Exercising the Inner Demons

Today is a bad leg day, but overall I think I'm doing great. My husband and I have started a health regime and we're sticking to it admirably. I've lost nearly 5 kilos in two weeks, something my thyroid would have laughed at if you'd told me I could do this before.

Everyday I've been walking, running, using gym equipment. I keep getting spammed by gyms for membership applications but honestly, I prefer to be by myself mostly when I exercise so I'm ignoring them. Particularly the ones that won't tell me their fees. Suss as all hell.

A voucher for $200 off makes me cringe. I paid less than $200 for a year at my last gym, what the hell is the real price if that's the discount??

Plus when you do shift work, it's hard to make it to the gym regular like.
Especially when assholes keep cancelling the gym classes you like most.

Step and Konga for the win. That's all I'm sayin'.



Normally I take my Ipod with me when we go walking. For one thing, it tracks my steps and things, and for another I find music is a pretty powerful motivator. I have different playlists for whatever I'm doing. At first, hubby found it annoying because he thought I couldn't hear him but when we go walking together I have the tunes turned down and I normally play instrumentals.

I can't tell you how much better most songs sound without their idiotic lyrics.

I don't go walking around my suburb without hubby though, while we have a great time together we have discovered that the people who live around here are weirder than we first thought.
Some are okay, a week ago Friday we were on a more lengthy walk where I tried running but it hurt my legs too much to continue. Then we came across a nice lady who had lost her dog. Moments later, we spotted it so hubby ran to try to catch it or at least get it off the road (thankfully cars had stopped) and I ran about three minutes down the track to catch up to the lady to let her know.

Once I started running full bore, and with a purpose, I couldn't be stopped. Until I stopped, and then I couldn't breathe. The point was, I did it when I didn't think I could and the pain was present but nothing too extreme.

Mmmm....Other's Day.

Cruelly falling on Mother's Day this year, was the one month on from the miscarriage.

So, that right there was fun. I'd unsubscribed from most of the baby-centric emails to save myself some heartache but I got bombarded with emails from every company under the sun pushing pink coloured Mother's Day crap on me.

Seriously, they're all aiming now. Fast food restaurants, clothing stores, pop culture shops, fishing stores, car accessories, the local council, gyms... anyone and everyone was like "Hey! Did you know it's Mother's Day and they're like, the best people in the world? Don't you think you should buy them a dinner pack/a new shawl/a Wolverine statue/a freshly spooled reel/a wrench/ an education about a local government initiative or a gym membership?"

I'd expected it but it felt like it was Christmas again and I was the Grinch - trying to avoid it but ultimately being dragged into the thick of things. And.... maybe a little green.

How did I combat this? Well, hubby and I slept in. Yep. We did nothing productive until about 11am when our stomachs rose up in protest together and suggested brunch before all the rioters passed out.

Panda had a big brekky while I said "Flip the darn table, I'm having waffles and ice-cream! ....and a strawberry smoothie!"
Other tables had choccies on them, and older ladies with flowers. Not sure if you had to book to get the choccies or if they only give them out to mother. I don't know how you know though.

Last year for Father's Day, Panda and my younger brother K-Dog were given gifts, and literally no one asked if they were dads. This time, people seemed happy to ignore Panda and I. I don't blame them, looked like it had been a busy morning for the waitstaff.

A letter for our baby

Coming up to Mother's day and finding myself not fitting into that category, now being more of a mmmmmm.... OTHER is a little difficult.

So, as a way of kind of dealing with it, I decided to write a letter to bub.

Dear Baby,

This week, even though we still feel your loss deeply - we have been feeling more positive about life, and the progression of our family. My parents gave us a commemorative coin set - bought and intended as a gift for you when you were born.

A memento helps.. for you there was no funeral, no mourners apart from those who knew.
Photographs and scans are nice.. a tattoo isn't our style and I don't know how else to honour your memory.

The moment we knew you existed, we were so happy. We'd struggled until this point so when you - our one good egg - became life at first go, we were simply overjoyed. It felt like something was finally going right.

The two week wait was agonising. I sat through an audio track of some perfectly enunciated but bored sounding lady talking me though a cliche riddled meditation/nonsense willingly because I was thinking about you.

When I got the phone call (which involved a lot of phone tag, let me tell you!) confirming you were there, and developing well - and had to sit through the rest of the afternoon trying to concentrate on my work without screaming excitedly non-stop. Your daddy didn't want to hear it over the phone, so when I came home I gave him a baby nappy bag with a panda onesie in it without saying a word. He looked up at me and burst into the biggest smile, then gave us a hug.




Everyday he would kiss my belly, kissing you through me until he could do it in person.

I felt so happy that you were there, I kept talking to you like you could hear me, I would sing and amend lyrics, my hand kept straying to my belly to hold you. I looked forward to doctor's appointments and check ups because they proved you were real, and they just made me more excited to meet you.