psycho kitty!

Took the day off work yesterday to take the cat (Josie) to the vet for a check up.

Josie is a longhaired tabby tortie who will be 11 on 01 May. She is full of tortie 'attitude'.

Actually, we nearly didn't make it to the vet at all. First of all Josie pulled a disappearing act when I got the cat basket out, then when I did find her after about 10 minutes she did a 'psycho kitty' on me. I ended up having to put my grappling gloves on to try and get her out of the wardrobe. I still lost, and my gloves have scratches on them ....

Of course as soon as I phoned the vet to say we might not make it, out she came looking a bit sheepish. Grabbed her, chucked her in the basket and off we went. The Cat Clinic is roughly a 20 min drive from the house and Josie ranted and raved the whole way there. She also had a fair bit to say while we were sitting in the waiting room which isn't like her.

Anyway, Simon eventually called us through and Miss Butter-Wouldn't-Melt-In-Her-Mouth emerged from the basket to be told "hello beautiful" etc etc. Check up went well, no health issues, Podgebelly has gained half a kilo, and her wee 'toilet issues' are a likely result of her fondness for chicken korma(!) and apple pie and custard(!!). Josie ends up lying on her side getting her tummy rubbed and you could see the wee student accompanying the vet thinking that she'd made a good career choice.

Then out came the claw trimmers and the you-know-what hit the fan!! The wee student was suddenly not so keen on veterinary medicine lol. Suffice to say Josie and Simon had a fairly major disagreement over her claws, and how she never dislocated her front leg I will never know! I'm pretty sure it was wrapped round the back of her ears at one point. She's certainly a good wee grappler - there was two of us holding her upside down and she still got out of it! Anyway, Grumpy Knickers ultimately lost the argument despite swearing like a trooper and attempting to deploy most of her sharp bits and her claws got trimmed.



Simon added insult to injury by picking her up and giving her a cuddle. He didn't see her frown, but I did. Then he put her back in her basket, she dithered a bit and he gave her bum a wee push. And she whirled round, swore at him - and swiped him an absolute beauty across the palm.

Josie normally really adores Simon and is generally a sweetheart with him, to the point of being a total tart. However yesterday it was more like Welcome to my world! This is the Josie I live with lol. I was mortified btw, even though cat scratches are an occupational hazard in his line of work. You really don't want the reputation associated with having a cat who savages the vet. It was funny though, right up until the bit where he was bleeding.

So the big match summary goes something like this:

Vet 1 - 1 Cat

Cat won on penalties after extra time.

a world first

Have just been to the world's first self-directed spin class. 3 participants, 1 CD and nae instructor. So of course we decided to do the class ourselves lol. Ok, so maybe we didn't quite manage to be doing the same thing at the same time, but we meant well and we all had a v good workout.

Think it might catch on?

back to normal-ish

So far this week I've managed to get to 2 of my usual 3 spin classes, and I'm planning to go to the 3rd this morning. I do like spin.

My foot is still bothering me a little bit, so rather than go to the kickboxing class I broke out the kettlebells again last night. This time my workout looked like this:

25 star jumps

50 swings
10 & 10 snatches (right & left)
10 double clean and jerk
25 bodyweight squats

50 swings
12 & 12 snatches (right & left)
10 double clean and jerk
25 press ups

50 swings
15 & 15 snatches (right & left)
5 double clean and jerk
25 crunches

10 & 10 overhead squats (right & left)

Apart from almost clonking the cat in the face with the kettlebell mid-snatch when she decided to nip past me, training went well! Chi kung and kung fu class tonight, then hopefully back to properly normal next week.

No krav

Since krav class was cancelled due to it being Easter Monday, I thought it was the perfect excuse to break out the kettlebells for some strength training.

After the usual mobility work I knew I want to work sets of swings, presses and double kettlebell squats, incorporating 100 reps in between.

My workout looked like this:

25 star jumps
25 x swings (16kg)
5 & 5 presses (12kg)
12 x front squat (2 x 12kg)

25 bodyweight squats
25 x swings (16kg)
10 & 10 presses (12kg)
15 x front squat (2 x 12kg)

25 pressups
30 x swings (16kg)
10 & 10 presses (12kg)
12 x front squat (2 x 12kg)

25 crunches


Overall it was a short workout but a hard one.

challenges, challenges

Lent may be over but I have decided to try and keep going with the no chocolate, no crisps, no fizzy juice etc. I actually wasn't even interested in chocolate yesterday. I definitely want to keep going with the no fizzy juice as it has no redeeming qualities whatsover.

Going without these things for the last 6 weeks has been an interesting exercise. If nothing else it demonstrates how much of British 'snack life' is built around them. I've stood in our shop at work wondering what the hell to have that isn't crisps, chocolate, sweets or biscuits. I'm glad I didn't decide to ditch baked goods as well, or I really would have been screwed! The shop doesn't sell fruit although the canteen does - unfortunately the quality is so poor that it's not worth buying. I often nip into the 24 hour supermarket on the way to work and pick up some fruit to snack on.

Fail!

Well, I *intended* to go to circuits on Saturday morning but in the spirit of epic fail I spent so much time trying to find the &^"%%!$ Home Delivery Network depot at Newbridge I totally ran out of time to get there. On the positive side, at least I got my parcel.

I certainly made up for it on Sunday with some personal training. I decided to train for volume so after some mobility work I hit the kettlebells for:

500 swings
100 shoulder presses (both sides)
plus 350 bodyweight squats

I then finished off with some chi kung and kung fu stance training.

some other stuff

I did do some other stuff recently.

Almost 2 weeks ago now I got the opportunity to attend a 2 hour kettlebell masterclass with master trainer Steve Cotter. I treated myself to this session since I ended up not being able to do the CKT training over that weekend.

It ended up being an excellent session. Steve had us work on just two lifts - the single arm snatch and the double clean and jerk. I'm not especially fond of either lift, which probably made it so much the better for me. I've never been that good at the technique for the clean and jerk, so I really liked the way that Steve broke the lift down into clear stages which we could practice and build on. I appreciate this 'chunking' style of learning.

We worked sets for volume rather than weight, which was definitely challenging! We certainly got through a lot of chalk. When I saw the pics from the event I realised that black had not been that a great choice to wear - I'm head to toe covered in chalk as you will see from this pic lol.

The other great thing about the class was that I got to meet up with a lot of the friends that I've trained with previously at Rannoch's KB1 and KB2 workshops. Quite a few of us keep in touch, and it's always nice to meet up again.

The next day I *hurt* (self inflicted, I know) but I did head off to the Combat Ready gym for a 2 hour krav maga refresher session. I was so tired I could really have done with not going but I had already promised UTP that I would go along. Actually, we were both so shattered that I don't think either of us trained to our usual sort of level which was a real shame because the session covered a lot of good stuff across levels 1-3.

It was certainly a busy session on the mats which made some of the ground stuff 'interesting' to say the least! After training, I had to zoom home, shower, change, eat and charge off to the hospital to see my mother.

another day ....

And a difficult one at that.

A meeting meant that I didn't get to spin class, and I was very late leaving which meant zero chance of getting to any classes.

However, I did my mobility work then hit the bodyweight exercises for my 100 reps:

30 pressups
15 lunges - right (rather tricky because of my toes)
15 lunges - left
40 bodyweight squats

I also picked up the 16kg kettlebell to push press for a few good reps. I've had the 16kg for a while now but have done little with it, so I really wan to start getting used to working with it.

I then did some kung fu stance training and finished with chi kung exercises.

It was a nice short little session that really took my mind off the stuff that's been going on at work.