Oh my. Has it really been that long?

Three days a week of attending classes has been a bit of a shock to my (cossetted) system, and I've really not had the brainspace to think about blogging. I think I possibly said that last post, didn't I? (So it's possibly as well I've not been saying the same thing on a more regular basis!)

As I explained, albeit briefly, I am doing A Course. Just briefly, it's a Work Skills & Training Course (formerly known, and still referred to as the CEEW course (pronounced as in 'queue')... Careers, Education Employment for Women, or something like that. A freebie course, designed to help women gain the confidence and skills to get back into the workforce.

Yo! That's me. Or as I like to say "... to help me figure out what I want to do when I grow up."

When I made that snap decision to do it a few weeks back, I was a bit concerned that it might be a bit of a mickey mouse course, and a waste of time. As I predicted/hoped I'm pretty much on top of a few of the subjects (like computers, and even Maths, even if I haven't done any specifically for around about 30 years!) And while I question the worth of doing Science at this point in my life, and I wonder if I really give a damn about 'Womens Studies', if nothing else, I'm giving the brain cells some exercise.

But then there is a 'subject' (of the airy, fairy, touchy, feely, BS variety) that is turning out to be the most valuable of all. Meh... that doesn't quite even do it justice. Life changing more like.

Apart from making me painfully aware of the self-discipline involved in having to be somewhere kind of important three days a week, what it is really doing is addressing my self-confidence. I feel like I've turned a corner, or conquered a mountain, or something equally metaphorical. I've suddenly discovered that I'm actually OK. That I'm not inferior to other people, that I've got something to offer, that my opinion is valid. That most of the time I actually do come across as the type of person I want to be, but also that I have the tools within myself to combat the not so wonderful traits that jump out occasionally.

I'll leave any further deep and meaningfuls for another time... but suffice to say I'm on a ride to somewhere positive. I have a feeling that this 'somewhere' down the track might involve writing, and so I do want to figure out how to make the most of blogging opportunities. I am not sure whether to totally reinvent myself blog-wise, or to simply renovate this place... but there is no rush to figure that out in the immediate future.

Meantime I'll try and get back here more often now - after all, I don't want to lose the handful of you that have kept my blogging ego afloat over the past year or so!!! (And just so you know, I have managed to keep reading everyone! - it's the creative output that has been on snooze.)

Today some panic over due dates of 'assignments' eased when it dawned on me that they were due at the end of the semester, not the end of this term! Doh! (Bit of anxiety had been happening there, yes!) They are nothing major, and stuff I should be able to do on my ear, but I've still not lost the ability to make mountains out of molehills - or turn simple tasks into much more complex ones.

I still have a 5 minute presentation and a science report to do in the next four weeks which are freaking me out just a little bit. And in the midst of that, I have to train somehow for THIS, and I'm not quite sure that one (1) 100 mile in a day ride completed 10 days ago will be enough!



















Yup. Some things haven't changed. I'm still crazy.

I had a bit of a dilemma today - and it wasn't over the decision to skive off a day of TAFE classes in only my second week! That part was easy! Marc's birthday, and a coincidental day off for him. Chance of a bit of a sleep in... and getting to spend the day with him... No contest, whether we got to go riding or not, even if the idea of a serious training ride was the catalyst for the decision in the first place.

But the bloody sore knee...? How sensible would it be to ride today, given how sore it was last night? Would I run the risk of making it even worse, and really stuffing it up - just in time for the 100 mile ride in 10 days time?

You can joke (Jeanie!) - but I really was tending to the hypothesis that 2 days of sitting in a classroom (and the car) was making it worse rather than better, as ridiculous as that might sound. The way it was hurting last night, I was thinking that I couldn't make it much worse.

So, I decided on a 'gentle' ride, with due warning to him that we might not make it more than a few blocks.

But it all went fine... the knee barely twinged, and as of 10.56pm (as I type right now) it is still all okely dokely, hunky dory... etc etc. We called our (piddly) 31km (with lunch out at a local cafe in the middle) a 'recovery ride', and while it would have been more rewarding to have done a serious 80-90km training run, I am a much happier girl tonight than I was last night when I truly wondered whether I'd be a scratching for next week. While we won't have done as much training as we'd like, we do know that we can make the distance if we just keep riding.

So hypothesis proved! (Although the voltaren tablets I've taken could also have had some small effect!)

Not really what I needed to confirm that I'd made the right choice to do this course in the first place.

Couldn't we just ride bikes all day every day?


























These two photos of us were taken last Saturday. One of them will end up in the paper, because we have been CRAZY enough to have agreed to ride in a 24 hour/500km charity ride around and around a bloody velodrome - in about 8 weeks time. (Or less probably by now.)

I guess I'll fill you in more about that soonish too....

Between getting my backside out of the house three days a week to this new course, to a weekend full of cycling and netball, I've not been in the zone for waxing lyrical in blogland. Sitting here aimlessly catching up on my favourite blogs, yes. Composing anything remotely interesting - errr... no.

Ironic, really. The course I am doing to help me figure out what to do (in a follow your dream/passion/interests/skills/abilities kinda way) is the main thing that is taking me away from the couple of areas that I actually have an interest in pursuing. (ie. writing, and web design.)

[Would you be surprised to learn that the housework is suffering as well?]

If nothing else, I suppose it is giving me an insight into what life would be like doing what most mums already do. Things like having to rush around in the morning., and get out of the house the same time, or earlier than the kids. Not having the luxury of putting washing on/hanging it out mid-morning... or wandering into the shops any old time to pick up something for dinner... etc. Already I'm doing work experience it seems.. and I'm not an immediate convert. Why is it I think I want to work again?

Right now I'm not up to detailing the whys and wherefores of the course, so I'll leave that till.. um.. some time soon... maybe...

Meanwhile, on the other side of my life, the crazy adventures continue; we have our 100 mile ride (on the tandem) on Sunday week, and we are trying to get in a bit of training. We did around 80km on Saturday morning, and then snuck off from a netball carnival on Sunday for a quick 37km. I'm not quite sure what I did wrong, or differently, on Sunday (probably tried to make too much out of the 37km stint...) but by Monday morning, my left knee started playing up. It's not bad after a night's sleep, but gets gradually worse during a day of sitting in class and in the car driving to and fro to class, as well as the usual kid taxi runs.

Not happy Jan.

I had actually decided to take tomorrow off class (yes, I know, sounds slack already..) I have a good excuse, really. You see Marc has the day off work (local horseracing 'Cup Day' = many businesses giving up and giving employees the day off.) Plus it's his birthday! So it seemed an opportunity to do a serious training ride. One of my classes is computers (which is a basic, starting at 'this is how you turn the computer on' type of class so I won't miss much)... another is fairly 'meh', and I have the ability to catch up quick enough on the science class in the afternoon. (It's the first one, so most of it will be summarising what we are going to do...)

But. The KNEE is a problem.

Time to go to bed and see what tomorrow brings.