Exercise

Well exercise is a funny thing really isn't it? I must say I have always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with it really.

As kids we had the "you have to do one sport" rule in our house so couch surfing the weekends away wasn't ever going to be an option really.

My primary school and most of my high school years were dominated with two sports - gymnastics and hockey.

Ok I know I know, pick your stunned mullet selves off the floor and read on! Those of you that know the tomboy would find it oh so easy to see me covered in mud in the pouring rain, smacking that hockey ball right through the legs of the opposition defender! Oh and how much did I love that? There was something so cool about running on the field in the pouring rain, getting soaked to the skin, covered in mud and then home for a hot shower and something to eat! I wasn't half bad as a winger either, you may be suprised to learn. We were really fortunate that in both primary school and high school we had a brilliant rivalry between ourselves and another school. Different primary and high schools in similar areas but the rivalry was brutal. Come the top two play off it was always us against them and that was back in the days we cared not a jot about the self esteem of the losing team. There was never a suggestion we shouldn't share the scores with the young ones, lest they realise they are on the end of a pasting! I mean really, it isn't rocket science the ball goes flying past you to the other end and a goal is scored and it happens time and time again, you kinda get that you are being flogged! Luckily that didn't happen to us we had an awesome group of girls.

It is kind of funny looking back you know because for all our ferosity on the pitch, and the "die you b***h die" mentality on the field in the heat of battle, when that final whistle blew, it was like someone flicked a switch. Both teams of girls were all on the same team, flicking even more mud and muck on each other if that was even possible, having a great laugh and thanking each other for an awesome game irrespective of which of us won that round.

There was no such thing as fights on the field or worse yet parents fighting on the sidelines. As a parent of todays school sports players I now realise what bliss we lived in during those times. No-one was playing for sheep stations and it was all just a bit of good fun!

Soooo those of you that know me are really struggling to picture moi as the petite, delicately feminine model of a gymnast, right? Come on, don't try to pretend nice, you know you are thinking it, yes you are, go on just admit it!!!

I was but a wee thing as a child, a little short, skinny kid back then (oh puberty is a cruel cruel thing!) I started gymnastics at about age 8 and continued through til I was about 16. The latter years weren't quite so successful being 5' 7" and a little less than "rake like" in appearances didn't really do a lot for my future successes I can tell you.

However pretty, petite and delicate is part of the mix, but so too was power, speed, and strength, and I was good at that bit! It is funny how now we talk about developing upper body strength in girls and making sure we balance the exercises we do with them. Back then we did it all! Chin ups on the bars, sit ups, push ups, bouncing off of beat boards in handstands to build up shoulder strength and upper body strength.

The other thing we worked on of course was flexibility. Lots of painful contorsions of our bodies to see just how far we could push things without a zing/snap/tear happening. Now I think about I never really felt that sore the next day, oh the beauty of youth we took forgranted back then.

Towards the end of my gymnastics training I took up coaching the younger kids. I sooo loved it and they, strangely enough, loved me too! I did some coaching courses in my late teens and was quite into it for awhile. My hubby reckons I am a frustrated teacher at heart, maybe he is right, life seems to keep bringing me back to teaching in one form or another.

I gave up on coaching gymnastics as things became so competitive, we had talent squads and then we had programs that bussed you to school after your morning training before school every day, then bussed you back there for after school training and the same again on weekends. These were babies of maybe 9 or 10 years of age being pushed as if they would be the next world champions. Of all the kids I know of that went there maybe 1 in 1000 might have made national success, none of them international. We were making them choose this sport over all others, we were making them give up their lives to be this supreme athlete. Nadia Commenich was my total hero growing up. I had seen what giving up gymnastics did in her life, because she knew no other and I couldn't willingly participate in doing that to any other children's lives. They must be kids first, sporting participants second - so in my late teens I walked away from gymnastics.

In the times that I trained in these sports I loved them - it wasn't exercise, it was hard work at times but it was fun, it was challening - it was enjoyable.

In my early twenties I decided I should do something so I did the whole join the gym thing that was big at the time. Weights were good, there was a challenge there but after awhile it became a bit ho-hum, here we go again. Tried my hand at aerobics too - hmmm definitely not my thing. Perhaps my gymnastics training served me too well and I was too co-ordinated, either that or I had arrived at Unco-s-R-Us aerobics class. I had never seen so many people who didn't know their left from their right and if the exercise called for doing different things with different hands, oh good Lord, stand clear you could lose an eye! So I would do this class thinking, hmm feeling a bit hot now, feeling tired now, oh for pete's sake can you just do the damn thing right and stop stepping on my feet because you are going the WRONG DAMN WAY!! These were the years of my hate relationship with exercise. It was torture, I hated it and still I felt this intrinsic sense of guilt to make myself keep going to re-live the nightmare on a daily basis.

