Interior dialogue, with gratuitous Hugh Jackman pic

Quote du jour: “I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.”
Mark Twain

Me: I need to put up a post on my blog.
Inner critic:Why? Nobody ever reads it.
Inner paranoiac: Besides, even if someone does read it, they'll give you advice!!!
Me: Because I need to hold myself accountable. I can go a few weeks keeping up the daily exercising without blogging about it, but something always happens to derail me, and once that happens, it's hard to get back into it.
Inner slug: Stop! I'm blushing.
Inner defeatist: Look, it's simple. This week, you've been working 10 hour days. Add that to the 3 hours of daily commute and 8 hours of sleep, and that leaves you one hour in the day to eat, exercise, shower, weed the yard, mow the lawn, and whine about how tired you are. What do you expect?
Me: The only solution I can see (aside from not working 10 hour days) is to build exercise into the commute.
Inner selves: Why not just put up a picture of Hugh Jackman exercising instead?



Exercise du jour: Callanetics this evening. Next week, plan B.


Photo courtesy of Cool Guyz

"Oh good. You still work here."

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Not the best way to start the day: "Oh good. You still work here."
- A co-worker, when I walked into the office one day last week. Turns out the company's been playing musical chairs, a.k.a. reorganizing.

Not the best way to end the day: That night I drove home by back roads, going 60 down dark, narrow roads that don't even had a shoulder if you need to pull over. I turned into the driveway, shut off the engine, and only then noticed clouds of steam rising up from under the hood. Half an hour later, the car was still steaming. Can't see any loose hoses, but there's a definite smell of antifreeze. Thankfully, I can get around without a car if I have to.

Goal for the week: I'm thinking that I might try working four 10-hour days this week. The manager told me that this was an option, and I'm wondering if it will work out better. I get more done when I can concentrate for long periods of time. Plus, I'm spending three friggin' hours a day commuting. Would be nice to only have to do that four days a week.

On the down side, doing this means that I will have less time to exercise during the week. Therefore, I have to take a walking lunch break. Also, I will have to make it an absolute rule to use the elliptical every night. That's going to be hard. I don't mean physically, but mentally. By the end of the day I'm usually worn out and want "me" time -- I want to relax, put my feet up, and be self-indulgent. The trick here is to try to persuade my inner slug that using the elliptical is a form of self-indulgence.

Exercise du jour: 4 miles walking, 15 minutes elliptical. Yes, I know it's the same goal as before. When it gets easy, I'll up the workout. (It's easy enough physically. The challenge here involves time and discipline.)
Done! Actually did 5 miles walking.

The inner slug loves the holidays

Quote du jour:
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas", he thought, "doesn't come from a store."
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

I'm not sure if I'm going to have time to blog for the next few days. I'm going to try to get the exercise in anyway. If I can't, then I'll pick up where I left off in a few days. Every time I stop exercising, I am afraid that the inner slug will re-awaken and take over my life again. I'm betting that posting this publicly on the blog will help me keep going.

Have a wonderful Christmas (or whatever it is that you celebrate).



One last picture of the reindog.

Top 10 Reasons Not To Run

10. It's too nice outside... I'll get hot.
What, you've never heard of water bottles or sunscreen? Forgotten all those lovely, shady, through-the-forest running trails just down the street?

9. There are too many people outside. They'll stare at the fat chick and laugh.
a. Screw 'em. b. Who cares? Once the run is done, you'll be feeling a lot better than they will.

8. I'll huff and puff.
If you get out of breath, you have my permission to slow down. But you're going to go out there and try anyway.

7. I'll get red-faced and sweaty.
There will be a shower waiting for you when you get back.

6. There's a slight twinge in my left big toe.
If it's still bothering you after the warm up, we'll re-consider. But you're going out there anyway.

5. There's a really good movie on TV that I want to watch!
And there's a really good VCR waiting to tape it for you!

4. I'm really not in the mood.
Good to know. Now get your running clothes on.

3. But I need to wash the dishes, vacuum the house, re-shingle the roof, rake the lawn, and solve Global Warming first, before the run!
Laudable, but not plausible. Run first, solve Global Warming afterward. And put on your cotton socks.

2. My poor old dog will feel lonely if I abandon her.
And she'll feel delighted when you come back, especially if you smell interesting and give her a treat as an apology. Slip into those running shoes.

1. I -- don't -- wanna!
Shut up and start lacing the shoes.

Exercise du jour: Jogging 4 miles
Done! Silly as it sounds, writing all the feeble excuses down, and posting them publicly, really did help me get up out of the damn chair.

High School and the Passive-Aggressive Subconscious

Sometimes my subconscious mind still thinks it's in high school. It gets passive-aggressively annoying.

You know the kind of thing. Usually encountered when dealing with teenagers of the female persuasion, but not invariably. They mope, they sigh, they look mournful. But if you ask what's wrong? The invariable answer: "Oh, nothing."

[deep sigh]

They expect you to guess what the problem is.

For heaven's sake. Things have come to a pretty pass when my subconscious expects me to read its mind. It's depressed about something, but I'm supposed to guess why. I'm going to assume it's work-related.

Times like this, my subconscious wants to drink red wine and read Neruda, Borges, or Rilke, poets who convince her that there's more to life than a 9-7 job every day. (When I was in high school, I used to skip algebra to go downtown and drink espresso and read C.S. Lewis, Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso, and try to convince myself that there was Life After High School. Turns out it's called High School 2: The Saga Continues. Just as well I didn't know that then.)

