Juggling for fitness and pleasure

My workplace recently engaged in a "steps" challenge, where different departments competed to see who could rack up the most steps across the team. My team came an admirable second in both the overall steps category and the average steps category.

We were defeated in the overall steps category by a team with significantly higher numbers than us (so they were able to step more steps than we stepped) and a team that had significantly smaller numbers than us, but a lot of enthusiasm (so they stepped more steps per steppers).

At one point I was chatting with some colleagues about the challenge and I mentioned that I sometimes juggle to get my steps up if I'm running short but don't want to go anywhere. Apparently, these particular colleagues were unaware that I juggle. Most of my other colleagues know this about me, because I keep a set of juggling balls at my desk and often have a "juggling break" to flex my shoulders if I'm getting too stiff from sitting too long.

But not everyone has walked into the office area while I was in the middle of a (particularly messy) Mills Mess,* so occasionally someone I know discovers I juggle as new and "exciting" information. I have to let them down by telling them I just do it for fitness and movement. Quite often, this startles people almost more than discovering that I juggle at all.

Juggling for fitness?

Yes, it's a thing.

I first came across the idea of juggling for fitness in my early 20s, and found it utterly freeing. I taught myself how to juggle in high school, but (like most things that involved physical dexterity) I realised that I'd never be able to do it to performance standard. I have the physical grace and natural elegance of a walrus on land.

If I practiced really hard, I would get better at it – but I'd still never get to performance standard.

"What was the point of learning how to do something that's for performance if you know you'll never perform?" my teenaged self thought.

But! Then I discovered that there are people all over the world who... just juggle. They don't do it for audiences, they to it to move. Like riding a bike or running even though you have no intention of ever competing, you can juggle just for the fun of juggling even if you have no intention of ever performing.

Oh, and you can actually juggle competitively. 

I have no intention of doing that, either.

In the grand scheme of things it's a bit like using a skipping rope. You have a small, inexpensive piece of equipment that allows you to essentially travel without moving. 

You can just have a light juggle, and get as much exercise in as you would if you were going for a light walk, or you can ramp it up and make it more involved and intense with bigger or faster movements and more points of body contact.

Between a set of three juggling balls and a footbag (hacky sack) I have a "gym" I can (and do) take with me wherever I go.

Does this mean I juggle all the time and I'm very good at it? No. And, also, no. But I could. 

Sometimes I get on a bit of a streak and I'll start juggling regularly for a few weeks, sometimes I'll go months without picking up a ball.

Sometimes I'll pull my travelling balls out of my bag and juggle in the hotel a few times while I'm on holidays. Sometimes they'll never leave my bag for the whole trip.

But, I enjoy it whenever I do it, and I don't worry about how often I drop the balls (picking them up is part of the movement) or failing to get a certain trick again (given my walrusness, I'm doing well just to juggle at all – and no one is watching, so who cares?).

If you're looking for a low-impact exercise that you can do in the comfort of your own home that costs very little, I thoroughly recommend juggling. It's good for your brain, good for your joints, and a half-decent cardio workout.

Way more fun than a treadmill, and decidedly better value for money.

*I'm not very good at Mills Mess

Mellow Yellow, Or: No one said you have to progress

A bouldering route at my gym.
Pick the yellow or the blue climb.

A few months ago (getting close to a year now, I think) I started going to a bouldering gym.

I'm really enjoying it, I'm getting a lot out of it and I think it's doing wonders for both my physical and mental health.

I am still on the bottom rung of the ladder, and I have no real intention of trying to go much higher than that.

The gym I go to indicates the difficulty of the climb with colour. The basic, beginner level is yellow, then blue, purple, green... and a range of other colours I don't care about because I'm probably never going to climb them. To be honest, I'm probably never going to climb the green ones. The purples are a distant maybe.

As I may have mentioned in the past, I'm not the most physically adept person in the world. My fine motor skills aren't particularly fine. My gross motor skills are kind of gross. The more I try to hone and refine my technique on... well, anything, the worse I get. It's like the worst thing I can do is actually put thought and effort into what I'm doing.

I went to get evaluated for dyspraxia a little while ago. The results were inconclusive. They said I may have mild dyspraxia, or I may just be rubbish at everything. It was suggested that I go in for more tests, but I haven't done it. There's a limit to how much time and money I want to spend on having people say "there's nothing actually wrong with you, you're just crap."

So, while my basic strength levels are all improving and I'm developing muscles (which is nice), my coordination and balance remain unimpressive. 

