhat disappointing in some areas but as presidents go he’s been decent and he’s a class act.
An interesting point is that I didn’t really care for Hilary Clinton all that much in the early days of campaigning. I leant towards Bernie Sanders back then although I wasn’t sure he was capable of winning against anyone from the Republican party. It’s hard to know how he really would have done but I honestly doubt he’d have beaten Trump either. After all, he’s a socialist and many of those same people voting for Trump hate socialism at all levels. Later on in the campaign I started considering Clinton more seriously. I think she had the experience and power to get things done in ways that Sanders possibly wouldn’t have. Towards the end of the election season, my feelings towards her were more positive than ever. I think what got to me was the way she held herself against all that on-going antagonism. It reminded me of when Julia Gillard was prime minister and receiving similar treatment although not on anywhere the same scale as has been levelled at Clinton. Hillary stood head and shoulders above the opponent right to the end. My respect for her has grown considerably.
It would have been really cool for there to be a female president. That doesn’t mean I was ever going to vote for her just to have a woman in office though. In the end there just was no competition to beat her.
Meanwhile, I look at my Facebook feed and I see the hatred is alive and well towards Obama. I had to look beyond my filters to see that but it was there. My cousin (who isn’t gullible like so many in my family) posted a story about Trump claiming Ford jobs stayed in the US because of him. Or something along those lines. The comments on that article proved to me that people are happy to believe anything that agrees with their view, regardless of facts. Also that two people can read a news story and come away with totally different information. I don’t get how that can be so different.
Although I don’t want to continue having the churning stomach I don’t want that anger to go away because I want to have that motivation to fight back in any way I can. Even though I live in Australia, the United States is my home and I am worried that it will turn into a place I can’t return.
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Walk in the park
Like most Wednesdays, I went for an hour walk in a park near where G (the guy I am a carer for) lives. I was a bit unsure whether it was a good idea to risk a walk because we’d had rain from mid-morning onwards. In the end it was just fine and no further rain reached me at all. I managed to go pretty fast today, with my first lap (kilometre) at 10.5 minutes and another of the laps was under ten minutes. The only time my laps went too long were when I stopped to take photos so I was keeping a good pace today.
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Anniversaries
Three days ago, it marked one year since our cat died from injuries likely caused by a dog attack. In some ways it seems a long time ago then it doesn’t seem so long ago. There are still the occasions when I return home and expect to see her lazily walking down the driveway, making me wait to pull the car in. :) I changed my Facebook picture to one with her in it last year but I think I will soon change to something new since it’s already been over a year.
Today would have been my close friend’s birthday if she were alive. This is my local close friend who died four and a half years ago from bowel cancer. She should be 54 now. She is still on my mind a lot of the time but so it’s kind of weird to think it’s been so long since we talked now.
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Learning Japanese
I’ve picked up quite a bit of Japanese just by watching so much anime but also from reading manga and from some Japanese tv programs. I have started learning the hiragana characters and have mostly mastered about fifteen of them out of 46, I think. There’s also katakana which are characters used for foreign words which I plan to learn once I have finished the hiragana.
I found many apps for my phone that are really useful. Many of them teach how to draw the character properly and also serve as flashcards of sorts. But the most interesting thing to me now is learning the kanji characters. I downloaded a free dictionary and found it has a study mode with lists of kanji characters for each grade at school up to high school. There are also lists for the various levels of Japanese learning, related to assessments available. I’ve been working on the grade one level for a week or two now and I have impressed myself a bit by recognising characters I see on the anime. Even more exciting was dropping into a Japanese goods shop (they seem to be popular here now) and recognising the kanji character for water….the Scientist wanted to know how to say the word but I am ashamed to say I couldn’t remember it. :) Not that I am working on that part quite as much just yet.
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Negative Trump news
I’m thinking of keeping some sort of timeline, maybe in the form of links to record all the things happening that are problematic with a Trump presidency. I’m not sure I can keep maintaining it but I think it might be good ammunition when I come up against people (mainly family) who don’t understand my views. I might make this a page on this blog or maybe create another page with a different url….I wouldn’t be surprised if someone hasn’t already started something like this. I guess I need to work on recording these stories as I see them, either in a document file to be uploaded later or directly to an online page. Come to think of it,
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Bad dairy
I didn’t exercise for three days running and the weather was warm so I headed out on my bicycle in the afternoon to try to get back on track. The ride was good for the most part and I noticed I am not having to work quite as hard to climb hills as I did before. I guess this getting fit thing is paying off now. :)
My first stop was at some markets in a suburb a few kilometres away to buy a needed item for someone in the household. Then I popped over the big shopping centre across the road to buy bread before heading back towards home. My next stop was the Indian food shop that lies in a somewhat different direction. I would have taken a direct route but there are lots of roadwork areas along that path and I was uncertain how well I’d be able to cycle there. Essentially I rode most of the way home and travelled to this shop to buy curry paste for Game Fanatic.
