thumbs up, thumbs down

Because you all need to know my opinions on shiz, right? (And they're not all complaints this time.)

1.) SmartWool socks. Thumbs up.  I don't have much circulation in my feet, I don't think, and they get very cold.  Recently I saw someone somewhere praising SmartWool socks as indispensable for surviving winter and it reminded me that I do have an old pair that came from I-don't-know-where but that are, indeed, the bee's knees.  So I decided I should really get some more.  The price for them is, however, alarming.  So I started looking for them at Marshall's and TJ Maxx, etc, with marginal success.  The discounted price ain't cheap either. But they are worth it. Then yesterday I was at Nordstrom Rack with a friend (to whom I had to explain why these socks are the Holy Grail of hosiery) and they had one pair in my size for 50% off retail. Score. Took them to the (male) cashier who asked excitedly if they were men's or women's.  He was crestfallen that they were women's. "I kept waiting for us to get them in and we didn't and I had to go to REI and pay $20."  I felt vindicated, because I think my friend didn't believe me these socks were a Big Deal until that outside confirmation, lulz.

2.) Kneeling squats in the Smith machine.  Thumbs probably down.  I mentioned my new gym doesn't have a real power rack with adjustable safeties, right?  Just two squat stands with fixed safeties and a Smith.  It's been kinda bumming me out that I can't do some of my favorite exercises.  So the other morning I sucked it up and attempted my beloved kneeling squats in the Smith.  I dunno, kids. You know how when you try to squat in the Smith you have to put your feet way out in front of you, and that's why squatting in the Smith isn't generally recommended? Well, doing kneeling squats in the Smith meant putting my knees way out in front of me and even then I didn't feel like I was getting complete ROM.  Gonna give these another try this week and see whether I can tweak them, but so far I'm disappointed.

3.) Naked Juice Green Machine. Thumbs up with shame. So, my one co-worker who shares my interest in "health" and "fitness" got a case of mini bottles of these at like Costco or the like and kindly brought me one. I am now sadly addicted. I say sadly because I don't have access to a source of mini bottles, so I'm buying the big ones which are a.) two servings but of course I drink it all and b.) like 3 bucks a whack.  It's fucking ridiculously delicious though. Mainly because it's apple and mango juice with a teeny tiny miniscule bit of kale to make you think it's good for you.  I keep telling myself it's obviously like 4 servings of fruit and vegetables so TOTALLY worth the 270 calories and three dollars. But even I don't believe myself and I want to be deluded about this.

4.) The Slutcracker. Thumbs mostly up.  Went to see this the other night with some** work friends and while the night had a damper on it for other reasons (weather was sucky, a couple of people who were planning on coming had last minute emergencies, and the host of our pre-show dinner party is going through a breakup), the show itself was on the whole fun and well-performed. What makes it germane to the blog is that it's burlesque and burlesque means there were a variety of mostly-unclothed body types.  I had to put away some of my preconceived prejudices about how skilled a dancer a 250 pound woman is going to be. I mean, I know saying that out loud (well, typing it publicly) makes me an asshole. But while I know fat people can be good athletes (see: many many powerlifters and Pablo Sandoval), I have to admit I don't visualize them as dancers. Which is obviously a stupid and wrong-headed prejudice and I now know that. So seeing a bunch of naked people perform a dirty ballet was good for my moral and ethical development.***

xoxo

**Some. My more devoutly religious co-workers stayed home. And maybe prayed for our souls. Or bitched to their friends about having to work with a bunch of deviants. One of the two.

***See, religious co-workers? It was practically like going to church.

omg, i'm the worst blogger evah

Sorry, guys. Work and life in general have been kicking my butt***.  It's not even that I don't have time to write--I have weekends off (mostly) after all--it's that I don't have the mental energy to come up with either anything interesting to say or an entertaining way to present something that isn't actually interesting.  I keep thinking I'm going to have a fitness adventure and try something new, then come back to report on it, but then it's like, who am I kidding? go to gym, do same things, go to same yoga classes I know I like, rinse, repeat, blah.

I take that back.  I did go to a yoga workshop last month that was more meditation than yoga and it was very cool (though not, obviously, a "fitness adventure.")  The same weekend I did that, I also went to two other yoga classes, which is two more than I usually go to. I was kinda thinking that between the yoga, the meditation workshop, and the acupuncture--I've started back at acupuncture, have I mentioned that?--I could probably claim to be the most relaxed person in the history of relaxation. Stop laughing. Okay, if you know me, you can laugh. Briefly. But seriously, I think there's some truth in it. One of my co-workers, who is a basket case of work-related stress and anxiety, said to me (and our boss) the other night that working with me was good for her because I talk her off the ledge when she's stressing about shit that can't be controlled. I was like, oh honey, no. If I'm the least anxious person in the room, Houston, we got a problem.  But who knows? Maybe I AM the most relaxed person in the history of relaxation.

I have done one other new-ish thing over the past month. There have been several mornings where I've left work at 4:45 in the morning and it's been just so delightful outside, weather-wise, that I just couldn't bear to go to the gym and instead kept walking on by it.  And just kept walking the 3 1/2 to 4 miles to my ultimate destination where I'd get on the bus or commuter rail to my house.  There is something other-worldly and delightful about walking right through the city of Boston in that hour between 5 and 6 am and if I were not the worst blogger evah, I'd have done a whole post on it complete with pictures I took. But, y'know. And now that the polar fucking vortex is upon us, I'm not foreseeing very many more early morning walks/opportunities to take those as-yet nonexistent pictures, so that post will have to wait till spring. Or never. One of the two. I will say this, however.  If you ever have the opportunity to take a long walk or run through a city at that hour of the day, when it's still dark or just getting light and there are people around, but not too many, and traffic, but not too much, do it. It's like another world. A very pleasant, alien world.  (All the traffic lights at all the intersections on Boylston Street are flashing at that hour of the day. WHO KNEW?)

Okay, enough being positive n' shit.  On to the complaint department.  Because I would also like to update y'all on what's been pissing me off lately.