Now, when I say "my coordination and balance are unimpressive", I'm fully aware of the fact that some people would disagree with me. Those people are comparing me with someone who does nothing. If you don't climb or juggle or do yoga, the fact that I do makes me instantly more "impressive" by comparison. However, if you compared me to someone who has been doing any of those things for the same length of time that I have, you would realise I fall neatly into the category of "could be better".

I'll often try a route that requires more coordination than I have, and my hands and feet will simply refuse to move. "Come on, Sharon, you just have to move this foot up here..." Nope. Not happening. "Okay, fingers, you just have to keep holding on to this thing while I move my other hand to--" No. This sequence of movements will not happen.

I may or may not be able to see what I have to do next, puzzle-wise, but I only have two options: stay where I am, or fall off.

It even changes from day-to-day on the same climb. Monday I could send that climb; Thursday I couldn't.

The yellow routes are mostly within my capabilities, though. It may take me a couple of goes to nut out how to do one that requires a movement I'm not au fait with, but that's a nice challenge that I'm actually capable to solving, and then I get to enjoy doing it again a few times before they reset the wall and take that climb away.

So I do the yellows (and the blues I can do) several times in a session. I take what I can do, and make it harder, rather than getting hung up on things that are too hard.

I know the "done thing" is to try to progress to the next level. Well, that's fine, if you can do it. If you can't, but you keep assuming you should, you'll just get completely frustrated and give up, disheartened. Again.

BUT! And this is really important – you don't have to progress. There's no law that says you have to move on from the beginner levels, if you are still getting something valuable out of those levels. 

I have a regular workout at my climbing gym where I pick at least five routes that are within my abilities, and I do them five times each. This converts those climbs into sets of reps, and my goodness it's a workout. By the time I've done five reps of my third climb, I'm dripping with sweat and feeling the burn in my muscles. It's like running up several flights of stairs, only it's a full-body workout.

On the days where I'm just trying routes, I'll see if I can manage a few blues, and sometimes I can and sometimes I can't. When I can, I'll do it a couple of times before moving on to trying another route. If I can't, I'll try it a few times, and then go do a couple of climbs that I can do before trying another new one. It's exactly right for me.

So maybe you are trying an activity where you feel pressured to progress, but you are still at a spot that's working for you and you don't want to move past it yet. Remember, just because you can't do something "well" doesn't mean you shouldn't do it at all. And you don't have to progress, you can just enjoy life in the shallow end of the pool. Anyone who says otherwise is a source of negative energy, and you don't need that kind of negativity in your life.

Touching base

 My mother has recently started noticing when I touch things to steady myself.

I often have a slight balance issue or a few seconds of dizziness, where I just lilt sideways for a moment. It's usually something that happens a few minutes after I get up and start moving around after sitting down for a while or getting up from lying on the couch.

It's normally something that just lasts a second or two, and I just touch the furniture, or the wall, or lean on the door frame for a moment so I don't fall into it. If I can't touch something, I right myself well enough without any worries in a couple of steps – I don't actually fall – I just find it easier to touch something briefly to regain balance and I move on.

The thing is, I've been doing this for as long as I can remember – at least since I was a teenager – but my mother has only recently started to comment on it, like she's suddenly noticed something that's a new development.

I know why: it's because she's having trouble with her balance now, so she's starting to do it herself, so now she recognises it when she sees it happen. But it's still weird. 

You know, I've been tripping over my own feet, bumping into furniture and knocking against walls and doors for decades. For decades, it has gone without comment. Now, suddenly, she's noticed.

To give this a little extra context, my mother has this thing where she always (*always*) assumes something is wrong. She will watch you like an absolute hawk and analyse every unexplained movement or noise to see if something is wrong – which is an absolute blast if you are the kind of person who fidgets, cracks your joints and makes little humming noises to yourself when you let your mind wander.

I'll probably write a whole 'nother post delving into "I'm a natural fidgeter who pulls random facial expressions when I relax, but I get asked to account for every single one of them when I'm with my mother so I feel like I can never fully relax". But that's another ramble. 

The point is, I've spend literal decades of my life begging my mother to stop asking "what's wrong?" every time I twitch to relieve some muscle stiffness ("what's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just stretching." "What's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just cracking my fingers." "What's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just letting my mind wander." "What's wrong?" - "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP ASSUMING SOMETHING'S WRONG!") but she's only just started noticing the touching thing.

I get asked "what's wrong?" if I so much as frown slightly (btw., I frown when I'm tired, and I'm always tired), but I've been falling into walls for decades and she's only just noticed?

