Running, reading, classes about to start

I had quite a chilled weekend. We didn’t do too much. Today Paul swam laps at Centenary Pool, while I waded in the baby pool with the bubba. She seemed to enjoy it. We spent some time this afternoon with the inlaws as it was Paul’s mum’s birthday. When we go there the bubba has Nanna, Grandad and Auntie all fussing over her which is lovely (and it’s a nice break for me). She also gets to look at their little dog which she likes.

Classes start tomorrow which I’m excited about (but slightly nervous as I’m sure I haven’t done enough reading over the summer in preparation). The bubba has an infection on her tummy so she may not be able to go to childcare this week which is annoying but luckily my mother-in-law is able to help out.

I ran 8.14 km this morning which I’m quite proud of. I am totally on track for the ten kilometre race I’m doing in three weeks. Last week my training ramped up from four sessions per week to five and I really felt the difference! So this week I only did three of the five sessions (I wish I’d done four!) but I still ran 22.3km and I’m going to try to do all five this week and see how I go. If I’m finding I’m too sore, I’ll miss out one of the sessions for a couple of weeks. I really like running and it really helps my physical AND mental health (especially with the sleep deprivation I have from my breastfeeding baby!).

I haven’t been reading a lot recently, but what I have been reading has been for my Honours course (books like Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire, edited by Merri Lisa Johnson, and The Porn Report by Alan McKee, Katherine Albury and Catharine Lumby and also more academic stuff). I know I’m going to find it hard to read for pleasure while I’m studying and having to get through a mountain of reading for my course. I’m thinking of making Saturday a day off from uni where I get to read other stuff for pleasure. Non-study-related books/magazines I’d like to read are Tim Ferris’ the Four Hour Body, Lawrence J Cohen’s Playful Parenting and Runner’s World and Bitch magazines.

What a day

My run this morning was the first time in about a month I’d been running while pushing the bubba in the pram – boy, it really slowed my pace. My iMapMyRun App (which usually works really well for me) lost my GPS position halfway through my run so only recorded half my run. When I got home my key wouldn’t work in the front door and I realised I couldn’t find my phone! So I retraced my steps and luckily found the phone lying in the grass, quite a few blocks from home. Thankfully my sister-in-law came and picked us up, drove us to get Paul’s set of keys, which also did not work, and she hung around while we waited an hour and a half for the locksmith to show up and then the next hour while he worked on removing the lock! The poor bubba didn’t have her morning sleep, her morning tea or lunch (luckily there’s still plenty of breastmilk for her). She did, however, have a great time getting dirty, playing outside our apartment block on the stairs and out in the rain, until she was so tired and hungry, she fed to sleep on my lap, on the stairs, with the locksmith’s power drill going at the lock! What a day – and the lock replacement was quite expensive (locksmith said the previous lock hadn’t been installed properly).

Bubba starts childcare next week (as I’m returning to study). We went in to the centre yesterday and she had a play and had a great time. We were supposed to go in today but that didn’t happen. We’ll go tomorrow for a bit. I think she’ll be fine. I’ve got her booked in for three days a week but I think we might actually change it to two days. I am studying fulltime though, so I’m going to need quite a bit of time to spend on it (maybe not the best time to take up blogging again?).

As my previous blog post is from a year and a half ago, maybe some fill-in is needed? After we left London, we stayed in Hong Kong with Sam for a few nights which was really great. She showed us around Hong Kong which was awesome. A total bummer that her partner was away for work so we didn’t get to see him. And Sam recently had a little boy, which is pretty cool. After we got back to Brisbane, we lived with Paul’s parents for four months while we got ourselves sorted. We were living there when we got married. Paul got a job and we moved to a really nice (rented) flat in New Farm and in early 2010 our bubba was born. She has recently turned 1 and is close to walking and saying a few words and is just gorgeous. I started running when bubba was 5 months old and I’ve kept it up and am signed up to do a 10km run at the end of March. We recently bought a place so have moved out of New Farm (I’ll miss you!) and I’m gearing up for a busy year – study (doing Honours in Cultural Studies for Arts degree I finished years ago) and I’m also really wanting to do the Gold Coast Half Marathon in July (that will require a huge commitment of time for the training but I really want to do it). So, yeah, I think I might try to get back into this blogging thing.