Back on the Exercise Ball

In fulfillment of my New Year's resolutions, I have been attending Pilates class for two weeks. The first time I tried to go to class, the instructor no-showed. Undaunted, I came back the following week.

I had been mistaken on the time the class started, so I showed up halfway through the workout routine. I started to turn around and leave, but the instructor encouraged me to stay. In fact, everyone stopped and waited for me to get my equipment out and settled. One older lady, Kay, recognized me from when I had been part of the class last year. She was laying on her mat with her head near my feet.

"When was the last time you were here?" she asked suspiciously, tipping her head back to look at me upside-down.

I admitted that I hadn't been in Pilates since Spring Break. Feeling the need to explain myself, I rambled on about switching to the aerobics class for heart health, and then quitting that to do Tae-Bo videos at school and take walks with Karen around our neighborhood. By the time I finished relating my exercise exploits to these women who had never left Pilates to begin with, I felt like Gomer explaining herself to Hosea.

Kay shifted back on her mat, and we began to do large leg circles. However, in the middle of the set, she craned her neck once more.

"Well, welcome back. Are you going to be faithful to the class this time?"

I honestly can't remember what I said, although I'm sure it was something hopefully affirmative, but I do remember being intensely interested in my leg exercises. How embarrassing to be called out on my exercise commitment-phobia by a sixty-five year old woman!

So, needless to say, I have been faithfully attending class on Tuesdays and Thursdays since. The class attendance has dwindled since the last time I was a participant, down to the point that there is not even a regular instructor. So it's me, Kay, and another sexagenarian named Pat conducting our own Pilates independent study course.

We meet on the fourth floor of our exercise facility, and Pat counts out our reps while Kay cracks us all up with her blunt and forceful opinions on all topics. My favorite so far is, "Men with families should not ride motorcycles. If a man with a wife or kids were to die in a crash, that would be so inconsiderate. Unless he had like two million dollars in life insurance."

I rub my youthfulness in the faces of Kay and Pat by doing a few extra reps with my five-pound weights, and in return they rub their life experience in my face by regaling me with stories about assembling puzzles and living with dietary restrictions. It's great inter-generational fun, and, even more, I can still feel my muscles toning even as I sit here typing. Here's to continued success in February!

Forecast: Ice "Down Under"

I went running yesterday. I was not desperately chasing an ice cream truck, nor was I being pursued by a bear, panther, or molester. I ran by choice. I am an honorary member of what is called the "Lindsey Watson Rickshaw Club," which is the group of teachers from my school who exercise together after school. The name comes from an offhand joke that I made about the conditions under which I would join a running club. Since it has been so hot, the LWRC has been exercising indoors with workout videos, and I have happily participated.

Well lately the weather has been beautiful, as you fellow Central Texans know, and so the members of the LWRC have started running. Yesterday, I agreed to join them. I thought that perhaps my loathing of running was exaggerated in my mind, since it has been many years since I've actually tried it. I thought that the peer pressure of running with my friends would inspire me to challenge myself. I thought that the social aspect of chatting would distract me from the running itself.

Wrong! I still hate running. First of all, it was a long run. We were going to run the "Bear Trail," which is the most famous running track in town (and which, by the way, is highly overrated. It's just running on crowded sidewalks around campus). But our run began at school. So, yes, we ran to the Bear Trail, and I felt ready to keel over by the time we reached campus. And I was breathing so hard, I was unable to chat, and so all of my attention was focused on my own fatigue. Finally I exerted my bad influence on one flexible friend, and persuaded her to finish the run with me at a brisk walk. When we had slowed down enough for me to catch my breath and actually participate in a conversation, I enjoyed myself very much.

So, the moral of the story is, if you ever do see me running again, you better drop your gear and hightail it too, because there's something deadly nearby.

Wake Up

Mr. Darcy famously observed that every personality has a tendency to certain evils. One of mine is a tendency to be boring. It's easier to stay home and watch a movie than to think up an exciting outing. It's easier to say "no" to a risky proposal than to try it out. It's easier to order what I know I like than to try something new. Usually I coast along in my status-quo life, but occasionally I take some uncharacteristic initiative to try something new. This weekend was one such time.