What did you think was happening before? That I was just a clumsy oaf clown? Can you go back to that, please? It's way better than having someone suddenly ask "are you alright?" all the time (just a variation of "what's wrong?") when I'm just doing something that has been normal for as long as I can remember

Hair

 

Photo by Taylor Smith on Unsplash

I was looking through some photos if misguided haircuts recently... which is pretty much all of them.

All of my haircuts have been misguided.

Well, that's not entirely true. I have two haircuts that don't look completely ludicrous. One is to have my hair so long that all I can do is pull it back and it doesn't look like it's meant to be anything other than the wild locks of a Highland Barbarian. In theory I could braid that and it would look semi-decent, but I have the fine motor skills of a walrus, so I don't really braid. Just a basic plait every now and then.

The other haircut that doesn't look completely ludicrous is a pixie cut – so little hair that no styling is possible and all I can do is throw in some product to spike it up a bit when I'm feeling fancy.

Every other haircut falls prey to the fact that I my hair is, in fact, the Rum Tum Tugger: it will do as it do do and there's no doing anything about it.

I'll think of a haircut that might look pretty cool. I'll go to a hairdresser and they'll say "sure!" and then it will look kind of okay for approximately 2 hours. Then it looks ridiculous.

Once my hair starts getting its bearings, it turns whatever haircut I have (that isn't "wild woman" or "pixie") into "what the hell were you thinking?"

To be honest, I don't think the wild woman or pixie cuts were particularly good either, they were just not as terrible as all the others.

I had the wild woman hair for most of my teens and early twenties, and then cut it shorter in my late twenties and regretted it. Every single iteration of it. Until I hit on the pixie in my thirties, which works until I decide I want to grow it out. Then I have the challenge of trying to force my way through a dozen terrible iterations of my hair until I can get back to wild woman... and I inevitably lose patience and get it all cut back into a pixie again.

The thing is, I've tried to do the thing where I embrace the fact that my hair is always going to be a bit daft, assuming that, if I do it on purpose, it will actually be kind of cool and funky. It never is.

I've had the same approach to my clothes over the years – I don't look particularly good in anything except "uber-corporate", and I find "uber-corporate" clothing impractical and uncomfortable, so I still manage to look like I'm dressed poorly. I tried embracing my "I dress like someone who doesn't know how clothes work" aesthetic to aim for "quirky" and "eclectic". It never looks quirky and eclectic – it just looks like I dress poorly.

No matter how hard I try, it never looks like I did whatever daft thing I'm doing "on purpose" – it just looks like I'm unintentionally unfashionable/untidy/unattractive, which is twice as bad as just being all of those things intentionally because you're bucking the system. I'm not bucking the system, I'm just incapable of making it work... and you can tell.

My hair is super annoying right now, but it's not yet at wild woman stage (and probably never will be), so I can't just pull it back without it looking super silly. I've pulled it back. It looks super silly. I'm going to have to go back to the pixie...

They call me "Bucket"

 That's not even remotely true: no one calls me "Bucket".

But I called myself "Bucket" the other night, which was a bit weird. I think I meant it as an encouraging endearment, as I said something like "Come on, Bucket, you've got this!"

And then I immediately thought, "Bucket? Where the hell did that come from?"

But it's a step up from what I usually call myself, which is "you idiot."

Seened ja kartulid (or: Man I miss onions)

Photo by Lars Blankers on Unsplash

I was having a conversation with a friend about potatoes (which is always something worth doing – I recommend you find a friend right now and have a conversation about potatoes with them), when I mentioned a potato-based dish I used to eat all the time during my schmegan phase.¹

It was an Estonian dish called "seened ja kartulid" or "seened karulitega". This dish literally translates to "mushrooms and potatoes" or "mushrooms with potatoes", and consists of mushrooms, potatoes and onions. Many versions also add bacon (because Estonians add bacon – or "salted pork" – to everything), but you can just have it as a vegetarian dish.

Basically, you boiled a couple of potatoes until just tender (like for a potato salad) and then cut them into bite-sized slices, then you fried up some sliced onion (about half a smallish onion per serving) and as many different types of mushrooms as you could get your hands on (sliced), along with the potatoes. Rapeseed/canola oil was standard, but some nice olive oil would work if you were fancy. Fry the lot until they lose all the excess moisture and start to crisp. Then you just added some salt and cracked pepper.

No sauce or anything like that, just a good oil, good salt and good pepper (along with good mushrooms and potatoes [and onions]). It's one of those dishes where you get the best quality ingredients you can get your hands on and make some magic with only a handful of "basic" things.

