Break Yourself Better

I've been having a lovely time writing for a site called The Weekly Wrinkle about all kinds of things that make me laugh.  Today I'm really happy to be posting my next bit of nonsense back here, in my happy in between, enjoy...

This is it, I’m going to make a fortune because it’s nearly time to unveil my very own, “Post-Christmas, everyone’s a bit fat”…..Broken Limb Fitness Fad.

Back in August I broke my 5^th metatarsal while stumbling clumsily on holiday (perfectly sober more’s the pity). After an operation to pin an errant little bit of bone and 14 weeks of post op tedium, I have found many unforeseen shallow benefits to this injury; various aspects of incapacitation and recovery that are as good if not better than many of the nonsense “eat yourself thin and happy” things I’ve read over the years. 

So here, gratis for you readers, I reveal snippets of my soon to be best-selling book and DVD: Break Yourself Better.

Skin Care 

After 3 or 4 weeks of non-weight bearing/hopping/crutching, then 3 weeks of partial weight bearing/crutching, I found hidden skin benefits. Namely that my left foot was transformed all over; soft, smooth and unblemished as a newborn’s.  Persistently and without any effort from me.  And it still is.  Genius.

Bingo Wing Busting #1 - Swinging on Crutches

After around 6 or 7 weeks on crutches I had extremely firm upper arms.   As a result I have not yet consigned said crutches to the loft (don’t worry, not stealing from the NHS, mine cost 11 Euros in Spain).  Just a few minutes a day swinging around in the bedroom is keeping the bingo wings at bay and is fun now that it’s not a necessity.

Bingo Wing Busting #2 - Bum Shuffle Toning

I found that the shuffling up and downstairs on my bum that I had to endure for numerous weeks had two fabulous benefits.  Firstly for my upper arms, much more fun than those machines at the gym.  Secondly it also managed to flatten down my bottom and kind of dissipate all the wobbly bits.  For my hugely successful book I shall endeavour to find some dodgy science to back all of that up.

Surprise Weight Loss Opportunities #1 - Pre-Pubescent Flashback

Leg withering and muscle atrophy is not really something you’d imagine could have a silver lining, but I’m happy to say it can.  You see, on a bad day, I think it is secretly a little bit ok to look in the mirror at the top of your withered thigh and see that it looks just like Victoria Beckham’s. (*DISCLAIMER, do not look at the whole leg, just the bits that have not been thin since you were 10 years old)

Surprise Weight Loss Opportunities #2- Allergic Reaction Result!

Adverse reactions to both anaesthetic and pain killers, plus inactivity and slight depression, can mean unforeseen weight loss. (*DISCLAIMER, continued exciting eating makes the weight loss/gain boundary quite hard to discern.  At some point you have to step away from the biscuit cupboard)

Hard-Core Points 

I find that any points this many years past child-bearing are hard won.  Even my two natural births are long past counting and it’s been difficult to garner anything on the pain scale since then. Men on the other hand continue to do man-games like football through and past their 30s, so fractures,sprains,ligament tears are commonplace. However a bona-fide broken bone, operation and ligament damage, borne with supreme grace and bravery (this is hindsight here remember) just adds to your “I’m harder than you” quota.

So, should you have stumble-trip-clunked over the festive period and find your brittle bones suffering, come and find solace at a bookshop near you.

Monday, lovely Monday

Today I cracked it, this working three days a week thing.
13 weeks after my foot op, I spent this free day getting the balance right.
Firstly taking my boys to school, seeing the other parents, enjoying the reaction of the kids to the Great Fire of London story session I did last week. Then I went for coffee with my lovely friends at the Deli I always wished I spent more time in.
From there to a quick butcher and grocery shop before 2 hours singing with a group of wonderful old Jazz musicians. Then straight to the gym for that all important rehab, before school pickup, gentle unhurried walk home, homework, playing and music round the kitchen table while I cooked and ate with the kids.
Guilt free, restful, creative, happy being both quick and slow, lazy and efficient, I am delighted to have had this one day feel this good.

Dis-Abling Lack of Empathy

I broke my foot on holiday back at the start of August.  

One month and an operation later I'm still laid up/compromised/trying to live my normal life as a working mum of young kids in the summer holidays.  I have crutches and an an aircast and am trying to use them now my stitches are out.  I spend most days deciding between backache with my leg up to stop the swelling, or foot ache if it's down to type and work.  My perenially and notoriously skinny legs are now so spindly and lopsided (I have used the word withered a little too often) that I couldn't rush the recovery period even if I tried (I have, don't tell my Mum or Sister).

