Lazy Sunday? What's That?

After my three hour nap yesterday, I then got about a hundred hours of sleep last night. So much, in fact, that when I got up this morning (at the delicious hour of SIX THIRTY), I told G, "I'm not even going to take a nap today!"

Then, I saw this:

And I knew in my heart that there would so be a nap. I was right. It fell in the middle of the night and of course I didn't hear it. G said he spent about thirty minutes looking around the house for a racoon. (This is relevant because an enormous, pregnant racoon got into one of our neighbor's houses. It was hysterical. Until last night.) No wildlife, just poor hanging choices. Too much weight.

There was a hard run today, prep for class this week, a thousand years of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and then this:

We went to the grocery store together for the first time in about a decade and I remembered why I usually go alone.

I have been thoroughly enjoying these little German treats. They are pens that look like pencils. They are the best things evahhhhh.

Ok, back to it. I'm kind of amazed at how quickly the weekend flew by...

The Four O'Clock Hour (Or: Who Am I?)

Well, the good news is that I've made it through the first two weeks of school! My students are still alive and so am I! I've managed to establish a diet/work out routine despite the crazy new hours.

The bad news is that this involves getting up at 4:00, or 4:15, or 4:30...three days a week.

If you would have told me over the summer that this would be my plan, I would have laughed in your face. I have no idea if this is sustainable, but here's the thing: the semester is already as hard as it's going to get. It's not like it's going to get harder. So, if I can do it now, I can do it in September and October and November. Etc.

Meanwhile, at 2:00 every afternoon, this is all I want to do:

Sidenote: G said, "Do you know that you frown in your sleep?" I said, "I have no idea why! That's when I'm happiest!"

Or eat all of this:

The really sad news is that I woke up at 4:00 this morning. Um, on a Saturday. That's like, against my religion and general philosophy of life. I graded the rest of the "job" papers, finished stuff for a Woolf presentation this week, started Uncle Tom's Cabin, met the Terminix man to take care of some wasps around the house, cleaned the house, aerated my flowers, did All The Laundry, and then took a 3-hour nap. Despite the nap, I'll still be in bed by 9:00, mark my words. All the DDP in the world will not keep me awake much longer.

Books lately:

Flush by Virginia Woolf (<-- phenomenal. I'm going to love this class every bit as much as the Jane Austen one. If not more.) Read this immediately. It is a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Cocker Spaniel.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (<--for the third time. I get more and more out of it. Read it immediately.)

The Coquette by Hannah Foster (<--one of the three earliest American books. It's just meh but whatevs.)

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriett Beecher Stowe (<--have never read this before. In the middle of it now. I'm just glad not to be reading Moby Dick.)

Stop reading on the floor, Mom. It's irritating.

Ok, I'll move up to my spot so I can judge you from a distance.

However, I've gotten G hooked on reading The Martian (go read it immediately), so as I'm slogging through homework, he's sighing and laughing and wheezing and generally having an enjoyable panic attack. Man, I can't wait to see the movie!

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Me: "I think I'm going to put up the fall decorations next weekend. It will be September, you know."

G: "Or. You could wait until the temperature is out of the nineties. Just an idea."

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I *almost* ran into a man on my bike this week. And by "almost," I mean that we actually made contact but I had already braked almost to a stop and tried not to fall over. In my defense, he was extremely high. As I was getting close to him, he was weaving all over the place and I was going, "Excuse me. Excuse me! EXCUSE ME! ACKKKKKKKKK!"

He didn't even react when we collided and I had to pick myself up, get readjusted (remember: box turtle on a bike) and heave myself back into motion. I was breathing too hard to say anything and he was all, "Ummm?  ...  Dude?  ...  People should like, be careful on bikes." I was like, "Next time I'm not going to slow down! I'm gonna cream your a$$!" Ok, not really, but kind of, yeah.

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Ok, must go back to reading. My blood pressure is still not low enough to blog about selling the house. But one of these days.

Enjoy the weekend, peeps!

Trying

All I can say this week is that I'm trying to establish a new routine. All The Jobs have kicked in and there are not enough hours in the day. C'est la vie.

Then I leave a book on the floor - unsupervised - for three minutes and look! I discovered the extent of the damage this morning when I was trying to make decent copies.

Chunks! Chunks bitten off!

 And this:

  

Never a dull moment.

Also? I got up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 this morning to work out before all the chaos of the day. The reason I have to work out? Because a certain someone sent me the best congrats-on-selling-the-house gift evahhhhh:

Hello, German chocolate!