1.) Wasting food.  I threw out a whole pound of ground turkey this morning that I forgot was in my refrigerator. The sell-by date was 11/11. Oops. I am a moron. Luckily ground turkey is dirt cheap, but I am still pissed at myself.  I also threw out a tupperware full of canned pumpkin that had gone moldy the other day. I've been making that pumpkin cream cheese bake I shared the recipe for quite a bit and since it only calls for 82g of pumpkin at a whack, that means leftover canned pumpkin in a tupperware. The last time I bought canned pumpkin, the giant can of it was only like literally 20 cents more than the can that was half its size. But buying the giant can does NOT save you money when it molds before you can use half of it, Andrea you moron, you. That's my economy tip for today, kids.

2.) My own ignorance of basic knowledge. So, when I could not make the pumpkin oatmeal bake I wanted for breakfast the other day due to sad pumpkin tragedy, I was kinda stymied about what I could substitute. I gave up and just made proats. Sigh. But it made me realize I don't know enough about the chemistry of baking to just willy nilly alter recipes and I should DO something about that. Like, what is the difference between baking powder and baking soda? Don't they do the same thing? Why do you need both in the same recipe? How did someone figure out you need 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp baking soda in that recipe? What would happen if you used 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1/4 tsp baking powder instead?  Does anyone know of a good book (or website even) that would explain the science behind baking to me?  It might save me from eating proats. Which I am SO over.

3.) Aggressive sales people.  I was in the Nordstrom activewear department the other day, purportedly looking at North Face jackets. Purportedly, because I can't not also look at all the other workout clothes if I'm in a 20 foot radius of them. It's a sickness. So, I'm browsing the sale rack when Uber Perky 19 Year Old Salesgirl gloms onto me and helpfully explains that the rack I am looking at contains size extra small to medium, while that rack over there contains large to extra large. "Just so you know." Um, thanks? I think I could figure that out on my own?  I move onto other rack. She follows me, making a comment on everything I touch, most of them prefaced with "just so you know." Finally, I am at a rack of black winter jackets and she has to come over to point out that there are actually two different types of black down jacket on that rack.  "Yes! One has a hood and one doesn't, and one is puffier than the other!" I say totally deadpan.  She doesn't get my sarcasm.  I leave without buying anything. Un-fucking-believable.

And, now, to end on a positive note, here are a couple of things that are not pissing me off.

1.) My new sofa that I bought during tax free weekend and which was finally delivered just before Halloween. It's very very comfy.  Toby thinks so too.

2.) These pants which are half-price at Athleta. They're having free 2 day shipping on the website right now, which is handy if, like me, overly aggressive salespeople have made you appreciate online shopping all the more.  Seriously, though, those are my favorite new workout pants. Just so you know.

3.) I'm on vacation from 11/21 to 12/1, woohoo. Maybe there will be a fitness adventure!

xoxo

***I also had Ebola. Or possibly a very bad cold. One of the two.

P.S. I saw a couple people online taking a fit at other people joking about their cold/flu/hangover being Ebola. Srsly? It's offensive to Ebola patients to poke fun at oneself by referring to one's admittedly minor ailment as a possibly deadly disease?  I guess I'm going to hell then.

i wanna do a very bad thing

To set this up, a few facts about Andrea which you may or may not already know.

1.) I hate winter. I hate winter with every fiber of my being.  I see no upside in white shit falling out of the sky, being cold, wearing 18 bulky layers of clothing and still being cold, falling on the ice, paying obscene heating bills and still being cold, having to get up five minutes earlier in the morning to have time to put on those 18 layers of clothing and still get out of the house on schedule, climbing over dirty frozen piles of no-longer white shit, having dry skin, dry hair, and dry mucus membranes, becoming a semi-hermit because leaving the house when you don't have to seems like too much trouble, and etc.  Winter sucks, okay?

2.) I am, like, the whitest white girl ever, and I am not just talking about my atrocious lack of dance skillz.  I am pale. By March, I am almost literally translucent.  Like," let's teach the circulatory system by looking at this woman's unclothed body" level.

3.) As evidenced in my last post, I want to take pictures of myself in which I look all lean, muscular, and ripped.  Ghostly pallor doesn't aid in this endeavor.

4.) I cannot afford to go to Hawaii, Cancun, or even Florida. At this point, I could probably afford to go to Rhode Island, but it's not really any warmer or sunnier there.

All these facts combined at the end of last week to lead me to a very shameful activity.  I was looking on groupon for bargain tanning.  Blush.

No, seriously, I have NEVER been tanning, not even in the '90s when all my co-workers went.  At most, I use a little self-tanner on my legs during the summer so they are only two shades lighter (and more orange) than my arms and shoulders, not five.  But tanning beds seem like just asking for cancer and a Bad Idea. Especially since one of those always tanning in the '90s (and at-the-beach-all-summer Gloucester townie) co-workers already had to have a shitload of suspicious growths removed before she turned 35.

Well, some of those groupons for tanning cover spray tans as well.

That's scary in its own right, nomsayin'?

So I'm kinda back to the idea of risking skin cancer--one time in a tanning bed won't kill me, right? RIGHT? plus the propaganda on the tanning salon websites all tell me how non-dangerous it is--or a little self-tanner at home. Which is all well and fine (and a little orange and possibly streaky) on my legs, but I cannot do my own back. At all. Anyone wanna volunteer to rub lotion on my back and save me from melanoma?

Yeah, I thought not.

xoxo

fitting a nap into your workout

Does that sound as appealing to you as it does to me? If so, you are just gonna love my experience with yoga nidra, kids.

A couple Saturdays ago a yoga teacher whose restorative/deep stretch class I really enjoy was holding a workshop on yin, restorative, and yoga nidra. I've done and enjoyed the first two. The third I was all WTF? about, but intrigued, especially when I saw it was described as sleep yoga. Just the concept of that was fascinating enough for me to arrange for a co-worker to cover a few hours of my shift Saturday so I could leave work early to attend. When I googled yoga nidra and read that it was supposed to put you into a lucid dreaming-like state, well, then I was really reeled in.  The whole concept of being awake and asleep at the same time fascinates me.  Plus, for someone who lives in their own head as much as I do, the promise of it being actually productive/healthy/not just daydreaming is like a siren's call.  NO, I am NOT lying down in a dark, warm room covered with a blankie and letting my mind wander, I am MEDITATING, muthafuckah.

