This was taken as I backed out of the driveway to go to the gym:
This was taken on my way to the gym:
And these were taken barely an hour later, when I arrived back home:
OK, Spring… now STAY and stick around! Sheeeesh!
When I was alone in Germany in 1980, asking my mom for money went something like this:
Day 1: Ask my hosts if I could call home. Knowing it was very expensive (like many dollars per minute!), I’d feel very guilty. Alternately, I could send Mom a telegram which was also expensive and required my hosts to make a trip to the Western Union office in town. (The telegram would be delivered within hours or possibly the next day.) There was no faster option. If my request was warranted, Mom would ask my hosts for their bank account number so she could wire me money.
Day 2: Hoping that the money was actually wired, my hosts would drive to their bank and pay another fee to retrieve the wired money.
Thirty years later, a kid in Europe asking his mom for money looks something like this:
That IM lasted maybe 5 minutes and once I began the funds transfer process it took about… oh, 5 seconds! No charge, no mess!
Things have changed so incredibly much in the past 30 years! I don’t think our kids can even begin to fathom the immense difference in the speed of communication from when their parents were their age. I wrote about it previously here… and I think I’ll need to write about it again soon.
With details. Because really, I think some 20-something jaws will drop!
Step 1: Ignore the slightly funny, very easy-to-ignore noise as you drive home from work.
Step 2: Forget to mention said noise to your automotively gifted husband that evening.
Step 3: Head to your physical therapy appointment – which happens to be at a gym – the next morning.
Step 4: As you drive to the gym, ignore said noise again. Also ignore the nagging, something-just-doesn’t-seem-right feeling.
Step 5: Endure the intense pressure on your aching gastrocnemius muscle. Enjoy the ankle massage and heat therapy. Revel in the guilty pleasure of the gossip rag.
Step 6: Say g’bye to your PT friends and appreciate a few of the brawny, built, buff ProClub employees on your way out. Privately deny that you, a 53-year-old woman, even noticed them.
Step 7: Start your car, back out of the parking spot, and notice that something now most definitely doesn’t feel right.
Step 8: Get out of your car and notice this:
Step 9: Decide that you-are-woman, hear-you-roar, you can change a silly flat tire. You’ve been working out lately and you have new muscles of your own, thankyouverymuch,
Step 10:
Step 11:
Step 12:
Step 13: Be glad that this is right around the corner. Also be glad that there’s no internet access there, which means you can’t very well work, but you can prepare a blog post.
Step 14: Get to work late and appreciate your good fortune amid your bad fortune.
Step 15: Thank JJay and Josh PROFUSELY for both fixing your flat tire and brightening your day before noon. ;-)
Thank you, JJay and Josh!
So I guess this makes it official. :-)
(Man, I love this job!)
So, I did it.
Actually, I did even more than I had intended. Instead of biking 6 miles, I biked slightly over 7. Instead of walking 1.5 miles, I walked 1.75 miles. And instead of swimming 18 laps (a quarter mile), I swam 20 laps.
(Yes Aleks, I do, in fact, feel pretty dang good. Or, as you call it, “pumped”!)
I didn’t mean to go beyond what I’d set out to do and, in fact, when I read the sign on the front door of the gym I congratulated myself just for showing up and gave myself permission to “just do something” because I had, after all, “just shown up.”
Then I remembered that yesterday after a vigorous Boot Camp class that he taught (and insisted strongly suggested I attend), Chris, my personal torturer trainer, mentioned that next time I come to the gym there’d a be a book in his office that I should read.
I’m scared of Chris (his boyish face can’t fool me!), so I picked up the book in his office, hopped on a treadmill, and began to read the book, Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels.
When I read the section on stress I just about stopped in my tracks – literally.
“Stress is like kryptonite for your hormones — even just a bit of it can throw them entirely out of whack. If you remain a stress case for a long time, you could do some major damage to many parts of your body, including your glands. One of the biggest causes and symptoms of hormonal shutdown from stress is when people start cutting into their hours of quality sleep.”
Remember my last job? The one that worked me morning, noon, and night for two full years? The job in which worked with our production team in India at night, then got online for a few hours again very early in the morning to make sure everything was done correctly (and scrambled like crazy when it wasn’t), and then worked with clients at Microsoft all day?
Remember that job?
(Yeah, I’d like to forget it too.)
