follow your feet: Boot Camp (hoo-rah)

Flying

I spent my weekend visiting my delightful sister in Palmerston North. I have never been to Palmerston North before. I quickly came to understand what a wise decision this had been. It was going to be a long weekend, not least because the clock tower in the town square no longer worked and persistently informed us that the time was in fact 5.15. The clock tower was also covered in lichen and mould, complimenting nicely the slightly backward feel of the town. I say this, acknowledging that I come from the only marginally larger, Dunedin, which is not the most ‘forward’ town either. Back to Palmy, Mama Bear managed to rent a manual vehicle. She was well out of practice, stalling ten times in the first fifteen minutes (not to mention the numerous other times over the course of the weekend).

And it's still 5.15

Probably the only advantage of having a blog, even on the very small scale of mine, is the intriguing hold you have over other people. Especially when those people have important public personas to uphold. Suffice it to say that I have been banned from mentioning a number of the weekends events and there were a number of slightly anxious, ‘you’d better not blog about this…’ comments (I'm such a well-behaved sister).

Genetically incapable of keeping anything tidy

I am still deciding if the events that took place in the weekend were the result of the location or my strange family. I feel like when one arrives in a new place, the first port of call is, most commonly, exploration, discovery, adventure, wilderness, losing yourself, finding yourself, seeing, doing, experiencing and so the list continues (in a rather obnoxious manner). Not me and my family, though. No, we went to the nearest book shop we could find and invested in some adult colouring books (not ‘adult’ colouring books but adult colouring books, if you get me – entirely innocent I assure you). Our next port of call was our accommodation, where we sat down for the next few hours and were zen and chill and mellow and present. We spent those hours adventuring and exploring in the wilderness of our minds. Mindfulness is totally ‘in’ right now. And I like being totally ‘in.’ So yeah…

Adult colouring books = the best

Our next call for entertainment while in this small town was the movies. Ordinarily, I would feel, as a tourist in a new place, going to the movies would be a total cop out because it is one of those experiences that is universal (unless you go to an independent cinema and this was not an independent cinema). In this situation, however, I was all for it… There was little else to do, if anything. The movie choice (my own) was fantastic. The benefit of this being that something great had happened before we’d even rested on the first evening of our mini-break. I felt a very real sense of accomplishment when the movie ended. Even if the rest of the weekend was a complete flop at least I had watched a good movie (it’s the simple things).

The movies <3

But come Saturday, boot camp started. I don’t know what ‘normal’ families do when a small sub-section of the family gets together, but mine trains. And not like a chug-chug train, but like a ‘hoo-rah, hoo-rah, hoo-rah’ kind of train. You see my sister is training to go to China for the Miss World competition. You might laugh, snigger or even snort at this, but I personally know, second-hand, that this is a very real thing. Beauty pageants are a real sport and choosing to be a beauty queen requires a lot of cold, hard training. HOO-RAH. So, being the very supportive (and mildly amused) family that we are, the assembled company partook in the training scheme for the weekend. On Saturday, this consisted of a super-intense ab work-out with Davey Wavey (youtube sensation) and an endurance event. Like all normal families on holiday together, we all lay down in front of the computer and worked on developing that all important power-house of a core, that we all have. I don’t know though, Davey Wavey isn’t really working for me – it might have something to do with that name…

Lambie Family Boot Camp

HOO-RAH

The endurance event was also super intense. It involved running through mud, and dogs and people and cyclists and mud and whatever, yeah, that was about it. But I did nearly die. But such is the nature of family get-togethers in my humble existence. Love comes at a cost. Sometimes that cost is a near-miss with a sprained ankle or a near-miss with a mad bath. Whatever your cost or struggle may be, remember that is just as valid as other people’s problems, no matter how insignificant it may seem in comparison, like the first world struggles of an upper-middle class white girl. Still valid. But I have digressed...