An a-ha moment

There's a great walking track at the end of my street, which leads to a well-touristed lookout point. I usually walk this track on my own, and in the summer I've often set out quite late in the day so that it's getting dark by the time I've turned around for the return journey. And I would often come across lone males loitering about off-track.

Being a woman, encountering lone male loiterers tends to detract from the pleasure in my hour of fresh air and exercise. But I was probably just being paranoid.

Perhaps that guy was jogging (because they always seem to be wearing skimpy shorts, even in winter) along and had paused to admire the abundant scenery. Perhaps, after the first one stopped, another guy running behind him glanced over, briefly agreed on the loveliness of the view over the town below, then ducked into the bushes for a wee. We all know how much men like to wee outdoors. The the first guy sees him out the corner of his eye and remembers, "Yeah, my bladder's kinda bursting full. I could do with a wee too." And he ducks into the bushes, forgetting that perhaps it might be a little more polite to find a different spot. And then, embarrassed, they see each other and leave.

Or maybe this hill is gay pick-up spot and I, resident of this street for almost longer than Keira Knightley has been alive, just didn't realise until my neighbour mentioned it.

Big balls

As you know, I'm on a mission to get back into shape, a mission which took on a new intensity after I saw a photo of myself in a swim suit.

So far I'm still doing a 35-minute fast walk home from work four days a week, which has done good things for my thigh muscles but less-than-impressive things for my office look (I wear my powder-blue walking sneakers with everything). If The Little Madam is still napping when I get home, I do my sit-ups, half push-ups and leg lifts before I even let myself near the fridge door (although today was a complete bust, because TLM decided to have a 40-min catnap and was already waiting for me to entertain her when I got home.)

And now I have an exercise ball. (Up until now, I've always known these giant rubber beach balls as Swiss balls. However, a Swiss friend of mine - who actually owns one of these things too - doesn't understand why everyone here refers to them as Swiss balls, whereas everyone in Switzerland just calls them exercise balls. So in deference to someone who ought to know, I've stopped calling them Swiss.)

Actually, I've had my exercise ball for about three weeks now, bought on TradeMe. Unfortunately for me, I didn't notice that it would be in a deflated state at time of sale, and I didn't have anything to pump it up with. It was just as well that my Swiss ball-owner (not Swiss-ball owner, mind!) had a little air-pump thingy that accompanied her ball. Yay..an excuse to go visiting...

Did you know that, once an exercise ball is fully deflated there is a very good chance you won't be able to get it into your car (unless you drive a van, an SUV or a truck)?

When I carried my now fully inflated orb to my Toyota Echo I realised there was a real chance that I'd be carrying it back into my friend's house and pulling out the pin. There was an audible sigh of relief (as opposed to an audible sigh of a giant balloon leaking air) when, with only a small amount of grunting and pushing, I manoeuvred my object of hope into the back seat, next to my very curious toddler in her carseat.

By the way, I still haven't gotten around to using the darned thing. I think I bought too big a ball.