Tomorrow's agenda also includes getting up at 4:30 to run.

Trying. That's all I can say.

Scar Tissue

For about two months this summer, we were so stressed out and bitter trying to sell the VA house that we went into this phase of what I call House Improvement Protest. We decided we were never going to spend money on tailoring and tweaking a house based upon our tastes ever again, because when it's time to sell the house, we just have to shell out an ungodly amount of money to make all things vanilla for resale value.

Not that we plan to sell this house. Ever. Never again will we go through that.

Everrrrrrr.

But now? The shell shock is wearing off and the scar tissue is starting to form. After spending the entire weekend frantically working on homework, reading, and class prep, I had cabin fever and we decided to go find a reading lamp for the library.

When we found the one we liked, we had this joint moment of can we afford this? Then G was like, "Wait! We only own one house!"

Ta Da!

Looks good, right?

We sit in here throughout the winter - and let's face it, that's like a good 10 months out of the year here - and the lamp helps us shed a little light on the situation! Haaaaa. We can each control our side and the base is thin enough that we don't have to strain to see each other.

I foresee lots of cozy nights, whining and groaning about homework under the soft light...

The First 10

Finally, finally, I have lost 10 pounds. Part of me is really proud and part of me is downright shocked at how long it took. What they say about getting older and the metabolism slowing down? Um, yeah, there's something to that.

Ten pounds is the equivalent of TWO LUCYS!

I haven't done anything revolutionary. I haven't joined any programs or purchased a fit bit or drastically changed my daily routine. I haven't cleansed or bought a lifetime supply of vitamins or sworn off, well, anything.

I have kept a food journal since mid-May in which I honestly and meticulously record everything (diet and exercise) every day. I only weigh myself once a week - same time and place every week, just for consistency's sake. The first five-ish pounds dropped relatively quickly, but then progress came to a standstill, and around July I began to count calories. (Side note: how did people ever count calories before the internet??) I have to say that counting calories has been a real eye-opener, and definitely led to the next "stage," if you will, of losing.

The weight loss has been unbearably slow gradual for a few reasons, I'm sure, but the main one is that as I'm losing fat, I know I'm building muscle, which weighs more. Since I'm not tracking BMI or fat percentages or anything cray cray like that, I just have to know that that's going on with my body.

I don't think I look much different:

Past

Present

The progress tends to become "tangible" only in random spurts. I will go for a couple of weeks feeling that my body is the same, the very same, as it was a few months ago, despite riding miles and miles on my bike and really counting calories. Then, on a random morning, one of my skirts will be too big to wear anymore (as in, it won't stay up on its own! <--true story) and, just like that, I'll realize that I'm making progress.

That said, even having lost 10 pounds, some of my regular old clothes are just a tight as they've always been, which is really discouraging.

No one has made any comments or asked any questions, which leads me to believe that I don't look any different. I feel different, though. Paying attention to food and exercise helps me control stress in an enormously effective way. Drinking water all the time makes me feel better and more energetic. Exercising regularly makes me feel strong and helps my body to metabolize the adrenaline it produces when I get stressed out. Exercising wears me out and helps me to sleep well at night instead of giving way to a wandering mind. Watching my food intake helps me to feel good instead of overfull and bloated. Methods that were "new" a couple of months ago now feel "normal" and just, right.

And I'm now entering the hardest season - a busy semester. I rocked it last week, riding all the time until I actually got a little sick of my bike, and I have a plan for next week, when all 75 of my jobs will be going simultaneously. If I've learned anything, it's that I have to do something to make progress. If I change nothing, if I do nothing, then I will continue to weigh this amount and my outside appearance won't match my inside personality.

So, here's to the next 10!

TGIF, people!

These two.

All that's missing is a bottle of wine and a copy of Eat, Pray, Love.

 

It's Working For Now

So, I have to say, even though my quads scream in pain on a daily basis, the whole riding my bike to work thing is going great.

The first week of school is always the absolute worst for parking, and I've managed to avoid all of that stress and chaos! I'm trying, people! Also, because I'm so hot and sweaty and in need of a make over after riding, I build in enough time to get to school early, and I've found a way to be super productive during that time.

[[I've also managed to avoid paying for parking at my night classes by strong arming G into being my chauffeur. He loves it, after a day of meetings that start at 6:00 a.m., getting home just in time to drive through traffic with me talking his ear off about this and that. Then turning around to come get me 3 hours later. I know he and Lucy roll their eyes behind my back. Ask me if I care! ASK ME IF I CARE! I saved like $25 in parking! I don't care!]]

