Tuesday 1 January 2013

New Year's Resolutions


Flax flower
Yup, said I wouldn't do it, but here I go again!  For the last 18 years, it's been the same NYR: to get fit!  I can work a whole day in the garden, but that just builds upper body strength, not cardio-endurance stuff!  Am dreadfully unfit.  Embarrassingly so!  People assume that because I am slim, I am fit!  Huh?  The two are not synonymous.   In fact, I know heaps of bulkier persons who would leave me gasping for breath in their dust, at a small walk.  I know, it is a complete dichotomy to what I stand for - all my values of healthy lifestyle and sustainability!!  But don't we all need a vice?  It's not that I'm lazy.  Just don't totally love walking or exercising!

Beauty of Bird Walkway
So my long-suffering husband, who walks at least 3 times a week, tries hard to coax me out of my exercise-phobia.  Always tries to encourage me and insisted that we buy some decent walking shoes for me a couple of days ago.  Part of my late Christmas present and early New Year's resolution solution.  Insisted on taking me to an upmarket store called Hikoi (must admit, they have really cool eco-footwear).  After spending what can only be described as an equivalent of kitting out a small African village with footwear, we left the store with my ever-impending sense of anxiety.  Now I was expected to honour the amount spent on my new footwear and actually walk!!  Oh, dear!

Haiku boulder:
"migrating birds
my father sends the next son
on his way"
New Year passed quietly, with my hubbie and I watching episodes of New Girl (with ever-increasingly bizarre scenarios) while the world around us raged - stereo music blared from at least 3 points around us as fireworks lit the night sky in 2 opposite directions.  Our teenadults were respectively heralding the New Year in Rotorua and Coromandel.  That's okay.  We have always maintained our family tradition - Christmas is for Family, New Year for Friends.  So this morning, when said husband made us a strawberry smoothie and suggested a walk, I felt obliged to accept.

Ducks coming in........
Setting off at a breakneck pace, I thought, "I'll show him, I can keep up!".  Now any thoughts of starting off on a slow-paced, incrementally reduced distance was not a shared objective for him.  He took me on a hike!  50 minutes later, huffing and puffing, I managed to eke the last power in my muscles to wobbily carry me home.  What a blissful sight.  Home!  I was glad I took my camera, stopping often to take a picture!  A great excuse to catch my breath.

Thing is, it's a nice way to get to see the charm of the place you settled in.  And to really connect to the place and the people.  We met Ian on the way....... a retiree who told us he's new to the area, and that he lived in France with his first wife, then lived in Taupo for summers, going abroad for 6 months in our winters and now he's settled here in Mural Town.  Nice.  Took all of 5 minutes to glean all that!  And a good breath-catching moment!


White-faced heron pair


Mike's favourite on the walk - the kingfisher

Trying to keep up....
Anyway, it's day one.  Wonder if I can do this 3 times a week?  Would be great if I was disciplined but I am too much of an addict.  A New-Year's-breaking-Resolutions addict.  Bets on, how long it will take before I break this one again - a week?  A month?  I reserve the right to be the first to call it off!  I'm just too busy to get fit!!



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