June 14, 2008 (Healthy Midlife Crisis and Tree)

This week has been quite a week with the drama of the dry socket finally ending on Wednesday (I'm almost pain free where that's concerned now). I must say it has been easier to maintain my diet for the last couple of weeks, but I wouldn't recommend getting a few teeth pulled as a nice diet program.

I had what I thought was my last date with my lovely trainer, Marcella, but she talked me out of more money than I can tell you without embarrassing myself to meet once a week until October. The reason she could do this is that I realized that she pushes me harder than I push myself and I know that I will be better off with a little help.

Yesterday, I finally realized that all of this effort to get in better shape is likely my healthier version of a midlife crisis. I was walking a mile or two a few times a week until the spring of last year. After all those lovely medical tests and biopsies began and I was having to be naked in front of strangers quite frequently, I started walking 3-5 miles almost daily. I was thinking that being in better shape will make that a little less embarrassing. Well, after last week's mammogram that led to an diagnostic mammogram that led to an ultrasound, I must say, that is always going to be humiliating for me no matter what kind of shape I get into.

Marcela says she needs to get me out of my shyness at the gym because I don't want to exercise out in the open area even with my clothes on. I don't even change in the gym; I do that at home. Randall says that if I keep that up my car is going to smell like a locker room. I've got to figure out how to keep my cloth seats from absorbing all that sweat.

Here's what made me realize that I am having a healthy version of a midlife crisis. My son (18 years old) wanted twenty dollars so I told him that he could chop this small tree that fell in our back yard two months ago and take it to the curb to earn the money. We don't have a chain saw. If you knew how stupid my husband and son can be sometime, you'd know why we don't want a lot of stuff you could cut your leg off with around the house. We have an ax and a hack saw and a regular saw. Keep in mind, I have friends and neighbors that own chain saws. Matt cut all the branches off with the hack saw, but we needed to cut the trunk in half. The reason this is in the saga is that I decided to help him cut this trunk instead of going to the gym and believe me, this ended up being a much better workout than I had hoped for.

At first we tried to use the hack saw, but we had to saw around the trunk and hope to break it from there. We took turns. When one of us got tired the other would take over. This is when Matt said, "Mom, you actually have more endurance than I do." He got as much accomplished in half the time that I did though, so we were doing the same amount of work. Unfortunately, we miscalculated and when we got completely around we realized we were off by a half inch. We were both covered in sweat and had a blister on our right hands. This is when I realized we would need to use the ax, the very dull ax. Neither one of us had much experience with axes so at first the ax was just bouncing off the tree. Matt said, "Mom, I think we're just spanking it." With that, he started to mow the back yard to earn the money. We now had a blister on our left hand too. I went in the house and got some winter gloves because I don't do that kind of thing enough to warrant having work gloves. I went back out there and hacked away at that stupid tree . I finally figured out how to make a little progress, but after an hour, I had only gotten half way through the trunk. By then Matt had finished mowing the back and wanted to help again-his manhood couldn't take it any more. We flipped the tree over and took turns hacking. When the ax started bouncing off for one, the other would take over. After an hour Matt gave up. He called his friend to come over to help him get it on the roof so that he could he could throw it off and break it the rest of the way. (Now, do you understand why we can't have a chain saw at our house?) Well, I wasn't going to let this tree beat me and I knew that I had better get this thing chopped in half before Bradly got there and helped Matt with his brilliant plan. Ten minutes later that tree was cut in half. This all took over three hours and cost 12 blisters because my hands are a city girls hands not a farm girls hands. My arms are so sore they feel bruised. I think that the tree may have beat me a little.

This morning I walked the Killer Trail and ran up every hill for the first time in a few weeks with my new running shoes, so now I have blisters on my feet too. But it only took me 1 hr and 19 minutes. If I can shave another 4 minutes off of that I will be doing the 15 minute miles that Marcella says are necessary to really be exercising. I got out of my car when I got home and my seat was completely soaked in my sweat. She's wrong; I really exercised. I tried on those jeans again and I'm still no where near buttoning and zipping them but I can get them over my hips easily...I am making progress. All this work, just to try and get into my old fat jeans. It's really kind of comical.