Except, yeah, I ended up lying down in a dark, warm room, covered with a blankie, letting my mind wander. It was cool.

We did the yin and restorative parts of the class first and there were a lot of hip and low back openers that we held for long periods of time--which was awesome for me, as those are just what I need, but it was fairly demanding. My groin/adductors were screaming from keeping my legs spread. (Shut up.)  So when the teacher started transitioning us in the yoga nidra, I was certainly ready to lie down comfortably, pull my blanket over me and listen.  She said that in the training/workshop she'd taken some people had actually fallen asleep and snored loudly, which was somewhat disruptive to the other students, so if any of us started sawing wood so to speak, she was going to just come and gently place a hand on us to wake us.  Otherwise we were just going to lie there, listen to her, and let our minds go through the three layers of...something. I forget. But there were definitely three layers involved.

I do not think, boys and girls, that I actually fell asleep. I didn't need to be prodded at any rate, and when she told us during the meditation that we were going to start transitioning out of it, I heard her perfectly. I didn't startle the way you usually do when you doze and wake.  But before she told us we were going to "come back", I was definitely somewhere else.  I was trying to explain it to my friend M2, and all I could liken it to was the breathwork class our mutual friend S and I attended once while we were in massage school, a class which was sorta like yoga if all the yoga was pranayama. I remember getting whacked out on endorphins in that breathwork class and leaving there feeling better than I had in months. The effect of the yoga nidra wasn't as strong, but it was also much shorter, just perhaps the last 20 minutes of the yin/restorative/nidra class.

Anyway.  It was cool.  Would do again. And since Mr Google helpfully provided me with the location of an ongoing yoga nidra class in the Boston area, probably *will* do again.

xoxo

"i just wanna hit shiz. and possibly people." part the first

Big doings in the malevolent andrea/Bitty Bro world, kids.  No secret I haven't been getting to the gym much of late.  Part of this is that I've mostly been working six days a week at two different jobs, both with horrible to semi-horrible commutes, for the past almost-three months.  Excuses, excuses, right?  Time was, I'd have made it to the gym even so. But I seemed to have lost my mojo.

Being an analytical sort, I carefully sat down the other day and considered just why that might be.  Part of it is that my gym (which was extremely conveniently located to my OLD job) is now in the opposite direction of my two new jobs. I'm simply never in the neighborhood anymore and if I have to go past my house to get there after a 12 hour day, you know I'ma end up on the couch, not the weight floor.  Secondly, there's the fact that after my surgery last year, I was never able to completely get all my strength back.  Oh, I got back to my previous weights on some lifts and close on others, but I certainly wasn't smashing PRs.  Since what I enjoy most about lifting is/was feeling strong and badass, this took some of the joy out of it.  Thirdly, the new gym management that started busting me for squatting barefoot and otherwise enforcing other heretofore not-enforced petty gym rules also took some of the joy out of it.  Time was, that ghetto Y felt like home to me. Then suddenly it didn't.

With all these extremely important insights (lulz) in mind, I made two decisions. First, that I just have to find someplace closer to my two new jobs to work out and, second, that I have to find something that's a new challenge, something that's gonna reignite my passion. (Because you know I think working out is supposed to be fun, not some grim chore you grit your teeth through.)  And thus I started googling.

My first thought was crossfit. Now, in some circles in which I hang, crossfit is roundly mocked. Sometimes for good or semi-good reasons: kipping, Paleo diet cultism, cultism in general, badly coached Oly lifts leading to spinal injury, etc.  Sometimes for no good reason: "we're just better than you are, nyah nyah."  I was willing to look past the kipping and the Paleo diet. Besides, one of my online weightlifting pals switched to crossfit and she still looks awesome and is strong as boool.  Mr Google found me a crossfit "box" walking distance from one of my jobs and a stone's throw from Fenway Park.  It costs $270 A MONTH. See, kids, that's two weeks worth of groceries or a freaking car payment or, in laymen's terms, more fuckin' money than anyone should pay to go to the gym EVAH unless it includes Mikey Lowell showing up nekkid to "coach" you. Next!  (There were more reasonably priced, if still expensive, crossfit boxes on google, but none of them were convenient enough in location to make them irresistible.  So, next!)

What else have you always wanted to do, Andrea? I asked myself. What other fitness endeavor would a.) make you feel strong and badass and b.) is something that you would have been too shy, unsure of yourself, and intimidated to try when you were a young woman?

Well, kids, as I expressed it to my friends...I just wanna hit shiz. And possibly people.

I googled some martial arts type places, but I knew, from my son having taken kenpo karate for several years as a kid, that that wasn't exactly what I was looking for. The whole belt system...taking tests, being judged and graded...just not what I wanted in my workout.  I respect that and I think it's awesome in instilling discipline etc etc in kids (or other people that have a problem in that area) but my whole life is awash in self-discipline.  I know all about hard work, delayed gratification, working towards a goal, blah blah fucking blah. I don't need that in my gym life. I just wanna hit shiz. And possibly people.

Mr Google provided me a boxing gym.  A boxing gym with something like 40% female members and testimonials from Shawn Thornton, the Phantom Gourmet guy, and a few Red Sox wives.  Including Mrs Mikey Lowell. (Who, obvs, must be a former, not current, member since they live in Florida now, but how is that not fate?  Apart from the fact that I'm a few years too late to punch her in the head and yell "I want your hot Cuban husband, bitch!"  Kidding, kidding.  I'm willing to share.)  Where was I?  Oh, yeah, said gym is also a little over a mile walking distance from one of my jobs and a reasonable T ride from the other.  My only sticking point was the fact that nowhere on their beautifully designed website was there any indication of how much it cost.  I could only imagine that it might be even more than the $270 crossfit place. After all, Shawn Thornton, Mrs Mikey Lowell, and the Phantom Gourmet guy aren't exactly the kind of clientele one runs into at the Ghetto Y. Nevertheless, I signed up for my free introductory lesson...

