I'm back baby! In more ways than one.
For 2 months I have been staggering through life like Superman with a pocket full of Kryptonite. I hate to draw such a dramatic comparison, but I've been using x-ray vision for over a decade, I am able to leap over my lounge in a single bound, and I'm sure there have been nights where I have almost gone in to the hospital after putting my undies on over my jeans. But I digress. It started with a general feeling of lethergy which over the course of November, evolved into constantly yawning and sometimes, more worrying, gasping for breath for no reason.
So concerned was I that I had a serious health problem that I went to see the Doc for a blood test.
The results were disturbing. "Mr Webeck, your blood test results are back. It shows a very high-" In a split second I finished his sentence with every worst case scenario. "- cholesterol." What? I barely had time to digest the news before he continued. "And you have low testosterone." Ok Doc, I came here to get and explanation for my lethargy, not to be told I'm an old fat woman! He also said my renal function wasn't great. Should I tell him that over the last 10 years I've drunk enough Pepsi Max to fill a swimming pool? Nah.
A few days off work and I was starting to feel a little better. Who knew that working an entire calendar month with only three days off could bring about such physical exhaustion.
And then came Christmas.
Since working nightfill for Big W all those years ago, I've found it hard to see Christmas as anything but hard work. But the 8 days around Christmas this year was ridiculous! Through 8 busy days and seven busier nights, I averaged about 3 and a half hours sleep a night. I have never felt such depths of tiredness. Ready to snap at anyone that dared give me an opportunity. Begging for some annoyed patient to complain about my demeanor. Praying for a doctor to suggest I wasn't working fast enough. I was fantasising about spewing a tirade that would make Mark Latham blush. Alas the chance never arose and so the crazed lunatic inside me must remain annonymous for a little while longer.
Physically, that feeling in your eyes after swimming in an overchlorined pool. The throbbing in your head after a night that ends with tequila shots. And for 1 week I swear that Lindsay Lohan had more functioning brain cells than I did. I was a zombie. Walking amongst the living, those around me could tell there was something missing inside me without really being able to put their finger on exactly what it was.
But as 2011 begins, and with 48 hours of life away from the hospital under my belt, again the zombie inside me has been subdued. I am normal again, or at least as normal as I was before.
So now, as I wait for the arrival of our new baby, due any minute, I cherish the sleep filled nights.
Until then.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Friday, December 31, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
SAME DOGG, NEW TRICK.
What happens when 435 characters on a facebook status update doesn't quite say it? You blog.
So here's the first of many entries to chronicle anything and everything. Ultimately this will be a mix of interesting anecdotes, opinion (keeping controversy to a minimum), and random thoughts that belie any real logic.
So, to open the innings, what sort of entry defines me? What issue is profound enough to justify forever being my debut into the world of internet blogging? And so it begins -
I remember my Year 10 English teacher one day announcing to the class that each student was to prepare a speech for the following week. It was to be two minutes long and could be about any subject we wished. As a student (and some would say in later life) I loved speaking to a crowd. I immediately began planning my speech. There was so much to talk about in 1993. I had dismissed immediately the notion to speak about Steve Waugh's season, due in part to the luke warm reception to my last speech, 'Why Steve Waugh is better than Dean Jones.' Mark Taylor was scoring at will. An ode to Tubby was shortlisted. Perhaps a rebuttal to the common belief that sportsman had to be super fit athletes, using the recent stats of David Boon and Merv Hughes as irrefutable evidence. Shane Warne had googlied, zootered, and flipped the Ashes away from England. Should I attempt some crowd participation and hold a religious ceremony, dedicated to the god of spin? Within 10 seconds my plans were sent into disarray. My teacher continued, "- and Nathan Webeck, you are not allowed to talk about cricket." Why was I being singled out? Had I spoken out of turn in class (which was in any event a distinct possibility)? What else was there to talk about anyway? Despite putting a strong case forward that to deny my right to speak about cricket, she would possibly be denying my fellow classmates an entertaining ball-by-ball retelling of Tubby Taylor's century in the First Ashes Test, my teacher would not relent. So, this first blog is dedicated to that teacher.
All through the current Ashes series I've been pragmatic about Australia's chance of victory against arguably the best English side since Botham. Sometimes we put our best up against their best, and sometimes our best doesn't measure up. On paper they look the goods.
Can someone please explain to me then why, in my car on my lunch break today, I started to get teary when Mitchell Johnson took his forth wicket? I had weeks earlier had a premonition that Mitchell Johnson was going to rout the English just when everyone thought he was a spent force. I told my colleagues about my vision. They were understandably sceptical. I had never displayed any sort of psychic ability at work before.
