muscles

Not writing a blog feels like not breathing right. I’m all staccato and pixillation. It’s been busy – I’ve been busy with work, people, emotive tiddlypoms, opportunistic dynamics and sunshine. I complain about none of those but they do demand a new attention, one to which I had, heretofore, not thought about at all. Truth is, I forgot that I am now over the 70 hurdle and that does make an infuriating difference. I don’t ‘look’ my age, or so I am told, and when I see others bent over big midriffs, stick in both hands and with a list of ailments so long that, were I to ask about them, Wednesday would turn into Thursday.

It doesn’t seem to matter how actively I make my brain work, with scrabble, wordle, writing, reading, good conversations on interesting subjects, nor how much I walk, row, bend, strengthen core muscles, a body will demise. It’s a right p in the a, and no mistake, but that’s how it is. Three days work in a busy cafe takes me four days to recover from, even though I love it. The whole getting old thing, in my opinion, is of faulty design. Surely the whole person should age concommitantly, brain and body agreeing on a strategy and just getting the hec on with it. But, no. There are those whose body continues about a million miles beyond their brain, and vice versa. Who ever thought that was a fun idea?

So I doze a lot, catching snatch-sleeps randomly, but not on work days, obviously. I tell myself this is newish, that I will get used to it, and I hope I will because I don’t remember a time when I had this much fun. Buzzing as a team member, laughing, serving, joking, teasing, washing up, chatting, moving, helping……all so uplifting. I have more energy than ever raised within the past 4/5 years. I laugh more, and easily. I see the fun in pretty much everything. I matter. I am seen, valued, important, and what I think is this……..

There should be a shop (do I have to write ‘store’?) for oldies who find a new purpose and who are on the hunt for a new body, one that isn’t carrying all the sharps and damages of decades. I could flip through the items for sale, check out the general strength, the state of internal organs, the power in the arms, hands and fingers, the vertebrae, the hips, knees and more, the versatility of well-toned muscles and the ability to bend from a strong core. A bit like buying a wedding dress, but more long lasting. I would keep my face, heart, mind and beliefs, however, because it was all of those attributes that got me this far in my crazy bonkers life and I love my life.

Perhaps I need to learn to pace myself, whatever the hell that means.

Up with the sun, we are and ready for action. The task this day is to de-grease the deck and then to oil it for when my younglings let out the house. So much to do, so little time, but I am always game on for physical work, never having been good at sitting on my butt for very long. It always takes time, as a guest, to find out what ordinary tasks I can take on. There’s the washing up, of course, and the floor sweeps etcetera, but I find there’s often a lot of ‘You’re on holiday’ responses at first, when I offer to help, which is a caring sort of thing to say. I counter that now with a reminder to them that my butt is expanding with all this being on holiday stuff, and my legs need a cartwheel or two to flex them up again. I don’t notice how much flexing I do back home, lugging or stacking wood, lifting heavies out the way or into it, gardening, climbing steps, scrubbing out cupboards or hoovering black spider webs in the ghastly loft. Just ordinary stuff, as I say.

The deck is covered with furniture, big plant pots, heavy tables and the big basket of dog toys. We clear, sweep, shift and heft, de-grease, hose down and wait for the sun to dry it all off. Yesterday we went to the store in search of the recommended oils plus brushes and spoke to Yolande who has a real wealth of knowledge on all things hardware. She is also an Afrikaner. After some discussion on the right and best oils for the task in hand, she asked a question that would have sounded like this in the UK, a perfectly ordinary question for sure. ‘How big is your deck?’ She, obviously needed to know that in order to establish how many gallons of oil we might need to comfortably cover all that wood, and for two or more coats. However, the way an Afrikaner would ask that question is “How big is your dick?’ My son, with a twinkle in his eye, replied “Now, Yolande, that is a very personal question!’ I watched her face, first confused and then what she had asked and how we heard it dawned on her face. First, a wide smile and then a burst of giggles that lifted us all into the air, astonishing passers by with a barrowload of hammers and planks, screws and very grumpy faces.

Such fun can be had if the fun bones and muscles are flexed and ready for the chance to out. A simple exchange of words, twinkly eyes and a dancing sense of humour can bring the sunshine into any day, can put the spring into a step, can turn an ordinary task into a story. We were still chuckling as we left, as was Yolande.