  

Now as a normal kind of woman, generally healthy, in my late 30s, this is a frustration and what I hope will be a blip of a quarter of a year.  What it means as a mummy to a not so typical little 4 and seven-eighths year old boy, is an enormous eye opener.

My little man has two very rare genetic disorders 18p- and 22q+ and for reasons best known to higher powers, is gloriously not severely compromised by them, anymore and at the moment.  That isn't to say that life with him is all whoopadidoo easy.  He does have a "disability" and there are challenges aplenty, but he is not currently "disabled" and we're thankful that he can see, hear, talk, walk, eat, toilet, run, think and enjoy his life like others his age.

So many of his little Chromosome 18 gang have really tough challenges in many of those areas and through them I've been introduced to a world of varied disabilities.  So when a hearty grumbling pierces my "I'm fine, really" attitude, the people who've heard my moans have been the friends with typical families and typical lives and typical troubles.  Not my hard-pressed amazing supermommy tribe. But that's for exploration on another post on another site (www.differentizgood.org, here I come I promise).

Why I'm writing this is because as a temporarily not-able person in London, I am incredulous as to how people who have lifelong mobility issues get to join society at all when the simple things are made so difficult.  

1. In most public places, if I need to use the facilities I have to go either down or up numerous stairs.  
2. Any walking I do has my eye fearfully trained on the pavement because of the uneven flagstones and potholes.
3. Pedestrian crossings are about two thirds as short as they need to (I knew this anyway, as an unofficial older person guardian whenever there's been one next to me crossing).
4. And in the city of London in 2011 with countless refurbishments having gone on over the years and an Olympics coming up, I am unable to find step-free access to a major tube station allowing me to physically reach my office in Goodge Street in the centre of London. The closest I can get is to either change tube lines twice (with steps) or get off half way and then get two different buses and have to walk.  So my amazingly patient bosses have cabbed me into work one day in the last month and been great about me working from home the rest.  

Today I am hoping to brave my normal journey there and back like a normal person.  But commuters and fellow travellers please beware.

Because if any of you tut as I fearfully stump towards you gesturing for your seat as I get on the tube and try to sit down before it moves off and I fall over...... 

Or if you tut when at Goodge Street station I take 10 minutes to climb the many stairs from platform to lifts, before hoping you don't stand on my foot as I edge to the packed lifts.....

Or if I over-react a little when you shove me as you do everyday in those lifts or surge forward and squash me as you try to enter and leave...... 

I will not be nice happy sunny Zen former-tube passenger Sara. 

I will be sore, cross and vindictively passionately vocal about our disgusting lack of empathy for anyone less than typical, and how this scourge of our society shames us daily. 

You have been warned.

PS on 6th September

That post was written last week.

I have just returned home from said commuting to work and the scores are as follows:

Fellow tube-goers - nearly full marks, but I cheated by travelling not in peaktime.

Bus nobbers, as I shall now call them -  Zero, generally awful and selfish behaviour inducing a near panic attack causing me to get off a stop early because I feared falling over or being squashed by people or the bus doors.

Vindictive Sara in the face of these bus-nobbers -  Zero.  Too scared and spindly to stand up and rant.  

And now my poor little calf is yelling "what's happening" very very loudly at me, having had to walk or stand for 35 minutes at the end of a day full of more action than it's had in a month.

Tomorrow's another day.  Now where is that local cab number????

Hop ouch grrrr

Another few weeks go by without a blogpost, again with a brilliant excuse.
I went on holiday with family to Spain, I had a lovely time despite a few blips.
The first being when we arrived at the airport at 4am on Sunday to find that our flight had been cancelled. During the next 15 hours or so until we arrived at the villa in Spain, I only had two freak outs. One as we drove home from the airport about what time to go back and how much to trust the airline. The other 15 hours later when I couldn't find the coach that was taking us to the car we had hired.
Did I say car? Sorry I mean van. Actually that was just funny, driving into Puerto Banus on a shopping trip in our little white van, sandwiched between Bentleys and other posh cars. We played a game with the kids, trying to decide what our delivery should be each trip.
I know you'll be wondering, so I'll tell you. Fishing rods to the port, because it's by the sea, and then deliver the fish on the way back to the villa.
Anyway, holiday was nice and quite relaxing. We had a day trip to Gibraltar which we all decided would be gorgeous if owned by someone other than the British. That way you'd get to eat nice healthy food in the sunshine, although you wouldn't have M&S.
So on Thursday morning I am hurrying round the pool, gathering suncream and water bottles and hats and goggles while the kids are getting ready for a swim. Then
Stumble
Snap and twist
Scream
Yes, simply standing still and turning to fetch something I manage to stumble trip. The scream was me telling the kids to move away, the silence was me saying to D I've really really done something bad.
I spent the next 3 days unable to walk on it assuming a bad sprain and getting sympathy by posting photos on Facebook.
Red crutches on Friday bought for 11 Euros help with independence but when on Saturday my toes turned black, I figured all was not well.
Skipping the (don't) meet and assist at the airport, the kind of fun wheelchair through security, ambilift off at Luton, child pushing me hair-raisingly at incoming passengers on way to car, and the new swear words I invented in response to hubby's "man up" comment, we dropped me at A&E on way home to find I had broken and displaced my 5th metatarsal. I made sure I told D I was manning up as the nurse sent me to the plaster room though!
Long story short, temporary cast led to inadequate consultant at fracture clinic who said no pin or cast needed, just walk and see you in seven weeks. Second opinion on Thursday, a week after I hurt it said let's operate the bone is badly twisted.
After the op that night the surgeon said it would not have healed if we hadn't pinned it and that I would have had terrible arthritis.