TO BE CONTINUED

fitness blog frauding

I counted yesterday.  I worked out a whole nine times the month of August and twelve the month of July. This is contrasted with my normal average of eighteen times a month--which only includes weight training, which I track. At times that I've been really working on my fitness, there are sometimes cardio-only or yoga days along with those eighteen weight sessions. Needless to say, neither of those things happened this July or August.  I don't think I've actually been to a yoga class since March and I can't remember the last time I went to the gym for an extra cardio day.

Pitiful.

OTOH, there's something to be said for being a bad example.  Or at least an imperfect one.   Just as I think it does some kind of a service for me to post pictures that make plain that I do *not* look like one of those twenty year old girls with their fitspo tumblrs and perfect cellulite-free asses, it may be a service to say, hey, I value my fitness and I love working out, but sometimes life gets in the way...AND THAT'S OKAY. Working out only 21 times in two months hasn't led to losing all mah gainz.  Working out only 21 times in two months hasn't made my muscles fall off and I can still sprint to catch a bus. (If I'm not wearing flipflops. Damn flipflops.)  Perfect is the enemy of good. Etc etc.  

That's not to say I don't feel better (bettah!) when I'm getting to the gym more often, but that's as much a function of getting to the gym more often equating with more free time and less stress as it is with the actual benefits of exercise.  I think.  Did I just commit heresy?

You know what I'm like.

Meanwhile, I just starting reading (okay, skimming) this book.  I think it's gonna fix all the problems with my body, except, y'know, I don't really want to follow his advice. Lulz.  I don't want to squat without pointing my feet out.  I don't want to refrain from crossing my feet and bending my knees when I do pullups and dips. Waaahhhhhh. It's too hard, mommy.  Anyway, I'm gonna read it all and then I'm gonna see if I can implement at least some of it.  With my documented problems with authority, I have this issue where I will initially believe whoever the latest internet guru is, then start questioning why their advice is any better than any of the past internet gurus' (contradictory) advice, then I just end up doing what the fuck ever I want to do anyway. Which is probably why my hip is killing me on and off lately.  Whatever.  I've made it to the ripe old age of 50 without any knee problems and, despite that previously unrecognized congenital abnormality of the spine that was noted incidentally on my abdominal CT scan last year, no major low back problems, so my pointing-out-y feet can't possibly be fucking me up that badly, can they?  Sigh.

If anyone's actually read and put into practice Supple Leopard yet and/or followed the website, please give me your feedback in comments.  Have you really fixed all your aches and pains and stiffness, and improved your athletic performance?

xoxo

i have a problem with authority

I don't know if y'all believe in the Myers-Briggs, but I am an INTP.***

In case you do not feel like clicking on my link, let me quote from that source of unimpeachable knowledge, wikipedia:  "INTPs accept ideas based on merit, rather than tradition or authority. They have little patience for social customs that seem illogical or that obstruct the pursuit of ideas and knowledge."

Yes. That wraps up some of my more annoying personality traits in a nutshell and ties it with a pretty bow. I don't like stupid rules, kids. I will follow them if they make sense. I will follow them if my NOT following them will unduly inconvenience someone else. But when people try to make me follow rules I disagree with just because they're the rules, I bristle. And when people try to convince me their stupid rules do in fact make sense when clearly they're illogical, I kinda go insane. I know this is an unattractive quality in a mature adult human being. I just cannot fight it.

What's that got to do with this blog and its subject matter? Well. I may have mentioned before that I have, since sometime last summer, been absolutely devoted to squatting barefoot, or as I prefer to call it, monkey-footed. Sometimes I do this actually in my bare feet. Sometimes I do it in my grippy socks.  But being able to feel the floor through my feet has improved my performance so much that I really do not wish to wear my shoes in the power rack ever again.  Unlike many other things that are verboten in my gym--using cell phones, taking your children in the adult locker rooms, removing the connectors from the cable machines--there are no signs telling you to keep your shoes on. I am not the only sock squatter, not by a long shot, and for months I was never reprimanded, nor did I see anyone else reprimanded, for taking their shoes off in the rack.  Then maybe in February or so, one of the morning employees came up to me in between sets and told me I had to put my shoes on or he would get in trouble. Okay, fine. In my head, I christened him the Shoe Nazi and I stopped going to the gym before noon on any lower body days.  It annoyed me, but no, I didn't actually want him to get in trouble with his higher-ups for my disobeying the (non-posted) rule.****

Then just last week, in the middle of the afternoon, one of the (young) gym employees I am quite fond of approached me in between sets of box squats, literally blushing, and apologized for having to tell me, but...his boss had seen my bare feet and told him to make me put my shoes on. I felt so bad for the poor kid. I assured him I knew he was only doing his job, put my shoes back on, and called my squats for the day.  Next lower body day?  He was working again, so to avoid putting him in the awkward position of having to tell me again to knock my shiz off, I kept my shoes on to start.  He very sweetly came over and let me know that, uh, the coast was clear. Great!  Fast forward to this afternoon.  I wanted to squat again.  I figured it being Sunday afternoon, there'd be absolutely no one around who would care if I went money-feet.

I was wrong.

The Boss Lady herself was there and this time she gave me the scolding herself.  After somewhat patronizingly telling me that *she* used to power lift and thus understood why I wanted to do what I was doing, she told me I couldn't because I could drop a plate on my foot and the gym would be liable.  I rather sensibly (I thought) said that, um, I was inside the rack and thus that was impossible.  She started going on about how, well, if a plate fell off the bar into the rack... I refrained from asking her to explain how the laws of physics apparently don't apply in our gym. I did point out that I had the collars on the bar. She suggested I buy a pair of Vibrams. I did not ask how Vibrams would protect me from breaking a toe if those pesky laws of physics did stop applying. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes my brain explode and my blood boil. Don't give me bullshit reasons for your stupid rules that insult my intelligence. Tell me your insurance requires all the gym-goers wear shoes and Vibrams count as shoes. And then maybe I'll be a good girl and be inspired to buy some of these:

Meh. Tell me bullshit and all I was inspired to do was break my kneeling squat PR fueled by pissiness and then completely immaturely gloat on getting away with taking some ninja video of the high box step-ups I'm working on.

xoxo

***I'm a weak "T" however--I can make myself score as an INFP by answering just a few questions I'm iffy on differently. In practice, this means I'm a little more tactful and circumspect than stronger INTPs usually are. I went to massage school with a woman who was, I have absolutely no doubt, a strong INTP. She was always causing a ruckus by saying the things out loud that I was only thinking. I hearted her greatly.

