Inane Chatter

I think I might be getting sick.  I can’t tell yet if it’s just seasonal allergies, but since John just got over the flu, I’m a little nervous.  My head is a little (not a lot) congested, my throat is sore enough to hurt when I swallow, the lymph nodes right under my jawline are swollen, and I think I had a fever for a little bit during the night – I woke up freezing and shivering and went scrambling for socks and warmer clothes and more blankets.  Everything but the fever could mean allergies – that stuff happens to me every spring.  And fall.  And at random times throughout the rest of the year.  I was planning on running today, but I think I’m not going to.  We have a 5K with Jess in less than a week, but I gave up any hope of a good race a few weeks ago.  Running today wouldn’t help that much, and a day of real rest might.  So I’m going to do nothing.  Almost nothing.  I might go to the library with John.  Maybe.

I’m off to DC for work this morning, and I didn’t want to get up early enough to go to the gym for a real workout, so I decided to make it a yoga day.  I don’t feel like what I did counts as working out since I didn’t do it for long,  but it felt nice.  It was quiet and peaceful and full of stretching.  And I think I needed it to balance out the very stressful dream about traveling to Peru.  We were packing to get ready for the big vacation, but I couldn’t remember the name of the town or area in Peru we were going to, so I couldn’t look up the weather forecast, and I didn’t know what to pack.  I was scanning my email for the details, but all I could find were pictures of goats, and none of them were captioned with the name of the town.  Very stressful.  Then John’s alarm went off, and I bolted upright, arms flailing, totally startled awake.  I hate alarms.  I needed yoga.

Now I’m eating my breakfast of granola and yogurt, listening to the yoga station on Pandora (which is great until the ad breaks – jarring), and glancing at the clock to see how much more time I have before I have to get in the shower and get moving (not much).  But that way leads to rushing and stress, and who needs that?

During the meditation part of yoga class last night (my favorite part), I was thinking* about doing yoga at home.  I always mean to do it the rest of the week, but I never do.  Then last night, I realized that since we put the desk away (the one I had the puzzle out on – the table wasn’t big enough and the puzzle was going nowhere, so I quit), there’s a ton of open space in the library (that used to be the dining room).  It gets all of the morning and midday sunlight through the east window and the bay windows, so it’s a cheerful, sunny room, and ZOMG I’m going to do yoga in there!  Isn’t that just disgustingly perfect?  Yoga in a room with sunlight streaming from windows all around?  So I tried it this morning.  At 6:30.  Flaw #1: it’s still dark at 6:30.  Flaw #2: it was pouring down rain.  Actually, Flaw #2 was just fine with me.  I found a yoga station on Pandora, and that kind of music combined with the rain beating on the windows was very relaxing.  Then I lost all my zen peacefulness when I kicked the baby gate on my up the stairs and pulverized the toenail on my second toe.

*I don’t think I’m supposed to think during meditation, but it’s hard to just be.

Yoga is good and I shouldn’t skip it two weeks in a row anymore.  I had good reasons (Halloween, then my lizard transformation – okay, maybe Halloween isn’t a good reason), but still.  Tonight was hard because I haven’t done anything remotely related to yoga in three weeks.  Except stretching after running (which I haven’t done much of, either).  I stretched.  Except not today.  I don’t remember stretching this morning.  Okay, none of this is making sense, and it doesn’t really matter since I’m back on the yoga wagon.  Except for next week, since it’s the night before Thanksgiving and we’ll be on the road.  But after that, I swear I’ll go regularly.

I’m able to hide my mutation now (for the most part), so it’s back out into the world I go.  I also tried lotion today, and that seems to be going well.  I was supposed to stay away from lotion in case it aggravated my already tortured skin, but after four days at home with the heat on, my skin is SO DRY.  And I figure if lotion is okay, then maybe sweat is okay, and maybe I can exercise again.  So I might go to the gym tonight.  Or maybe just run tomorrow morning.

I look like a lizard.  Like a salamander.  Or maybe a newt.  It’s awful.  Apparently, I’ve found another antibiotic I’m allergic to.  Sure, that’s only two now, but one of them is amoxicillin, and that rules out everything in the -cillin family, which I think includes penicillin.  (So someday I’m going to die because I need medication I can’t take because I’m allergic to it.  Yay for me.)  At least with that one, the reaction I have isn’t visible to anyone.  With this one (bactrim), I turn into a lizard.  A lizard on fire.  Ooh, like a salamander!  (I knew there was a reason I went for that one.)  Seriously, though, I look scary.  The doctor said I shouldn’t exercise for a few days (because I shouldn’t sweat – weird, right?), so I’ll be fat and scary.  Good combination.  Too bad it didn’t happen right before Halloween instead of right after.  Built-in costume.

Roxy is still wearing her lampshade, but she’s doing much better.  We gave her a break from it for a lot of yesterday (because we were home and could watch her), and we only had to stop her from licking her paw a couple of times.  I’ll probably be home with her a lot this week.  I don’t want to go out in public like this, so I will most likely work from home.  Today is a sick day.  Morning with the doctor, home for now, another appointment this afternoon – too disjointed to be productive at work.