I documented the process this morning, for your reading enjoyment.

When I get to campus, I schlep over to my department and have full access to the copier before other people get in. This is gold. I make copies like a champ, and drink water & stretch out before my coworkers arrive. (Side note: I know every location on campus to make free copies. It's taken me a full year, but I nailed it.)

After copying, I schlep over to my "office" and transform myself into a super model, per the usual. Then, I hop on the computer and catch up on email and workshop crap stuff.

I gulp down a liter of water, double fist my breakfast, then stop in at the faculty lounge for a latte before heading to my group of angels. It works.

This week I have created a system. It will, of course, completely change next week when my writing consultant and grading jobs kick in. That will begin my real struggle to fit in exercise and maintain a little weight loss. I will want to curl up into a ball and sleep for a thousand years.

OK, time for The American Novel. I've already had the first Virginia Woolf class and I'm in love forever.

Box Turtle on a Bike

I'm riding to work every day this week because my schedule is slightly more open than it will be the rest of the semester (the writing consultant job doesn't start in earnest until next week). My backpack is heavier than usual because I'm schlepping a lot of classwork in addition to work clothes.

The thing is, with that honkin backpack on, this is what I look like:

Source

Minus the smile. I'm huffing and puffing way too hard to smile like that.

I don't mind looking ridiculous because I'm way too mentally preoccupied with survival to care about anything else. However, here's a glimpse at the other riders who surround me:

Source

I'm not kidding. Now imagine me in the middle of all that. Their sports gear, their water bottles tucked into pockets on their backs. They're all hunched over, calves pumping, gears shifting, Lamaze breathing...it's too much. I want to tell them to calm down but they whiz by me too quickly.

In other news, my second class is angelic as well! We just might survive this semester after all!

Well, THAT was a first...

Ok, peeps! First day of teaching went well. Looks like this first batch is closer to angel than sh*t bird, so...we'll see what tomorrow brings.

But, I walked into class five minutes before it started and...no one was there. It was like those crazy dreams you have right before school starts except from the teacher's point of view. I proceeded to get stuff together, and, right on the dot of start time, the entire class walked in. 25 students at the same time! I kid you not. I was like, what the...?

Turns out, though, that today is a first for me. 25 true freshmen and mine is their first college class ever. Evahhhhhhhhh.

Mwahahahahahahahaha.

All those terrified pairs of eyes looking back at me. All those jittery nerves. All those fresh little minds to mold. It's almost too much.

The Good Stuff

This summer has presented an alarming amount of stress. One of these days, when enough time has passed and alcohol has flowed freely through my system, I'll talk about it on here.

But let's accentuate the positive, shall we? Be thankful for God's good gifts and all that?

This has happened a lot lately.

I've moved on from DDP's (<-- for the time being. I have a feeling that once school starts up again, so will the caffeine fixes.) to Diet Cherry Limeades. Yummy Summer Refreshment, people.

G has given two keynote addresses at conferences over the summer! Somehow, under all of our noses, he has become a well-known and sought-out subject matter expert on like important things. I can only get away with putting this on the blog because I know he's too busy to read it right now.

Do you like how I buried that under my Sonic minutiae? Maybe he won't even notice.

As I type this, I'm sipping coffee in my extremely clean and organized house. That alone is worthy of its own blog post and I'm still incredibly impressed with myself.

Lucy is not impressed. Nor was she helpful with cleaning.

I got a raise at work! Let it be known that I still don't make any money, but acknowledgment is acknowledgment. A raise is a raise.

I also got another job! I was offered a grading job for a couple of professors from a different department. This is a great opportunity for me to get a foot in the door of a different part of campus, and my grading philosophies match up with theirs. I'm sure I'll want to die a thousand deaths about every other week this semester, but we've got to recover from losing all of our money over the house sale, and this is a start.

Oooh, another job? Does this mean you won't be home much anymore?

I've given a second round of clothes to goodwill. My body, it is a'changin. I sure wish I could speed up the process, but hey, I'll take it. Thanks to some unexpected gifts, I got some new clothes lately and there may or may not be a spring in my step. Just sayin.

We have transformed our front yard and it looks a thousand times better than it did. It still has some bare patches, but time will fix that, and we have attracted some high rabbit drama. In addition to Lucy's boyfriend, we now have these two, who play in the yard until they start fighting over our apparently delicious weeds. They circle each other and munch so dramatically. It's all drama over here, all the time.

I'm going to put up a petting zoo sign and just start charging people. I present to you the scene that plays out each morning:

Lucyfer, who gets her meals brought to her twice a day by The Help, couldn't care less about any of this.

