4 posts from June 2008

About a month and a half ago my husband and I joined a gym.

I'm a big chick, and I have never been bothered by my weight. Overall, I'm fairly healthy, though inactive. I rarely get sick, and even when I do, my immune system works in overdrive- I have healing powers like wolverine! Yearly physicals  revesl great colestrol, normal blood pressure and overal goodness. My first husband pushed me alot to lose weight, which did nothing except piss me off and make me stubborn. My current has never pushed me- because he is happy if I'm happy.

But he was not happy. Depressed and without energy for anything, he needed an outlet. And I knew it. He was a big child, and then in the early 2000's, he suddenly decided he'd had enough and dropped alot of weight. Over the past few years hes slowly gained, and it bothers him.He still sees himself as a fat child when the reality is he is an average man, not fat. Just inactive.

And so we joined a gym. I hoped that with both of us joining, we could motivate each other and therby not be able to flake on the couch each night with the excuse of wanting to spend time together. The gym has a pool, and I've always enjoyed swimming, so I envisioned myself swimming while Sean weight trained.

I have to stress, exersice was not something I defined as fun. I am shocked, therefore at what has transpired. For the first three weeks, I begged off some days, finding trivial excuses to stay home. So I went to the gym 3 or 4 days a week. But rationed that it was better then nothing. I was bored with the pool. I had tried the nightly aquasize class, and found most teachers sucked. Mondays morning class teacher was great, so I'd find myself going to her classes no matter how  was feeling.

Ay week 4, I was well and truly bored and undermotivated. I popped in on saturday for a swim to find the pool closed for an event. So I went to the gym instead, rode the bike and cooled down on a treadmill.

Click.

Ten minutes in, hot and sticky, with my thigh muscles burning, I was feeling fantastic. Three weeks on from this discovery and my attendance has gone up to 5-6 days a week, and I'm the one whining at Sean and draging him physically out of the house to go to the gym. I am absolutely addicted. The crappiest sort of day at work, no desire to do anything but crawl into bed, and I know if I get myself into the bike, in 15 minutes I'll be feeling like sunshine is coming out of my ass.

Three weeks later, and my energy levels have shot through the roof. I'm ready to take on anything, and feel super accomplished.  I cannot gush enough. My ten minute bike ride and ten minute cool down of the first day has morphed into a 7 km bike ride (8 kms twice a week), followed by half a km of rowing, and 1.5 km treadmill cooldown. Another week of this and I'll have boosted the rower to one km and then will add the evil looking cross trainer machine into the mix.  I think that the wee after that, I will also throw in a weights based routine once or twice a week as well.

We've done nothing different in the diet field- we eat a varied healthy range already, with our problem being portion size rather then wrong food choices. But even this is righting itself- for reasons unfathomable to me, I find myself eating smaller portions as I feel full faster. This does not make and sense to me whatsoever- if anything, I expected to be hungrier.

Last week, I noticed my pants are lose and I have to leep hauling them up. Yesterday I bought a new pair of track pants and two tank tops. All items had to be bought in one size smaller then I've been wearing.

And so it begins.

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat
But always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed
I hope you still feel small
When you stand by the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance

Exerpt from Lee Ann Womack's I Hope You Dance

100_1824

3 comments

We stumbled upon this statue, Dancing Bear (by Pauta Saila) when wandering through Ottawa a couple of years ago. He is the first piece of public art from Nunavut in the far north to be displayed in Canada's capital city.

The Inuit people of the Canadian Arctic use the Dancing Bear as a recurring art theme, typically in soapstone carvings much smaller then this one. The polar bear is top of the food chain, the ruler of his environment, and feared by all. Because of this, it is considered a great honour, and a very desirable thing to come back as a polar bear in the next life. And the Dancing Bear is seen to be just that- a person's soul re-incarnated as King of the World, and understanably quite happy about it.

Today, I feel like Dancing Bear.

