You Can Take the Girl Out of Tassie...

I’m slowly coming to the realisation that you can take the girl out of Tasmania but you can’t take Tasmania out of the girl. 

I am lucky enough to have a job and a boss where I have flexibility.  So this week I find myself sitting in Tasmania having left my Sydney home for a week, working for the most part but being able to spend time with my family, which I haven’t really done in 25 years on a regular basis until recently, about the last 18 months.  (At this point I encourage you to read a previous blog from a few weeks ago:  Sweet Home Alabama - it ties in nicely with this blog.)

I hear some of you gasp in horror.  Hell, I gasp in horror when I think of how long I have been away from home and my family and the amount of times I have been here.  Having said that, I think it does somewhat come with the territory when you leave home.  Let me explain. 

I left my home state at 18, seemingly dying of a broken heart, as only an 18 year old can do dramatically and with such flair.  I needed to put as much distance between my home and the tumultuous final teenage years when I changed from a “Miss Goody Two Shoes” into, well quite frankly, a bloody nightmare.  I’d fallen madly in love with a boy, who it turns out was quite a bit older than me (I was very mature is my excuse).  Long story short, it didn’t last and my heart was broken.  I left and settled in Sydney and a whole big wide world awaited me.  For a while I hated everything Tasmania represented.

Fast forward 25 years and I have only just realised how much I love being home.  I was at lunch with some old school friends on this trip, people who I have connected with on Facebook over the years (without FB and social media this would probably be a very different blog, but I digress) and we were chatting about being parents (them) and career people (all of us).  I was saying how “easy” it is to be home.  They asked what was easier.  I thought about it and said: “I think I am a nicer and better person when I am here”.  Upon being called on to explain, I thought about it for a minute or two.  Those minutes gave me time to digest what I just said.  But in a nut shell I am not as stressed, I am not as busy thinking of 101 things and I take time to smell the roses.  I connect with my family.  I listen to people instead of trying to multi task.  I really listen.

This trip I visited some places I haven’t been to in a long time.  I took a photo of the house I grew up in.  I met up with some people who at some stage in my 18 years here meant a lot to me.  And as I write this I realise it has made me sad.  Sad that it is only now I don’t take where I grew up for granted.  Sad that I have to leave in 36 hours and return to the grindstone that is Sydney.  The 3 hour commute to work (16 km drive each way); the hard core job I have, the day to day responsibilities I have.

But I am not ungrateful for my life outside of my home state.  I realise I need to be thankful for my family and friends in Sydney who love me and the flexibility and salary my job provides me with.  While I am not quite at the CEO level I dreamed of at 21, if I had of stayed in Tassie in 1990 I’d be married with 5 kids and probably a couple of grandkids – at 42…  And that is okay.  But I don’t think it was ever going to be me.  And if it had of been me – would I have tired of it by now?

Who knows.  They are questions I will never know the answers to.  And I guess that’s okay.  While I can get on a plane and fly home whenever I choose, I can’t rewrite history.  But I can be thankful for my wonderful family and the freedom I have to be me, the overseas trips I take as I am not tied down by children and my great life.

Thanks mum and dad for making me the person I am.  I probably don’t tell you that enough.  Thank you Tasmania for being an awesome place to grow up in and most of all, thank you for the memories.  I’m going to start making new ones.  I don’t know what they quite look like yet.  I’ll just have to work that out as I go along.  I look forward to it.

Tip Toe...

Further to my blog of yesterday regarding the gym.....

It is just after 7am, I am still half asleep, despite having been to the gym, and I realise we are having a casual day at work and I need to find jeans and a top to wear..  I can't just throw on a suit and walk out the door - today needs consideration..  Need to wear a top high enough not to show my back tattoo (previous blog:  Women & Tattoos), something that is classified as smart business casual and something which does not show too much of anything - essentially, as I used to tell my team "wear something you would wear out to lunch with your grandma". 

This needs thought.

I decide on suitable clothing and I put on my black boots.  They felt odd..  So I changed to my red boots.  They felt weird as well and were obviously too big.  By this stage I am convinced that getting up at 5.10am and doing a work out from 5.30am to 6.30am is sending me loony and perhaps I need a rest.

Then it clicks.  So I go try on a pair of shoes and guess what?  They are too big.  The gym is paying off people; I am losing weight in my freaking feet.  Awesome. 

