Stuff and stuff!

Additionally, ngggggggg!

*shakes fist at the world*
*sighs*

People keep telling me I need to take a holiday. It’s a lovely idea, but my problem is, they mean for me to come back. That’s probably why I don’t take many days off. They’re just a tease. If I’m going to be doing this, whatever the hell this is, then no point in giving myself regular bouts of temporary amnesia where I pretend to be a lady of leisure and have no worries to bother my pretty little head about. It only makes coming back to reality all the more difficult.

Now a permanent holiday, that’s something to think about.

Running has been an interesting experiment. I’ve learned a lot – mainly about pain – but here are my other observations two months into training.

- Runners’ decorum dictates that we do not wheeze as we pass each other. It’s not only pretty gross to hear someone coughing up their lungs, but it’s embarrassing to share your level of unfitness. It is customary, instead, to suck in your breath as you overtake.
- Emirati old ladies do not take kindly to being passed at close distance, even if you are female. They will angrily tsssk at you if you come to close and completely ignore the fact that the reason why you’ve been forced to infringe on their personal space is because their 2.5 rear-ends are smack dab in the middle of a runner’s course and are holding up traffic.
- No one should run in skin colored short-shorts, because from such and such a distance, it looks like they’ve got nothing on. And that’s scary. Makes you want to stop and head the other way.
- Lots of lonely guys come to check out chicks when they run. Why else would I see a regular parade of dudes, stylishly decked out in the latest MTV extra get up, puffing away at cigarettes while slowly meandering around the track.
- Anyone trying to pick me up when I’m running is likely to be coughed on and maced with my asthma inhaler.
- You can be a serious runner and still be seriously fat. When I figured that out it nearly put me off running for good. I mean, with all that pain and suffering, I should at least get the added benefit of some weight loss, no? Nuh uh, I gained weight. Muscle, they say, but after seeing regulars who are portly but able to do 10 kilometres easily, I’m worried.
- Beware the Attack Locomotive. This is a chick who doesn’t run, she stomps, and throws her shoulders and hips like’s she’s ploughing through. If that wasn’t unnerving enough, she likes to pace herself against me, so when I pass, like an angry bull she’ll start up and chase after me, only to stop a little bit ahead. Her slow approaching deafening clomp is like something out of a horror movie. I’ve taken to just stopping when I see her and letter her get far far away.
- Inspector Cluseau lives. I’ve seen him out at the park, in a giant pair of grey pants, a black and white striped T-shirt with three-quarter sleeves, a floppy hat pulled low over his face, big sun glasses, a push-broom moustache, and get this – a cigarette in his hand. If that’s not the man himself in one of his horrendous disguises I don’t wanna know who he is.
- Blisters can have blisters. And toe socks are a blessing in disguise, keeping your sad tootsies from any further friction while you run.
- You can run without having eaten, but as you progress you’ll discover you are running on the world’s only eight-sided square. No matter how often you seem to turn the corner, you’re still miles away from done. So do have a real lunch before you run.

It’s a weird thing when you do something you never thought you could do. You finally cross that line – the line you thought would only take endless amounts of pain and insane discipline and single-minded focus to reach – and realize it wasn’t all that bad. You could have done more. You could have gone farther, pushed yourself harder, been faster. And then you start making plans for the next goal.

Do I dare think I can run a half-marathon? We’ll see.

I love metaphors/idioms/homilies, or whatever you call them. They do a brilliant job of communicating for the usually tongue-tied me. I can't always find the right words, but I have images in my head, and those little vignettes paint the picture.

That said, I thought I'd share two of my favourites.

"I wouldn't spit on him if he was on fire." I thought I had picked this one up in my literary travels, but no one else I know has ever heard of it. Familiar, or did I really coin this brilliance myself?

"If my aunt had a mustache, she'd be my uncle." This is apparently a Rajasthani saying for the pointlessness of 'if onlys,' sorta like "If wishes were horses than beggars would ride." We have our own version of this that's been in my family for years, dunno where it originated from but it goes "If you had wheels, you'd be a bus."

What's your favourite or a family original?

People keep accusing me of sneaky thinking, advanced plotting and/or deliberate manipulation. ^0_0^ If that wasn't a blight on my character enough, the sad thing is, they're wrong. I somehow give the IMPRESSION of being far craftier than I am. So I look malicious but am actually quite dumb. Where's the good in this again?