MrsB

This time I’m just referring to colour – I have been actually feeling ok since the post on being a hopeless geriatric and never fitting in at CrossFit – so I’m only talking about lovely blue Instagram shots that happen at this time of the year here in London.

Instagram is probably my most used app and even though I have other photo editing apps, I keep coming back to Instagram because it’s so simple to use. A few months ago they added a new ‘add a bit of sunshine’ button to the app – have you seen it?

I use it for most outdoor shots, it adds a tiny bit of extra colour and just makes everything pop. For indoor shots and portraits is does not work at all, so don’t be alarmed if you try it on those and the result is awful. [...]

I’m back on my feet now and able to eat again. I went for a run yesterday after 4 days off and the legs were tight (especially shins for some weird reason – I never usually have trouble with my shins) but loosened up after about 5km and in the end I did 7.63km in 40 minutes. Not too bad for a lunchtime run.

This morning’s CrossFit was fab. I had hoped for burpees and box jumps (instead of lifting weights) but I got rope climbs and slam balls. Fine by me! I lost a bit of skin from my right hand from the rope but did my 5 rounds of 400m run, 2 rope climbs and 12 slam balls in 17 minutes and 52 seconds. I don’t know whether that’s any good, but my heart was seriously thumping by the end of it so I consider it a success.

I actually told the coach that I love those kinds of workouts the best and could do without all the heavy weightlifting – I hope I don’t get dis-membershipped for saying that! [...]

Ughhh… yesterday was a blur. I had been feeling a bit off on Sunday afternoon but since Oliver has a cold I thought nothing of it – my body can fight off a cold before it can properly hit me. At 1am though I was jolted awake by some serious stomach pains. I took a couple of paracetamols and slept on and off until it was time to get up. On and off meaning up every hour as I was still in pain and Oliver was in between us coughing.

In the morning I got ready for work still feeling lousy but I got on the tube regardless. I sat there for 10 minutes sipping some warm apple juice and then realised I was not going to make it – I felt so weak and nauseous, and I got off and came back home. [...]

I love Wednesdays. They are my days off work. My mental health days. My days to go running, my days to cook and to spend time with Oliver who’s in the nursery only from 9:30 to 12:30.

Today was my last Wednesday off until January 2013 – a colleague of mine had an accident last weekend I am now working full-time until Christmas and actually working right up to Christmas having had to cancel my annual leave for the week before as well.

Of course I volunteered to do this since I’m part of a small team and being one member down right before Christmas is not a good thing, so I’m not complaining, BUT it will be a little bit tough on me to do full 5 day weeks.

Today I made sure that I used the day to the max – I walked Oskar to school in the morning and then ran to Richmond park and back, 22.6km in total. Afterwards I had an hour to relax and then it was time for a little birthday celebration for Oliver at his nursery. I took in cupcakes for everyone and got to see the little Montessori ritual that they do for all birthdays – walking around the sun while holding a globe for as many rounds as they’re now old + some songs, etc.

After nursery we came home and danced! Just for the heck of it… [...]

“Scorpio children are strong-willed, passionate, and intense, and the need to feel secure drives them to control themselves and others. A strong, durable emotional connection is one of their primary needs, but, perversely, they may test the durability of that connection, often without realizing they are doing so.

Your Scorpio child may seem by turns affectionate, aloof, devoted, obsessive, loving, and manipulative. Scorpios have such range and depth of feeling that you may sense that your child is expressing only the top layer of her true feelings — and that you could understand him a lot better if only he’d let you in on the secret.”

True. All of it. So totally true. Especially the part about being strong-willed and intense. Oh well, that’s how he rolls so we roll along :)

I’ve written a few random facts about this now 4-year old child of mine. Just because I know I’ll forget them if I don’t write them down. So here we go, in no particular order: [...]

In 2 days my baby turns 4. Thank goodness it’s only 2 days away as I’m sick of hearing “Is it my birthday yet? I want it to be NOW! I want it to be TODAY!” Poor kid, maybe we should have kept his birthday a secret until it actually arrives :)

Compared to his mellow brother*, Oliver’s energetic to the max, always singing or humming loudly, and making HILARIOUS poop jokes or blurting out phrases from books at home and in public (yesterday on the bus he kept almost shouting “Sometimes you’re the winners! Sometimes you’re the loosers!” – from a Dr.Seuss book).

He’s also very much full of WANT! and NEED! and NOW! and RIGHT NOW! and NO! He sticks his fingers into his ears as soon as he senses a command or discipline in my voice. I have to ‘make’ him do things with the nicest voice possible and always raising my voice at the end of every sentence as if it’s a question and not an instruction to do something. Most of the time I remember but if I don’t and say something too seriously, he stops being responsive to me straight away. It can be quite an exhausting game. [...]