My sister Laurashmaura played college basketball. My brother Alan was an all-star football player in high school. My sister Leslie is a cheerleader, which she claims is sport enough to qualify her as an athlete. I am commonly regarded as the family scholar, on a nice day, or else I'm the family couch potato. So when Stephen and I went out to the lake with my family last Saturday, I didn't even bother to wear my swimsuit, as I had no intention of getting my hair wet.

Laurashmaura and her friend Jayna took some turns tearing it up on the wakeboard. After they finished, dripping all over the boat in all their glory, I started to feel twinges of interest. "Next time we go out, I think I'll try that," I offered, imagining this blessed event to be next summer. The family was surprised but encouraged me. And so, to make a long story short, I jumped into the water in my tank top and shorts to try out the wakeboard for myself.

It was so fun! No one thought to take a picture of my proud accomplishment, so I've searched the internet to find a substitute picture that documents what I must have looked like:

Now of course, the down side is that no activity short of a car accident could have prepared my muscles for this kind of use. Today I wish I could have called in sick and laid on the bed with my whole body in traction. But it was worth it to be wicked cool for twenty minutes.

Practical Knowledge

A couple of days ago I was leaving work later than usual, and the parking lot of my downtown building was empty of its normal traffic. As I walked toward my car, I was approached by a scruffy looking man who had been sitting on a nearby bus stop bench.

When he asked if I could give him some money to go eat dinner, I replied with my ready answer, "I'm really sorry, but I don't carry cash."

My heart started to race as the man's eyes narrowed in anger. "Let me see about that," he growled, lunging for my purse.

The adrenaline surged through my body and my instincts kicked in. My right fist shot out and my assailant was startled by the force of the blow, the pain of which was compounded by the impact of my Aggie Ring on the bridge of his nose. He yelped in pain and staggered backward, clutching his face when I struck him again with a swift uppercut to the chin.

Taking advantage of his momentary weakness, I felled him with a roundhouse kick, no small feat in my tweed pencil skirt and brown high heels. He lay unconscious long enough for me to dial the police on my cell phone, and the police quickly arrived to take him into custody. As they loaded the vagabond into the back of the squad car, the cops praised my quick thinking and sure aim.

Okay, maybe not. But I like to tell myself stories like this often as I try to motivate myself to keep up the hard work with my Tae Bo videos. I never know...one day these wicked skills might come in handy!

Slump Day

I'm not going to therapy because I want to believe that this happens to everyone. I had a bad self-esteem day. Actually, it was two days.

Day 1: It all began when I tried to put on my favorite pair of khakis, (the ones I bought last year because my old khakis were too small, the ones with the baggy fit) and they were so tight the pocket seams made big distinct rectangle shapes on my thighs. It continued when we went to my in-laws' house and I weighed myself on their hospital scale. They have the brutal kind with the sliding weights, so there is no room for fudging about which tiny line the arrow is pointing to, and no excuses about alignment and scale differences. Anyway, the weight was my all-time high.

(I do realize that people who obsess about their weight are obnoxious to those well-adjusted people who have come to happy terms with their body image. But I have not been able to contain my neurosis, and I've asked around to selected diplomatic family members and friends if they can tell a difference. Everyone has diplomatically informed me that I am not visibly larger, except for my mom, who said she thought I looked more "healthy." Whatever.)

Day 2: the scale incident had been enough to shock me into action. I bought Slim-Fast shakes at the grocery store and ordered a salad at Panera rather than my favorite potato soup. I was excited to be taking action, but still in a self-esteem slump. It didn't help that all of my clothes had turned ugly in the closet while I slept, and that I happen to hate my new haircut. (The only redeeming factor was that my freshly cut bangs did sweep low enough to cover the new zit on my forehead--seriously, I couldn't catch a break on this day.)