It was a year into that job that I broke my ankle, at which point I continued to lead my very stressful life -- except now I was completely sedentary. Stressed, sleep-deprived, injured and sedentary.
Oh, and menopausal.
Kryptonite is right.
I was so immersed in the book that I’d walked over a mile and a half before I knew it! Then, as I biked, I continued to read about the vital role that hormones play in fitness (or lack of it) and in eating. I read about my increased risk of many cancers since I am both menopausal and overweight, not to mention that Mom’s death from ovarian cancer means that I might have a genetic predisposition to certain cancers as well.
What I was reading both scared and inspired me. I think it was the fear, though, and not the inspiration, that got my feet peddling faster and faster, and before I knew it I had biked seven miles, a full mile more than I’d intended to.
I make no promises, to myself or to anyone else, because I’ve done that before and it backfired, and everyone was let down and disappointed. But I am now on a road toward something and I’m beginning to not hate it quite as much as I did when I started all this, signing up for both a personal trainer and for the Danskin Triathlon.
I don’t love it yet and I wonder if I ever will. But today I at least don’t hate it and I am proud of myself for finishing the mini-est of triathlons.
I think Mom might even have been proud of me today.
This expired a few days ago (though I really haven’t used it lately):
Today I’m headed to the gym to attempt a VERY mini triathlon in a five-months-out Danskin Triathlon self-pre-assessment -- because I’m terrified and hugely lacking confidence that I can do this.
My Easter morning goal will be 1/4 mile swim, 5 mile bike, and 1.5 mile walk (yes, I said walk).
I’ll do this today in honor of my mother, who was always far more athletic than me and who died on Easter morning six years ago.
This from the grandson of European immigrants (my parents) who came to America in search of a better life:
[7:39:15 AM] Aleks: im really happy here. im not the slightest bit home sick or burnt out or anything, its really strange. i love it here so much right now and the ease in which i assimilate around europe i still just want to stay.
And that grandfather’s response when I told him how much Aleks likes living in Prague:
I'm so glad he feels the way he does. Encourage it. He's lapping up the whole newness of things. Prague was at the crossroads of Europe centuries before Columbus was born, he's feeling that in his bones, and it's too exciting to feel homesick. So great that he's even learning the language. I have the feeling this trip will be very instrumental in the direction his life will take. Try not to talk him into being homesick just to please you.
What Aleks needs is fall in love with a girl who keeps him in Europe for a while. (Just kidding!!)
My parents immigrated to America from Germany in 1953. At that time America had such promise and Germany was reeling from a lost war and lost identity. Because of their bold choice to leave everything they knew behind, their children were raised in prosperous country during a time when opportunities were endless and hope and optimism permeated absolutely everyone and everything. (Hell, we grew up in Berkeley in the 60’s, so hope and optimism lived in our bones!)
But things are different in America now. Instead of the land of opportunity, we live in what seems to be the land of dashed dreams and gridlocked politics. Without getting all political on you, I’ll just say that I am appalled that it took us so long to pass legislation that takes care of ALL Americans and I’m floored that anyone (anyone!) would vote against a bill that gives every Americans what seems to me to be a simple and fundamental right: health care. We’ve become greedy and egotistical and grouchy and I think that if we continue down this road (in spite of having a great president who wants to bring about positive change for all but is constantly road-blocked for the sole sake of road-blocking), the glory years for America will be very, very short-lived in historical terms, barely half a century.
So when Aleks talks of returning to his roots in Europe, he tugs hard on my heart strings because I’d be so sad if he moved so far away -- but at the same time I know that he must feel some of the same feelings that my dad felt in 1953 – the country of my birth is confused and weak; maybe there’s a better future for me somewhere else…
Call me unpatriotic (though you’d be wrong), but quite honestly if I were twenty right now, I might very well be thinking the exact same thing.
As if this wasn’t dramatic enough, Elisabeth had to go and blab to inspire Kat about the joys of trapezing! So now instead of just one daughter giving me a heart attack, I have two!
(Plus a son across the world in Prague and another son seriously considering a possible internship in Australia! I’ll tell ya -- it was easier on the blood pressure when “adventure” for these four siblings consisted of playing laser tag in the forest!)
So here’s how Kat and Elisabeth spent this afternoon (be still my pounding heart!):
I need a bubble bath and a glass of wine. (Now that’s my idea of adventure!)
