Over the past few days I have visited the gym and made it a point to try to get to 4 min/km on the treadmill. That's 15km/h. It's heart rate territory that has been off limits for years, or feels like it. I got my heart rate to 177 bpm twice in the past 3 days. My maximum is supposed to be about 180 or so. To give you an idea, in my last bike race I got my heart rate up to just 164, and I seldom get it to 170.
The point is that as we get older we continue to train hard but we tend not to push ourselves 100% any more. There is a danger in doing this of course - beyond heart failure - one courts injuries etc. But it is at these high levels of exertion that the true benefits to performance really begin to accrue, and the weight starts to get jolted out of its safe zones.
It was while exerting myself that I realised I had been lazy too at home. I moved into a decent neighborhood in Johannesburg's Northern Suburbs about 18 months ago, and in the last 6 months the landlady has metastasized into a combination of a lunatic, a crazy bag lady, and something capable of producing an awful stench.
A few minutes ago I noticed she has removed the electric cable from a refrigerator, plugged it back in... The plot in short is that I warned her previously to stop cooking in my garage and using it as a kitchen (she has placed a board over her sauna and is sleeping in that room, having moved out of her own house and rented it out). So after being inspired by Jamie Oliver, and unable to stop herself you could hear her bashing pots and getting her grub going. Here's a glimpse at the operation going on.
Having ignored several documents asking her to clean up her mess, and cook somewhere else, I then removed her refrigerator (to persuade her not to tippy toe in for snacks). My girlfriend helped me. I unplugged it, and she carried the dangling cable. This evening I found the cable of the fridge ending up in the plug - so it looks like I just yanked it off the wall. She called the police when I cleared boxes and other debris out of the garage, accusing me of malicious damage to property.
Okay about an hour has passed since I posted the above. In the meantime I've had 3 police officers sitting on my coach listening to my Tale from the most Woeful Weekend Crypt.
This was because the trauma councillor (bizarre, yes I realise that) called my girlfriend (well, she answered my phone while I was at gym) and said she was a cop, on her way to a murder in Houghton and needed to come and see her/us.
With the landlady/slumlord in toe, the cop (who my girlfriend said smelt of liquor and appeared slightly tipsy) came into the loft and the landlady immediately started sniffing around, opening cupboards, trying to rip my cellphone out of my girlfriend's hands (she had called a lawyer).
The cop then identified herself as Mrs Kramer, and said she was a trauma councillor for the Special Victims Unit. She told my girlfriend how much trouble she was in etc etc blah blah.
When I arrived home at about 8pm my landlady sped away and Kramer and Kramer were there on my driveway. For a trauma councillor it was kinda curious that she was unaware of what had really transpired the night my landlady was beaten up by 3 guys, locked in her safe and I had rescued her at around midnight. Apparently, according to my landlord, I wasn't involved at all, and the police had rescued her. Kramer emphasised this, saying: I was there when it happened.
Anyhoo, I have wasted enough of my own time and life on this petty and frankly pathetic behaviour. Fill yourself in my watching these videos or asking me some questions in the comment field.
But, to refer back to the title, I was lazy in the sense that I ought to have put my foot down early on and said NO to the early accumulation of garbage and cooking in the garage. I did actually write several letters, and there was a small amount of activity. But It does make me wonder - some of those weekends when I was alone her I should really have made a point in finding out the extent of what was happening. When I went to take photographs I realised just deep the shithole actually goes.
And I believe this lesson applies equally to the world beyond our doorstep. Shit is happening in finance, in the atmosphere, in the food we eat, in streams and rivers out there. Do we ever bother to get up off the sofa and find out what is going on?
No comments:
Post a Comment