I'm really looking forward to the semester, especially the classes I'm taking. I'm also hoping for good students in the classes I'm teaching. I don't think anything can match my angel class from the spring. I also don't think I deserve to get another sh*t bird class this soon. There's got to be a happy medium. Please, please, please.

And with that, I must get a run in before it's time for a hair appointment. Not to be confused with a hare appointment. I really, really need some highlight action these days...

TGIF, people!

Um, no.

Everybody Count Off

Deadlines are powerful motivators. I've been wanting to deep clean the house (and organize the crap out of it <-- literally and metaphorically!) for months now. I keep saying I'll get around to it. And now school starts in exactly a week. Training for work starts this week.

It's time. My bike is in the shop. My car will be in the shop tomorrow. So I've been knuckling down in the house.

When I go for a long time without cleaning/organizing (and, let's face it, I can go a long time), all of a sudden I get very motivated and just tear through the house, re-organizing, giving stuff to goodwill, throwing stuff out, and even re-decorating. G jokes that if they're not careful, I'll throw out Lucy and him in the midst of all of it. So when I get this way, he walks around the house yelling, "OK! Everybody count off!" to make sure we're all still alive and well. And home.

My functional shelf. The one reserved for classes and teaching.

No more piles of papers. No more piles of unread magazines. No more dust. I even vacuumed. The whole house. Even the stairs. This is why people hire maids, fyi.

It's as if someone is coming to stay with us, but they're not.

The house will not be this clean again until sometime in December. Maybe. Probably not. The house is like, never this clean.

But it feels good. I can see all of my shoes in the closet. There are no random cords or bills on the floor upstairs. The rabbit hair is at a minimum for the time being. But only for the time being.

I feel like this:

I sit on the floor and foam roll a lot while watching TV. Lucy glares at me.

I'm exhausted. But I'm organized. And no one got thrown away.

Shrimp Cocktail Saturday

You know you have good friends when you can say to them, "Hey, listen, we're going to come over for dinner on Saturday night and here's what I want you to make for us..." That's essentially what we did.

I have been craving-with-a-capital-C Chef Campo's shrimp cocktail and the only - only - upside to the stress of selling the house is that we can use it as leverage, a pity card, to make our friends do whatever we want.

Hence the shrimp cocktail.

To me, shrimp cocktail means a few shrimp and some cocktail sauce. Right?

But Chef Campo has refined my palate. He makes a cold soup of all kinds of chopped veggies in a tomato base. It includes glorious bits of shrimp and avocado, too. Served with some chilled shrimp, it is the perfect summer food. We ate it on the back deck under the spray misters.

I want All The Shrimp Cocktail

As usual, it was awesome to catch up over some wine. The thing that I love about Nat King Cole and Chef Campo is that they are foodies to the core. Eating dinner at their house is an experience. It's like you're in Europe or something. The first couple of hours are all about cocktails and hors d'ouvres. Around 8:30 there is a light, delicious dinner with a new wine, followed by an incredible dessert and a different kind of wine. This is what is considered "dropping by for dinner" at their place. Dropping by for dinner at our place includes our friend, Papa John. On paper plates. Just sayin.

The one and only non-foodie among us, as you all know, is G. He gets his fix in other ways. Like talking about space craft until I want to curl up and sleep for a thousand years. Luckily, Chef Campo has worked on many types of space craft/programs (for realz!) and has commemorative posters of some of his projects. G was googley-eyed for half the evening. I know he secretly wants to move in with them but I refuse to be left alone with Lucyfer.

All the space posters

But! If you need a photographer, G is your guy. I forced them into a picture of the glorious shrimp cocktail and G was shouting directions like something from a reality show on the Bravo channel.

G yells, "SMILE LIKE YOU MEAN IT" --

Then G yells, "HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE THE STUPID SHRIMP COCKTAIL?" -- 

Then G yells, "OK, EVERYONE, LOOK SERIOUS" --

After he snapped the picture and saw my expression, he goes "Serious! You're supposed to look serious!" I was like, "This is my serious face for food! It's intense! Look into my eyes!"

I don't know why Nat King Cole looks more sad than serious. Obviously none of us can follow G's instructions...

As I say most of the time when we hang out with them, it was a much-needed night of chilling out. They have lowered our blood pressure many, many times over the last few months.

OK, peeps, it's an exciting Sunday around here. G is nerding it up all day and I have big plans to clean up the library and get all my stuff organized for the new semester. Big plans. But first, I'm going to drink some coffee and stare into space. Then there may be some reading...Then I may have to call Gama and chat for a while. And take a walk. And drink water and stare into space some more...

