Back to it

The holidays have, thankfully, come and gone. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy them. What I don't enjoy is the onslaught that begins earlier and earlier every year. I remember nearly having a fit of apoplexy in Kohl's when I saw Christmas displays up in mid-October. I remember mumbling psychotically to myself and shaking my head. I may have twitched once or twice. Hey, it keeps the pesky salespeople away.

*mental note* try this next time I'm browsing on a car lot

But... I digress.

There has definitely been a shift in my attitude during this time of year. No longer is it the full-on orgy of food, drink, food, and food. And cookies. Nope. We had our Thanksgiving dinner, and our pumpkin (mini) pies. We had our leftovers. We had our Christmas ham. However, something was missing. What was it?

*thinkthinkthink*

Oh, yeah. The pressure. The pressure to have x-dozen of x-variety of cookies made and given out. The pressure to consume anything and everything in the name of "It's the holidays!" The pressure to visit here, there, everywhere and please everyone.

Is it wrong to savor the memories of Christmas day, me in my new Christmas pajamas and earrings, switching between A Christmas Story and my dvr selections, dozing on the floor curled up with my dog, ignoring the phone calls from the tipsy neighbors, who felt terrible that I had to work Christmas night and trying to invite me to their family dinners so I "wouldn't be alone" on Christmas? If that's wrong, I don't wanna be right. It was sheer bliss, except for the fact of having to show up at work that night, but even that wasn't too terribly bad.

I do regret the lapse in the 5-day-per-week workout schedule that I had established in the fall. The holidays weren't its downfall, however. It was my house. Now that that is no longer an issue, and there is no out of town trip looming, the schedule is back in effect. A lapse, pure and simple, is all that it was.

Other than the regret of the temporary slowdown of my gym visits - and even on the days I skipped the gym the dog and I were often taking snowy walks together - I have come out of this holiday season feeling great. I don't have the January hangover and pounds and bloat and fatigue hanging over me. I don't have the dread of some impossible and ridiculous unsustainable diet/exercise plan that I "have to" start come January 1. I have my routine to get back to, and dare I say I am so looking forward to it.

Here's to 2010!

Merry Christmas!

Hard to believe the last entry was Thanksgiving. There's been lots of blood, sweat, tears, achy muscles, long days and nights, deaths and saves, between then and now. Life has settled and I finally have a moment to just sit and write.

Two years ago today, I got the best surprise of my life. A scavenger hunt of note cards led me, finally, to a little box from the jeweler in the bread drawer and a proposal that I had no idea was coming. Now, here we are, all finally in the same house, trying to consolidate my stuff into his house and my lifestyle/routines into theirs. It's coming together better than I ever imagined. All of my ambivalence and worries about not having "my" time have disappeared.

I'm still reeling from the activity of the past couple months. It's been a blur of going from work to my house - to get it ready for the tenant, money draining at an alarming rate from my bank account and into a house that I am leaving, to trying to fit it gym visits and mini-workouts.

There seems to be an inordinate amount of death and grief this holiday season, tempered only by our squeaking a few small victories past the Reaper. It's what keeps us going. There was the family I cried with, who found their beloved husband and father deceased in bed. They went from screaming with denial and turning to me, faces twisted in grief, "Why didn't you even try to save my dad?" - to acceptance that he had gone peacefully in his sleep, pretty much all any of us could ask for. There was the 44 year old from the other night; I just found out yesterday that she had died. I wasn't surprised at that. I had gotten to know her a few months ago when she passed out at the wheel, coming to rest on a sidewalk with no idea how she'd gotten there. She'd been in the process of a divorce and had many stressors. Some of the things she told me, and her appearance, led me to believe she'd developed an eating disorder, and possibly some sort of pill addiction. Same situation the other night, she hadn't eaten or slept for days, she was lethargic, she was falling frequently and passing out. She had been diagnosed with electrolyte imbalances the last time we transported her - red flag for an eating disorder. She didn't look great, but she didn't look like she was going to die that night, either. I didn't remember until hours after I heard she had died, the face of her pre-teen boy as we carried her down the steps of his grandparents' house. I stopped before we left and asked him if he wanted to give her a kiss.

"Oh, he's already given me one", the patient mumbled, smiling. He gave her a gentle hug, tears in his eyes.
I'm glad we stopped for that.

