one hour of weights at the gym. for some reason, i’ve always had a much easier time of gymming when i’m doing weights. i don’t get endorphins apparently because i never leave the gym with a feel-good, life-is-great, love-the-burn feeling but, while i completely loathe cardio which feels entirely like work, weights give me a powerful feeling that works well with the loathing i feel while gymming. does that make sense at all?
i was disappointed that i didn’t get to the gym wednesday since this was my first week of trying to get back into a routine but my head was so not into it thanks to all the concrete drilling (yes, today is day 4). yesterday was my cardio day so instead of going to the gym and getting nowhere on the treadmill, hubby and i walked about 4.4 miles on the beach last night. it was a wonderful walk and the sand was great for stretching out my calf muscles that have been so tight since tuesday’s stair-stepping session. between stretching them out on the walk, sitting in the hot tub when we got back, and making myself smell like a little old lady by slathering mineral ice on them before bed, my calves are feeling much looser today. yay for that!
as you can see from the sidebar, i spent far too much time today plurking and working to even try to think of a post. shame on me.
really, what more is there to say on day three?
i’m really starting to feel like all of this drilling is a personal attack on me. the headache that i worked so hard to get bearable is now throbbing my eyeballs again. this is the first thing that has really had me questioning condo-living. i know things have to be fixed but all i can think while trying not to cry from the pain of the drill reverberating through the concrete and into my teeth is “why won’t they just leave me alone?!”
so the headache that started yesterday afternoon lasted all night and this morning. i took countless motrin and could not knock it out last night. i couldn’t even get up to reheat leftovers for dinner. this morning, i couldnt’ lift my head off the pillow so i had to call in sick. i took some more motrin and waited for it to dissipate enough to start working. after two and a half hours, it eased off enough to login to work. the wonderful part is that they are doing more concrete fixing today. i wonder how long it will be before they drill right into my skull again.
they are fixing some problem areas in the walkways today. this means that on and off all day we have been listening to the drilling, chiseling, and hammering of concrete. the concrete between floors and metal studs in the wall are all reverberating with horribly loud and annoying sounds. the furniture is vibrating and my head is throbbing (alright, this is probably partially blamed on the stair climbing but the noise and vibration of the floor, ceiling, and walls is the bigger villain, methinks). i’m really hoping that they finish fixing at least our floor and the ones above and below us today. i think i’ll jump off the balcony if i have to listen to this all day tomorrow too.
today’s cardio was all walking but it was the most exhausting and excruciating 45 minutes i’ve ever had. i only walked but i walked the stairs. i walked down the east stairs and up the west stairs. for 45 minutes. i’m so done. let’s see if i can calculate my steps.
– 22
+ 24
– 24
+ 24
– 2
+ 2
– 2
+ 2
– 5
+ 5
– 2
carry the one, that’s 57 flights down and 57 flights up for a grand total of 2057 steps. i had to leave the stairwells a few times for a cool-down lap across the building but i stayed in motion the whole time. i’m pretty certain i had at least two coronaries and sweat a gallon and a half. you can see that the last few laps were small, cool-down laps around the top floors of the building (stay close to home in case you die). i’d like to get to the point that walking up the full twenty-four doesn’t kill me. after six or seven flights i am gasping like crazy and my heart is pounding out of my chest. it’s good cardio though and good for my legs so i might try to keep at it and build up my endurance for it. maybe one day i can throw in a third lap of the full building.
other than some fairly impressive waves (the gulf came all the way up to our beach access walkway) and a stronger-than-normal breeze, gustav didn’t touch us. we stayed under tropical storm watch all weekend but all we got was clouds – no rain, no lightening, no severe wind. it really made for a nice labor day weekend. my only regret is that we were going to get out and ‘yak saturday afternoon while the water was still nice and calm but the waves started earlier than we expected. friday and saturday nights we went out to our favorite hangout and hungout till 2 or 3 in the mornings. yesterday, i started the new month by getting back in the gym. i did all weights, no cardio but then we got changed and walked down to our favorite shopping plaza and walked around so that was sort of like light cardio, right? i think my plan right now is to try to do weights three times a week and cardio twice. today will be some sort of cardio day. we’ll see how things work out.
i don’t know where i come up with my dreams sometimes. it’s never really that they are that outlandish – usually they’re very realistic – but the contents can be astounding. last night i dreamt that three of my coworkers died within a week. one of them being my very dear friend who i have been so concerned about while he is fighting cancer. in my dream, i even lamented about how i had been so worried about him beating the cancer and he died from this stupidly unrelated cause (the cause was linked for all three but i’m not even going to get into it because it was so stupid). one of the other guys was the one who got new lungs two and a half years ago. i cried for days walking around the office, packing up their stuff for their widows to pick up. when i woke up, my pillow and face were drenched in tears. i spent the rest of the morning going in and out of the dream and it has left me emotionally drained this morning.
