Kilimanjaro Challenge 2011

Welcome to my blog!

Follow the ups and downs of the biggest challenge I've ever faced. My friend Justine and I are climbing Kilimanjaro in February 2011 and are hoping to raise £10,000 for Naomi House Children's Hospice.

Thanks for visiting.
K

Kili

Kili



Monday 21 June 2010

Car Booty (Shoulda Sold the Dog!)

We did another car boot yesterday, and rather successful it was too! Justine and I thought we'd do a themed car boot this time, rather than the higglety pigglety of the usual bric-a-brac and other items, we were very organised and sorted out our stuff and had a kiddies stall.

We sold clothes, bikes, toys and books and did quite well. We've been very lucky and people have been very generous with donations so we had plenty of stock. Lots of good quality childrens clothes too, which were virtually brand new - they're only in them five minutes aren't they? It did make me laugh that considering we were selling items from as little as 50p when people asked "have you got any aged 3-4?", which we did, but because we hadn't sorted them into size order, and they were just laid out, looking pretty, folk didn't want to rummage. I kinda think rummaging for a bargain is part of the fun, isn't it? But next time, we'll have it all size ordered, just like the high street - only MUCH cheaper!

The biggest draw of the day appeared to be Ludo - my dog. Since I didn't want to leave him at home on his own all day, I took him with us. I was fully expecting him to be a complete pain, but he was mostly quite good. He did quite a lot of singing though (for singing, read 'high pitched whining at other dogs') but eventually he chilled out and everybody wanted a cuddle! He was so patient, getting his head scratched and tummy tickled (it's a hard life) and he was really gentle with all the children that had been dragged over to try out jeans/jumpers/t-shirts etc. I think next time we take him, we'll start charging for cuddles, we'll make a killing! He seems rather exhausted now from all the fuss though....

Sunday 13 June 2010

Some Good News, Some Bad......

Been a bit quiet on the blog front the last few weeks, sorry about that. So we're in June and the weather is lovely and warm. Lots of BBQs and friends round, but unfortunately, none of that lovely stuff gets money raised and people fit for a mountain!

The good news is I have a legitimate reason to not go running any more - hurray!!! The bad news is, I've got osteoarthritis - booo!!!

I won't bore you with too much dull, depressing, medical stuff, but I've mentioned before that I have the knees of a 90 year old, and I was only half joking. I thought I'd better get myself off to the Drs to get my achy joints sorted before attempting to climb anything bigger than the stairs. Apparently I have something called Hyper Mobility, which is posh talk for being a bit double jointed. This isn't usually a problem for most people, but a few unlucky folk suffer damage to their joints because the joint moves further than it is safe for it to do so. I'm one of those unlucky few and the damage I've been causing, by being a bit too bendy, has now developed into osteoarthritis in my feet, and thumbs and likely to develop in other joints where I have pain too. Which is something to look forward to! Not at all the diagnosis I was expecting and there's no magic pill to make it go away, which was what I was hoping for, just control the pain with pain killers.

What does this mean for the mountain??? The Doc says I shouldn't do any running as high impact sport will exacerbate the problem, but walking is fine. I can do lots of training by walking and any pain can be controlled with painkillers, since there's no treatment once osteoarthritis has set in. It's also only likely to get worse so I'd better get myself up that mountain before I'm unable to later in life. I'm quite pleased that I don't have to drag myself running around my three mile circuit on a Saturday morning so every cloud does have a silver lining! The unfortunate thing is the worst affected joints are in my feet, and I'll kind of need those, but as long as I'm sensible I really don't think it should pose a massive problem. I suspect my insurance premium for the trip has just trebled though!

Most importantly, what does this mean for all of my beautiful, beautiful shoes???? I may resort to sleeping in my very high heels if my feet get to sore to actually wear them!

So other news is we've done a leaflet drop for our next event - a Hog Roast with Rum Shack!! I'm quite exciting about this one. Hopefully the weather will be warm and England will win their group, which means their quarter final match won't clash with the Hog Roast. When we put the date in the diary in the middle of a long, dark winter, the World Cup was but a distant dot on the horizon, but now, unfortunately, if England are only runners up, the match will clash with our event!! How inconsiderate!! I hope that Green fellow sorts his butter fingers out from now on, I need England to win their group, I can't be having any schedule clashing!!! It would be terribly unpatriotic to hope that they don't go through to the next round at all, wouldn't it? - Although, by July 3rd, I might be sick of all the footy and that annoying, endless droning of air horns and noise that seems to accompany every game -what is that about???

So, off now to pour myself a glass of vino de collapso and drown my sorrows at being a prematurely aged 31 year old, with an old persons condition - I wonder if it'll get me out of washing up and cutting the grass from now on......