Maybe my tears were joy at the realisation that my name would forever be used in the same sentences as Nostradamus.
Searching for an answer that wasn't related to some sort of hormone imbalance, I came up with only one. That is the nature of the game. Cricket is not a sport. It is a framework of rules by which players can create their own story. Those stories have the potential to become legend.
Mitchell Johnson's spell of bowling on the 17th day of December, 2010, will be one that will be written about in greater terms than 'line and length'. It was a devastating display of raw passion. To the technique coaches and fitness coaches, Mitchell Johnson said 'give me a ball, and set me loose'. The results raised the phoenix from the ashes (pardon the pun).
That story is the only reason we watch sport. The emotion. The idea that the darkest hour is always the moment before the dawn. Maybe Australia won't win the Ashes this year. Maybe we can't even win this test. But when Paul Collingwood fell to Mitchell Johnson for 5 on the 17th day of December, 2010, and a grown man cried in his car, a nation stopped and wondered. Maybe. Just maybe we can.
And for the record, in 1993 I stood in front of my Year 10 English class and gave a speech on crime statistics in NSW. Everyone agreed it was the most boring speech that I'd ever written.
Until next time.
So here's the first of many entries to chronicle anything and everything. Ultimately this will be a mix of interesting anecdotes, opinion (keeping controversy to a minimum), and random thoughts that belie any real logic.
So, to open the innings, what sort of entry defines me? What issue is profound enough to justify forever being my debut into the world of internet blogging? And so it begins -
I remember my Year 10 English teacher one day announcing to the class that each student was to prepare a speech for the following week. It was to be two minutes long and could be about any subject we wished. As a student (and some would say in later life) I loved speaking to a crowd. I immediately began planning my speech. There was so much to talk about in 1993. I had dismissed immediately the notion to speak about Steve Waugh's season, due in part to the luke warm reception to my last speech, 'Why Steve Waugh is better than Dean Jones.' Mark Taylor was scoring at will. An ode to Tubby was shortlisted. Perhaps a rebuttal to the common belief that sportsman had to be super fit athletes, using the recent stats of David Boon and Merv Hughes as irrefutable evidence. Shane Warne had googlied, zootered, and flipped the Ashes away from England. Should I attempt some crowd participation and hold a religious ceremony, dedicated to the god of spin? Within 10 seconds my plans were sent into disarray. My teacher continued, "- and Nathan Webeck, you are not allowed to talk about cricket." Why was I being singled out? Had I spoken out of turn in class (which was in any event a distinct possibility)? What else was there to talk about anyway? Despite putting a strong case forward that to deny my right to speak about cricket, she would possibly be denying my fellow classmates an entertaining ball-by-ball retelling of Tubby Taylor's century in the First Ashes Test, my teacher would not relent. So, this first blog is dedicated to that teacher.
All through the current Ashes series I've been pragmatic about Australia's chance of victory against arguably the best English side since Botham. Sometimes we put our best up against their best, and sometimes our best doesn't measure up. On paper they look the goods.
Can someone please explain to me then why, in my car on my lunch break today, I started to get teary when Mitchell Johnson took his forth wicket? I had weeks earlier had a premonition that Mitchell Johnson was going to rout the English just when everyone thought he was a spent force. I told my colleagues about my vision. They were understandably sceptical. I had never displayed any sort of psychic ability at work before.
Maybe my tears were joy at the realisation that my name would forever be used in the same sentences as Nostradamus.
Searching for an answer that wasn't related to some sort of hormone imbalance, I came up with only one. That is the nature of the game. Cricket is not a sport. It is a framework of rules by which players can create their own story. Those stories have the potential to become legend.
Mitchell Johnson's spell of bowling on the 17th day of December, 2010, will be one that will be written about in greater terms than 'line and length'. It was a devastating display of raw passion. To the technique coaches and fitness coaches, Mitchell Johnson said 'give me a ball, and set me loose'. The results raised the phoenix from the ashes (pardon the pun).
That story is the only reason we watch sport. The emotion. The idea that the darkest hour is always the moment before the dawn. Maybe Australia won't win the Ashes this year. Maybe we can't even win this test. But when Paul Collingwood fell to Mitchell Johnson for 5 on the 17th day of December, 2010, and a grown man cried in his car, a nation stopped and wondered. Maybe. Just maybe we can.
And for the record, in 1993 I stood in front of my Year 10 English class and gave a speech on crime statistics in NSW. Everyone agreed it was the most boring speech that I'd ever written.
Until next time.
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