Later that night, an sweet older lady, her family surrounding her, having one of the biggest heart attacks I've seen in a long time. She ended up being one of those fuck-yous to the Reaper.

I've been so tired that I scraped up a car in the parking lot beside me backing out too quickly - at least I don't have to worry about where the first month of rent I collect goes. Sigh. I feel as if I've finished a marathon and I'm waiting for the next event.

My gym routine has suffered, severely. It will continue to suffer until the dreaded first of the year, when I will have to fight the New Year's Resolvers for cardio machines. However, it's time to get back into my life, my routine. I'm craving it.

My best friend in the world is having a little boy! I am deleriously happy for her, since she wasn't sure she could conceive or carry a pregnancy to term. She's halfway through a very healthy pregnancy. Miracles do happen.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I saw several herds/gaggles/gangs/mobs of turkey this morning on my drive to work. I wonder if they were going to Thanksgiving dinner?

Sometimes you have to visit where you were...

... to see just how good it is where you are now.

We celebrated our Thanksgiving day yesterday since we're working through the holiday. Dinner with all the trimmings, mini-pies for dessert. I do my best to eat in a healthy way. I strive for foods that are minimally processed. I avoid flour and sugar. I don't eat pie. I don't eat mashed potatoes and gravy. Yams are microwaved with a little pat of butter, not baked in a syrupy brown sugar bath. A salad precedes every meal, and sometimes is the meal.

However, I'm not doing a Tofurkey Thanksgiving with mashed cauliflower subbing in for mashed potatoes. No. I bust my ass 90% of the time so that when it comes time for the 10%, I'm not going to have guilt. Fuck that - life's too short (insert favorite cliche saying here). Now, I haven't been perfect. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I've caught myself justifying eating more than I need with the old, "I got up at 4:30 this morning to work out - don't I deserve this?"

However, yesterday showed me just how far I've come in the almost 2 years I've been working on my eating issues.

I used to look forward to that uncomfortably full feeling I had yesterday. Hell, I'd seek it out, make it happen. Eat to coma every time. Numb out. Fall asleep. Undo the top button - hell, don't even wear pants you have to button, what are you thinking? I had 1 1/2 helpings of dinner yesterday and could not take another bite, not if you held a gun to my head. In my old life, that would have just been the start. Easily, I've eaten 3 times as much in a sitting and then was ready to tackle dessert; but that is my past. Not because I have this incredible willpower and white-knuckled it though dinner and got dragged kicking and screaming from the table; because I just didn't want any more. Even with servings a fraction of what I used to consume, I actually over-ate pretty severely by my current standards and felt bloated, slow, achey and burpy all night.

It was a feeling that was oddly foreign yet at the same time familiar. I thought back to years past where it would hurt to sit or even lie down after Thanksgiving dinner. How pathetic is that - on the biggest eat-then-nap holiday of the year you're too uncomfortable from eating to get your nap on?

I don't know what has changed. I can't say for sure it won't ever be like that again. I live in absolute fear that The Sickness could catch up with me again one day. The only thing I can do is apply the antidote every day. Get up. Work out. Move. Assess hunger. Assess feelings. Work out.

Move. Every day, move.

Week In Review

*sigh*

Have you ever felt that - while things were stable and you were accomplishing the things you wanted to accomplish - that you were on the precipice of it all crumbling? That is how I feel. It's not really the upcoming holidays; I feel that I've worked very hard to overcome that holiday Buffet Pig-Out mentality and mastered the art of 90%.

It is the disruption of my routine. Believe it or not, the easiest days to get a workout accomplished are days when I work daylight, 8a-8p. I know that I need to get my ass out of bed at 4:30, and after that comes shower and work. Easy peasy. Not so easy on days off, with some tasks on my house still hanging over my head. With the painting of the entire house out of the way, the rest has become overwhelming. Really, I should feel as if I'm in the home stretch and when I was in the thick of painting hell, I was looking forward to this time. Now, however, I am confronted by my stuff. Stuff that needs to be moved. Stuff that I need other people to take away. Stuff I still need to throw out. Stuff I need to strip/sand/refinish, because I'm not paying someone $1200 to do so. Stuff I need to box up/donate. Stuff that needs to be dragged out to the curb on garbage day.

