4/5

Can you tell I've been busy?
This is not the only space I've been absent from.

I've been missing from the couch in the afternoons after school for a story and a long unhurried chat. I've been missing from the playground watching tricks on the monkey bars and catching up with the school mums.
I've been missing from the rock pools and the beaches and the dams of our normal summer hangouts.
I've been missing from the warm evenings on balconies and front stoeps with girl friends and wine.
I've been missing from the bench in the breeze in my mum's garden.
I've been missing from the couch with two dogs and a cat and my husband and a series on Netflix.
I've been missing from my life.

Job 4/5 ended today.
3 days spent inside a hotel with 300 delegates and a packed agenda. Working in a group which included men with ritual scarification, and women with scars of a different kind but not any less visible. Catching up with old activist comrades and meeting new ones. Intersecting with an age, race and gender mix well out of my norm.
Learning again how good I am at what I do, and how much I enjoy it.
4/5 was a good one.

It's the next one which is scary.

The last month I've been working two jobs, both demanding and challenging and time-pressured and complex.
I've been working two jobs which required minimum 8h a day each, and wouldn't settle for very much less than that.

One of those jobs is done, but I doubt it will make the next any less frantic.

I will still be missing for a while. My husband, my kids, my friends, my life will still have to do without me for a bit.
But tonight I will sleep.
And tomorrow I will start again.
And by the end of this month I'll have done 5/5, and I'll be back.

the one about gym

Yes, I cracked. Well I had to do something after making promises here and here. And while Yoga Fit is a-m-a-z-i-n-g and I'm feeling and seeing the benefits thereof, it's still only once a week, and once a week ain't gonna shift no significant bulk ok?

So I cracked. And joined a gym. Loathe and despise the word, the concept, the industry, oh and sweat in general but hey, as the mother of a childhood friend of mine used to say as she plucked out her leg hairs one by one with a pair of tweezers: 'you have to suffer to be beautiful'. Do you? Do you really?

Turns out you do. But it seems in this case, the suffering did not take the form I thought it would.

Let me explain.

You see, still deeply un-enamoured with the concept of 'gym' (odd that this didn't make it onto my list of 100 things I dislike intensely, though I think sweating did...), I was lured into the promise of 30 minute workout, a 'total body workout' and the fact that my 'curves would (apparently) amaze me', I signed up for a month at Curves - the women's only gym. (see emoticon of spitting in disgust).

Omg, this place is deeply flawed.

Firstly, the whole work-out is questionable. 30 seconds a time on 12 or so machines with 'rest stations' in between. Hmmm.

Secondly (and please believe me when I say I'm no sizest), but the instructors are fat. Not just 'big-boned' but fat. Is this supposed to make me feel comfortable there? More comfortable than having a size 0 gym instructor in lycra? Maybe so, but the reality is it just ain't right. You wouldn't buy Jimmy Choo's from someone wearing Crocs. You wouldn't buy a Beemer from someone driving a Beetle (or arguably, vice versa). You wouldn't be happy with a doctor with a hacking cough. You wouldn't go to a dentist with no front teeth. You get my point.

Thirdly, it's so twee. It's like a mix between church camp and girl scouts with a little bit of high-school 1st hockey team thrown into the mix. The franchise is international and each branch must look the same the world over, the same purple decor, the same horrific music, the same twee motivational posters on the wall ('A fit mum is a happy mum!') and the same (and I kid you not here) diaphanous purple curtain which gets whipped across the entrance to the work-out space should (gasp of shock and horror) a MAN enter the office. Urgh!

But yet, I signed up for a month, totally suckered by the 30 minute lure, and in total acceptance of the fact that if I didn't sign up, and pay for the torture, I'd never get round to cardio at all.

So now I go twice a week around midday, and hit the circuit, and try and get into the music, and try to avoid reading the posters over and over again, and try not to follow the waddle of monster purple-clad thighs across the room, and try to get into a zone and work that flab.

And I've discovered that all the above are the true monstrosities of gym. The workout itself is not too bad, the endorphins kick in quite soon to give one a lift, and I've discovered a little trick to get through it quickly and enjoyably: I imagine myself in the montaged training sequence from a movie, the Rocky 'Eye of the Tiger' scene; the slow cut, sweaty sequence which works our hero into his (or her) pinnacle of raw cut muscle and fitness. The fighter. The lover. The challenge. 

And I've lost 2 kg. Go gym!