I begin writing here as  a means to drag myself out of the funk I have been smothered by for a few months.  But it's time to uncurl myself from my safe little warm ball and venture out into the land of the living once more.

I've largely been frustrated with some things in our life which are completely fixable, but which have gone unattended to because my husband, whom I adore utterly and completely, is sometimes a twit:)

I am being unfair, of course. My husband as Asperger's, and it makes him see life in a very different sort of way. When things are out of control, he just does not function at all...wherein I (and most people, I think), feel the need to wrestle control back, he just gets overwhelmed and refuses to deal with it as though the problem did not exist at all.

We're financially struggling. We have not yet paid off the big trip(18 months ago we travelled around the world), as the credit cards are still full and the bills are absolutely crushing us. We decided months ago to re-finance the house, pull out the equity and use it to clear the bills and start fresh. He's so scared that they will say no to re-finance that he is dragging his heels and being slow to do everything. There are documents he need to gather and such that he keeps "forgetting". For months. Despite daily reminders. It is ENRAGING me to the point that I want to throttle him somedays! I think we have everything ready now, and we will get the papers to the mortgage broker this week. Finally.

I have no intention of making this blog a place to bitch about  him- this will be the ony entry in which I will focus on this...but I also need to clarify where my head is at right now- mostly because I feel for the first time in a long time that I am in a good place again. It's all dark and dusty in the corners of my head, and I've spent too much time in there lately with the cobwebs.  And recently I had the sudden realization that none of this is his fault. I've been focussed too much on the nit-picky things.

It is partly because I am so far away from MY friends, MY family. I moved here in 2004  after meeting him on the net, and hauled up everything I knew, packed my life into three very large suitcases and boarded a plane. Everyone we have here are OUR friends. So naturally, when the thousand of little things that crop up in a relationship bother me, I've ben sitting on it. I don't want to complain about the petty things to OUR friends.

But,  if I had MY friends here, I would bitch about stuff, we would laugh about it, drink a bottle of wine and it would be over and forgotten, instead of me thinking and overthinking,dwelling on it until it grows. Just little issues, miniscule daily routine passing things getting blown out of proportion till they seem like big issues. Once I made that connection, everything got much sunshine-y-er in my head.

And the really big, overwhelming things about him? Are the good things. The patience that is without end, the willingness to go along with my randomness, the ability to deal with the crazyness of a woman with PMS, the astuteness to know exactly when to kiss me, exactly when to tickle me till I strugle not to pee myself, exactly when to surprise me with a bottle of bubbles and a blowing wand.

I've never met a man quite like him. I never even knew such creatures exsisted.

And so, If I have to drag him, kicking and screaming into reality till he gets his shit sorted, then he'd best hang on tight, cause it will be a bumpy ride.

Life....here we come again.

I believe in freedom of religion. And freedom from it.

I believe that I am not worthy enough to judge you. Nor you me.

I believe respect is earned, not given.

I believe flowers belong in a garden, not in a vase.

I believe in zerberts.

I believe in subsidized education, childcare and healthcare. And I believe in the creation of an asshole tax to pay for it.

I believe thunderstorms are a form of foreplay.

I believe fear is an aphrodisiac.

I believe dancing is a means of self-expression.

I believe everyone should sing.

I believe that love and hate can co-exist.

I believe things work out in the end. If it is not ok, it is not the end.

I believe that food should not explode in your mouth.

I believe everyone deserves a second chance.

I believe I have the right to bitch-slap anyone who asks me a question but cannot be bothered to wait for or listen to the reply.

I believe that other people's expectations of me may be important at the moment, but in the end, only my own expectations matter.

I believe there is no emotional hurt that cannot be overcome by a journal, a long cry and the love of a good friend.

I believe good chocolate almost compares to good sex. Ditto for good coffee.

I believe every morning is a new beginning and another chance.

I believe that every person has beauty.

I believe that love can mean more risk, and more pain than anything else a person will ever experience. And that it is worth it.

I believe that fog = peace.

I believe there are accidents in life, but that life has no mistakes.