Fortunately pregnancy and childbirth gave me ample excuse not to have to be fit looking and that stomach flab, I could wear it proudly as the post baby bulge...oh of course it doesn't look great but look at this baby!

I tried my hand at variations on the theme well as much as you can with two young kids.

Then at thirty something I found myself accompanying one son to karate lessons. He didn't want to go on his own, and there was some "sign up two it's cheaper deal", so off we went together. The plan, I would do the first 3 months and bow out gracefully and he could keep going. I don't think he even made it to 3 months you know. Over eight years on, I am still going!

Karate is the closest match to gymnastics I have ever found. No I haven't lost the plot! We are talking traditional karate here, kata and bunkai (self defence applications) not the kinds of karate that entails breaking cement tiles with your forehead.

Kata requires balance, grace, and precision - all of which gymnastics requires. Yet there is also a need to demonstrate power, strength, and speed - again all required in gymnastics. No wonder it is such a perfect fit for me....well it is in the sense of my enjoyment of it, perhaps not so in my ability to execute it?????

I like to think of the karate we do as "the thinking person's sport". There is so much detail to be aware of, there is a history and a purpose to each series of moves and their meaning. You are sooo busy thinking about all that stuff, it isn't until you finish that you realise just how knackered you are feeling. Yep most definitely back in the LOVE phase of exercise, I miss it when I can't go, it is like a drug now really, going to training!

Contrary to some of the media stereotypes karate brings people from all walks of life to have a go, people that were it not for karate, it is highly unlikely I would have crossed paths with them at all.

Remembering all those damn compulsory routines - a different one for floor, bars, and beam, and then all the optional ones too......I'm sure that is why I find remembering kata moves and patterns a little easier than others.

Those early years of strength training and flexibility - oh thank you God - without that my kicks would never be head high! Nor would I be able to use that strength when I need it.

Oh and for the last couple of years of my karate training, this too had lead me back to teaching. Teaching in another sport and loving it just as much. There is something quite humbling about teaching, putting yourself out there, knowing at some point you will screw up and your students will know you have screwed up!! At which point you can only really laugh at yourself and get on with it. Teaching in general but perhaps more so in karate is most definitely a showing of humility, and of learning together alongside your students with every member of the dojo a teacher and every member a student.

KARATE - OH YEAH STILL LOVING IT!!!

IF IT WAS EASY ANYONE COULD DO IT!!!!!!

Mutual unconditional love

Ok part 2 - the four legged friend who tests the limits of unconditional love.

Did you ever wonder if personality traits and psycho behaviour were limited to just humans? We have living proof that fodder for the canine equivalent of Dr Freud is alive well, and one of them lives at our house.

Xena came into our lives as a supposedly 6-7 month old German Shepherd/Kelpie cross rescued from the Animal Welfare League. Yes she is named after Xena Warrior Princess because at the time of adoption she was on additional feeds due to her being severely underweight and she had many nicks and scrapes on her body, evidence that life hadn't been kind to her. We decided this was clearly a survivor in need of a "girl power" name and so Xena it became.

For those of you that have kids, you know how from the time they pop out they know how to screw with your heads? You know no-one tells them but instinctively they know how to push the buttons so you go from calm in control adult to psychotic out of control parent in under 10 seconds. I mean even as newborns they pretend to stop breathing just long enough for you to be mid 000 before they gurgle and turn over!

Well this is just how Xena got in to this house. One of our German Shepherds (Clyde) had passed away and Bonnie was lonely without him. She was about 8 years old and truly elegant lady. So we decided we would head off to the pound in search of a friend for company for Bonnie.

There in this cage stood a lovely lady 6-7 months old, walks well on a lead said the card on the door. So back inside we went for the lead to take this girl into the play yards at the pound to get to know her. Well, I tell you, it is here her mind games began. Oh how beautifully she walked on the lead next to C, as if she knew just how she was supposed to behave. In went the boys, oh still Madam Perfection - no jumping, no scratching, no chasing. Of course when you have another dog you have to have the two of them meet at the pound before you can take them home.

Well Bonnie wasn't over the moon about Xena (hmmm perhaps we should have listened) but she didn't mind her that much either. Xena on the other hand played the placid, submissive underdog like she should have been the lead in Annie the musical! So of course we decided we should take her but we had to wait for her to be desexed prior to picking her up. I swear the little cow knew, you know, she knew she was in baby, no need to act that perfect pet now!