he has a habit of ruining surprises. i’ve all but given up on giving him gifts because anytime i get a gift idea for him, he goes out and gets it for himself before i have a chance to give the gift. it’s frustrating. and i’m not a good gift idea-er so it’s hard enough to come up with something that i think he’ll actually like. i’ve always done whatever i could to make a big deal about his birthday but this year he’s seemed really down about it (and we’ve been crazy busy) so i didn’t really do anything. so this morning he had a board meeting for the condo association and it was the perfect opportunity for me to slip out real quick and get a birthday cake (which he’ll probably gripe about anyhow because it’s not good for you) and card. i made it to the store and back before him. i walked in the door and shouted out to him to make sure he wasn’t already home and got no response. i opened the fridge to hide the cake and he walks in the door. jerk. i yelled at him and told him i wasn’t talking to him anymore. so much for surprises.
(the earbuds are in because he got a family singing call at the same time i was singing to him)
even if
YOU don’t think it’s a special day,
I do. i love you and am so proud to celebrate another year of you!!! yay for being
the answer!
last night was a well-deserved rest night. we napped a bit after work and then moved out to the couch to hold it down and watch tv. it’s still stormy today, although i haven’t hear about any tornado warnings around us this morning so that’s a plus. my hubby is NOT getting sick. i still feel wiped out from the weekend (most likely the complete lack of sleep saturday night combined with a very full day sunday). i wish i could get motivated like my cousin. i’m so impressed by her training for a marathon. enough nattering for now?
it was a busy weekend packed full of family visiting. we got up there friday night at a decent enough time to visit with MIL a bit. saturday we had our family get-together with gma h in the nursing home. it wasn’t a great turn out, less than fifteen when we usually have over sixty, but there was good conversation. it was only the second time that gma has ever not known hubby. she can’t even remember any of her old stories anymore, which is sad. i guess she’s still doing alright for being nearly ninety-eight years old but it just almost seems like she’s already gone. she’s such a wonderful woman.
we left that nursing home and went to another to see hubby’s ex-grandmother-in-law. she was perfectly fine when we last saw her a couple of months ago but it seems that she has started to lose her mind since then. she didn’t know me and assumed that hubby had just gotten remarried. she was very proud to meet me and was happy to call me one of her own. i’m glad that after a couple of years of visiting her, i still make a positive first impression. she didn’t know she was in a nursing home, thought she was in the hospital and getting ready to go home. after leaving, hubby and i talked about how heartbreaking it must be to lose your mind. we are hopeful that they don’t know that it’s happening. we went from there to hubby’s ex-in-laws and went to dinner and back to their house to see a slide show from their recent 50
th anniversary party. we’ve always had nice visits with them but this one seemed much more relaxed and personable than before. i guess because we were always there primarily to visit granny a, they didn’t feel as relaxed. who knows. it was a pleasant evening but, as always, i left saddened by the fact that i have a better relationship with my husband’s ex-in-laws than with my own mother. his ex-MIL hugs me and tells me she loves me; mine told me two years ago that she didn’t want to see me or talk to me anymore. such is life, eh? we got back and spent some time with MIL and FIL before going to bed. unfortunately, i was not to get any sleep whatsoever saturday night. that’s when the storms rolled through from fay’s outer bands. generally, a storm doesn’t bother me but the wind was so strong and swirly-sounding i was certain that we were going to be carried away in a tornado. i can take a hurricane any day, i am terrified of a tornado. even after hubby got up in the morning and the weather had calmed down some, i wasn’t able to get a nap in. made for a very long day yesterday. we had our family-gathering at gma m’s house which was bought by a grandchild after her passing this year. it was the first time i had been back there and i was afraid that it was going to be awkward and sad but it wasn’t. the cousins have done a nice job of opening things up and utilizing the house more. it was a good turnout (all but two grandchildren+ showed up) and everyone had a good time. i felt a little bad for cousin’s wife because she was so worried about everything being perfect and everyone being comfortable and after twenty or thirty minutes there, the power went out. it stayed out the whole afternoon (despite the power company’s estimated fix-time that came and went with no power). luckily, it was a breezy afternoon so with the windows open, it was fairly comfortable and the food was being cooked via propane anyhow so no plans were disturbed. we got on the road late in the afternoon and made it home around 22:00 last night. we asked around and fay was a non-event around here (“how was the storm?” “storm? what storm?”). now can we all agree that it’s friday and get on with our three-day weekend?
