04.02.13- Heel Pain, Hot Drinks and How To Not Have "One Of Those Days"

So, what happens when you get out of bed the morning after almost half-marathon distance?

1) Your feet become locked in pain and you feel like one of those poor sods in the Bible who go about nagging Jesus for help.
2) Making breakfast includes a lot of agonized waddling.
3) You get a feeling in your thighs which I imagine can only feel like the sort of ache one must get from having an all-night orgy with an over-enthusiastic sumo wrestler/mountain gorilla/jeep.

Typical post-11 mile walking posture

It took until about 12 in the afternoon and a lot of Tiger Balm until I stopped walking with all the grace of Jeff Wayne with an STI.
Today could have been "One Of Those Days". As in everything going tits up. But today I was determined not to dwell on the little mishaps that kept happening and to stay focused on the good stuff. It's far too easy to shrug and say, "Oh great, what a shit day I'm having; everything is going wrong." The truth is, if you take a step back and put things in perspective then unless your foot falls off, your car explodes and your house gets taken away by a tornado and all your family get eaten by lions in the garden, then often things aren't all that bad. One way I've started to teach myself to look at things is to take a deep breath, step back and ask myself: "In two months from now, will this matter? When I'm a crazy old cat lady on her deathbed of cat litter, will I look back on this moment and say 'Oh, if only I hadn't dropped the teabag on the kitchen floor then dropped the carton of milk that dark day in 2013 my life would have been so much better'."
The little things that irritated me today and threatened to turn things into "One of Those Days":

A shit coffee does not have to mean
a totally ruined day

• An apprenticeship I applied for after my degree had an error in the application process and so told me I could go no further because I was apparently not "literate" and couldn't count, as the email told me on Friday. By the time I rang and explained that yes, being an English Literature student I can read-- and yes, having an A at Maths GCSE must mean I can count fairly well-- the position had already gone to someone else. Fuck you, I'm off to look at picture books.
• I ran to a cashpoint a few streets away because I was late meeting someone. The cashpoint decided today was a fabulous day for being broken.
• I dropped beetroot all over the floor opening a jar and turned like, everything in life purple.
• The bulb in my lamp exploded. Again.
• Cupid is proper having a giraffe.
• The pharmacy is full of awkward people who guard my blood testing strips like Gollum with the One Ring. YES I NEED THEM. YES I NEED THEM NOW. NO I'M NOT FUCKING RUNNING OVER TO THE DOCTOR'S SURGERY TO ASK HIS PERMISSION NOW GIVE THEM HERE OR I WILL BLOOD TEST YOUR FACE.
• The email was misleading and the exam results still remain shrouded in mystery.
• I reversed into my neighbour's car.
• I definitely nearly died in hail/asteroids of Hell.

BUT looking at these things, they were damn irritating at the time but fairly insignificant there written down. Cashpoint down? Boohoo, drive to Uplands, no biggie. Didn't get apprenticeship due to shitty technical error? Some things aren't meant to be. Maybe the manager was a knob anyway. Exam results still a mystery? Good, saves me howling into my pillow if I don't get a First. Hail? Hot shower, cup of tea, warm onesie.

This strategy really worked today and helped me keep my cool. Instead of giving in and saying "wow everything today is going wrong," I noted every positive thing that happened. And a lot of positive things happened. In fact, I've had a great day if I let these little mishaps go over my head (I hope by the way that lightning does not strike me and a thief runs into my room while I am writing this and steals all my possessions, as I think that today might finally be ruined and would be very cruelly ironic). 

The afternoon was spent having coffee and a catch-up with my ex-boyfriend's mum. I've only ever had one long-term relationship and one of the hardest things about breaking up after so long is not seeing their family when you've become so close. And me and his mum got on so well. I think it's really great that she's stayed such a friend to me and will still meet up to catch up. I've known his family for nearly 4 years now and I like being kept up to date on how everyone is doing. Plus I do like my hot drinks. Cat ladies always have a teacup to hand.

Dylan: Definitely would have lent
me a hipflask

Then I went to Uni and sat through a very intense lecture on Dylan Thomas' poetry. Very difficult, yes, but also very stimulating. I was feeling a bit of a sense of self-doubt before the lecture and was tempted to skip it, thinking myself not clever enough to be there. But of course, as the lecturer pointed out today, the more complex and elusive a poem, the more ways there are of interpreting it. We explored some really fascinating, complicated themes and things clicked and my mind was stimulated. I enjoyed the difficulty and the challenge. Yes, I'm worried that when it comes to the assignment I'm just going to stare at a blank sheet of paper for 3 weeks and just write: "I like this poem, Dylan Thomas really likes grass and dead things," but for now I'm just going to enjoy exploring all the different ways his poetry can be interpreted.

I was definitely just admiring his towel

Plus I have that presentation on sex in a couple of weeks to prepare. I don't know if I'm too prudish to talk about hard-ons to a group of people I barely know, and I don't think I'll be able to sneak in a hipflask before speaking (Dylan would have, though).
Then it was cup-of-tea catch-up with my good friend Laura. We are planning a group holiday in July which will be lovely to look forward to as an end-of-Uni reward the week after my graduation. I'm quite fond of sangria, sun and fit blokes with suntanned arses prancing about by the pool.
I don't think I'm as deep a person as I sometimes like to think.
To end the day, I got hailed on. As in the Hail of Satan. It was freezing cold, I felt like I was the fat spotty kid in the playground who gets a million stones thrown at them and my boots were soaked through. A crazy Indian man hung out of his Fiat Punto and started panting at me. This confirmed for me that men are strange, which is why I will devote my life to felines. They will not hang out of cars and hyperventilate at me in the hail. They will not leer at me with their mates, strutting out of the chippy in their trackies. And they will not grab my bum rather rudely in bars and charmingly suggest intercourse.

The perfect gentleman does still exist in Swansea

They will keep me company, eat Felix, keep my lap warm and scratch out the eyes of intruders.
...I'm really really cold. I'm going to go and cuddle myself now.
Goodnight kitties.