Second post today - Do you want a laugh ??

Well this may not appeal to everyone’s sense of humour but it appealed to mine because if I didn’t laugh I don’t know what I would have done !

I never thought I would get to the point where exercise became such an important part of my day – whether it will be the same when I am working I don’t know. But, I got home from doing my big shop at Coles and it had stopped raining so got changed and set out with my water bottle and brolly. I was probably about 500m from home when it started to pitter patter – not much but enough to put the brolly up so my glasses didn’t get wet,

Within about 400m my arms had had the biggest workout trying to hold the brolly in front of me – picture a 5’7”, 25kgs over weight woman, walking down a main road trying to hold a brolly in front of her against (what felt like) gale force winds. At this point I probably should have turned around and gone home but I didn’t ! Said wind doing it’s level best to blow up my loose fitting singlet to expose my white blubbery belly to all and sundry driving past. On the other hand, I am doing my best to keep the brolly right side up, hanging onto my water bottle and pulling my singlet down each time it blew up. I also have to keep lifting the brolly to make sure I am not going to walk into any poles or people (thinking about it now, why I thought anyone else would be daft enough to walk in this weather I’m not sure !!)

Turn the corner out of the wind tunnel, only to be caught in a tunnel slightly less windy – the challenge on this road was that the wind was blowing in more than one direction !!! And, of course, blowing harder and harder. I managed to negotiate this road and turn into one slightly more protected EXCEPT the golf umbrella I am using is really only designed for pitter patter rain – not the heavy downpour I find myself in. Thus, the very item I took to stop me getting anything on my glasses has turned into the very thing dripping water onto them !!!!

The trick now becomes negotiating driveways which are painted – damn, do people not consider walkers in the rain when they paint their driveways ????? Once I was sure it wasn’t a painted driveway that was going to make me see my a** when I slipped, I had to negotiate my way through the streams of water running down each driveway because my little stumpies are no long enough to make the jump across the driveway.

This is when it starts to get really funny because the rain has cooled things down very nicely, I on the other hand, have started to get really hot – so, what happens when heat meets cold – steam occurs – on my glasses !!!!!! By now I am just about p**ing my pants I am laughing so much. I have since turned into another relatively protected road and decide that I should skull my water as it is getting too hard to hold onto the water bottle and the brolly – so I do this and, as fate would have it, there are no rubbish bins on hand !!!! But, at least it is lighter to hold now that it is empty.

Up comes to final turn to take me home – BUT, that is back into the wind tunnel !!! So after turning the corner and nearly walking into another poor soul out in this awful weather, I take the brolly down and just walk in the rain !! The next challenge is seeing out of eyes getting stung with the rain falling behind my glasses and having to look through lenses which are just a mass of rain drops. So I get to a road and a car is turning – I gesture for him to go, he obviously sees me without a brolly and, I think, is gesturing for me to go but I am not sure because I can’t see that well, so I gesture back, and then both he and his passenger gesture for me to go so across I run (well as fast as I can run) to the other side of the pavement. By now not only am I soaking wet but my hair has been blown out of the clips holding it back so on top of everything else I have my hair hanging in my face and adding to the drips on my glasses !!!

I got home, took my shoes and socks off and gingerly walk across all the tiles to the laundry where everything went into the machine before I went and had a shower. But, now I know I can curl up on the couch and either watch some TV or read my book and not feel guilty because I haven’t been for a walk today. And now my glasses are all clean and I see again – this makes me really happy !!!