****Well, there's a posted "proper athletic shoes" vs "street shoes" rule to keep people from lifting in work boots but nothing specifically says you have to keep your proper athletic shoes on

in which andrea takes the nsca-cpt

Late on this report but late is better than never! Well, obviously some of my blog posts in retrospect would have been better as "never" but you know, gotta fill the electronic paper, blah blah.

N E Way.  Bright and early on the morning of April 6, I traversed the wilds of East Boston and presented myself to a small conference room in a large chain hotel near the airport to take my NSCA-CPT, paper n' pencil edition. Here's the thing. The NSCA has two ways it will allow one to take their certifications. One is the nifty twenty first century computerized, get-your-results-immediately-after option which can be taken at various (I'm totally serious here) H&R Block locations at your own convenience. You just pay, schedule a date, take the test, and find out if you've passed. The second is the old skool #2 pencil, fill in the lil oval blanks on your score sheet in a proctored room then wait a few weeks for results experience we all remember from out SATs that occurs in certain cities on a few select dates.  I chose option #2.  Why, Andrea? you ask. That seems stupid!  

Well, kids, two reasons. First of all, if it's not patently obvious, I am a huge procrastinator when it comes to certain things.*** When I decided last fall that I was going to pursue this certification and saw that the test was going to be offered here in early April, I realized that having that firm date as the day I HAD to take it was going to serve me better than scheduling it at my leisure. Otherwise 20 months were going to go by as I told myself I wasn't *quite* ready to take it yet and maybe I ought to study a few more weeks.  Secondly and more importantly, they charge you less to take this test the old fashioned way.  And they charge you even less if you choose early registration.  It may not be obvious from the number of pairs of expensive shoes in my closet, but I am ridiculously cheap frugal about certain things.  Why should I pay these people more money than I have to just to take their test?  Besides, if I didn't procrastinate, taking a test at an H&R Block during tax season seemed...unwise.

Back to our story. I did manage to procrastinate enough on my studying that the week before was a huge review-everything-I-ever-read and try-to-cram-it-into-my-brain panic experience. I had bought the (expensive!) practice test package from the NSCA which turned out to be quite helpful. In my studying frenzy, however, I found myself getting stupider by the minute. I sent a friend a semi-panicked text the day before the exam which said something like "omfg the more i study for this test, the worse i do on the practice exams!" to which the response was "um, maybe stop studying?"  Ah, my friends, what would I do without them? Sigh. I didn't heed that advice. In fact, the morning of the exam I was in the hotel lobby an hour early furiously reviewing chapters of the CPT manual on my kindle in between stress-induced trips to the restroom.  About twenty minutes before they let us into the room, I switched to playing a relaxing game of Tetris**** instead. So it's not like I was cramming until the very last minute. She said in her own defense.

There were five other, um, frugal people taking this exam with me on this sunny Saturday morning. Interestingly (to me at least) there were three of us ladies and three guys; the guys all appeared to be in their twenties, the ladies all over forty or at the very least 35.  I'm not sure what to make of those demographics.  Women my-age-ish all wanna make career changes? Young women into fitness aren't confident enough to want to teach it?  Old guys and young women aren't so cheap they'll actually pay extra to go to H&R Block? I dunno.

Just a few things about the test. The first 35 questions are video questions. Not my favorite because they are, necessarily, timed. They show you a video clip, you answer the question, they go on to the next and there's no going back. This is contrary to my own (probably most people's?) preferred way of test-taking. Sometimes you just need a little time to mull over the correct answer. But this was an area the practice tests did prepare me for somewhat. Wouldn't have wanted to go in there not having experienced the format for those. The rest of the questions were just your average standardized test multiple choice questions. The funniest part (oh, in retrospect) was that the proctors had told us they would announce when we had an hour left--out of three--and twenty minutes left. There were 200 answer spaces on the test sheet and when "one hour left" was called, I had just answered question 120-something. Holy crap! I semi-freaked. I am NOT a slow reader, kids, and I have never had a problem running out of time on tests. I started reading questions really fast and not mulling. Then I turned over another couple pages in the test booklet and realized that, oh, there's 200 answer spaces but only 150 questions. D'oh. I had plenty of time to reread the questions I'd blown through and make sure I hadn't made any mistakes.  Oh, Andrea.

Perhaps my favorite part of the whole exam was the guy seated directly to my left at the next table. He was perhaps the youngest of us, a black kid with long dreds who appeared to be only twenty or twenty one. I could see him in my peripheral vision and he was doing exactly the same thing I was doing: acting out some of the various exercises the test was asking us about so he could feel what muscles were working, etc. It made me feel very warmly disposed towards him (as did, let's be honest, his youth...it might not be obvious in my bitchy sarcasm, but I am extremely maternal in nature): kinesthetic learners of the world, unite!  Hope you passed, Long Dreds Kid!

Hope I passed too. We'll know in about five to seven weeks, I guess.

xoxo

***true fact: I'm writing this as I procrastinate on what I'm really supposed to be doing this morning

****if you're having an old skool experience, go old skool, yo

i drink alone

This post is only very tangentially related to health and fitness, but it does touch on body image so I'ma drop it in here.  I'm just dying to share this experience with y'all.