So, I'm typing this in bed, day 6 of 14 where it must be raised and rested. I now know the following:
Crutches are fun for about a minute
Morphine is great while it lasts and beyond that my body disagrees violently
Codeine and I will never be friends
I am able to safely lie myself on the bathroom floor before fainting after a build up of codeine
6 year old boys do not like immobile nauseous mummies during the summer holidays
Enforced rest is crappy but having no choice helps me to behave...that and the fear put in me by surgeon about a big pin in a very small bone...

And I don't know the following:
Would camping solo with kids and very nice friends be very stupid post day 14 even if am allowed to walk with boot and crutches by then?
Is faking wellness better than admitting pain with angry 6 year olds?
How much apologising and niceness is reasonable to expect from husband who has been on business trip from days 2 to 6 of incarceration and is now asleep on my sickbed, dealing with jet lag, before leaving for a meeting in a few hours?
Whether I am capable of giving in and just going with this resting lark while the house is in disarray despite the amazing and fortuitous former au pair who has been saving things here.

In pure vanity and fitness terms, I don't know whether my left leg should have already have thinned so much. I was afflicted with chicken legs before, hence this stumble trip and broken leg having been put off for so long in one so clumsy??? but my poorly leg already resembles a sparrow. What bird of thin limbs could possibly follow in the next week??

Ah well, new experiences abound.

Day 6, already slightly better than day 5, day 5 much worse than days 3&4
Overall, stoicism and northern grit just about intact.

Age 39...

...and I've just decided to embrace the power of makeup.

At some point during my stroppy teenage years I looked at my beautiful mummy who still, to this day, has her routine of putting on makeup as part of her every day, and for some reason decided that that wasn't for me.

I remember thinking that I don't want to get used to wearing makeup every day, so that I don't ever have to hate my face on a day when I don't put it on.  Also I was and am a bit anti-routine and lazy and hate feeling like I have to do something every day without fail or else. 

So for years I've had some makeup, managed to put it on when going out for the night, or for weddings or parties or whatever.  And done that managing not to be too embarrassed at any nice comments that might have ensued.  I also have tried very hard over the years not to bristle at the comments I've received when my curly hair has been straight on that day after it's been cut.  Which are right up there with the 'oh you look so different, so lovely without your glasses'.

That's really nice and all, along with the straight hair comments, alongside the makeup comments, but actually I have curly hair and glasses and generally can't be arsed with makeup.  Which is also ok....isn't it?

And I realise that yes, that is ok, but so is wanting to look nice every day, wanting to go beyond the clean face and moisturiser rule that became my bare minimum.  Wanting to allow myself to dress nicely, to feel good and to use the tools that can help me with that.  Tools that also include a good night's sleep, plenty of water, remembering to smile and not just frown, and continue to breathe in all the lovely things around me.

As an official bona fide nearly grown up, I now embrace wanting to have nicely highlighted hair and trust my fantastic hairdresser and his advice as to when he will let me realise my ambition to let my grey hair 'run free'.

I look at my mother, my sister in law, my mum, I think of an old friend and her presumably still active lipstick obsession, and think how lovely they look.  I must make sure I tell them more often how their effort is appreciated from where I'm sitting.  I also think of my own late blooming as one more thing that me and my super sis have in common.  

On my recent annual girls weekend, I found myself looking closely at my gorgeous blonde friend's makeup, using it, seeing how nice it looked and grinning at how different I felt.  So for my 39th birthday a month ago I asked my mum to buy me the magic Touche Eclat, I bought myself a pressed powder, dug out the bronzer and nice lipstick and liquid eyeliner that has slowly snuck into my top drawer this last year, and started to gently form my little routine. 

