Shoelaces

When we're children we get told two basic things at kindergarten. The first is 'don't eat the paste' and the second is 'never walk around with your shoelaces undone'. I never ever ate paste at kindergarten because I never really understood the appeal of it. Why eat weird sticky stuff when you can have delicious apple pieces instead? As for the second thing? Well I always had my shoelaces firmly tied up. My father would tie my shoes with a double know that was so tight that I often struggled to undo it after school. I never had to worry about my shoelaces coming undone and for some reason whenever I saw someone else with an unraveled shoelace then I'd get a little bit annoyed. I guess it was the know it all inside of me. I knew that they were going to trip up  and so I really wanted to point that out to them. Six year old Camilla really must have been a vile creation because I have a distinct memory of intentionally tripping up a boy with his shoelaces undone. At the time I thought to myself 'gosh he needs to learn a lesson'. Lucky for me I didn't get sent to the principals office for violence since it just looked like he'd tripped himself up. Honestly what a vile creature!

Yesterday I had an undone shoelace incident. I was running home and about three hundred metres from the front door. One thing that I've always done is sprint the last little bit of my run home. I remember my sister telling me that my fitness would improve rapidly if I sprinted between lamposts but then at the time I decided to flag it because it was far too exhausting but at the end of the run then you're willing to put it all on the line so it walks wonderfully. Anyway I stared down at my shoes and I noticed that my left shoelace was flying free. At that moment I was forced to make a decision. Either I could break my end of run sprint and tie it up or I could risk it and keep on running. Inside my head I started to weigh up the pros and cons of both options. On one hand I was imagining slamming into the concrete. It's a terrible feeling and one which I remember vividly. You see I haven't fallen over on concrete since I was at primary school. In my head I just kept on imagining red hands and grazed knees. Despite this image I still decided to keep on running (I rationalised that my current speed meant that my shoe lace was moving too quickly to trip me up). The whole time my heart was in my mouth and I was praying that I wouldn't trip myself up. Nothing happened. I arrived home, did my stretches and I was perfectly fine.

The point of that seemingly pointless story? There are often aspects of our lives that we rarely examine. They stay buried and labelled as a sure fire way to get to a negative outcome. We often don't realise how much we change over the years. It isn't exactly possible to pop outside of your body and just check on your own life. So naturally we just assume that nothing has changed. We're still the same person. I concluded that  because an undone shoelace meant grazed knees when I was five years old then it would mean the very same thing as an eighteen year old. Everything changes so it's important that we appreciate the changes.

3 Good Things

* Casually making a gnocchi salad from scratch. I felt like such a domestic goddess although most importantly it tasted AMAZING!

*A lovely walk to the botanic gardens with my mother.

*Waking up and having a lovely little HIMYM related discussion with Phoebe, Michaela and Paul. Oh and in case any of y'all are reading my blog the whole 'vomit-free' thing is related to Ted not vomiting at all not just cause of alcohol.