Maybe in another 7 weeks my butt will be smaller.  Or my feet will have gone from a size 8 to a 6 and then I'll look stupid - 5 foot 7 and a size 6 foot.

It's all I've got today.  I am too bloody tired after waking up at 4.53am this morning in anticipation of the alarm going off at 5.07am.   Ignore me, I am just cranky.  Got out of bed the wrong side.

#Gym #WeightLoss #IAmSerious

Step by Step...

So, as per a previous blog, I joined a gym..  I thought it would be filled with a lot of beautiful people.  "Posers" if you will..  I'm really glad to say that I was absolutely wrong..  The gym I have joined is full of people of all ages all with one thing in mind, to get a little fitter and look a littler (or a lot) better than they do now.

Three to four days per week I drag myself out of bed at 4.55am.  It is winter.  It isn't easy.  I am at the gym by 5.25pm and on a machine by 5.32am.  I work out for 60 minutes.

The first six weeks didn't really herald any physical results.  But every day I went a minute or two longer on the cross trainer and had a steeper incline on the walking machine.  Now I am up to 40 minutes on the cross trainer.  No sweat.  Okay, that is a lie - there is a lot of sweat and I curse the damn thing for the first 12 minutes or so - a few times I've nearly just stopped and thrown in the towel.  But I didn't.  I kept going.  And bang.  Last Friday someone told me I was looking good.  Was I?  I had given up looking for results, I was happy with increasing my fitness.  The next day I noticed my jeans no longer fitted me without a belt and even then I looked like one of those ridiculous teenagers who wears their jeans down around their butt showing off their underwear..  Next stop..  Shopping for new jeans.  In September - the end to be precise.  I am not rushing out to buy new clothes now, I am going to wait a bit to see what other physical changes take place..

I don't love the gym but I know that in order to regain the confidence I seem to have lost I need to do something to make myself feel better.  Having said that I don't hate the gym either.  It has just formed a part of my day - like lunch.

So, if you are thinking about joining a gym I encourage you to give it a go.  They are not all places full of beautiful posers who really don't need to work out.

I have a gym "buddy" - a friend who gets up at the stupid hour every day to go to the gym with me.  We don't really speak, we probably grunt (who is at their best at that hour?) - but it is motivating.  I can't let her down and she feels she can't let me down.

So stay tuned, I'll report how I feel again at then end of September - just under 8 weeks away!

From Little Things...

The other day on Facebook I read an article posted by someone I admire and have known since high school.  I know if she is on her "soap box" about something normally there is good reason.  SO I read the story.  Then I got on my soap box and shared the link.  And then it went quiet.  I guess it wasn't a cute link to a story about a cat or a dog, or a dancing baby - you know the ones, they get 100's of 1000's of like and comments.  This article was about something people don't want to comment on/are too afraid to comment on OR, straight out, they don't care.  And I'd like to think I am surrounded by people in my social media stratosphere that do care..

Here's the story: From Little Things Big Things Grow

it's a delightful story about a company called "Wicked Campers" - who, as the name suggests, rents out camper vans to people travelling around Australia.  Where is the fuss in that  I hear you ask..  The fuss isn't in that - the fuss is in the slogans they have painted on their vans.  One delightful example if below:

Just in case you can't read it, it says: "In every princess there is a little slut who wants to try it just once".

Really?  That is acceptable and not worthy of some outrage?

As the write of the article says:  "When something is wrong and has become normalised it’s the exact moment to speak up."

I think it is time to speak up.

#WickedCampers #PaulaOrbea

Sweet Home Alabama

I am chick flick mad.  You may be surprised to know I love Sci-Fi as well.  Not Star Trek Sci-Fi - more shows like Under The Dome and Arrow (actually, does Arrow count as Sci-fi?  And if I'm really honest I watch it to look at Stephen Amell, I meant who wouldn't?  I always say, Arrow, so bad it is good...).  But I digress...

Back to my love of chick flicks.  I like the fact the story lines are so easy to read.  I like tuning out for 2 hours and not thinking about anything other than what is playing out on the screen in front of me (yes, I know, I know what is going to happen but I don't have to THINK about it). 