Nothing or a tiny bit for the glowing good days.  A little more help when feeling grey and tired.  And the maximum, well my minimum maximum anyway, should there be a camera or a need to feel pretty and instead of standing out as tired and old, allow myself to blend in as having cared enough to try a little.

Yes, that's the difference now.  

Now that I'm significantly older, tireder and able to look at the whole Sara in the mirror again, I realise that the makeup I once thought wearing would mean I'd stand out, actually allows me to blend in.   But blend in feeling happy, healthy, attractive and comfortable with myself.

So yes, this is a post about shallow things but a realisation that those surface changes are part and parcel of helping me to feel good deep down.

Now, where is that lovely lip gloss?

Camping

I have an ode to camping, having come back a week ago from my third ever camping trip.
Maybe it was the sun and the rain, maybe it was the same four weather-hardy families second year running saying devil may care.

Maybe it was the newly mentally healthy frame of mind that has been sneaking up on me since the fundraiser...

but I had an amazing time.

I didn't feel overwhelmed by the organisation or the situation or the weather or the eating or the keeping warm
I didn't feel underwhelmed by the outdoors experience that I thought should be so much more

What I felt was calm, happy, in control but not controlling.

Eat when hungry, drink when the kids are in bed, go inside when it rains, come out when the sun shines.   Wear wellies, tshirts or raincoats, woolly hats and cardigans and shorts and vest tops.  Go swimming, make coffee to warm up, eat a little bit too much meat in our excitement of having food cooked on an ever ready BBQ.  Paint facepaint tattoos in the sun, swim in the sea, play football, have sneaky smokes behind the bikesheds.
Drink huge rum and cokes and eat snacks and play games and blow up balloons and laugh and chill and have a ball.
Listen to the rain, overwhelmingly loud, slightly worrying about whether we're all being flooded and rolling down the hill, but put all that aside and love the noise and power of nature.
Be clean and a bit dirty and a perfect balance of everything.
Embrace life
Camping rocks
Even in rainy sunny windy Norfolk
Bring on next year
x

Did It, Loved It

It's four nights on from my fundraising party and I'm finally in front of the computer able to update you all.

Reading back on my last post, I'm so happy to be able to report that I was so happy on the night, all night, even when I was a little bit stressed and frantic.

The venue was gorgeous, the people there were so helpful and professional, there was enough food, the band were awesome and they made our party feel cool and fun and loud.

So many people came to support us and left having enjoyed themselves.  My gorgeous niece bought a gaggle of her friends and they helped to boost the atmosphere with their whooping and gay abandon and bring the average age down considerably.

I felt so much kindness and love for us and our boy and our boys.  I looked around the room and realised that there was a representative there from pretty much the whole of my life and certainly a cross section of friends from the last 30 years.  Many not knowing anyone but me and whoever they came with, but all smiling, most drinking, some singing and all putting up with the hugs and snatched thanks as all they really got from me.

We have raised to date just over £11,000 and I'm utterly overwhelmed and thankful for that.  My target was five and I thought that in these times of need that that was a bit pie in the sky.  So how glorious it is that everyone has been so generous and how right it was, though hard, to email everyone who I still have email addresses for years on from when we met.

Many people have texted and emailed since to thank and congratulate me on putting the event on and the word inspirational has popped up a few times.

It's funny that word.
Even though I don't think about it often, and can't recall on demand a list of who I find inspirational, I know there are many who would make it on there.  Famous and not, alive and not, old, young, sick, healthy, rich, poor.  Inspiration comes in many guises, enduring and ephemeral and I think, all terribly important for our aspirational and happy mindsets.

I got through the whole night not crying at all, not during my speech (about which I can tell you nothing), not during my song (about which I can tell you all you need to know...bit low and Barry White but I got away with it, thankfully Beat It snuck up on me later and was such fun) and not even when Alistair, Bonnie, friends and others thanked me and said they were proud.

But typing here with my hair on end, late at night, shaggy old shorts donned, slightly embarrassing dinner digesting as D is away again on business, I feel quite teary about people finding me inspirational.  People being so generous as to tell me that and share that loveliness with me.  People that I think are quite wonderful themselves.

Because I think deep down under the long encouraged humility and bloody minded playing down that I employ as walls around me, I think that it's massively important to me to think that I can inspire anyone.  To do anything. And to be moved by me, us, this.

The tears are coming at last.
What a lucky girl I am