Lessons learned this week

I have learned two very important things this week.

Like yesterday, I decided to go for a brisk 30 minute morning walk before work. This is nothing unusual. But it was cold. Very cold. And wet. So I missioned along for a while and then decided to warm up by breaking into a jog. This is unusual - I am NOT a runner.

After just more than five minutes of steady jogging, I got a mammoth stitch that felt like someone had punctured my right lung. It was horrible. Sheer agony, I tell you.

I moaned like a wounded beast and two spandex-clad old ladies out for their own exercise moved hastily to the opposite side of the road.

I slowed back to a walk. My one ear started to hurt from the cold (I have rubbish ears. Had grommets three times as a kid). This turned into a dull headache on the right side of my head. I completed my walk in misery and thankfulyl jumped into the shower as soon as I arrived home.

Lesson: I dislike running.

This is not news to me. If you've known me long enough you'll have heard me say the following at least a million times:

"Show me two people in a row who are out jogging and look like they're actually enjoying it and I'll take it up. Until then, no thanks."

Really... Give me a gym full of other sweaty people who look as ridiculous as I do going nowhere on the stairmaster.

Give me group classes where the butch instructor at the front tells me exactly what to do and when.

Give me my lounge and Billy Blanks shouting daft encouragements from my TV screen in his Taebo workout (good grief, that man is ANNOYING).

But don't give me a slippery, cold open road with lines of bored morning motorists staring at me while I try to jog and at the same time avoid the scores of domestic workers on their way to work who snigger at this mad masochistic woman breathing like a cow in labour as she attempts to do something she's clearly not cut out for.

Another lesson I learned is that I still take water for granted. When I lived in Broadacres, our water would get turned off without warning on an almost weekly basis. We once went without it for four days and were flushing our toilet with mineral water.

Since we've been in the new house, we haven't had this problem at all. Until last night.

When I arrived home at 18h00, the water was off and my mad Italian neighbour was awaiting me to point this fact out a million times over accompanied by grand hand gestures and lots of tutting.

Thankfully, since our experiences in Broadacres, we've been prepared and always have two 5-litre bottles of water on standby. With the water in our kettle and the 2-litre bottle we fill up regularly in our fridge, we were able to manage just fine.

But my sponge bath could in no way match up to the long bubblebath with TSC that I had planned. And brushing your teeth with ice-cold water from the fridge is not fun.

Lesson: I realised again how precious water is.

TSC always says that you can tell a man's wealth by how freely he uses water. The low-earning labourers on local buidling sites can wash up with the water they fill their hard hats with. Those of us spoilt suburb-dwellers used to having water on tap are outraged when we have no water for just one evening.

It makes one think.

What about YOU, dear reader? Learned anything interesting this week?

Have a great weekend, btw.