So home she came that first night and we all fussed over her, then off to bed we went. Bonnie (& Clyde while he was alive) would never dream of touching food that wasn't for them. Having had them for 8 years we had kind of forgotten what was "normal dog behaviour". Oh joy! next morning, not only had she done assorted piles of business in the house...oh yeah number 2's as well as number 1's....she had helped herself to some lolly Christmas stockings that were waiting for some friends we had yet to catch up with yet. Holy Moly, this dog had eaten everything in 2 Christmas stockings except the "M & Ms" only because she couldn't get the packet open. So much for chocolate being deadly toxic for all dogs...oh no, no. no, no, no not for this mutt! She had 2 snickers bars, 2 small Cadbury chocolates, several Freddo Frogs and not so much as a runny bum! She was pretty damn lively that morning, doped to the eye balls on her nocturnal sugar fix. We on the otherhand were like "oh what have we done?"

C had 12 months of long service leave commencing about the time Xena came home. So Xena had the pleasure of his company all day for 12 months. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship, well beautiful for one of them anyway!!! For her it was the beginning of her "C obsession". Smitten, obsessed you name it, she is his for life!

At times it takes me all my control not to laugh when she starts to behave like the attention seeking child, any attention being good attention. If he doesn't pat her when she comes up to him for attention, she waits til he is distracted and then using both paws encircles his feet. Well he may just pull away you know, so to prevent that, she must manage to gouge her claws into his feet, drawing blood should it be necessary to prevent his ultimate escape. The only way to end the bloodshed and severe pain of impaling by dog paw, is of course to pat her belly with his foot.

If she is unsure of his mood and she is not sure if she will get a happy reaction or a grumpy reaction, she approaches tail wagging at one end, lip curling back over the teeth at the other...talk about a screwed up mutt!

She gets on really well with Bella, hates every other dog...well perhaps that is a little unkind. She likes them from a distance, then when they get close she gets scared and then it is growls, teeth baring and hold onto the lead for dear live....so when we walk, we talk not to the other canines of the district.

As much as she loves C, she doesn't like men much, the only exception being my brother. People say he and I are a lot alike so maybe he is enough like me that she accepts him as part of the family. As for other males, when they get here it is a slow process. She is actually just scared of them but she has worked out if she growls and carries on and they get scared they back off and go away and she can rest without worrying about them, situation solved!! However she can't behave that way with all our male visitors. So usually we give her some space to get used to the idea they are in the house and she needs to get over it. So they sit there wondering if they are here for a meal or to in fact be the next meal! Over the course of the evening she decides that clearly she isn't going to get rid of them so she might as well go check them out. Usually before they leave she has decided they are actually quite nice, nice enough for me to stand on their chair and breathe my best doggy breath all over them and if they are really lucky, she might try to kiss them too.

I often say to her "only a "mother" could love you". She is the most loving, loyal dog with the most seriously annoying behaviour. If I go out to the washing line for 5-10 minutes, I don't need a welcome home reception befitting of 12 months away from home. I don't need to spend my time fending feet and other body parts away from my body - the karate block does help in this instance though! My favourite is all the experts that say "when your dog jumps up simply turn your back on them and they will stop, then turn around again"...helloooo come try that little number on Xena. When your clothes are stretched to tearing point, the layers of skin are peeling off like the skin of an onion, and any minute you expect to see blood seeping through the layers, at what point do I decide that ignoring her jumping up is not damn well working????

Add to that incidental psychosis at the time of getting ready for going for a walk, that means screaming around the house knocking stuff over, moving rugs and of course extra exuberant jumping up on the person carrying the lead. This dog gets more exercise from the carry on before we leave home than she actually gets on the damn walk!

Only our resident psycho works out how to push the "childproof gate" at the bottom of the stairs in order to sneak upstairs first thing in the morning when she hears the alarms or C talking to me. She sneaks up those stairs like a panther in the dark of night. How can a dog climb wooden stairs without a single tell tale sign, until you feel this body crash land onto the bed from a launch pad metres outside the door?

Still if my children were ever at threat or risk, I know with absolute certainty that Xena would put herself on the line to protect them. She is fiercely protective of what she considers to be her family.

Underneath that total psycho exterior is a very loving, very gentle nature, it just takes some time and patience to bring out the best in her.

I think she came to us for a reason, I fear if anyone else took her home she would have been returned too many times and would have been declared "not rehomeable" and she would have bought a needle and ticket to doggy heaven. I think it was only loonies like our household that would accept the idiosyncracies, see past them to the loving heart that she has.

That is why when it comes to Xena it has to be a case of mutual unconditional love for it to work!

The true meaning of unconditional love

Well that simply has to be a dog right?

Yeah yeah, I know lots of folk like cats, but really they are just slaves to a four legged native fauna killer that thinks of itself as their master.

