Woo hoo! 273 days.

Month 9 was infinitely easier than month 8. I wasn’t interested in drinking in the slightest, nor was I all resentful that I was missing out on something.

This leads me to suspect that maybe my horrible month 8 was more to do with not being very good at self-care, of which exercise is a very big component. Now that I’m back cycling to work, doing occasional yoga and eating breakfast &etc my keel is rather more even. 

Or the Improved Mood could be because it feels like winter (such as it was) might be almost over. 

Whatever the cause, I’m not messing with it. 

On to month 10!

supermarket flowers

I’m going to attempt an experiment for the next four (work) days:
➕ no internet before work
➕ no morning or afternoon coffee – am permitted to consume the first-thing-in-the-morning wake-up cup.

I like an experiment and figured it was time to shake things up a little. I’m hoping for joyful and full of health. Unfortunately I suspect the outcome will be grumpy and headachey.

I’m on my quest to get some value from that yoga pass, so went to hatha this morning – this week featured lots of hip opening stuff that I’m really feeling several hours later.

While riding back up my hilly street, a cyclist coming the other way came off his bike at speed (while going over a speed hump) and was laying unmoving in the road. I and a few drivers got there there pretty fast to see what we could do. 

The poor guy was bleeding pretty profusely from a very nasty eyebrow gash (and a few other bleedy less horrific cuts). Fortunately I had a clean towel with me to make a compress because there was a lot of blood. It was very lucky he was wearing a helmet because that was pretty beaten up. One of the drivers called an ambulance and I sat with my arm around poor cyclist holding the towel to his head, being the reassuring mummy type (calling his boss, ensuring the rescue of his AirPods) until the ambulance arrived. In very good news he’ll be okay.

This sort of thing does restore your faith in humanity – so many people stopped to offer assistance and the first to respond were all calm, sensible, well ordered and non-panicky.

What is horrifying is that this is the very speed bump I cycled over yesterday without a helmet because I was so unfocused and distracted I forgot to put it on. Yikes. Message definitely received.

The only photos I seem to have time to take during the week are of sunrises – fortunately they’ve been pretty spectacular.

xxx

I really upped the ante in forgettery today – was 3/4 of the way down (and up) my (hilly) street when I realised I wasn’t wearing my gloves … or my helmet!

Of course I rode back and rectified that! but yikes!

xxx

Yesterday I booked that week of leave (hurrah!) – starting next Friday. I’m quite excited about it and must refine plans.

I’m also excited about the small annual salary increase I received today – nothing near the exhorbitant heights of my Very Highly Paid team member, but no complaints. I think I’ll seek out a small celebratory treat.

I’ve never read anything by Patrick White.

For someone who is Australian and calls herself a reader, this is pretty shameful.

I’m currently rectifying this and have just started The Twyborne Affair. I read an essay on White by David Marr in The Best Australian Essays: a ten-year collection (which had been languishing on the kindle for over a year) – which triggered the idea that I should remain in ignorance no longer!

So I didn’t get out for that run this morning, but otherwise accomplished everything else on the #tinygoalz list. Hurrah.

Tomorrow I intend to book that week off. Already I’m planning the projects – for it to be a success, I must avoid the InformationSuperhighway at all costs.

xxx

I’ve just started listening to To The Lighthouse – read by Nicole Kidman. 

I’m not quite sure how I feel about it – it has definitely made me realise there’s very much an art and skill to narrating a book, which I’m not sure Our Nicole possesses. It almost sounds as though I’m reading aloud (which is absolutely no recommendation, I assure you!) – all flat vowels and sibilant esses (hiss hiss). Not that I am by any means a connoisseur, but I think a great audiobook kind of takes you on a journey and is really immersive, this rendition is not terrible, but is really more akin to having someone sitting next to you reading.

Shameful admission – I’ve not actually read any Virginia Woolf before (apart from a couple of chapters of Mrs Dalloway several years ago).

I’ll keep at it a bit longer.

All #tinygoalz achieved today – well, except the one about leaving the office at lunch time.

➕ breakfasted
➕ took lunch to work
➕ cycled to and from work
➕ left before 6:30pm (5:40 – miracle!)
➕ ate dinner before 9pm (sure, it was leftovers, but I will take what I can get!)

It’s a work in progress. 

Tomorrow I’m replacing the cycling with a morning run, and possibly adding in a haircut.

Sleep would be good and a moment to think would also be pretty excellent.

It’s one of those crazy-busy cycles at SML where you just have to put one foot in front of the other and hope you come out alive on the other side.

Today, I ate breakfast, made my lunch and cycled to and from work.

What I’d also really like to accomplish this week is to leave SML before 6:30pm (10 hour day – pah!) and to eat dinner prior to 9:00pm – because both of those things are incredibly full of suck.

I need that week/s off.

