Pilates update

After a pilates class from hell yesterday I could hardly get downstairs this morning! My thighs and hips were screaming as each muscle extended on going down the stairs. I hope this is doing me good and isn't doing harm to my ageing body. But actually I can already see a small difference in the cellulite that I have piled onto my upper legs over the last 5 years. If I keep this up I might just look half decent by May! The trouble with Pilates is my core balance - I don't seem to have one!! It's all about breathing and maintaining ones balance whilst sitting on a Bosu? Leaning on a bosu or standing on a bosu! Dear Lord who invented such an instrument of torture? Oh yes, it must be the same person who invented the exercise ball with 4kgs of lead shot inside and then secretes it among the ordinary exercise balls so that suckers like me (who skid into class late) are left with only this ball! While my arms are sagging and sweat pours off my head like a mini waterfall all the others are swinging away fresh as daisies! Bastards! Then there's a blue sausage made of foam on which we are supposed to lie while doing leg raises and situps - I'm sure these exercises are aimed at the young and not at the elderly. I have put in a request for a class for the elderly as I have fond memories of Health and Beauty aerobic classes where we gently swung our arms and legs and looked elegant. Not a drop of sweat fell from a class of 50 ladies of whom Sal and I were possibly the youngest!
The rain has stopped pouring non stop - just a quick cloud burst yesterday afternoon so I was able to get the washing done and dry. The river is flowing strongly and looks so inviting that I will probably go for a swim when I finish this. And to leave the property we have to cross our dam wall and then go through a fjord which is very exciting. No point washing the car though as its mud mud mud all the way to the tar road 5 kms away!

Was I always this stupid?

The bathroom door lock suddenly jammed - in the open position - which made it irritating as the door wouldn't stay closed while I was on the loo. After 3 days I decided OAP wasn't going to do anything about it so I got a screwdriver and unscrewed the handle from the one side and from the base plate on the edge of the door and removed the whole offending assembly. I knew we had a replacement lock assembly somewhere and made the mistake of asking OAP who immediately insisted he could fix it with a little oil. Half an hour later he refitted it into the door and screwed it closed and said "Voila!" I should have known but instead (Ithink my brain has gone a little soft) I WENT INTO THE BATHROOM WITH HIM!!! What WAS I thinking? Snap!! He shut the door and said "see it shuts properly now?" and jokingly I asked if it opened properly too - and it didn't! So there we were "Oh dear WHat can the matter be? Two OAPs locked in the lavatory!!! Lucky for us Elias (our helpful worker) was working for us that day but unlucky for us he was 3 floors UP in the attic! BUT lucky for us he has a cell phone (doesn't everyone?) and OAP had his so he rang him and told him to come and help us. Then followed half an hour of OAP trying to instruct Elias, whose English is not marvellous and his brain was a bit fried from something he smoked at lunch, in which tools to fetch from the store and how to get us out! In the end we had to take the door of its hinges - from OUR side with the pair of us bickering and squabbling as only we can do - and would you believe? OAP still insisted on using the same lock - only he confessed that a "thingy" had fallen out when he fixed it the first time and now he would replace that bit and VOILA it worked properly this time!! Now we have had so much rain - non stop from the 3rd of January - that the door has swollen and wont shut at all!

Torture!

I have just been to my second Pilates class at our "local" gym - about as local as anything is where I live! The first time was last Monday and when I got home I sort of stumbled out of the car, absolutely shattered, ate a sandwich, had a cup of tea and went to bed for the rest of the day!! Made me wondered what the point was? Today was a little better as I managed to keep up with most of the class (I positioned myself to the left with three other fatties which made me feel a bit better!). I also wore more tightly fitting gym togs so that I could see whether it was my shirt or my wobbly bits that were sagging onto the mat! I sweated gallons but felt good after a shower but my problem is, I am now STARVING!! I shall drag myself round the mall and then drive home to eat. This is the start of a regime in which I am determined to lose a few kilos before May - God help us all!

