Princess of the World

I am clumsy. This is because I am a girl. SCIENCE.

Along with my floppy ankles (aka medically validated clumsiness), I also just do stupid stuff. I have sliced into my finger so many times I almost have no fingerprints left (Woo! Life of crime!), and bang my head onto kitchen cupboards so regularly that one day THEY’RE going to break due a life of stress fractures from my skull. I also burn myself with fantastic regularity.

When I was about 6 I snuggled so close to the kerosene heater that I burned my ass on the metal cover, burned a big Z into my butt. My mum told everyone she knew and called me Zorro for months. I once got so excited at an episode of Australia’s Funniest Home Videos that I jumped up from my bean bag (!) with a large bowl of 2 minute noodles, filled to the brim with boiling water, in my lap. The boiling water really pooled up nicely in my lap as I fell back into the bean bag and nothing says funniest home videos like a crotch covered in red, fleshy blisters (people, never trust a cockatoo, they do funny shit that can cause DANGEROUS BURNS).

About a week ago, Graeme was busy doing that very annoying thing where he stands watching me cook (in frilly knickers and Louboutins, obviously) and flinches and winces and gasps as he watches me chopping vegetables, as if the mere act of being close to a knife is a sure bet I’m going to lose a digit. My feeling about this is I cook every night and of course sometimes you lose a finger here and there, who HASN’T secretly enjoyed their broccoli with a whisper of blood? (Also, if it’s going to cause him such terrible emotional angst I suggest that he just cooks us dinner instead, gender equality isn’t just about waxing ya know). I took on that particular tone of voice that partners take and told Graeme that it had been WEEKS since self inflicted injury. WEEKS. Sigh. Huff. Eyebrow.

So cut to last night when as a reward for doing a 60km mountain bike race (holy moly, that’s far!), I was doing a roast chicken (with garlic mashed potatoes, asparagus and green salad) for my brave sporty husband type. I went to pick up the pan for the asparagus (on a burner that wasn’t on) and the oven had heated up the handle so much my hand stuck to it a bit. I ran my hand under cold water and cried. I cried! Usually when I hurt myself I just run through my list of obscenities until I run out of ideas and go on my merry way, but this time I couldn’t take it out from under the cold water without bursting into tears again. I had to call Graeme over (I know, I know, I acknowledged weakness, next time we’re picking gladiator baseball teams where the stakes are life or death by cougar he won’t pick me to be on his team) to help finish the gravy. Also, I LET A BOY HELP WITH THE GRAVY AND THE WORLD DID NOT END. Lesson learned.

Anyway, I went to bed with a ziploc bag filled with ice and a wet cloth and at some point during the night it stopped hurting. There is only one blister that has raised (it’s the shape of Lake Ontario) but there are two massive white pockets under the skin around the blister. It’s gross, and a bit sore but I think I’m gonna be okay. I will accept gifts though. Just in case.

UPDATE* – I just went to get icecream and shouted to Graeme “I updated my blog! And I linked to yours! Because I’m a better wife who links to your blog even though you never link to m…” and at that point I hit myself in the face with the freezer door.

So, we did this weight loss pool thing based on this article from the NY Times in February. I sent it to Graeme and bish bash bosh! a bunch of us fatty boombas (all from his work except me) put in $50 each and whoever lost the greatest percentage of weight in 8 weeks won all the money. It was a great kick in the ass for summer as most of the winter I didn’t wear a coat, I just rolled my fat wherever I needed it to be and it kept me warm.

I lost 20 pounds in the 7.5 weeks. I did it by exercising a lot and eating well (it’s pretty much rocket science, I don’t expect you to understand). 63 visits to the gym in that time and my first 10km run through the City.

My goal with the run was to trip up the Kenyans and take home the gold. Unfortunately they ran it in slightly UNDER half the time it took me to run it so I didn’t get a chance to trip them because I never saw them. I did trip a random tourist who was wearing a Richard Pryor tshirt, just to prove I could. I also had an excellent rabbit to chase in the morbidly obese man in bright red shorts who managed to be in front of me the whole fucking race. Seriously. Obese. Terrible red shorts. Kicked my ass. I ran it in 1 hour and 41 seconds. A miracle of some sort I think. By kilometre 9 I decided that the man in the red shorts was probably Gwyneth (fucking) Paltrow in disguise again, this time for some sort of thought provoking and suicide inducing blog entry.

I had a running partner with me too, which made the whole thing much more fun. She is a teeny tiny Japanese lady who, based on my rapidly declining and her ever increasing energy levels throughout the race, somehow sucked out my energy in some sort of Japanese ninja vampire thing and used it to her advantage. Cheeky.

In all seriousness I’m really really proud of myself, especially given I hadn’t run for two whole months due to my ridiculous geriatric type knee injury. The night before the race I found a miracle thingy that enables me to exercise without crippling knee pain due to having wonky slack jawed yokel knees. If you have tracking problems, please buy this. It helped me a lot. Graeme took these but there’s not many as we were running SO INCREDIBLY FAST THE CAMERA SHUTTER COULD BARELY KEEP UP. I look like I’m about to eat Irene in at least two of the five photos.

The pool has been over for two weeks now. I didn’t win, some dick took up Atkins (which he is claiming is a good healthy weight loss)(seriously whipped cream okay, brown rice bad? Please. That guy is a heart attack in bad east coast jeans, 39 pounds in 7.5 weeks? Come on). (Also, despite the tone of this post, we like him even if he is a (really, really skinny) jerkface). He lost an incredible amount of weight and I just didn’t have it in me to eat any less and I couldn’t quite bring myself to not have a glass of wine on the weekend. Is all good. I am still working out every day (one day off a week of course), but it’s SUCH a joy not to go to the gym twice a day. Holy moly that was hard work. I look pretty good though and I hope to sleep better and to make it through the summer feeling a little less exhausted after a 65 hour week.

Tomorrow morning I meet with Eurotrainer. He’s a trainer at my gym who seems to do horribly unpleasant things to his clients, all the while looking on with long, wavy flowing black hair and a miscellaneous European accent. I feel like I’m gonna be doing some push ups and he’ll be quietly explaining how Serbia is going down because he’s gotta plan…

Work is suddenly bananas again. Not much to say about that yet. Hours have crept back up and I already have nearly a week in lieu time built up. Am hoping by the end of summer I have three or so weeks in lieu plus vacation time? That’ll cover my trip to Australia and a week off for when Daaaaaria comes. Daria’s coming! Hurrah! I’m practicing my margaritas already.

Alright. I broke the drought on blog posts. I can write again soon now. Thanks for coming by! I’ll update again this weekend with tales of gardening (by gardening I mean stabbing those little squirrel plant ruiner motherfuckers with my rake and hanging them on the fence so the other little fuckers learn) and Eurotrainer. I can’t quite come up with the perfect name for him yet, Euro-something. Trainer isn’t quite right. I am trying out The Eurovision. Suggestions?

This smile is because I ate fries for the first time in 2 months. All of the fries.