I tell you, this was the simplest meal on the face of the earth, but just good wholesome comfort food. The more varieties of mushrooms you could get your hands on, the better, but even if you could only get one type of mushroom it was still Good Foods. Have a slice of good rye bread with it, and you've got yourself a decent meal.

And then, of course, I went on that dratted FODMAP diet where I wasn't supposed to eat onions, mushrooms or rye bread. That pretty well knocked this one off the roster. I've since discovered that rye bread and mushrooms are okay in small doses, but onion is actually something likely to give me grief...

Man I miss onions. They're just so tasty, and so central to all of the good dishes. 

Someone somewhere made a comment that white people start any given meal with cutting an onion, and they're right. You know, when you come from a climate where pretty much the only vegetables you can eat for most of the year are root vegetables, onions become the star of the show. I used to know I was about to make something really enjoyable when I started with cutting an onion.

For some reason, a lot of the dishes I used to make all of the time before the FODMAP thing have completely disappeared from my repertoire, even though I'd probably be able to work out a few substitutions (or just put up with a bit of discomfort). It's like something interrupted the usual transmission and now I've forgotten what I eat.

But I think I'll revisit seened ja kartulid and see whether or not I can get away with it, without too much drama. Good Foods is Good Foods, after all.

Ooh, let's do the recipe blogger thing and add a recipe to the bottom of this post, so you can skip reading the whole dang thing and get a recipe, even though the rambling story about my relationship with onions was the whole point of the post!

Seened ja Kartulid

Ingredients:

• Mushrooms - sliced. As many as you like and as many different kinds as you can find.
• Potatoes - cooked until just tender and sliced. Approximately one small-medium potato per person.
• 1 medium onion - sliced.
• Oil for pan frying (no I'm not going to give you proper amounts - just wing the darn thing).

Method:

Heat oil in a frying pan and cook the onions until soft. 

Add the mushrooms and heat through, then add the potatoes and keep stirring until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms and potatoes begin to crisp.

Serve with sea-salt and cracked pepper, with a slice of rye bread to the side.

To drink? Beer. This is a good meal to have with a good farmhouse ale.

(1) For anyone who is new here, I spent a couple of years cooking and eating vegan food - more or less for the heck of it - but wasn't actually vegan as I ate everything on offer when someone else served it to me. Hence, "schmegan".

Oh, rats!

 I've been thinking about this article from Hakai Magazine almost constantly since I listened to the audio version a few nights ago:

In Defense of the Rat

Text by J. B. MacKinnon

Illustrations by Sarah Gilman

I subscribe to both the newsletter and podcase of Hakai Magazine, and usually enjoy the stories when I can get my act together to look at them. Listening to the audio version, I didn't realise that there were pretty neat illustrations in the print version. But there are, so you should look at them even if you (like me) are a listener.

Sarah Gilman

I don't mind a rat. When I was growing up, I knew a couple of kids who had pet rats and I used to play with them when I visited, so I know they can make lovely pets. I also pet-sat someone's mice at one point, so I know rats are the superior rodents when it comes to pet rodents (they're so much cleaner and more sociable).

I also read Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, so it's hard not to have a soft spot for rats, really. Or, for that matter, a deep-seated mistrust of scientists – particularly scientists who work with rats. Or any animal.

At some point during his article, MacKinnon mentioned that vets sometimes recommend people who want a really small dog should get a rat, which is something I've come across before (because they're as playful as dogs but take up way less space and don't need walking).

He also mentioned an experiment where scientists worked out that rats enjoy playing hide-and-seek (both hiding and seeking) and will happily play games just for the fun of it, with no reward wanted other than tickling – which they respond to by squealing with laughter (the rats, not the scientists). The scientist played with the rats, had great fun, tickled them, developed a fun and playful relationship... and then killed them to examine their brains.

What the hell, scientists? What is wrong with you? Why are you soulless jerks? Why are you always soulless jerks?

Honestly, what is it about biology and biologists? You think scientists are getting into whatever field they've gone into because they love their topic and they are interested in learning more, but the truth is they're a bunch of destructive monsters who kill and dismember everything they "love". And they have no empathy for non-human life forms. And quite frankly I find them very disturbing.

As far as I'm concerned, the only good scientist is the scientist who noticed what they were doing is abhorrent and stopped doing that.

Please, just leave those rats (and rabbits, and armadillos, and every other pour tortured soul in a laboratory) alone!