So anyway, I did the stupidest possible thing on a day like this- I went clothes shopping. I was with my mom and sister, who wanted to walk around the Marketplace. I happen to be on a long-time search for a cute white shirt, and so I tried on a few items.

Big mistake! Everyone knows that the Devil installs the lighting in dressing rooms, and that there is no worse image than your own body clad in underwear and socks in a full-length mirror. And of course, all the shirts I tried on made me look/feel dumpy.

The dressing-room employee makes his way down the row, checking up on all of us. A little chirpy wisp next door is disappointed that the size zeros hang a little loose on her. The employee knocks on my door and wants to know if I need anything in a different size.

I wish I could hand over my rear end and thighs. "Can you get me some of these in a Small? You should be able to find them somewhere around 2004."

A New Dang Post

Following a one-day break for Memorial Day, school life has not slowed down since the kids were released. We have been doing a two-week training for a new language arts curriculum that we have been teaching. Class has met from 8 AM-1 PM every day, and we have had homework to complete in the afternoons. We have also been having endless "debriefing" meetings and doing end-of-year projects like moving classrooms and creating curriculum maps and plans for next year.

I have also been attending my exercise class regularly, and I am very excited to announce that I touched my own toes during our flexibility exercises this week. Hooray!

We took the final exam in our Spalding class today, so that is over, which also means that I no longer have an excuse to be in town every day. Regular blog posting should be resuming in the next couple of days. I hope that you have not all given up on checking in here!

Further Adventures in Exercising

My search continues for a form of exercise that is both productive and enjoyable. KarenD and I have faithfully attended Pilates class since January, but we both began to feel the need for something more. We decided to try an aerobics class, which meets at the same facility and which conveniently starts thirty minutes earlier.

I'd been congratulating myself for my new healthy lifestyle of (usually) attending two classes a week. Unfortunately, after a couple of weeks of (usually) regular attendance of aerobics, I am forced to accept the reality that I am still grossly out of shape.

This is a women's class, but aerobics is like Pilates on a major dose of testosterone. Many of the moves are similar, but intensified in speed and repetition. Class begins when the instructor turns on a CD, and blasts very up-tempo instrumental music that sounds like the audio tracks for Miami Vice. This music sets the pace for the whole class.

Many of the moves are the same as I did in Pilates: bicep curls, crunches, leg lifts. The difference is that we used to do one or two sets of eight or ten. In this class, we do five or six sets of twelve, always to the manic beat of the music. We do some exercises in sets of fifty. Usually after the first twenty-five I feel ready to die.

The thing I do not like about the class is that I am the least in-shape person in the room. This is especially embarrassing because most of the other people in the class are middle-aged ladies with pale, wrinkly skin and tired hair. And yet they keep to the beat with their giant weights, adding extra kicks and hops to our routine to make it more rigorous. I struggle to keep up with my three-pound weights, and occasionally lay flat on my mat, lifting my head and only pretending to do crunches after my abs have given out. It's very humbling.

Despite this, I love the way this class makes me feel very powerful (when I am able to tune out the ladies around me). We do lots of kicking and punching exercises, which are even more fun than real fighting because there is no pain of impact with air the way there is with a human being or punching bag. Also, the music is quite invigorating, even as my biceps are screaming from curl number eighty-five. Most of all, I like to imagine how fit I must be getting from all this physical rigor.

Occasionally, I get tired of sweating and exerting myself, and think about returning to my formerly stagnant life. When the temptation hits me, I have to think of two things:
1. The dance that is now required to pull on my freshly washed jeans
2. The eyeful I got on the one unfortunate day I did my crunches in gym shorts--developing cellulite and varicose veins on my own youthful thighs.

And I am empowered to crunch on.

Flex

When I was able to opt out of high school P.E. by taking a business co-op class, I thought that the awkwardness of forced athleticism was behind me. Unfortunately, I went to A&M and discovered the "core curriculum" which included four hours of P.E. credits. The first class I took was step aerobics , which I really enjoyed by pretending that the aerobics routines were actually synchronized dance steps, and that I was in the background of some cool music video. The part of the class that was not enjoyable was a series of physical fitness tests such as a mile run, sit-ups, push-ups, and flexibility.