Which brings me to one of my favourite movies, that I watched for about the 23rd time on Saturday night, Sweet Home Alabama.  I came to realise a long time ago that I like the movie because of the fact it reminds me of me when I was younger (that and Josh Lucas is damn hot).  I'd left a small town to move to the big smoke (and left behind my first true love, well it had been over for years but you know teenagers, but that's where that similarity ends) and I got a bit ahead of myself..  I wasn't as obnoxious as Melanie (Reece Witherspoon) or at least I don't think I was (there is probably lots of people who will have a different opinion to that though!!) but I didn't go back to my home town and visit my parents or family enough, I didn't call them enough - I wasn't there enough...  I want to reach through the TV and slap her, then I realised I can't because I was I was her when I was in my late teens to my early 20's...

So the moral of this blog is - always be present, always make an effort to see or talk to your parents and family - even if it is just a phone call regularly...  If you live close by, call in - even for 10 minutes, just don't think you'll do it tomorrow.  Tomorrow never comes soon enough.  And, it may be too late.

I Bought a Zoo!

I bought a zoo.  Well, really I didn’t.  I joined a gym. But I bought a zoo sounds so much more exciting.

I bravely went up to the gym that opened just up the road from where I live, paid my joining fee ($9) and agreed to the $10.95 per week for usage of the whole gym 7 days per week.  Even for a non-gym person, how great is that?  $47 a month for using every machine and access to every class.
I digress.

I have joined a gym once in my life.  It was Contours in Mortdale (they have since moved) – a woman’s only circuit gym.  I hated it from day 1.  I hated everything about it.  For a girl who spent most of her early life playing sport, since I broke my hips at age 15 (long story) I have a lack of confidence about my legs holding me up sometimes (again, long story, but when I hip breaks, you collapse quite spectacularly) and this affects my coordination.  Once I am comfortable with a “move” it is not a problem but the first few times trying to master something can be challenging.

Anyway back to my story.  I was completing a circuit when it was time to do some move or rather and I hadn’t done it before.  The instructor yells out to the whole circuit “new girl up the back, can tell, she can’t keep up”.  I was freaking mortified.  I left, mid circuit and never went back.  I never gave them that feedback – hopefully one day someone will show them this blog and they understand why they only had me for 3 weeks (by the way, a circuit gym is rubbish – just rubbish).

Forgive me getting off track.  Again.

Bottom line is I am 42 years old and I was petrified of joining a gym.  I thought it would be full of beautiful people all preening and pomping around.  I was wrong, thankfully.  The majority of people I see every day are just like me.  Phew.

A 5.30am start is not ideal in winter but you know what, I don’t hate it. I will stick this out, finish what is set out to do (lose weight) and who knows, will probably continue to attend that gym.
Thanks Crunch Fitness – you may have taken your sweet time opening but I appreciate it!

 

 

Moving Mountains..

If you have reached this page and this particular blog entry, take the time to watch the follow up story titled “60 Minutes – Kristy Cruise Story” and then go to her blog page called “Moving Mountains” and read her story.

Moving Mountains - Kristy Cruise

60 Minutes - Kristy Cruise Story

Right – watched the clip?  Read her blog overview?  Good – read on. 

I  watched 60 Minutes last Sunday night and cried.  I cried a lot.  I cried those heart wrenching sobs that come from the heart, the ones you didn’t know were there.  I cried tears of joy for Kristy, tears of sadness for the people who would never have known about this procedure had it not of been for Kristy but who probably can’t afford it anyway and tears of despair for people like my mum, who technically doesn’t have MS (and this sounds terrible, but if she did it would be a lot simpler to get our government to help her) but Parkinson’s Disease – which, if you want to split hairs, is likened to MS sometimes (I digress with the part about my mum, but bear with me, there will be a link in a few paragraphs).

I feel my blood pressure rise just thinking about the fact in Moscow, Tel Aviv and Chicago RIGHT NOW there are amazing doctors who are conducting stem cell transplants (HSCT) on 100’s of MS sufferers with such positive results and yet the Australian government says “NO”.  Guess there is too much money to be lost by the pharmaceutical companies if we suddenly had an operation that may mean you don’t need to rely on so much medication if you do have MS.

I’m angry – even 2 days after watching this story I am still damn angry.  What exacerbates this anger is I wonder how many other amazing doctors are using break through surgery to help people suffering from other diseases – such as Parkinson’s Disease (link to my mum).

I know there are no guarantees this would work.  I know there are risks surrounding it.  But I also know that you may as well have an option because you chose to not because the government won’t allow it.

I think I will still be mad in a week.

 

#KristyCruise #MovingMountains #MS