Last night I braved the snow to go see George Thorogood, who was performing at the Lynn Auditorium.  Before I get to my point, lemme just express some amusement at this whole set up. They're trying to make Lynn Auditorium happen as a concert venue, which is just a little bit bizarre seeing as it's located in City Hall. I told the friend that I was attending the concert with that this meant there would be no beer. I was wrong. They had concessions set up and they were indeed selling beer. Inside City Hall. I don't even... Alright, I'm probably just cranky about that since I didn't have one. I'm on a diet and very much moderating my alcohol consumption. Sigh.  The other reason they are not gonna make this concert venue happen is that there's really no good parking. We found a space on street a few blocks away, but it took ten minutes of riding around. Plus, if they weren't selling beer inside City Hall, there's no good bars around there to pre-game. Um, without getting stabbed.

Anyway.  We found a space, walked over, got our tickets scanned and went in. (They weren't checking bags. I coulda brought my own beer, yo.)  My friend needed to use the restroom before we found our seats and I didn't, so I just waited in the hall, watching my fellow concert-goers.  It was stunning. Everyone--almost literally everyone--was between the ages of 45 and 60. Watching these clots of middle-aged people milling around the halls, I had this weird deja vu sensation, like someone had scooped us all up out of the halls of my high school in 1978 and deposited us 35 years later.  And the 35 years had not been kind.  My friend came out (bitching that the City Hall bathrooms were not really built to handle a crowd, heh) and I said, "Tell the truth. We look just as old as the rest of these middle-aged people, don't we? It's very humbling."

Readers, it's not as if I don't look in the mirror every day. And it's not as if I don't look at my same age friends and clearly see how we're all growing grayer/saggier/wrinklier/heavier/balder/etc. by the year. But it took a whole concert full of 50-somethings without any younger people to break up the visual to feel the full impact.  Humbling.  I was just saying to another friend the other day that, as I'm presently job hunting, I know I'm supposed to be worried about age discrimination and the fact that maybe a younger person is gonna get hired before me, but that it pissed me off, because in my head, I'm thirty.  A wiser, more experienced, less crazy thirty, but still. Thirty. I was joking about fudging my resume to make it harder to figure out how old I am, but the whole George Thorogood experience made me realize that no one but me is ever gonna think I'm thirty.  I guess that's demoralizing as well as humbling!  I can squat and deadlift and jog and go to yoga and all it's gonna do is turn me into a very fit old person.  Which is better than a non-fit old person, but I don't know what that says about my job prospects.

Here's a couple of my favorite Thorogood song for your troubles.

Yes, I DO know the second one is a cover. Shut up.

xoxo

P.S. Another lesson from last night? Drunk and/or high 50-somethings behaving at a concert like it still was 1978 are not cute. I'm talking to *you* bleached blonde chick in the tight pants, falling off your stillettos while dancing in the aisle and having to be removed by security.  I'm also talking to *you* guy two seats over whose miasma of really really skunky weed almost gave me a contact high and who despite all that apparent THC was NOT mellow and had to keep climbing over me every ten minutes to go to the hallway for god knows what.

P.P.S. Final lesson: I should probably cut my hair. All the women my age with long hair looked like shit and I am sadly probably no exception.

they weren't joking about snowmeggadon

That's my front door with a 5 foot snow drift in front of it.  My son and I just shoveled for 3 1/2 hours and we didn't even do the side walks--there was no place to put the snow.  I hurt.  And there isn't even any crap food in the house for me to eat back all those calories.

xoxo

"the highest peak in the Adirondacks!"

Let me start by saying that I began writing this a couple days ago and kinda gave up on it, but considering that I am stuck in my house due to snowmeggadon and I already spent the entire afternoon talking on the phone (to other bored people) and cleaning my bedroom closets***, I guess I'll buckle down and finish this shit. You lucky readers, you.

So, the other day in my continuing mission to throw out ALL THE THINGS, I cleaned out my bathroom cabinets. This yielded a whole green plastic trash bag of expired topical medications, hair "product" that had failed to live up to its advertising, bottles of body lotion with approximately 1/16th of an inch of lotion left in them, sunscreen that probably would promote skin cancer at this point. And the like. I also threw out a tin of Badger Balm that I bought in Lake Placid in 1998.

When I mentioned that, someone said that while she had no idea what Badger Balm was, she was pretty sure that after 14 years it was time for it to go.  Which sent me spiraling down the tunnel of misty water colored memories. (How's that for a mixed metaphor PLUS a reference to an abysmal 1970s song? Full service blog once again!)

In 1998, the gentleman who I was dating and I had a plan to climb Mt Marcy--"the highest peak in the Adirondacks!" (which is how I for years referred to it whenever I told this story, verbal quotation marks and exclamation point n' all.)  Actually *he* had a plan to climb Mt Marcy and I only went along because a.) I'll do just about anything once and b.) I like making the people I love happy, and this was gonna make him happy.  The year before he had attempted the climb with a bunch of his buds during a camping trip but they started out too late in the day, it started raining, and they ended up having to turn around before they reached the top. This weighed heavily on my guy. He didn't believe in being bested by Mother Nature. I was elected to help him fulfill his, uh, dream. He warned me ahead of time that this was a tough climb and that at a certain point the trail basically became vertical.  We day-hiked quite a bit, I felt like I was reasonably fit, and we did a few warm up mountains in late spring/early summer. (Including Mt Graylock, the highest peak in the Berkshires. Kids, let me just say this. The Berkshires are just a punkass bunch of little hills.)

I thought Mt Marcy was going to be challenging but fun.  I thought WRONG. (That's foreshadowing. Try to keep up.)

The first harbinger of impending not-ok-ness was when we were forced to postpone our original trip in early July after my then-12-year-old son was in an accident while with his father. We couldn't reschedule until August.  As those of you familiar with the northern hemisphere will know, days in mid-August are already quite a bit shorter than they are in early July.  This would ultimately turn out to be a problem.

For reasons that are lost to me now, we also got started later than anticipated. If I remember correctly, we started out with twelve hours of daylight ahead of us. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, we can climb up this mountain and back down again in 12 hours, we thought. And thus we set out, armed with nothing more than water, lunch, Skittles for energy, and a camera.  Nothing that would, like, help us in an emergency. Yes, we were morons.

I think by the time we stopped for lunch, it was becoming apparent that we were not making the time we thought we would.  It was also apparent that I was the weakest link.