Yes, flexibility. We had to sit (with the whole class watching) with our feet flat against the side of a wooden box, and reach down past our toes to a mark three inches past the edge. I still remember my embarassment when my instructor K.B. called out to the class-volunteer secretary that I could not even reach my toes. My memories have all come rushing back as I've been attending my new Pilates class, which involves lots of stretching and laying with one leg sticking straight (as if!) into the air.

When I shared my experience with my sister Laurashmaura, she said that she also has inflexible muscles, which means I can build my case for the mother of all excuses: genetics.

But as I've been complaining to various people about this, I've heard my own voice repeatedly declaring "I'm just not flexible!," and it's forced me to confront the fact that this is really true of my life in ways that are deeper than hamstrings.

It's the time of year on the school calendar when we start to look ahead to next year. I'm getting questions like, "Would you be willing to teach a different grade next year? Move to another classroom? Re-organize your class schedule? Take on some new responsibilities?" Stre-e-e-tch.

Or, even worse, with my husband's professional life in transition, "Would you be willing to sell your new house? Move to a new church? In a new town? Move so far away from your job that you can't commute? Start your life over somewhere else?" Stre-e-e-e-e-e-e-tch, and at times, snap! Those are the times that you can feel bad for Stephen.

They say that the way to become more flexible is to just stretch a tiny bit further every day. When it comes to touching my toes, consider it done! I'll be making beautiful large leg circles by spring break. When it comes to flexing my life...well...I'll have to let you know how that goes.

Lean, Mean Pilates Machine

I have never bought anything off of an infomerical, but the closest that I have come is one time in high school when I watched a pitch for a little exercise machine called the Pilates Performer. After three hours of watching a very trim girl demonstrating how easy it was to exercise on and store underneath a bed, and hearing many testimonials about how frumpy chip-eaters attained ballerina bodies WITHOUT SWEATING, I was ready to shell out the three hundred dollars plus shipping and handling to get myself one. Unfortunately, I was with my mom, and although she was equally impressed, she said that my dad might never forgive us. Maybe if we had showed faithfulness in using the Body by Jake machine that was already in the garage, we would have a better argument. As it was, we had exhibited more of a love for the idea of exercising than for the actual activity itself.

I've stayed interested in the idea of Pilates ever since then, particularly because it is an exercise program that does not involve sweating, which is one of the huge deterrents that keeps me from more traditional forms of activity. I also like the fact that almost all of the exercising is done while laying down on a cushioned mat, which evokes happy memories of nap time at Mother's Day Out. The non-prone exercises are done on a bouncy ball, which is also fun. I could have taken Pilates classes at the Aggie Rec, to which I paid exorbitant fees each semester, but I didn't, and I have regretted it ever since.

So I was pretty excited when my friend KarenD proposed the idea of taking a Pilates class together at one of the billion workout facilities in town. I have been looking for some way to trim up a little bit, as you know if you read this blog regularly. So far I have really enjoyed taking a trip to Academy to buy some cute and comfortable workout pants, and the class itself has turned out to be pretty nice. I have gone two times.

The class has been surprisingly difficult, even though it is true about the laying down and sitting on a bouncy ball. This class has forced me to confront (and display for others) my embarassing inflexiblity and also my frequent confusion with "right" and "left." I have also awakened many muscles that have long lay dormant, and they have angrily protested over the last week. But burning pains must mean that the exercise is working, and I am sure that I can tell a difference already. So the next time you see my husband, don't worry, he's not sneaking around town with a tall and willowy ballerina. It's just me.

It's My Body and I'll Cry if I Want To

I took my gift cash shopping on the day after Christmas, and in about the third dressing room, I came to a sobering conclusion: I do not have the body I had when I was twenty-one. I have a picture on my bulletin board of my sister and I on our boat one summer. I look very firm and trim in my swimsuit top and shorts, and it reminds me of what I used to be. As I studied myself between outfits in the poor light of the Aeropostale clothes closets, I conclude that firm and trim are no longer the first adjectives that come to mind. I'm a little squishier around the middle, definitely less defined in the upper arms, and I am pretty sure I have cellulite on my thighs. To be young again!