I wake up on my days off and think to myself, "How can I possibly go to the gym for an hour and a half with all of this crap hanging over my head?" Most days I go anyway and I know in my rational mind that it makes absolutely no difference in what I do or don't get done at the house. Sometimes I just do what I feel is the important stuff and cut cardio down to 15-20 minutes. I had stopped filling out my workout book on Sundays because my workouts were so muddled, trying to combine the new kettlebell strength moves I learned in physical therapy with the workouts I had planned, so that I never have to deal with that throbbing pain in my ass ever again. The fact that I stopped filling out my book frankly scares me, and I am making myself a promise that I will fill out the next 5 days tonight. Having a plan makes me feel safe; not having one makes me feel unstable and on a collision-course with disaster.

Last week:
Monday - first shift of a month of daylights. Ass out of bed at 4:30 and at gym by 5:30. *proud*
20 minutes cardio, squats/lunges modified with dumbbells from kettlebell workout (ouch - you can't hold a dumbbell over your sternal area the way you can a kettlebell - lesson learned), chest workout
Tuesday - Gym at 5:30. Struggled through my workout, sustaining severe respiratory damage from an inconsiderate crop-dusting. 30 minutes cardio, arm/tricep workout, abds. Tricep dips are the devil.
Wednesday - Day off. Gym at a leisurely pace. 30 minutes cardio. Modified leg workout, squats/lunges. I can feel my ass getting higher.
Thursday - Ever feel like crap, but you couldn't say or describe exactly specifically how you felt like crap? This was one of those days. I only completed 10 minutes of cardio, did my brief shoulder workout, skipped abs, went to my house, and accomplished absolutely NOTHING. I'm blaming the rainy, gloomy weather. That's right. I'm gonna Blame It On The Rain.
Friday - I didn't go to the gym. I wanted to get stuff done at the house. I got jack schit done.
Saturday - I took my new 25lb kettlebell to work with me and got 80 squats and 50 lunges done. It helped me feel better about Friday.

Plan. Plan. Plan.
Off to make a plan for next week.

Crop-Dusted

Dear Dude Working Out On Treadmill In Front Of Me:

It has been well over 20 years since someone farted so horribly in my presence that I nearly threw up (and that's saying a lot, I'm in healthcare). The last time was on a road trip, trapped in a Ford Tempo with my brother; 80mph down the highway, but I seriously considered the tuck n' roll, if only it would allow me to escape that thick, lingering odor.

Have you considered perhaps using a machine that doesn't place your ample ass almost directly in front of someone else's face? I mean, you had to know that Cloud of Doom was coming. I bet it burned coming out. Whatever you ate yesterday, it created this perfect storm of sickly sweet crappish odor that had an unreal hang time. My brother would be proud. I mean, if you were trying to actually invent a recipe to make someone gag, you really could not have done better.

I know that's not addressed in all of those Gym Etiquette articles you see in Men's Health, but maybe it should be.

• Don't grunt loudly or bang your weights together
• Don't drop weights on the floor
• If you see people waiting, limit yourself to 20 minutes on cardio equipment
• If you've overdone the fiber or something has actually gone and died in your rectum, please stay off the cardio machinery or become proficient at ass-kegels.

Overwhelmed

This blog is not dead, just temporarily neglected. My days have consisted of a blur of physical therapy appointments, gym workouts, and painting and remodeling my house for the tenant who is moving in mid-December.

I remember why I only paint once every 10 years: I hate it. I hate moving stuff. I hate covering stuff. I *VERY*hate cutting in.

However, my month of night shifts is drawing to a close and I'm hoping to be 95% done with everything I wanted to have done on the house by next week. I'll be done with physical therapy - which, by the way has gone fabulously. The physical therapist/torturer had me feeling 90% better the first 2 visits. I've been going 3 days a week for a month and I've done more squats and lunges in the past month than I had previously done in my lifetime. I do feel (and maybe, just a little, see?) a difference, though and these will remain a staple of my workouts at least 3 days a week.

So, without anything else meaningful to say at this time, please enjoy one of my favorite Nike ads. I always have my 120g ipod on shuffle while I drive, and when this song comes on, I want to stop the car in the middle of the road, just leave it there abandoned with the door hanging open, and do a triathalon.