I thought I was in good enough physical condition, the other hikes we'd done that year had been a piece of cake, but I was tiring and I was not-so-fast. By the time we reached the portion of the hike where the entire trail looked like this:

I was not as chipper as this adorable toddler whose picture came up when I google image searched "Mt Marcy trail." (And let me tell you, 14 years after the fact, proof that a two year old climbed that is a little depressing. Can we assume he was in a backpack till they let him out to snap the picture? Yeah, let's do that.) When we got to the very last part of the climb before the summit, and it was nothing but vertical rock, I sat down on a boulder and told my guy to go on without me and that I'd catch him on the way down. I seriously did not think my legs were going to move any more. Well, he wasn't having that and insisted that if I'd come that far, I had to reach the summit and see the view. I made it, we took some pictures, and then we realized that we had to start the hell down that mountain because oh my god, look at the time.

You might think that going down a mountain would be considerably easier than going up it, but my toes were smashing against the top of my hiking boots with each step downward. I ended up almost but not quite losing both my big toenails and they both had a horizontal ridge across them for years from damaging my nailbed. Nevertheless, we were almost running by the time we reached the bottom. Well, actually T was running and kinda dragging me along with him. We reached the parking lot just as it was getting dark. Which was a damn good thing since we hadn't been smart enough to bring along a flashlight.

We repaired to our motel room, changed, and went to dinner in Lake Placid, where we bought the Badger Balm, pretty sure we were going to need it.  I remember sitting in the restaurant and seriously wondering whether I was going to be able to walk back to the car once I stood up.  (Made it!)  I have never before or since had that feeling like my muscles just were NOT going to work.  And for at least three or four days after that, my legs and feet were so swollen I couldn't wear shoes. I had to wear flipflops to work when I returned. It was that bad.

But I did have a sense of accomplishment. I might have almost had to crawl down that damn mountain but I did make it to the top and back. So, yeah, for years I always laughingly referred to it as Mt Marcy--"the highest peak in the Adirondacks!" and called the whole experience the crowning athletic achievement of my life.  I realized in talking about this the other day that I still felt that way. I am proud of my PRs in the gym and happy when I make one, but I don't think anything I do in there is ever going to top doing that climb.

I peaked at age 35. I can live with that!

xoxo

***You think the Badger Balm from 1998 was bad? I found a whole box of magazines today from 1995. Yeah.

needles, wut?

My acupuncturist, Marcy, whom my friends have heard me talk about way too much, was on an NBC nightly news segment on back pain!  Here's an extended version from the MSNBC website:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I'm not sure what acupuncture does--I don't exactly buy into the concept of chi--but it does something. I've had treatments that left me so loopy and spaced I almost sat in someone else's lap on the subway on the way home. I've had the weirdly pleasurable sensation of lying on the table with the needles in and feeling as if I had a heavy, invisible blanket on me, weighting down my limbs. I've a previously sprained ankle that kept swelling up on and off for months finally stop doing that when Marcy scraped at it with what literally was a Chinese soup spoon. (In the massage world, I think we call that cross-fiber friction, but I've never performed it on anyone with an eating utensil.)

Oh, and then there was that time Marcy treated a point on the top of my head because I was feeling depressed in a flat, ennui-filled way, and mentioned casually that she would never needle that spot if I was in my much more common state of freaking-out anxiety because it was a stimulating point. Whereupon, several hours later in bed, I found myself suffering from the female equivalent of the fabled "call your doctor for an erection lasting more than 3 hours" of the Viagra commercials. Holy crap, one of the weirdest (and least comfortable) experiences of my life. I seriously wonder if the ancient Chinese treated that point on people suffering from, y'know, sexual dysfunction.

So, yeah. I don't understand exactly how or why acupuncture works, but it's pretty cool. Plus, I'm perfectly willing to pay to take a nap in a dark quiet warm room in the middle of the day, yo. It's not slacking--it's medical treatment.

xoxo

we come bearing gifts

I recently celebrated my 25th year working for my employer. Well, according to them. Actually I was hired in January 1986, which is 26 years, muthafuckas, but the hospital I work for has gone through so many mergers and changes in affiliation in the past 26 years of changing health care climate that somehow my "anniversary date" has mutated. They can say whatever they want; they've had 26 years of my life.  All the best years, I'm sure.  1986...I was practically a child...so young, pretty, full of hope and ambition and faith in human nature...

Sigh.

ANYWAY, since they think this year is my silver anniversary, I was invited to an honorary banquet which I did not attend.  As many of you know, I am deeply antisocial and going to some stupid function to get a free bad meal and a congratulatory piece of paper was not, y'know, high on my list of things to do.

Some of my co-workers who were also celebrating anniversaries did however attend and they encouraged me to at least GET THE FREE APPRECIATION GIFT to which I am entitled.  In the interoffice mail this week, the certificate which I did not pick up in person arrived, along with--yes!--a catalog with the gifts to which my 25 years of service entitle me .  I have until the last week of August to pick one. I spent some time this afternoon perusing it.  I was deeply disappointed that, apparently, 25 years does not rate a big screen TV.  (Rumor has it that's 30.)  I was deeply disappointed in all the offerings in fact.

It was a weird assortment. Everything from the trademark colonial rocking chairs that the hospital seems to bestow on everyone they wish to honor (and which, frankly, I would not put in my home if they paid me) to jewelry to cameras (too bad I just bought one) to a plethora of iPod docking devices (too bad I'm happy with mine) to deep fryers to deeply ugly vases and bookends to chainsaws (seriously!) to desk chairs to leaf blowers to knife blocks.  Weird and random.  I finally decided I'm probably going to choose a watch. The majority of the women's watches are fairly gaudy and overly blingy, but there's one kinda sporty one I liked.  Never mind that I haven't worn a watch regularly since 2005.  It's better than a pressure cooker or one of those godawful rocking chairs.

