Voyager

What a terrible blogger I've been. And even more terrible blog reader. It's like, since we moved, I've stepped into a different, eerie world where blogs don't exist. I hardly spend any time on the computer any more, except to study. I do other things instead. Yesterday, for instance, I spent two hours gathering blueberries and lingonberries. Then I came home and made apple cake. It's not that I don't care what others are up to, I do. It's just that creating a life for myself here is so much fun, so overwhelming, so different, that I haven't found my balance yet.

Between studying for three different courses and pretending to be Martha Stewart (except the prison part. I'm not doing that. I lack the upper body strength for prison), I've been going for runs. Skellefteå has its own version of Skatås called Vitberget (ie the White Mountain, a Tolkien-ish name that makes me think Gandalf lives there or something. Also, something of an exaggeration. It's more like a hill). J and I found a trail there so narrow you could just about fit two ants in it, which sent our pulses through the roof while we negotiated stone blocks and fallen trees for 5 kilometres. Otherwise, the river area is a great one to run fast in: relatively flat, mostly gravel-free and very, very pretty. I averaged sub-5 for two kilometres there the other day.

Last Sunday I joined a group at one of the local gyms for a Body Combat session. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's basically shadow-boxing, throwing punches and uppercuts and kicks and generally imagining that you're doing some serious damage to an imaginary opponent. I tried avoiding looking in the mirror while I did all that, or else the illusion would have been shattered as soon as I caught sight of my puny chicken arms trying to do ”damage”. I hadn't done any Body Combat in years, not since we lived in England, and I came away feeling energised. A day later, I was sore. Two days later, I couldn't move. My upper body, from my shoulder blades to the tips of my fingers, was aching so fiercely that I could hardly turn around in bed without waking up.

So I went for a run. Hey, it's worked for me before: when my muscles are sore, I flush the pain out with some increased blood circulation. It's science, people. I read that somewhere on the Internet, so it must be true.

It took me 5 km to get into some kind of flow. My legs never woke up completely, but I did pick up more speed towards the end. Now, after a hot shower, I feel much better than I did before the run, although I still suspect someone beat me unconscious some time last Sunday – I must have suffered head trauma and memory loss, that's why I don't remember it. Why else would my body hurt in such a way?