One week in October my Twitter feed was buzzing from anticipation of letters from the organisers of the 2013 Virgin London Marathon. Some people had received their yeses, some had received their nos, some were still waiting, some planned to leave work early to get home quicker to see what the answer was.

Having applied for a place as well, I joined in the excitement and called my mother and asked her to read out loud the text of the letter. Her English is not the clearest but I only had to understand one word: unsuccessful.

Ughh… not a good feeling. When I got home it only got worse though, the letter said “SORRY! YOU have been unsuccessful at… ” I knew what I read but I heard it as “Sorry, YOU are a looser, everyone else got a place!” (they should not have capitalised that YOU and I would have been fine :).

By the following day I had mostly calmed down, I knew that a lot of people apply for the ballot places. I had also signed up with a couple of charities so I still had hope. [...]

Our little holiday in Corwall was so nice, coming back to London and running the Run to the Beat half marathon last Sunday was nice and then – then everything’s gone downhill. Little trivial things in the great scheme of things, but little things add up…

So what’s happened? Well, Tuesday and Wednesday in CrossFit have left me really sore again and for some reason I’m not able to find joy in that soreness this time. For some reason it hit me really hard on Wednesday morning that I’m at least 10 years older than everyone else in my class and just twice a week CrossFit makes me exhausted and sore. Also, there is only 1, sometimes 2 women in my classes… they are very nice but in general I feel really out-of-place in a big group of guys, I feel like a fraud, like a silly old geriatric trying to keep up with the young kids. The sabotager part of my brain has been saying: Who am I kidding? I will never have a six-pack. Those abs of mine have been shot to shreds by those lovely kids of mine. I will never be able to do 10 pushups or even a single pull-up. I’m an old woman.

I hate that part of my brain… [...]

During our Cornwall holiday we stayed in a cottage next to a big hotel – we wanted the extra space and the self catering option provided by the cottage, but we also wanted the swimming pool provided by the hotel.

The Headland Hotel in Newquay provided this combination and we loved our living space and the ability to spend a few hours every evening in the swimming pool/sauna/hot tub. [...]

During our Cornwall holiday last week we spent one day at the Eden Project where we walked through a rainforest and a few mediterranean countries, both of which were in artificial biomes. It was a fun day out and I’ll let the photos do the talking. [...]

I don’t get Halloween. The whole zombies and vampires and adults dressed up as bloody dead corpses. It’s just not my thing.

The kids though love dressing up and going trick or treating. Luckily for me they are not very picky about costumes so last year they went as Knights (because we had Knight outfits already) and this year they’re going as Vampires and a local party shop had Vampire capes for £2.99 each and teeth for £0.99 each :) I still have to get some face paint and some hair spray for Oskar because he wants his hair up but other than that – we’re ready to go! (I will just wear my blue wig and bird mask from last year, I doubt the neighbours will remember that they’re from last year :) [...]

Last week we spent 4 days in Cornwall, staying in a town called Newquay.

We did a few day trips to surrounding sights as well, but before I get to those, here are some photos of Newquay (it was very foggy on most days as you can see, we still appreciated the sights).

MrB and I ran our 3rd Run to the Beat half marathon this morning. Almost 4 years ago he signed me up for the 2010 race when I was strongly in the mindset of ‘I cannot run’ and in pure fear of dying in front of a large audience, I started training and the rest is history!

First RTTB was freezing, second RTTB was HOT, third one today was freezing again. No amount of hopping in one place for 40 minutes before the start can keep your body warm so the legs felt totally stiff from the get go. I actually appreciated that it was really crowded in the beginning – it meant that I was forced to run slowly. I wish I could say that I warmed up and sped up but after a few kms but that didn’t happen. I did increase my speed a little every km from about 5km onwards, but the legs never felt loose. [...]

I baked some cookies last week using this recipe. The kids looked at them and said “What?!? Porridge cookies?! No thanks!”.

Great.

They demand porridge every morning but when I put oats in baked goods it’s a no-go?

Oh well. My brain was frazzled and not thinking straight due to the joy of PMS… so I ate two that evening. It would be no big deal if I didn’t know clearly that sugar does not do my body nor my mind any good. Darn hormones.

Anyway, these babies are good. I would bake them on a regular basis IF I could handle sugar – IF I didn’t feel noticeably healthier, happier, stronger when I do not eat sugar.

So after my lapse last week (I had a couple the next day as well :|), I am now back to my sugar-free existence and feeling much better now that the sugar-bloating has passed. [...]