But then I was thinking, huh.  Of this weird assortment of random items, why aren't there any sporting goods?  Couldn't the hospital buy me a bike?  Or at least a heart rate monitor or a new gym bag?  It's like they don't want me to be healthy. No, they'd rather gift me with a turkey fryer which would probably explode if the deep frying didn't clog my arteries first.  I see their game. They don't want me to live long enough to qualify for that 60inch flat screen.

I came home to find another missive from the hospital in the US mail.  This one from the financial counseling office.  Seems they have determined that the portion of my upcoming first surgical procedure that *I* will be responsible for is 250 bucks. Please pay up *before* your surgical date, bitch.  Payment plans available if you cannot afford the whole thing in these difficult financial times!

Can I just trade them in a fucking rocking chair for that?  I don't even...

Spend less money on useless award banquets and wave the co-pays for your employees, assholes.

Yeah, I know. They just don't want me to live long enough to collect the TV.

xoxo

President Obama, help me.

This post may have been written under the influence of intoxicating substances.  Speaking of which, I didn't see any fine cognac or Irish whiskey or beer-of-the-month clubs in their stupid catalog either.

here there be dragons

Here's my question to all y'all. In your fitness life, do you try new things? Or do you stick with the tried-n-true? In my admittedly limited experience, people mostly stick with what they know. At my Y, there are the pool people, and the Zumba/spin/cardio class people, and the cardio machine people, and the weightlifting people, and the yoga people. Oh! and the guys who just come to play pick up basketball. While the cardio machine people may wander over and do some half-assed weights and the weightlifting people may grudgingly grind out some cardio, what with the two areas right next to each other, I don't think there are a lot of pool people drying off and heading to Zumba or spinners squatting on their days off. And if there is anyone at my Y that takes advantage of all the fitness opportunities open to them, bless 'em, but I don't know who they are.

Of course, I count myself amongst the many. I lift weights. I grudgingly do some cardio on the machines. Outside the gym I go for walks and, rarely, runs in the nice weather, and I do just enough yoga on my own either on the mats after lifting or at home to keep my hips from completely seizing up. I have made it to one, yes *one*, actual yoga class in the almost a year and a half that I've belonged to the Y, and for god's sake, they're FREE. There are so many things I say I want to try, but do I ever make the time and effort? No.



I want to try spin class.



I want to try indoor rock climbing. (Not available of course at my ghetto Y, but one of our sister facilities in the fancy-pants neighborhood has one I could use.)



I want to try hot yoga. 'Cause having someone else fling their sweat onto me while I get in touch with my body and spirit seems fun. Or something. This however costs $$$.



I even want to try bootcamp some day despite the fact that a.) at my Y it takes place 3 days a week at 6:30am and the only physical activity I ever wish to engage in at that hour of the morning doesn't involve actually getting out of bed and b.) a friend who's a Vietnam-era vet laughs his ass off at upper middle class, middle aged people paying for faux "boot camp" and I can see his point.



Hell, I might even try water aerobics, if it wasn't almost entirely the province of little old ladies at my Y, many of whom use canes to make it to the actual pool. Eh. Maybe in 30 years.

So here's the thing. I am supposed to be on a rest week from lifting this week, mainly because all my weightlifting buddies gasped in horror that I haven't taken one since 4th of July. I'm bowing to the peer pressure. I'm sure my poor abused hammies will thank me. So what did I do today? I went to the gym and used the treadmill. Sigh. Not exactly breaking out of my rut, am I? Therefore I am setting myself a challenge. This week I will do one new fitness thing. And then I will report back, probably with humiliating but hilarious stories!

Stay tuned!

xoxo

P.S. If you have an idea for something you'd like to see me try this week (for my health and/or my readers' amusement), drop me a comment!

men and muscles

Your esteemed blog hostess is a single lady.



(As an aside, your esteemed blog hostess is still pondering where Beyonce buys her maternity leather booty shorts, but that is indeed a subject for another blog.)

As I was saying, your esteemed blog hostess is a single lady (and is it any wonder, because dear sweet Jesus, is there a man alive who wants to listen to her inane nattering about how pop divas cover their expanding uteruses?), but you could probably infer that from the fact she is writing this shit to entertain you at 11pm on a Saturday night instead of getting laid like a normal, coupled-up person. She loves her readers with every fiber of her being, but if the choice is between you and sex, she'll choose sex. Just sayin'. And no offense.

In her attempt to maybe, y'know, find a date, she has just recently made herself a profile on one of your popular online dating sites. (Do people confessing their secret shame usually write about themselves in the third person? Probably. Okay, let's knock that shit off. Ahem.) So, um, yeah, she--I mean *I*--used that very picture to the right of your screen as my dating profile avatar. I dunno. It was a better choice than the 500 pictures of myself in my underwear, taken solely to examine my cellulite, that I also have stored on my computer.

It has been an interesting choice however. It invites a lot of comment. There are the gentlemen that find it oddly sexy. Others just write to say, "Nice guns!" One guy with an extremely well-muscled shot of his own torso sent a very brief missive: "Let's talk." It took extreme self-control NOT to write back, "About what? How swole we both are in our profile pictures?" (Actually, I still might. That's hilarious. And, uh, do you see why I can't get a date? No one loves the sarcastic.) One nice man, after some back and forth, asked whether I'm a competitive bodybuilder, bless him and his absolute ignorance of what those chicks really look like compared to me. I reassured him that I do not have any clear plastic stripper heels in my wardrobe, which in retrospect was probably not so much reassuring as disappointing.

But one of the most interesting responses, to my mind, is that of the men who make jokes about how I could probably snap them in two/kick their ass. As a teeny tiny, pocket-sized and very quiet woman, beloved by small children and most animals, it is somewhat amusing to think that a picture of me flexing translates to Xena the Warrior Princess or some such shit. And of course these guys don't seriously think I could take them down--there are very few guys who think they can get their ass kicked by a woman even if they can--they just don't know how to react to a woman with visible muscle. Thus the reflexive joke. I find it sociologically interesting. I mean, almost as interesting as Beyonce's sexy ass maternity wardrobe.

I will report back with further developments. Unless of course one of my internet dates pans out. Oh, hush, I'm only kidding. Men my age don't have that much stamina. I'll still have plenty of time to type.

xoxo