Man, if I have to look like a mutant (and I totally do), I should at least get some cool superpower.

I think I’m getting old.  My back hurts (lower back – it’s felt achy and a little twinge-y since my last Muscle Blast class two Mondays ago).  My left arm was tingling off and on for almost a week (it’s stopped now) because I think I pinched a nerve doing a handstand in yoga class (a week ago Wednesday).  I make grunting noises when I lunge to get over the dog gate at the bottom of the stairs, and worst of all, I was SO over Halloween after about the tenth group of kids.  I lose patience for that quicker every year.  All we were doing was handing out candy to the kids who came by.  I can’t imagine how the parents of 8 or 9-year-olds must feel, trailing their kids down block after block.  I mean, when they’re 3 or 4 or 5, they’re totally adorable, they need your help, and they get tired fast (very important, that).  Beyond that age, can they even get tired out?  It’s exhausting just thinking about it.

I missed the very beginning of the evening because I had to take Roxy to the vet.  Once again, her paw was bothering her and she licked it so much she made it worse.  Yay for obsessive dogs.

Here’s my sweetpea last night at the vet:

And here she is today, completely miserable in her Cone of Shame. The sock just wasn’t working this time.

I took Riley with me on my run the other morning – huh.  Feels like several days ago, but it must have been just yesterday morning.  It’s only Tuesday.  Shoot me.  Anyway, a deer got really close to us.  I think he wanted to play.  It was cute, but Riley was a little freaked out.  The deer was following us down the trail, and Riley kept checking it out over his shoulder, ears pinned back.  It eventually ran ahead of us, and he calmed down, but it made for a very exciting morning.

We don’t get out much.  Actually, part of why I’ve been MIA is because I did get out over the weekend.  Went home to visit Mom and Dad and Corey and Mindy and Mark and Gaby and Candy.  Watched a gaggle of six-year-olds play soccer, found that I’m a natural at soccer myself (when one of those six-year-olds is the goalie), picnicked by the lake, played catch, flew a kite, got sunburned, went for a run – and that was all on Saturday.  It was a whirlwind weekend, but I got to see everyone (for not long enough, but it was better than not going).

And now it’s the work week, the last week of the fiscal year, when everyone freaks out, and I have to go to DC every day.  Here’s hoping next week is better.

I went for a long-ass bike ride this evening and hey, ass was a good word to bring up because mine is not happy with me.  My wrists, shoulders, and upper back aren’t too pleased, either.  I’m thinking long-ass (almost 13 miles) may have been a little ambitious for me, since this is not my sport.  Also, my bike doesn’t look anything like the bikes serious cyclists ride.  And there are a LOT of those around here.  We’ll just see if I can walk tomorrow.  Oh, and I have a headache.  I think I should just go to bed.

A model that Lance Armstrong rode at some point

My little Schwinn that I bought at Target. Not in the same league.  But I love it and I want a headlight and a basket.

My wonderful Wednesday nights at the gym are no longer.  My yoga class has been canceled (for lack of an instructor – all that drama drove her away), and my strength class instructor won’t be teaching at all anymore.  Tonight was the first strength class with the new instructor.  She’s not new to the gym, just new to Wednesday nights, and I don’t think I like her style of teaching.  (It’s not just because it’s different.)  The other instructors play music, and they use it to drive the exercises.  If we’re doing bicep curls, 2 counts up, 2 counts down, those counts are to the beat of the music.  They’ve chosen their songs for specific exercises, and it’s lots of fun.  This instructor plays music, but it’s irrelevant to the class.  She counts the exercises, but she doesn’t count evenly, and she ignores the beat of the music.  !  I can’t handle it.  Why would someone do that?  She subbed for one of the classes I was taking sometime last year, and I noticed it (and hated it) then.  She hasn’t changed.

I know.  My life is SO hard.

I bought the Garmin Forerunner 210 over the weekend (from my friendly local running store) and finally used it this morning.

It’s awesome.  I got the heart rate monitor, too, so I strapped myself in (watch strap, heart rate monitor strap – any more straps and I wouldn’t need clothes), synced everything up (found my heart, found my satellite), and took off.  I had a great run, but the coolest part about my new watch is that when I uploaded the details to the website (Garmin Connect), I got a whole bunch of neat graphs.

The top one shows how my pace varied over time, and I can tell that the downward spike is at the point where I had to wait a few seconds to cross a street.  The watch calculates all the easy stuff (average heart rate, average pace, stuff like that), but it’s also tracking elevation and calculating calories burned, and the website displays the details per lap (I set it so one lap equals one mile), and it’s just so COOL.

The gym at night is a peaceful place.  I know I won’t work out tomorrow (going to visit Jess and Chuck – yay!), and Sunday will depend a lot on when we get home, so I figured I’d squeeze in an extra workout tonight.  Especially after IHOP for dinner.  The gym is open until 10pm on weeknights, and most nights there are still people there pretty late.  Not tonight, though.  I walked in at 8 and I had the place to myself.  It was kinda nice.  None of the TVs were on and neither was the music, so the only sounds were my own.  I could pretend it was my own private gym.  No annoying people allowed.

