Tag Archives: swimming pool

Things That Are Making Me Happy This Week

Posted by Kate W in Stuff and Nonsense and tagged with , , , , , ,

01. Two days in Warburton to progress the Yarra River walking project. We’ve still got lots of in-between bits to walk but we headed to our ‘start’ – the Upper Yarra Reservoir, which is almost at capacity – see the treetops underwater in the foreground of the pic above?! There are loads of excellent walks, and we’re already planning our next visit.
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The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , , , ,

The things I love about swimming:

  • the immediate sense of relaxation as soon as I dive in
  • watching the tiles on the bottom as I churn through laps – it’s my meditation
  • the ritual – from the order of my laps to the way I roll my towel and bathers post-swim
  • the lingering smell of chlorine or the grit of salt

The specifics: I’m a medium-laner; always a 50-metre pool; always outdoors (all year round).

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka is a novel in two parts. The first is about an indoor pool and its swimmers. Swimming can be a great leveler, and Otsuka captures this in her descriptions –

We suffer from bad backs, fallen arches, shattered dreams, broken hearts, anxiety, melancholia, anhedonia, the usual aboveground afflictions. Continue reading →

Sample Saturday – friends, more friends, and boundaries

Posted by Kate W in Stuff and Nonsense and tagged with , , , , , , ,

Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, three from the list of books I was looking forward to in 2020: Continue reading →

The best of lockdown

Posted by Kate W in Stuff and Nonsense and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

Has there ever been such a grim title? Sorry, it’s the Pollyanna in me. I started writing Things That Are Making Me Happy posts seven months ago, when Melbourne went into its first lockdown. There was a brief gap between lockdowns one and two, but not enough for anything to feel ‘normal’. For me, that’s changed in the last two weeks and being able to see family and friends, and enjoy some dinners out, has been marvelous.

So, before I immerse myself in Melbourne’s ‘new normal’, I thought I’d remind myself of the highlights of ‘happy’. Here’s a quick summary of the best stuff – Continue reading →