Ah, the good ol’ days…

Remember deep in the near-forgotten mists of last week when I was stressing about whether it was okay to give myself a ticky mark for going to the gym a day late?

Those were the good ol’ days.

When we were young. When life was good. When going to the gym a day late seemed like a crisis that required deep thought. Unlike, say, the fact that I haven’t been to the gym since then.

This is why I need these damned checklists, because as soon as I get out of routine, it goes straight to hell.

If you happen to have my cell phone number and you happen to be up tomorrow at 8:30AM Eastern, give me a call. If you don’t hear bad music and ‘change stations now’ in the background, please yell at me for being the slacker that i am.

Opinion Poll

I did not go to Curves yesterday on my regular day, as work stupidity prevented it.

I did go today on my non-regular day.

Do I:

a) go back and give myself a ticky mark for yesterday. I made it up, after all.

b) give myself a ticky mark for yesterday only if I also go tomorrow such that I’m back on schedule

c) give myself a ticky mark for yesterday if I also go Saturday, which makes more sense with the usual day on / day off schedule for Curves.

d) no ticky marks! you snooze, you lose!

e) ticky box! (but not really, because I don’t a have a poll plug-in installed)

In which only some things went to hell in a handbasket…

See that? I’m not saying it all went wrong. Mental progress!

So, last weekend I went out on a pub crawl with friends and didn’t crawl into bed until close to 4AM, then got up and went to this giant food event where I ate way too much in the stunning heat, and came home and napped for 2 hours (or, more specifically, napped for 1 hour twice) and this has completely fucked up my sleep schedule.

I’m finding it hard to get to bed and hard to get up in the morning and ARGH.

I have made it to the gym 2 days this week, but in the late afternoon, rather than the morning, like I should.

I’ve also not been doing my neck thing, as last week was that time of the month, and this week I just haven’t bothered. But I got grumped at by the chiropractor this morning, so I guess I should start that up again.

I missed a couple of days of writing, too, because Serena and Lance are trapped in a frigging hospital room and I can’t write them out of it no matter how hard I try because it’s not in the nature of Serena’s character to just leave her Little Sister alone in the hospital, no matter how hot the guy who wants to take her to dinner is. In fact, she’s probably less likely to do it for a hot guy, because that’ll just make her feel more guilty. Stupid characters and their stupid internal consistency issues.

I did do some work over the week on my good in concept less good in execution stories for my writer’s workshop that I didn’t end up going to anyway, because of extreme scheduling confusion and the need to go to the gym yesterday evening since I hadn’t gone yesterday morning. I might post those later.

And yesterday I forgot to eat a vegetable. I mean, there were some vegetables in some of the things I ate (tomatoes, mainly) but nothing your mom would look and call eating your veg. It was a find day nutritionally otherwise, just duh on the veggies.

Reason #14: Because that stairway doesn’t lead to heaven

I frigging hate stairs.

I get out of breath so very, very quickly on them. Just a few is enough to have me huffing and puffing away. It’s embarrassing when I’m with other people and exhausting even when I’m not.

The thermostat that theoretically controls the air conditioning is up 3 floors from me, which is a lot of stairs. But it doesn’t turn the AC on and off the way it’s supposed to, which means every time I want to turn it on, I trudge up the stairs (by which point, boy howdy do I need some air conditioning!) and when it gets cold (or loud) in here, and I need to turn it off again, back up the stairs I go.

If I were in better shape, those stairs wouldn’t be so exhausting, and I wouldn’t spend so much time adding and removing layers to try and maintain my body temperature without having to climb them.

Small Victories: Stairs

On the weekend, before the Cirque du Soleil show, we parked at Richmond & Victoria for dinner then walked a few blocks to the Air Canada Center for the circus.

One the way back, we had to walk up two long sets of stairs to get off the floor of the ACC to ground level. Then, we walked the several blocks back to Richmond & Victoria. Then, we walked up two flights of stairs to get back to the car.