Auschwitz

I'm reading Auschwitz:Tales from a Grotesque Land. It's so absolutely shocking, even though I have read other books on the subject, that my mind constantly wonders at "Man's inhumanity to man". Are we actually SO uncivilized? No better than animals? No - worse than animals as we are supposed to be thinking, caring, HUMAN beings! Although in my studies I have learned that hatred for the Jews has been rife for thousands of years I still don't understand why "Christians" have such intolerance for other groups. Why can't people just get on with their own lives and leave others alone if they don't want to mix. I don't always want to mix with others and yet, when I am forced, am often pleasantly surprised!!!! I wonder if the problem lies with radicalism? If there is such a word! Hassidic Jews are really intolerant of anyone outside their clique which I find most unpleasant and yet I wouldn't do anything about it except leave them to their own devices! If I saw one in trouble I would help but am certain many people wouldn't! We see them all the time in Switzerland, they keep to themselves, dress differently, stay in their own hotels and (especially the men) are VERY unfriendly! The women and children are shy but friendly as long as the men aren't around. This paternal society - including Quakers and Mormons - just asks for outsiders to target them. Personally I couldn't be bothered to target anyone but I suppose the more aggressive humans can't resist.

Another thing about places like Auschwitz, Birkenow, Buchenwald and the rest of the death camps is that they were not exclusively for Jews. Gypsies (sort of understandable) Political prisoners (ditto) academics (why?) etc were all incarcerated. I keep wondering what would have happened if EVERYONE targetted had been killed. Most of the Germans after the war was over were NOT intellectuals. Same with the Russians and all other nationalities. In fact I should think that only about 2% of the worlds population were actually intellectual at that time - a world full of dummies? What was the term someone famous used once "The Lumpiat Masses" or something like that!

My final thought about the death camps is: How did ANYONE actually survive? Just the very thought that my children had been taken from me and killed, or my parents, or husband, would surely be enough to make one succumb to the bitter cold, lack of food and sheer hatred endured by those survivors. Why didn't they fight back? If you look at some of the photographs taken in the camps, the inmates, weak and fearful though they were, vastly outnumbered the guards. Sure many hundreds would be shot, savaged by the dogs or beaten to death but surely thousands could have overcome the guards and taken over the prison camps thereby keeping the Germans OUT? Hmm but then a siege situation would endure and they would all be starved to death. Oh yes - I also don't understand how the rest of the world just stood by while all this was happening and I find it highly possible that it could all happen all over again in one form or another in the future. Maybe not in Europe and maybe not the Jews but somewhere else and with other groups of people whose thinking is not quite the same as "ours".

Christmas with the Family

You know how it is when you look forward to something for so long? Well that's how I felt about 2/3 of my kids being with us for a long weekend just before Christmas. I kept going to the shops and buying more food (heaven forbid they should starve) and cleaned the house from top down - even painting the upstairs annexe in case they thought it wasn't up to scratch. 1/3 of the kids and wife arrived on Thursday evening and the next 1/3 arrived Friday evening with Best Grandson Ever! From then on all was a chaos of food, washing up and everyone trying to please each other! Jack decorated the tree we had purchased specially with all my matching baubles (bought specially!) and we piled the prezzies under. Grandpa wanted them opened on Sunday morning but was voted down (Gee, I guess HE knows just where he stands now in the Greater Scheme of Things!!!!!) and we ripped and unwrapped contentedly on Saturday evening before stuffing ourselves with prawns done to perfection on the braai by Golden Boy. Oh yes, Golden Boy has been having issues in his head (apparently for the last 30 years) and decided to unburden himself to me on Friday morning. I won't go into it all here as it really is very serious to him but after making me feel like The Worst Mother in the World (I promise he didn't mean to but somewhere in my roots I must have Jewish blood as I immediately imagine ITS ALL MY FAULT!) I was quite glad he got a nasty bit of sunburn on his feet, knees and arms where he sat on the rocks by the river unburdening himself! My poor baby, all I can say is we really do our best as parents but Hell it's not easy, especially when the parents are not in step with one another. It took Daughter No.1 to make me feel better about myself - she, with all her problems in her busy life, picked me up, dusted me off and took all my baggage away!

