Anchor

I've found my Anchor.

For a while now, I'd resisted joining a gym. I have a nice treadmill. Dumbbells, exercise balls, and a weight workout all written out at whatever house I may be occupying.

However, soon after joining the gym, I realized that it was having one place to which I could go and get everything I needed that was going to cement my routine.

I get out of bed, swill some coffee down, change into workout clothes, brush my teeth, and I go. I don't have to worry about waking anyone up with my music or the pounding of the treadmill. I don't have to take the weather into account. It's always sunny in LA (Fitness). I don't need anything but a minimum of an hour and the desire to feel this energetic and strong every day. Oh. A good sports bra helps, too (I don't have one). And a sweet gym bag with its own hair dryer.

I have a new routine: Legs + core Monday. Chest Tuesday. Arms + core Wednesday. Back Thursday. Shoulders + core Friday. Each weight workout followed by as much cardio as I have time for. Weekends are for fun, but I must do something, even if it's just walking the dog around the block. This weekend I'm looking forward to swimming some laps at least once, maybe both days.

You know, the way I feel now, I don't think I'd care if I never lost another pound. Ok, that's a small lie. At some point it would piss me off to be working so hard with nothing to show for it. However, I know for a fact there are normal weight people around whom I can run circles and bench press without breaking a sweat - normal weight people who just don't feel as good as I do right now. I get up at 5am when I work daylights to make it to the gym before work. Sometimes this is after going to bed only 5 or 6 hours prior. Yet I get to work at 8am infused with energy. My mood? Ask my co-workers. We got slammed with 23 calls the other day. I was the biggest recipient of the slammage and every time another call came in, I'd just laugh because it was so ridiculous. I can't imagine how I'd have reacted if in hibernating, junk-food-eating slug mode. It wouldn't have been pretty, I imagine.

Who knew a gym membership would be so important?

This Wednesday is a wordy one...

But, first, a happy picture. There's a dog in my house!

My house has found a new purpose: Doggy Day Care. When it's going to be a long work day, we bring the little girlie to my house for the day. It's in the area in which we work, so she's not stuck in the house for 14 hours without a break. It's really nice to come home and find a dog happily wagging her entire back end simply because I've shown up.

In other news, we've joined LA Fitness. Yes, *the* LA Fitness. It is a beautiful facility. The new aerobics room is bright, with mirrors on all walls and a new wood floor that springs back when you step on it. I will be honest, I really can't be in that room without seeing, in my mind, spent bullets on the floor. I think it's because I've seen large amounts of blood, and I've seen people die in ways they shouldn't have, and I've dealt with mass chaos all before - but never have I seen handfuls of spent bullets on a shiny wood floor. To this day, that is the image that sticks with me. Weird.

I got the free workout-slash-sales pitch from the personal trainer Monday. I will admit, it was a shorter and more effective workout than what I have been doing. However, the cost of working out with a trainer 5 days a week equaled my mortgage payment, so I will continue to do things the uninformed rube way. I did decide to work on a body part per day so that I am doing something different Monday-Friday.

Something the trainer pointed out, that I kinda/sorta knew in the back of my mind, was that I wasn't getting enough protein every day. This wasn't news to me. I've been tired and bonking every day at 3pm. So, off to GNC I go. The whey protein shakes I got are pretty decent and can mix with water. I have noticed a difference in my hunger and energy levels when using them the past couple of days.

I am still out of sorts as far as my routine. Every time I leave to go somewhere, anywhere, I feel like I am packing for vacation. I always have a bag of clothes with me. Gym clothes. Change of clothes. Uniform. I have duplicates of things I really need at my house and Dan's. Hair spray. Kashi bars. Deodorant. Muir Glen organic soups. Hair Dryer. I have THREE FUCKING HAIR DRYERS. Nobody who's not a hair stylist should have to own three hair dryers. However, in order to cut down on the toting around and packing of bags, I have one at my house, I have one at Dan's house, and I have one that now lives in the gym bag.

The gym bag. Simple concept. Stuff you use at the gym and after. You think it's simple. Until you have to go from a place where most of your belongings don't live, to the gym, and then to work for 12 hours. You realize that yes, you may have a sample-size body wash, but nothing with which to dry off. Or to floof your hair. Or to deodorize your sweaty bod. Or to paint one's face. Oh, to be a guy and need so little. To pee outside and laugh at your farts. But, alas, my plumbing and pysche dictate that I smell good and feel clean and my hair is floofed when I face the world. I got up at 5am. My timeline in my mind had me at Wal-Mart buying necessities for a stocked gym bag until 5:40, then working out from 5:50-7am, then showering and heading to work. The gym bag stocking mission ran until almost 6:30 (I should have known the shampoo aisle alone takes me 20 minutes, what with all the opening and smelling of scents), and there was no gym trip that day.

However, now there is a fully-stocked and dedicated gym bag, in which resides everything I need to transition from gym to work, or even a week's trip if I have access to laundry facilities.

It's the little things.

My personal fuck-you to George

You know, Crazy George, as he playfully referred to himself. George, who hated women because he couldn't communicate with them. George, who apparently flew cross-country to take a dating seminar from models, but showed no evidence of asking for help for his personality disorder, other than some Google searches.

Dan and I had been talking about joining that particular LA Fitness for a couple of months. We were just waiting until the end of August and the start of school, so that he would have more time. My best friend and her husband belong there. The big draw for me is a pool, and operating hours that would allow me to swim laps before and after work, and the possibility of being able to take Yoga classes again. As fate would have it, the first time I would walk through the doors to that facility would be the night that George decided to exact revenge upon total strangers. I was hoping my first tour of the place would be under different circumstances.

Obviously after last Tuesday night, our plan to join will take some reflection and thought. I don't even know if the gym will re-open, and if LA Fitness decided to bulldoze the location and build a memorial out of respect for the 3 beautiful women who were cut down there, in their prime, I would understand and support that 100%.

However, I have firmly decided that if LA Fitness decides to keep that location open, I'm going to be one of the first to walk back into those doors. Once the vigils have been held, and the candles, flowers and heartfelt sentiments of a shell-shocked quiet community have been cleared away, if those doors open for business again, I'll be there. I don't know if Dan will do the same. Of course, he would not have been targeted by this coward had he been there, anyway.

For all of those beautiful girls and women who thought they were just going to work out and then go home that night, for the two women I had to pronounce deceased, for the woman who survived the horrific massacre but can't have the lights off in her own home now, for my patient, who asked me if she was going to die, for all of the survivors, and for all of those suffering without their loved one, and for myself: The first place I'm going to go is back to that aerobics room. I'm going to stay there for as long as I can stand to, and I'm going to say a little prayer for those who died. Not being a praying person, I don't know what I will say, but it will be heartfelt. Then, I'm going to walk over to the spot where George committed his last cowardly act, ending his own life, and I'm going to spit on it and tell him, "Fuck You." That will also be heartfelt.