Another 20 miles

I was able to put another 20 miles on the treadmill this week.  I feel good about this plan.  I have not done the P90X this week, but hope to resume at least the upper body discs on my off days from the treadmill.  I was only able to do the Ab Ripper one time this week.

My best time this week was four miles in 62:44.  One of my big goals for the next few months is to get that time down to 60:00.  I am adding some tenths of a mile in my "cool down" in hopes of working up a little toward five miles a day.  I am setting a personal goal of a 10K by this time next year.  I want to surprise my tiny little friend, so I'm not saying much to her until I get closer to the 6.2 miles.

A Lazy Day

Today is kind of a lazy day.  Sitting in the recliner googling whether Beyonce was really pregnant and the Six Best Ways to Keep Your New Man.  I landed on a ranking website that ranked Rhode Island School of Design as having the number one creepiest mascot.  Apparently, it's a man's parts--down there. "Scrotie".  Ewww.

Leave it to those free thinkers.

The verdict?  I never thought Beyonce was pregnant.  I wondered how she was going to pull this off.  I think most people would have forgiven her if she'd just come out with the surrogate.  Maybe she could have said she couldn't carry babies for some medical reason.  I don't know.  Her body is how she makes money, why would she want to risk that?  I don't blame her if she wasn't.  What if she gained gobs of weight an stretched out her stomach and was never quite able to get back on top of the industry?  She'd be screwed.  That's how it is when someone has used their body to sell their singing voice.

As far as keeping my "new" man.  The list was stupid.  I'm supposed to laugh more, enjoy his hobbies, include him in my decisions, not let him monopolize my time and some other goofy things for women in their twenties and thirties that still actually think they should have to jump through hoops to keep a man.  Big tip comin' up here ladies.  If you like each other enough and your don't have any super-duper personality flaws, the rest kind of works itself out.  You'll either stay together or break up.  There's really no way around it.  Unless you go for the friends with benefits junk that is a bunch of nonsense.  Everyone knows the girl is using herself up.

So I look at the picture of the "plush" mascot representing male genetalia and just wonder where I've been that this is actually OK.

I'm Broke . . . Again

Went to the bank today.  I was $375 overdrawn.  That's always so embarassing when the teller give you this blank smile through the window.  I'm in a pickle.  Two of my students haven't paid me in MONTHS.  I'm owed something like $500 and I lost two students in January.  This is even suckier, because just maybe I can get the $500 dollars from the studetns I have, but the $120 a month is going to add up fast.  Apparently, it already has.

Logged In 20 miles and P90X

Last week was a good week for the treadmill.  As my title shows, I got in 20 miles.  5 days, four miles each.  I was going to do some uphill stuff, but it was just wearing me out too much to do anything the rest of the day.  I know with time I would have gotten accustomed to it and would have benefitted much more from the challenge, however, I need the emotional triumps almost as much as I need the physical triump, so I adjusted the treadmill to level and did four miles three more time.

I also did disc 1 of the P90X and the Ab Ripper X on Tuesday and a nother Ab Ripper on Thursday.  I started into the first 15 minutes of Disc 2.  Plyometrics are tough for me.  I wanted to power through them, but felt week and sore from doing too much on the treadmill.  I decided to put them off for Friday and as I could have predicted the days slipped away and now it is time to start a new week.  I feel good about last week's performance on the treadmill, just working through disappointment at not being able to do very much of the Plyometrics.

These are so awesome.  See the little knobs?  Those adjust the
weights that you pick up when you pick them up.  The numbers
are too small to see in this picture, but they are 5, 10, 15, 20
and 25 pounds.  This created a great workout.

For Disc 1 I used my new dumbbells.  Did I already mention I bought some Gold's Gym Space Saver  25 singles?  I love these weights.  I had some "girly" dumbells at 3, 5 and 8 pounds that were just not heavy enough.  I didn't get a good challenge out of them.  I am a new convert to "free" weights.  I've worked out on a circuit trainer for years and never saw some of the disadvantages.  Now I'm not slamming a circuit trainer because something is better than nothing, but free weights are definitley where it's at for a wholistic training session.

The balancing muscles don't get used when you are pulling or pushing stable weights.  When you sit or lean against something, you are actually almost doing yourself a disservice.  However, something is always better than nothing.

So that's where I was at and going into this week.  I'm going to try to stick to the 20 miles and try to get through the Plyometrics video.  I love P90X.  I hope I can do it someday.

Winter Of Our Discontent: Is This the Moment?

I slept in a little this morning and a thought occurred to me that has occurred to me before but I didn't give it much attention.  When I was in the beginning of tenth grade or even perhaps the summer before tenth grade, my mom left me and my dad and took my two sisters to another state.  I remember being told she was going over there to go to a different doctor.  There is a great deal of tragedy that has followed her decision that she never could have predicted.  A seriously sad chain of events critical to my future and the future of the family.

I kind of suppose up to this point in my life--what was I 15 or 16--I didn't do much caring what was going on around me.  I was just living my life.  So when the other shoe dropped I didn't give that much mind either.

I was given a choice.  Leave my friends, my school, my home and go with them or stay with my dad and live my mom's friends during the week and live at home on the weekends.  Now I know at the time I was in the tenth grade.  I was playing in a big band and felt very much a part of the group.  I'd been first chair all through middle school and the first two years of High School.  I had some friends in the band and my best friend at the time was  my locker mate for the last two years.  These are the things that are important to a tenth grader with little else.

What I had at home was strife.  My older sister was a little bit of a bully, and my younger sister had been a sickly child, so she inherently got the lion's share of attention.  I didn't know my dad as much as I should have at 16.  I wanted to stay behind.  Things here might not have been the greatest, but at least I had stability.

So, that day my mother, two sisters and the family dog packed up the station wagon and left.  I don't remember feeling much of anything about their leaving.  That bothers me a little.  What bothers me more is what happened to all of us that year or so and the butterfly effect that followed one woman's decision.

Mental Messages: How Do Other Women Do It?

Where do they go to shed this weight of being a woman?  This heavy burden of being "emotional", "moody", "flighty", "quirky"--the list goes on.  Some times I just don't want to exist anymore.  It's so heavy on my soul today, I really have to keep going just to survive.  I don't know who to be, how to be, or what to be.  I'm so frustrated with the world around me.  I try not to be weak and I get abandoned.  I try to be decisive and I get rebellion.  I try to be firm and I get attitude.  I try to be clean and organized and I get disrespected.  I try to include and end up being excluded.  I try to not talk and I get ignored.  I try to talk and get interrupted.

I just don't know what to do anymore.  I have no one.  Everyone is so busy.  I have opened up to a few people in my life and was met with disinterest.  People I thought loved me and cared about me are just too busy to deal with me.  It's your decision.  Just pick yourself up.  What are you complaining about?  At least this, at least that.  I want to crawl on a rooftop and tell the world I am dying inside from trying to figure out what to do, how to be, what to be . . .maybe someone would notice what it has felt like to be me.  Even if for a brief moment.

This is not how it was supposed to be.

I once dreamed.  I dreamed of family, of happiness, and of satisfaction.  I dreamed of holidays, vacations, plans and change.  I hoped for the future and reveled in the past.  My days were filled with pleasing those I loved.  Now I wonder what those I love fill their days with.