On Sunday Golden Boy and Golden Wife left and the rest of us relaxed while a storm crashed in the mountains above the house - hardly a drop of rain fell on us but the soak area of the mountain took a pounding. 10 minutes later the river came down in flood with tree trunks and topsoil turning it into a dark brown stew of roiling water. We watched as helicopters circled above the kloof upstream, imaging all sorts of horrors. Heard later that a climber had fallen and got stuck between the rocks, breaking a shoulder blade as he did so. He was finally rescued and taken out at 5am next morning!

On Monday Daughter No1 left for work, leaving us with Beloved Grandson until he too left on Wednesday. Suddenly it's all over and the house is eerily quiet and empty. We are back to our usual slobby selves, eating too much, resting and reading too much (IS there such a crime?) and back to the gym to try to futilely work off some of the wibbly wobbly bits.

Oh Yes - Forgot!!!! Grandpa asked Granny to marry him in May 2011 and she answered YES!!! Must be mad but what the hell, I always was a sucker for lovely man!!!

God Bless All who read my Blog and may 2011 bring all you wish for - within moderation!

Belgium in 6 days

We have been staying with friends in the Flemish part of Belgium for the last 6 days and having an absolute blast! They have made us SO welcome and taken us around all the places of interest - that, coupled with fantastic weather until yesterday, has made us think of a return visit to do all the things we just couldn't manage this time. Between OAP's sore hip and our hostess's sore leg (she fell in Jordan and broke it and has a plate and screws which are paining her muchly) I felt as if I was on a cripples day out every time we ventured out! Eventually the two of them would find a bench to sit on while our host and I would dash off to see the rest of the sights! We did Antwerp, Brugges(Broosch its pronounced!) and Brussels and there is still loads to see. Today we went to the botanical gardens in Antwerp which, though small, are very comprehensive and then we had tea and pancakes in the Toneelhuis (Theatre) which was VERY baroque. In the morning we cruised a huge department store called Carrefour where OAP bought himself TWO PAIRS of lovely suede boots which look remarkably like Caterpillars (the boot not the insect!). But we learnt that in Antwerp there used to be many canals threaded through the city - the ships would come to the mouth of the huge river and then offload into the barges which would then take everything upriver to the city. But when plague broke out the city fathers thought it was due to the stagnant water in the canals (more like to be cholera in those days with all the sewage in the water!) so they drained them and those they didn't fill in they sold to the townsfolk who had to "cap" them. This they did and then built houses on top of the caps but apparently the canals (refilled naturally from the water table) still exist underneath and you can do a tour of underground Antwerp by boat with a torch!!! I HAVE to do that! In Brussels we went up the Atomium which I last saw in 1958 when it was built for the World Trade Fair - what a blast from the past that was. Brugges was quaintly beautiful with all its little canals, ye olde coffee shoppes and ancient buildings and bridges and we did a tour of the town in a motor boat as the handicapped amongst us couldn't walk too much! For once in my life I am as fit as a flea and poor OAP is champing at the bit with his problem. In two weeks time we are back in SA and will have his hip looked at by an expert to see what can be done.

Camping August 2010

Like a swallow we fly from land to land

Seeking the sun to shine on our skin

And when that skin is suitably tanned

We return to SA, my children, our kin.

This year it snowed

It rained and it blowed

We fried and we froze

From our toes to our nose(S).

We shivered at night

And sweated by day

Our backs got all cranky

We drove home - oh yay!

But through all we had a great time

So I tossed of this poem - which doesn't quite rhyme!