I took Friday off as an Annual Leave day (so very needed!). As is becoming a thing on the rare occasion I don’t work on a Friday, I took a pilates class which I think is a very good way to remind yourself that you’re not at work.

My yoga studio has recently been taken over by new owners who acquired the lease on the property, not the actual business. The change-over came as a huge surprise to everyone (even some of the teaching staff) – one day there was an email stating “closing business, from tomorrow will be operated by NewOwners”. Fortunately NewOwners are recognising outstanding passes, which is very good of them, but only until 1 October. I’d bought a multi pass which I hadn’t used very much of – and found out on Friday that I had 25 classes left. Eeep! Slightly annoying, but at least I didn’t recently acquire a not inexpensive annual pass!

The rest of the day was not as relaxing or productive as I would have liked as I was sucked into work drama – grar.

xxx

On Saturday I thought I’d best make use of one of those outstanding 25 classes while I have the chance and headed out to yoga. Of course I did not make this easy on myself, Don had the car for golf and I was agonising about whether to ride Corey-the-bike, telling myself it was far away and scary. Honestly, my brain sometimes! The yoga studio is about half the distance to work … and on the same route. So I sucked it up amd strapped the mat to the rack and it took me 10 min to get there. I roll my eyes at myself sometimes.

It was my first yoga class for 4 1/2 years! I hadn’t realised it had been so lomg until I was lying on the mat. It was the same teacher as back then and I remembered all of his delightful and funny ways as we were working our way through the poses.

Afterward I felt pretty great! Old age must be making me more sensible as I wasn’t trying to prove how eXtreme I am or to do all the progressions – I just stuck with trying to get decent form. Look at me all grown up! I don’t know why or how, but I felt like I had a much better understanding of what my body was doing and how I was supposed to manoeuvre it.

I am really considering taking a week off at some point just to do projects (and for my mental health). I’d love to add daily yoga to that, though I daresay it would probably kill me.

xxx

Don and I headed out for ramen after he returned from golf and we meandered around Glebe markets for a while and became rather nostalgic for the old neighbourhood.

I could not restrain myself from buying (unpictured) matching kitty socks for Joan, Bessie and I because I am insane.

xxx

This morning we went out for a quick ride (I definitely need much more practice on the road bike), then a quick meal plan and grocery shop.

We were in danger of wasting the day in front of the television – already we’d snoozed through golf and cycling, so I dragged Don down to the local park to watch some local baseball.

It was a gorgeous, gorgeous day and so nice to just be out of the house doing something different – extremely relaxing and meditative sitting in the winter sun eating a sausage-on-bun and people-watching. 

I need more of this kind of stuff in my life!

Most of the music I’ve bought recently has been the result of emails from various record companies recommending various things. I’ve set up an auto-filter so these skip the inbox and stack up in a new music folder until I get time to work my way through them.

A couple of weeks ago I had a quite daunting 58 unread emails in the folder and I decided to suck it up and smash through the list while doing some mindless end of year spreedsheet-y stuff at SML.

I found lots to love and buy (and of course some not-quite-so-much to love) – I think this set could be described as equal amounts of quite wonderful and quite wonderfully bonkers.

On with my terrible descriptions (it’s very fortunate I have no ambitions as a music writer):

#15 – Jade Imagine: What the fuck was I thinking
Gorgeous, laid-back, peaceful, Totally Oz – great sunday afternoon music.

#16 – Axxa​/​Abraxas: Axxa​/​Abraxas
Kind of pop, kind of psychedelic, kind of retro-pop-psychedelic – all in a very good way.

#17 – Good Boy: Braap | Jarrow: Cody (split 7inch)
Good Boy: Plum
Totally Oz, low-fi, garagey. All the good things!
(and they’re just babies! Jarrow is 20! ZOMG!)

#18 – Palehound: A place I’ll always go
Great and lovely album, exceptionally listenable – very American indie-pop.

#19 – Shugo Tokumaru: TOSS
So very Japanese. I really can’t adequately describe it – kind of a pop-cacophony. Wonderful!

#20 – Essendon Airport: Palimpset
Eccentric-electro-eclectic with a bit of low-fi thrown in. Kind of bonkers. Initially I was “I love it, but it’s a smidge derivative” but then read the liner notes and found it’s a re-release of an album from 1981! Mind. Blown.

#21 – The Bombay Royale: The island of Dr Electrico
This is amazing – and bonkers – and amazing! Wild amalgam of Bollywood, disco, surf, funk, pop.
Heard the title song from their (not yet released) new album on 2ser while in the car yesterday and had to buy this one (and pre-order the new one)!

Only 3 albums to go until I hit the target! I hate to preempt anything, but I feel like I have this one in the bag. There is so much good music out there when you take the time to seek it out – and be willing to wade through much that is not to your taste.