Dogs on the other hand, all they want to do is please their master. Yep sure do love my four legged girls. So much so my kids made the comment in the past "anyone would think you love your dogs more than you do us"

Hmmm let's stack it up
They eat whatever I put in front of them
When I ask them to do something, they do, no answering back, no face pulling and not a single "whatever!" to be heard
No matter how crappy their day has been, they are always so excited and happy to see me

Hmmm you can see how this was a tough one to answer as the maternal matriach of the clan.

I have 2 four legged girls, today though will be about the newer of "the girls", Bella. Well we called her Bella (Italian for beautiful of course!) but she goes by many names; princess Bella, mummy's beautiful princess, princess or sometimes prancer.

And a prancer she is! I had all but forgotten of that cartoon of my youth where Pepe La Pew continues to seek "his amore" in the form of a totally terrorised feline, who no matter how hard she tries can not escape his love potion! When Bella plays at home and is chasing her ball or her other doggy play mate, she reverts to Pepe La Pew in an instant. You know what I mean though? That bounce, bounce, bounce on 4 legs that he used to do, especially when in pursuit of the "cat of his dreams", my Bella she prances just like that!

Oh and Princess, well she does think of herself and being quite special. Other dogs sleep on that bit of cement or pavers they find in the sunshine. Not Princess Bella, she is no mere dog! Oh no, the ground is no place for a princess - the really nice chairs of the outdoor setting on the otherhand, a majestic throne for a princess no less! Of course since she is supposed to be here to look after the house, if she has to see what might be going on down on the streets around us, she can always use the table to rest her chin on while she looks around!

One of my favourite times is knowing that my kids are about to come downstairs in the morning. No I can not see them or hear them from the kitchen. What I do hear is a slow "doof, doof, doof" sound, then it gets a little faster, then a little faster, until of course lying there just doing that is impossible. No!!!! Wagging my tail and hitting the floor is not enough, I'm about to burst with excitement, I simply have to jump to my feet and race to the bottom of the stairs to meet my 2 favourite household members. The two that will fawn all over me, maybe even crawl around on the floor and retrieve my most precious of possessions, the overchewed, split in the middle tennis ball, from its resting place under the couch. With a cute little tail wag, a whine and nose stuck under the chair, I can lure them right there with me in search of treasure.

On other occasions Bella resembles an articulated bus....no not because she has a butt the size of the back end of a bus, but because she folds in the middle just like that! When she is excited to see us, she wags her tail and bends in the middle regularly smacking herself in the head with her tail - not a problem, nothing is too much to show her family how much she loves them. And if that doesn't convince them she brings out the voice, the little noises that aren't quite barks but just come out in her attempt to greet them when they arrive home.

Or while I sit here typing this post about her, she has come into the study and curled up in a ball on the floor. Not seeing my attention, jumping up or causing a fuss, just coming in to be with me here in the study.......

yep that is most assuredly unconditional love ....oh and for my other four legged girl the unconditional love has to work both ways....different is one word that comes to mind to describe her - next blog post will be the story of Xena...yeah named after Xena Warrior Princess - sad but true!

What is with the pink?

Ok so those that know me would be just a tad suprised to find me on a PINK blog page! It is not like I don't have my fair share of serious curves, some more likened to that found on rather large sea creatures currently under attack from the Japanese. I guess it just that I'm not your girlie girl.

Why is it that we have this ideal or girlie girl, or not girlie girl? If you are a girlie girl, you must be an airhead whose biggest decision in life is what colour to have your foils, or what little stick on delight to put on your acrylic nails this week. If you are not a girlie girl, then you are somehow a tomboy, a non-deserving member of the female community. " A little rough around the edges" those dear old ladies would say with that smiling under protest grimace pasted on to their faces, "hmm is she married then?" would be the next question.

How liberating it is not to be the girlie girl! People have no clue about what makes you tick and, more often than not, you are a complete mystery to them.

"What you don't wear make up during the day?"
"no thanks but I can't be knacked putting it on, let alone taking it all off again at the end of the day"

You mean you can really be ready to go out in less than half an hour?
"How long does it take to throw on a pair of jeans, a wincheater and madly run a brush through the hair while running out the door?"

And if you mention that karate is your sport of choice - well it is all over! Why would a "more mature woman" (aka old bag mother of 2) want to do karate? I tell you, they don't know what they are missing. Where else can we girls, get hot and sweaty, shout and yell and people don't even bat an eye lid, let alone wonder if perhaps we are having some kind of pre-menopausal melt down?

So here's to all those girls that are really happy in their own skin with who they are, with no need to fit some consumer driven stereotype designed by some high flying CEO on a quest for their next quintillion! What an awesome place to be, where you are just you, and people can either like you or bugger off and talk to someone who cares.

So a pertinent or a pointless meandering - you decide