As if on cue, Riley came over and shoved his dripping head into my lap just then.  (He’s a messy drinker.)  I’ve got to pay him some special attention to make up for boarding him overnight tomorrow.

Good night!

You know what’s hard?  Biking uphill after yoga and squats.  I’m not sure I can get up the stairs.  I might have to crawl.  Or maybe I’ll sleep on the couch.

There are videos on The Daily What today that I’d like to watch, but they’ll have to wait.  I’d rather listen to John practice playing his banjo.  (Oh, yeah.  John got a banjo.)  Then I’ll figure out how I’m going to make it to bed.  Later, but soon.  Like maybe now.  No…almost.  Now.

Sure, I had a nice long walk with the dogs, an even nicer long talk with someone I haven’t talked to in forever, a healthy dinner (French Country Salad FTW!), and an evening bike ride with John.  You’d think that would be enough for one evening, but you’d be wrong.  No, I didn’t leave enough time to make banana bread, and so I must hang my head in shame.  I’m a failure.  Also, those bananas aren’t gonna make it much longer.  Double failure.

Riding a bike (after 4 or 5 years of not riding) really is just like riding a bike!  Who knew?  I was a little nervous.  Corey laughed at me when I told him this the other day, but I’m afraid of going downhill.  Because our hill is steep, and it’ll be fast.  And what if I use the front brake instead of the rear brake and go sailing over the front of the bike and die?  I mean, really.  Last night, though, it was either walk or ride.  John needed my car to go to Home Depot, and I had a yoga class at the gym.  How else was I going to get there?  Besides the aforementioned option of walking.  John pulled my bike out of the garage, put air in the tires, and adjusted the front brake so it wasn’t messing with the front tire (See?  My fears weren’t groundless!), and I couldn’t very well back out then.  He even took it on a test ride for me.

The hardest part was uphill (because duh), and I just rode the brake on the downhill.  I wasn’t exactly graceful getting off the bike, but nobody was around to see.  Yay bikes!

People are dumb.  Also mean.  Not everyone (obviously, you are an exception), but most of us.  Can I be a hermit?  Would anyone mind (or really notice) if I just stopped dealing with people? I don’t mean that I would stop talking to everyone (I would certainly keep talking to you), but it would be nice to have an access list.  I will only talk to people on my access list.  And I reserve the right to add to and subtract from my access list at any time.

I just killed a mosquito that was flying near my head.  In my house.  Which means it probably already got me because that’s how it always works with mosquitoes.  Can I get hermit insurance that covers escape from mosquitoes, too?  That would be helpful.  And spiders and scary bugs (like centipedes and millipedes).  And snakes.

If I decide to become a hermit, I’ll keep going to yoga.  Even if my yoga instructor does try to kill me with sun salutations for 35 minutes straight because that’s just what you do at the summer solstice.  Who knew?

I’m totally worn out from today.  I spent the work day getting more and more frustrated, and then I went to the gym for two hours (class night) and didn’t think about work for even a second (which was wonderful).  But the gym drained all of that frustrated energy out of me (and more), so now I’m all limp and noodly.  Relaxed, but in an I-can’t-lift-my-arm-above-my-head kind of way.

I heard the prettiest version of Over The Rainbow during yoga today.  I don’t know a lot about Eva Cassidy (she was local to the area and she’s dead – that’s the extent of my knowledge),  but I have really really liked everything I’ve heard her do.

The good: I saw a rainbow!  And I immediately shouted, “Rainbow!” because I am a moron.

The bad: Near the end of my second mile (of three), my legs couldn’t tell the difference between uphill and downhill.  It was like dragging lead weights through water both ways.

The ugly: Right after I saw the rainbow, the skies opened, and I had to run the rest of the way home (the entire last mile) in the pouring rain.  It’s hard to see when rain is sheeting down in front of your face.  I don’t recommend it.

Have you seen Text From Dog?  Hilarious.  Some of my favorites:

I am sore all over.  Have been all day.  I don’t know what I did ’cause I’m pretty sure I didn’t do much yesterday to deserve this.  I think it’s a holdover from yoga Wednesday night.  I woke up all stiff and tried to do some of those yoga moves on my own this morning, but I could barely bend over, so I gave up.  Which is the opposite of what I should have done, since I’m sure if I’d kept at it I would have loosened up.  Anyway, my hamstrings are tight, and my back and shoulders are sore.  But then I ate Indian food for lunch (which is synonymous with eating too much Indian for lunch), so I went to the gym and spent an hour and 20 minutes on my favorite cardio-machine-that-is-not-an-elliptical.  To punish myself.  And also to pretend I didn’t eat that much.

Words.  Interesting thoughts.  Other words.  Yoga was especially nice tonight, but all that breathing and relaxation at the end drove any semblance of coherence away.  I’m barely upright (it was a long and tiring day), but very loose, so I’m heading to bed and hoping I don’t have any cop drama dreams tonight.  The alarm went off this morning as I was throwing a small bomb out the window so it wouldn’t blow up in the house.  It might have been a grenade.  Grenades are basically just small bombs, right?  But I could do without that kind of tension in my dreams.  Wish me luck.