I mean, take last Thursday. The flesh was willing, but the spirit decided it was depressed and didn't want to work out. It just wanted to drink red wine and read poetry.

The logical side of the brain pointed out that Exercise Would Make You Feel Better Already, but to no avail. I was trying to lift a lead zeppelin with a weakling motivation.

I tried to be practical and try to figure out the problem. What the hell was worth the prima donna act? Sure, I'm less than thrilled with work. Suck it up, subconscious. You'd be more depressed if I were out of work and you had to deal with me sitting around the house all day, wearing scruffy clothing and slouching around.

Didn't work. Ended up doing Thursday's exercise on Friday night, just before midnight.

I hate it when the inner demons win out over the health & fitness part of my conscious mind. If my sub-c pulled this trick this up on a regular basis, I'd send it down to the local therapist's office for conversation and medication. Since it only acts like this once every semester, usually around mid-terms blue moon, I suppose I should let it have the occasional day off. Show mercy in the hopes that it will see sense. I mean, as frustrating as life gets sometimes, at least I'm not in high school.

Exercise du jour: Still trying for that 12 miles of cycling

A choice between earplugs or violence... hmmmn....

My neighbor across the street thought it would be cute to give his kids a couple of vuvuzelas.
They are loud.
I am currently re-evaluating my position on non-violence.

Too hot, only jogged 2 miles. Checked my watch ("are we there yet?") after a mere 4 minutes, breaking my previous time-checking record of 6 minutes. I'm choosing to consider that a personal record and therefore something to be celebrated.

Even though I broke my watch-checking PR and even though I got overheated, there were some positives. I found myself getting into a rhythm (once I stopped checking my watch) and even almost possibly kind of enjoying myself a little little bit of the time.

Maybe my slacktitude hasn't completely left me out of shape. And the knees didn't have any problems at all. I'm still trying to figure out why they flared up in pain so severely for those few days, but at least running jogging very slowly doesn't hurt.

Exercise du jour: jogged 2 miles
Done!

To Exercise Or Not to Exercise?

This morning's self-talk:

Me: Hey, the schedule says "Get up early and cycle briskly to work."
Inner Slug: Yeah? Well that's fine if the schedule wants to do that, but this body needs another hour or two of sleep.
Me: Hello? Are we awake yet? There's still time to get up and cycle part-way to work.
Inner Slug: In this heat?
Me: It's only 70 degrees. You won't faint.
Inner Slug: It'll be over 100 by this afternoon. I'm fragile.
Me: Pleeeeeeeease?
Inner Slug: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........

Yes, my inner conversations really are that boring. There are probably people out there who have fascinating inner soliloquies, the kind Hamlet was always indulging in. If Hamlet had been debating with his inner slug about exercising, rather than wrestling with his inner doubts about his father's death, what a dull play it would have been.

However, unlike Hamlet, I am putting my dithering to good use by posting it up here on the blog so that all the world (or a minute fraction thereof) can see my sloth and thus shame me into getting the damn exercise done. If I can't motivate myself from the inside out, I'll reverse the process.

Exercise du jour: 10 miles cycling. Or at least 8 (depending on the heat). But at least 8 miles.

Introducing my evil twin sister Yrrem

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Let me introduce my evil twin sister Yrrem.

Note: Not to be confused with my good twin Shelley. (I call her my twin because we entered this world in the same month and in the same state and no, I don't mean the state in which everyone enters this world i.e. nekkid and crying because some doctor just slapped them.)

My e.t.s. Yrrem is fed up with all this exercising and trying to eat right. So she's advocating an anti-campaign of eating poorly and not exercising. Alas, since I've already been doing this for the last week or so (what with resting injured muscles and Mardi Gras), she's decided to focus on keeping me from breaking what she considers to be a winning record.

In other words, I've given my inner slug a name.

Exercise du jour: My evil twin sister is trying like hell to talk me out of doing a 4 mile jog. You'll never make it, you're doomed, your legs will fall off if you even try to do this, it'll make you late for work, what will the boss say...
Dang. Why did I have to get an evil twin sister who was so verbose?

4 miles jogging. With the iPod cranked up so I won't hear my e.t.s.
Done! Slowly, but I got there. (For future reference, probably better to do the run before donating blood rather than after.)

Weight Loss through Sleeping In

I don't explain it; I'm just reporting the facts.
Got up this morning. Weighed myself.
Went back to bed for a couple more hours. (Hey, I couldn't get to sleep until about 4 in the morning, okay?)
Got up again. Weighed myself again.

Don't ask me how 2 more hours of sleep translated to 2 pounds off the scale.
I'm just going to enjoy the moment. Pardon me while I bask.

No, not that kind of Basque.

This kind:













Exercise du jour:
Went for a bicycle ride for a couple hours. Flat terrain, easy pace, and even so I had to struggle. Damn but I'm outta shape.

Photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

In my darkest hour

What's going on?
Why is it so dark in here?
Did I forget to pay the electric bill?
Wait a minute.
There's a light switch around here somewhere...

I think I like it better in the dark.
At least until I clean up the mess...
do a little light dusting...
maybe bring in a bulldozer...

Besides, everyone is celebrating Earth Hour, so I'm not being anti-social, I'm demonstrating solidarity with environmentalists. Yeah, that's the ticket.