I anticipate two responses to my lament:
1. "You are still not a large size, so quit complaining."
2. "Twenty-one was not so far away! Wait until you are 40 and then you'll know what it means to pine after the body of your youth."

To both of these, I say, "I KNOW!" The changes I have noticed so far have not been dramatic, but they have been steady. Innocent bystanders wouldn't notice, probably, because my frame hasn't actually changed shape (yet). It's just a little thicker and squishier all around. Now this is a bad thing precisely because twenty-one was only three short years ago. In three years, I have kept the same habits, have had a clean bill of health, taken the same sorts of medications, and I have not been pregnant. In other words, there is no good reason for an increase in weight and squishiness.

I attended a sprawling university where walking was a necessity of life. Although I had very irresponsible workout habits in college, I burned a lot of calories just walking from one class/Coke machine to another. I had been warned that graduating to a sedentary desk job would be bad for the waistline. This would have been true for me, except that my first job after graduation was a stressful, exhausting horror that sapped me of all appetite. However, after that year was over, I quit that job, got married, and found a job that was fun and satisfying. Good-bye stress, hello pudge. It is my theory that I am just now experiencing the "New Employee 15" at the exact time that my body is hitting its mid-twenties metabolic slump.

Now, in the timeless words of Mr. Bennet, two unhappy alternatives are before me: I can either resign myself to unrelenting physical expansion, which will only accelerate as I enter into my baby-bearing phase, or I can start changing my habits, which means less ice cream and more aerobic activity.

I'll tell you what doesn't work, and that is the South Beach Diet. Other than that, I'm open to ideas of how to avoid either of my "unhappy alternatives." Healthy food that tastes delicious...Exercise options that don't involve sweating or exposure to the elements...Magical pills that develop muscle definition as I sit at the computer...I'm open to suggestions.

Further Adventures of an Internet Nomad

This may end up getting cut off quickly, because I'm staying "overtime" in my classroom lab at Baylor to avoid having to go the non-air-contitioned lab at my own school. These are the joys of not having internet access at home, and it not being my turn with the laptop. I wander from wireless spot to wireless spot, trying to find places where I won't get charged.

Since reading Karen's post from yesterday, I've had exercise on the brain. Don't worry, I'm not contemplating any major lifestyle changes of my own, but I've been more aware of those around me who happen to enjoy that sort of activity. This caused me to clue into something freakish that has occured on the Baylor campus every day this week. My class starts at 1:00, so I am usually driving through campus at around 12:30. Every day, I have seen at least three people JOGGING down the sidewalk. The fact that people enjoy jogging, period, does not really compute in my brain. But jogging at noon, outside, in the summertime really seems like poor judgement. I don't care what sort of tunes you might have on your iPod, there is no way you can be distracted from how swelteringly hot and humid it feels outside! Exercise fanatics, maybe you can offer an explanation.

Speaking of my class, here's some hope for the future of America (for those of you who cannot "hear" emotion in typed words, that's sarcasm). This class is made up of 10 supposedly "gifted and talented" 4th-5th graders from the greater Central Texas area. So far, these students have been confused by words like "currency," "ethnic," "Portugal," "Andes," "economy," and "industry," I'm talking, can't use context clues to come up with any idea of what they might mean. They also have been stumped by the following questions:

"In what province would you find the city of Montreal?" (the first sentence on the website they've been directed to says, "The city of Montreal is located in the country of Canada, in the province of Quebec.")

"What city is the scuba diving capital of Rio de Janeiro?" (a list on their website contains the following information: "Arrial do Cabo: this beauiful city is known as the scuba diving capital of Rio de Janeiro."

All this to say, I LOVE my "real" job and appreciate my "real" students. My own kids will absolutely be educated in private school.