#healthy – Relay shun ships

Authors own – Hiking on Arroo Trail, Co Leitrim

Loves young dream, my man and me. We have been together now for 32 years. It has not, of course, been all plain sailing. There have been trials and tribulations. There has been love and hate. There have been many ups and downs in this roller coaster relationship, but, for better or for worse, we are still here, still in love and still enjoying each others company.

He can still make me laugh until I almost pee myself and he can incite such rage in me that I want to ‘knock his block off’. The course of true love never runs smooth though, isn’t that what they say.

We are trying to get out and about more, for two reasons. 1. my dear old husband is recovering from heart surgery and needs to try build up his strength. 2. Having moved to this new County, we need to explore it and see what it has to offer.

Yesterday we decided to go for a hike up the Arroo Trail in North Leitrim. It was a bit of a damp day, but we said, sure what else are we to do on a Sunday! We layered up, packed our back pack and off we went.

The scenery en route from Mohill, where we live to North of the County is just beautiful. We pass through little villages like Keshcarrigan, Lough Allen and a bigger town called Manorhamilton, to get to this Arroo Trail.

Having parked in the car park we started on our way on the trail along the road and then slowly up through the mountain trail. We had lots of sheep to entertain us en route and though it was spitting rain, we were warm and toasty in our waterproofs.

The views as we ascended were just spectacular, even if my camera couldn’t do them justice. We took our time, given that my other half is gradually trying to get back to full health and we didn’t want to put too much pressure on his poor old heart. It was quite a steep incline, but good under foot, with gravel and rocks.

Looking back down the trail we could see the coast, which must be Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal. On a clear day it would look even more spectacular.

From the car park to the end of the trail is just over 4 km and you go back down the way you came up.

We chatted, ohh-ed and ahh-ed at the beauty, the elevation, and how, at times it was a bit difficult on our poor thighs, as they are not used to such a work out. We stopped and drank our water to replace salts, lost through our sweating and I even welcomed the rain to cool me down and took off my hat and gloves to feel it on my skin.

Getting down was alot quicker as it was all down hill and the view was truly beautiful.

‘We should come back on a clearer day’ I say to him, ‘but not on a hot day, or we will melt althogether’.

Spending time together, doing new things together like hiking, and discovering this new place we call ‘home’ has been and I hope will continue to be, a really lovely experience.

Being ‘just us’ again has given us a new lease of life, literally.

So it is not always about the chocolates and flowers, Valentines, it is about spending quality time together and appreciating what we have, like a new healthy heart and a new perspective and to feel grateful and blessed with the little things in life that matter.

Dolly, dilly and daisy…authors own image

Happy valentine Day !

I’m getting fat. Not fat, fat exactly, but fatter than I was. Having said that, what do people consider fat?

I was always skinny. The skinny bitch. I didn’t think I was skinny, but I didn’t think I was fat. I was just me and my size was just my size. I was lean, yes but I didn’t think anything about it because, like I said, I was just me.

So now, I am still me, just a bigger version of me than I was, when I was younger, so, am I fat?

No, not really, though I do have a spare tyre, my upper arms are definitely bigger and softer, my thighs are bigger too and they wobble, they didn’t used to wobble. My ass, well let’s say, now I have an ass, so before I had a small ass, never the less, it was still an ass. My face is rounder and I have more than one chin. When I was the skinny bitch, I could, if I tried hard enough and put my face down towards my neck, make myself have more than one chin,

It is called skin, lean with pockets of fat cells in it and maybe some muscle. I used to have muscle, when I was the skinny bitch. I did lots of hand stands and cart wheels and other gymnastic tricks. I loved gymnastics at school. My friend and I were both good at it. We were the skinny bitches.

We remained the skinny bitches even after we had children without even trying.

I went even thinner after my first baby, all that breastfeeding. It gave her colic. I thought it was what I was eating, so in the end I ate very little. She still had colic. I put her on the bottle as I had to eat and something had to give. She took the bottle and the colic went, but the constipation came. She still screamed in pain.

It was a lose-lose situation for her, and a win lose for me. Win because I could now eat again, the cabbage, potatoes, salad cream etc. that everyone said was probably giving her colic. I lost because she was still screaming and I felt it was my fault for putting her on the bottle and the poor child was still in pain….

I started to get fat when I was in my early 40’s. Actually I think I started to change, ever so slightly, from my early 30’s, I think I gained about 7 pound from when I was in my teens. I didn’t try to gain these pounds, they just arrived, slowly and without much encouragement or notice from me. I was still a skinny bitch you see.

By my early 40’s I had gained another 7 pound. Still I think I looked pretty good in the mirror, even though, that is a whole stone in a 10-year period. I was beginning to ‘fill out’. I was also noticing that my skin was changing, slightly. I was getting fine lines and the elasticity was beginning to loosen I suppose. That’s ok, it does that with age.

By my early 50’s I had gained another 14 pound and from 50 to 55 another 7 pound. So from my teens I had gained two and a half stone and like they say, it crept up on me.

I am not blind. I could see my body changing shape. My face, rounder, my boobs fuller, my belly definitely fatter, my arms, my legs, my whole body. Still, I was me. I am not fat. I am fatter than my skinny bitch days, yes, but I am not fat. I don’t know when I will consider myself fat but I know this. Some people, thinner than me, will look at me and say that I am fat.

Some people, bigger than me, will look at me and say that I am skinny.

I will say, I have more fat on me than when I was skinny, but, I am still me and I am happy with who I am. Like my skin that is ageing, my hair that is greying, my body is changing as it naturally does with age.

I am glad to be ageing, it means that I am alive and that I can chose, every day, what I do with my day. I can choose to look in the mirror and say ‘hey, you are fifty something and still fabulous’ or I could criticise how I look and feel bad about myself. I chose the former not the latter.

The moral of this story is, just because you are the size that you are, you have to decide whether or not, you are happy with you. So long as you are healthy and have a healthy view of yourself in your own mind and can embrace your own body, wobbly bits and all, or bones and all, don’t let it consume you.

Other people will always have their opinions, it’s either colic or constipation, skinny bitch or fatty. You decide, yourself, what label you want to put on you……

Tag: #healthy

My Valentine and me

Fatty and Skinny….