At the end of all of that, I was only moderately winded, rather than gasping for breath.

This gym thing is clearly helping.

Quickie Update

There’s no new thing for this week, since I’m revisiting last week’s new neck thing, now that it’s not that time of the month anymore.

The 15 minutes a day cleaning project has now officially cleaned every part of my apartment at least once. Some things have been done more than once and some things need to be done again, but the space under my desk was the last uncleaned spot, and I did that tonight.

Curves is going pretty well. I’m getting there MWF and not hating it. And the people are very chatty, which is what I like about it, so that’s good.

I got my sleeptracker watch on Friday and at this point, I think it’s likely to go back. It’s not really helping as much as just going to bed at the same time every night did, and it doesn’t really seem to detect periods where I’m ‘more wakeful’. It detects periods where I’m completely wide awake and actively rolling over. I don’t exactly have difficulty detecting those points in my night — when I’m deliberately moving pillows, I know I’m awake. Duh.

Public holiday, private hell

Curves was closed today, so  I did 15 minutes of DDR instead.

Please kill me now.

This is why I changed gyms…

I might have gone through all the not-so-sordid details in an earlier post, but as a summary of the history, I used to go to Curves near my office, and while I never much cared for working out, I liked the people there a lot, and they were very friendly and helpful. They also did amazing things like stop billing me in months when I couldn’t get my shit together enough to come in, even though I was still on contract.

Then, when I quit that job, I picked a new Curves that was nearer to my house. It wasn’t the closest one, but it was a Curves shining star club, so I figured it would be good.

Not so much.

The people there were so totally uninterested in the people on the circuit. They’d stand around looking bitchy and talk to each other, but never more than a hello when we came in for the customers. So, while I’ve been paying them for the last 2 years, if I’ve gone there more than a dozen times, I’d be surprised as hell.

So, as part of this effort, I decided to move to a different Curves, hoping to find one I’d like, and I went to visit the one nearest my house. Grace and Sarah have been nothing but wonderful. They chat, they dance on the recovery boards, they sing along to the music, they correct our form, they keep us company as we work out. They are what my first club was like and my second one wasn’t.

And just now, a few minutes ago, Grace phoned me at home. She’d noticed I’d been on the sign in sheets for the last week and this morning, and she wanted me to know that she was proud of me for coming in and working out.

I’m kind of tearing up over that, just because it’s so nice of her.

So, for reference of anyone who might be in Toronto and looking for a Curves:

Awesome Curves locations include:

Toronto, ON – North York Southwest
2355 Keele Street, Unit #16
North York, ON M6M 4A2
(416) 240-7733

and

Markham, ON – Southeast
550 Alden Rd., Unit 113
Markham, ON L3R 6A8
(905) 513-8821

Sucktastic, avoid at all costs Curves locations include:

Woodbridge, ON – East
9000 Weston Road, Unit 9
Woodbridge, ON L4L 1A6
(905) 265-7716

(Which, in looking at the website I notice, has lost its shining star designation. Ha!)

For reals, yo.

I went to the gym again today. This time, though, I actually, you know, went to the gym for a workout.

Which kicked my ever-loving ass, I might add.

My rep count is down by a third to a half (counting reps is not part of the Curves philosophy, but I am a nerd, and thus I must count things), even with my heart trate only in the 70-75% zone, I was sweating like a pig, and my ginormous stomach got in the way of doing several of the exercises properly.

It made me feel like a total lard ass, but then, being a total lard ass was why I needed to go back to the gym in the first place.

Grace, the Curves staffer, is really fucking great. She gets out on the circuit and models good recovery board behaviour and watches everyone’s technique and knows everyone’s name (and introduced us all to each other). Exactly what I felt Vaughn was missing.

I do wish they had a stretching tower — the stretching tower was 9 kinds of awesome.

So, next week’s new thing: Curves on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.