Isolation?

Gidday.

Well, it has been a while, I know. I enrolled in a summer school paper to play catch up, thinking that the breeding season would slow down and I would have time to work on this project. Nyah-uh. We have only started to slow down (seasonal business, we go flat out for about five months of the year, then play catch up over the winter) this week, just a tad. Problem: paper due tomorrow.

I have the day off work, to fine tune the dreaded project, and have just submitted it.

O. M. G.

So damn relieved.

Sometimes I wonder what the heck I am doing with this “go-nowhere” degree. I am only doing it for self fulfillment purposes, and man, it is a bloody unfulfilling process when I bleed to get things on paper. Luckily I am off to the races later this afternoon to watch my filly race. Not great hopes, she has drawn a wide gate, but she is on the recovery trail after a wind operation and ran a very encouraging third at her first post-op start a few weeks ago. If she runs well – oh let’s be honest here Paula – if she runs motherless last – I will be having the hugest gin tonight!

This has been an interesting last few weeks. I have decided I am now casting myself as the vilest bitch out there. I have cut my middle brother out of my life – long, stupid, juvenile story – and had words with my oldest-friend-in-the-world. No longer am I the peacemaker/doormat/people-pleasing-dumbass that I often was for the first forty-five years (maybe more) of my life. Hell, I have always been opinionated, and voiced that, but, my God I liked to play nice. I can’t be arsed with any of that palaver anymore. I have re-branded.

To illustrate: Roger and I have an exchange student living with us for six months. She’s delightful and the same age as our youngest, who heads off on exchange to France in August. We committed to this, after much discussion about our weird living situation, as a pay-it-forward type of thing. Someone will be hosting our girl, the least we could do was host another “as payment.” So, we decided together that we would try to do a lot of things that “normal” families do, play good hosts. We have had a lot of activities planned, and one of them was to do a North Island walk near our holiday home before the weather turns to shit, and they close the mountain track in winter. It is about 20km, and in an alpine area, requiring a medium level of fitness. I have been on the treadmill and doing as much walking as I can, to catch up on my waned fitness as I have been sitting around reading and writing outside of work hours. I don’t feel I have done enough just yet. Friends got wind of us wanting to do the walk, and invited themselves along. Now, this sounds all very convivial, but these friends include a marathon runner and two women who do a lot of alpine tramping and are SAHMs who go to intense gym sessions every day they are not climbing mountains. What a fun day for a late 40s lardarse, huh? I was furious, and pulled out last week, citing my essay’s deadline (which was a real problem.) My oldest-friend-in-the-world (one of the “mountaineers”) rang me at work on Monday to get me to convince the boys to do it another day as something had come up for her and Mountaineer#2. I told her I wasn’t doing it today, but planned to take the girls and some friends and do it in the next few weeks. She replied, “cool, M#2 and I will come too!” I blankly stared at the wall in my office and replied, “no. No you won’t. I am unfit, and this is my idea of hell, you two sprinting up the mountain, and me breathlessly trying to catch up, only to have you sprint away again when I get to where you are waiting, when I need to drink water and breathe.” She was a bit shitty saying she would be fine doing it at my pace. But she won’t. And I would be miserable. I know this from prior experience with her, Ms PE-degree/push-yourself-to-the-point-of-death. I want to do this and feel GOOD about my achievement, ENJOY the beautiful scenery, not feel strapped, agonised and miserable. This without the problems I have with social anxiety these days. I would be in an uncomfortable physical space, pushing myself far too hard, hell, I know it will be physical, and I do push myself like I did the other day keeping up with a party going up a different mountain, but it was a GOOD challenge, not a scary-I-think-I-might-have-a-heart-attack kind of challenge, more a sweaty, heartbeating-in-my-head kind of Ididit, and IknewIwouldandcould kind of achievement. I don’t need to also be in an uncomfortable mental space, fighting my mental panic attack symptoms I now get around people I know. So, the whole lot of the crew that Roger has dubbed The Kardashians (because they are rich and useless) has had a little catfight over who is going, when, with whom, and where they are planning on sipping Pinot Gris afterwards, urghh. The self-proclaimed leaders of the clan wanting to do it their way and day, while two of the fatter men have worked quite hard and cleared their work schedules to do it today. Roger just said, “FuckYouAll, I’m going Wednesday, and anyone who wants to stay at our place is welcome.”  He told me that Fatty #1 (his best mate) and him are going to get going at around 6am and knock the bugger off, before the crowds. Meanwhile, I feel like a bit of a failure because my plan to do something fun and outdoorsy has been thrown off track a bit. I am so damn pleased I no longer play nice with the Kardashians, but hell, I feel like I was elbowed out of my own mini-adventure!

And my battle with isolation continues…

Oh well, will go watch the horse race and get-the-fuck-over-it with a giant gin tonight – earned!

Cin cin dahlinks!