choo choo

I feel a little like a new Hogwart’s student, running pell-mell toward a brick wall labeled “Platform 9 and 3/4.” 

It’s a little unnerving, but there really haven’t been many moments of NOT feeling a little unnerved by life since I stepped off the baby train and grew those same babies to the height where most growth charts end. And, to be fair, I was equally confused by the pre-baby days. The thing about baby-rearing is, it doesn’t matter if you have questions about life-at-large. The steps you have to take regardless of your relative lack of self-actualization are so incontestable that there isn’t much time to dwell in life-doubt.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the analogy in paragraph one evokes a pre-train moment of uncertainty, I know where my seat is, and I know who’s occupying the one next to it. The issue, if there is one, is how are we going to arrange all the luggage? Maybe the question should really be about the size and contents of the trolley I’m careening toward the brick wall with.

I noticed, just today, that maybe the funny idea I sometimes have that my home and surroundings should be settled by now (as in by this age,) is fallacious. Have you ever--so far in your life at least--hit a point where you don’t have to finesse your way around various rocks in the road, earn the trust of new natives, or just generally adapt as a strategy? Yeah, probably not. If your life is not static, you most likely have to keep doing these things.

Ok, it’s fine. I’ll take that.

Gyming, Part 2

I am somewhat impressed by gym people who can hop on one machine in the room-where-propelling-oneself-causes-no-forward-motion, and just go for it--for tens of minutes at a time. I think the real name for that area of the gym is cardio room, as it is a place to elevate your heart rate, but I don't know. I'm not very gymmy, I just go there. It is also the room where people can watch you huff and puff as they take their dogs for grooming or hit the local hash-slingery for breakfast.

I can force myself to fake-row for ten minutes straight, or fake-run on the fake-road-made-of-bungee-elastic for fifteen...but then, I am sorry to say, I am bored out of my skull. So, for me anyway, the object of having many kinds of machines is to compensate for my attention span.

Sometimes I wonder if people choose their treadmills on the basis of closest tv screen. Fox, appropriately, is on the far right side of the room, near the window. CNN is to the left near the water cooler. And I am usually somewhere toward the back, wondering whether I can, with athletic integrity, jump off the silly machine and go spend some time figuring out how you wrangle the weird devices toward the back of the gym which purport to zero in on your foot arch/mandible/muscle between the 3rd and 4th ribs, or whatever that one specializes in.

I have done the 5:30 am spinning class a few times. I will not do it tomorrow because I cannot maintain the "hovering" posture for as long as the commando-lady commands, and the bike seats do crazy torture to the pin bones if I slack off too much. My pins need a break. Instead I'll vary the fake-rowing, and fake-running with a real run-to-nowhere. If a conveyor belt is good enough for luggage, it's good enough for me.

Gyming, Part 1

We go to the gym. I am using the present tense, indicative mood of the verb “go” purposefully, as it best reflects the mindless intentionality we must adopt to keep making this statement real, until such time as it becomes as much a given as “we brush our teeth.”

I will refer you to the book Younger Next Year, by Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge. This is, as I say, a reference, not a recommendation, because the last thing I want to be is a lifestyle evangelist, but this is what happened:

Allen likes library books. Liking library books is a good thing, because you are required--after a certain time--to return them to the library. Most of the books that flit through the shared part of our world are relatively easy for me to ignore. Tractor Beams for Trawlers, The Captain Vegetable Diet Plan, and What Color is Your Parallax Solar-Powered Surfskimmer, all seem to cover topics I can take or leave. So I don’t know why I picked up the Crowley/Lodge book and started reading it, but I did. And now we GO to the gym. 

The argument that aerobic fitness and weight-bearing exercise are health extenders is really quite compelling once you start to pay attention. And, as fuzzed as I am by the perimenopausal fog these days, I know several things: I hold mobility in high esteem, and I hold loved ones in even higher esteem. So, if--through the expenditure of effort which is, at times, unappealing--I can help preserve both of the above, I guess I’m in. 

What happens, if you’re in it together, is that it only takes one person to say “move it babe, it’s 5:45 am,” and the other rarely complains too much. (Well yes, early.) Because there’s always some reason, after breakfast, to not [get stinky/hack an hour out of the day/be available.] So, first thing. Then breakfast, then walk the dog. It’s just easier.