They didn’t have the paste that we’ve been buying in stock so I got a couple different others to try. One of them was a Sri Lankan paste (which turned out to be quite bland). I needed to spend $10 to use my credit card so I wandered around an checked the fridge at the back. I discovered a bottle of mango lassi there and added that to my small haul.
The ride home was a bit more eventful because the chain on my bike suddenly popped off and I couldn’t get it back on properly. I ended calling the Scientist who was to meet me at a nearby shopping centre parking lot to help out. I walked the bike there and tried again and was able to sort out the chain but it was too late to call the Scientist again. Fortunately it’s only about a five minute drive from home. He was able to take the purchases home while I rode home.
I drank a bit of the lassi while on the way and it was bit thicker than I expected but not so much that I made note of it. The ride home from that point was uneventful from that point. I got home and had a shower. My appetite was almost non-existent and I hadn’t eaten very much during the day so it surprised me. I was able to eat a bit of food later in the evening and that didn’t sit well with me all afterwards. I felt more sick to my stomach than I had before. This wasn’t the stomach churning feeling I’ve had since the election.
I did sleep reasonably well but woke early and thought I should check out the bottle of the lassi which was in the fridge. I only drank about half of it before. I discovered there was no use-by date on it so I’m inclined to believe it was sticker that was removed previously. I should have checked it out when I bought it and paid for it. I’m guessing I had some sort of food poisoning from this…either that or it was coincidental. Needless to say, I won’t be drinking any more of it and I probably won’t ever buy any dairy products from that shop again. Sigh.
At least the bike ride went well though. :)
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Despondency
It was another night with not much sleep. I stayed up until I was so tired I was sure I would fall asleep. And I did sleep for a couple hours but woke up and had to force myself back to sleep. It still wasn’t enough but I think it will get me through the day.
While I am incredibly angry that Trump was elected, that’s not really the source of my despondency. When I made the decision to cut off all conversation about politics with much of my family was when it became obvious that the problem for us is a fundamental difference in our views. There’s just no way I can bring someone else around to my thinking because I see the world so differently and I always have. I’ve been made to feel a traitor to family and country because I don’t agree with what most of them think. I have never been all that great at persuasion so it’s not even like I made any real attempt to change minds within this group. My main goal had always been to call out lies and misinformation but it didn’t make any difference and just increased the gulf between them and me. The funny thing is I ran across two articles in the past couple of weeks with more reasonable arguments against Hilary as president. Sadly I never saw anything like this from those trying to sway my opinion.
The worst part of all, though, is the meanness that comes along with these differences. It was bad enough to see all the name-calling of anyone with any association with liberals or liberal views. Some of these posts on social media were directed at me specifically and at me within a tiny group of family members who didn’t see things the same. But the worst thing I saw was after the result was announced and there was much mockery of those supporting Hilary. It was uncalled for. If Hilary had won and the conservatives had done this I would have been equally upset. It just made me feel that we are at a low point in humanity when there is so little regard for other humans, especially those different from us. I say this from a point of considerable privilege as a white person living in a western country.
On top of this I was also very dismayed to see reports of non-peaceful protests occurring. If these reports are true then I am truly disappointed. At the same time I do imagine that had Hilary won, there would have been not just protests but widespread riots throughout the country. This was a big source of anxiety for me even if she had won. Sigh…
Meanwhile, it’s a matter of moving on in some way at this point. I can’t change what’s happened so it’s important to brace myself to deal with the fallout. For the time being I plan to keep some distance from most of my family. That said, this was made a bit difficult because one of those people just happened to have a birthday yesterday. I really wanted to stay silent at this time but I wasn’t going to be ignore a birthday just because I was feeling angry…it’s not like it’s this person fault to have a birthday…of course, this person was really happy so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Sigh!