My First Massage

I've been thinking about getting a massage for quite some time, and let me tell you, I'm hooked. Hook, line and sinker, people.

First of all, I want to pronounce it as the Brits do (MASS-azjh). Secondly, never in my life has a massage sounded like something I'd want to subject myself to, until I started getting older and my poor muscles began to rebel against basic movements. The thought of someone else squeezing and rubbing all over me was just not appealing.

But. This summer. There has been so much stress with trying to sell the house, and I've pushed my muscles to the limit with all the working out, and the thought of laying on a table while someone took care of all the knots sounded like just the thing. I may or may not store an inordinate amount of stress in my body.

I asked all my local peeps about where to go, and the consensus was to go to a real spa instead of the local massage chains. It is a bit more expensive, but not much, and I would get the entire spa experience.

It. Was. Awesome.

I am nothing but a noodle and I love it.

The Day Spa

I booked an 80-minute Swedish massage and let them know that this was my first time. When I checked in, they led me to the changing room where I locked up my stuff and changed into the plushest robe ever. Then they led me to my room:

My view from the massage table:

My masseuse left the room to give me privacy to get under the sheets. I had on my sports bra and undies because to me that basically counts as naked. But she asked me to take off the sports bra (she left the room again) because the massage focuses quite a bit on the shoulder blades and back. The whole thing was very professional and comfortable. The parts of my body she was not working on were always covered up.

I started face-down while she worked on the unbelievable amount of knots in my neck, shoulders, shoulder blades, and upper back. She says that people make repetitive movements all the time, even just sitting at a computer all day, and the muscles will naturally build up lactic acid, and it's good to flush that out of your system regularly. And, of course, when we work out, we build up all kinds of acid that is only partially handled by foam rolling. After all, you can't (at least I can't) foam roll everything.

At times it was painful, but overall it was a really pleasant experience. Music played lightly in the background, the oils smelled wonderful, and we didn't talk. I was able to relax and just go with what she was doing. I asked her to focus mostly on my legs because of all the running, hiking, walking, lunging, squatting, and bicycling of the last couple of months. She altered the Swedish massage into a sports massage for my legs, and I could tell that she knew exactly what she was doing. I was really impressed.

After 40 minutes of laying on my stomach while she worked back and legs, she lifted the cover for me to roll over on my back. She then spent the majority of the time working the front sides of my legs (and my feet), and she finished up with my arms, hands, then my neck and scalp. While I was on my back I had a warm towel under my neck and also on my eyes. This was great because I didn't have to worry about looking around, or making eye contact with her, or even keeping my eyes open at all.

Once we were done, she gave me privacy to put the robe back on, and she met me in the lounge with a glass of water and a glass of champagne. She reminded me (in addition to what my peeps advised me) to drink an enormous amount of water all day to help flush out the toxins. I went into kidney-stone-mode and drank water like a champ. After the champagne, of course.

I realize I look drugged in this picture. It's actually the "best" of a few shots I took. I was extremely relaxed and she had messed up my hair with the scalp massage and I totally didn't care. I was high on life. I sat in the lounge and just chilled for probably a good 20 minutes or so before changing back into reality my clothes.

The lounge. My view from the corner.

Although this was a treat for myself, I will definitely do this again in the future. In fact, I scheduled another massage for mid-semester when I'll want to die a thousand deaths instead of write and grade papers. I'm hoping that the thought of another massage will motivate me to continue working out when the schedule gets cray cray.

Because I didn't work out at all in Arkansas, my body had had a bit of a break. When we got back last week and I started working out again, I was pretty sore. Despite the foam rolling and stretching, I'm usually sore for a couple of days until my body adjusts again. It was in the middle of all this soreness that I got the massage, which can also make your body sore because of the release of all the acid. This was another reason I drank water like a crazy person. And you know what? Today I'm not sore at all! She helped my muscles and I was able to flush out the toxins, and I feel great! I'm sold!

I'm going to start building in a Swedish/Sports massage a few times a year, just to work out the kinks. 

A couple of tips if you're thinking about getting a massage:

(And I realize the irony of giving you tips because I think I'm the last person on Earth to experience this and all of you guys already know the drill. But just in case you want/need a reminder.)

* Don't wear makeup. Your face is shmooshed into the support the entire time you're on your stomach. And the scalp/neck massage will inevitably include parts of your face. The masseuse is working with oil and this would screw up anything you might have had going.

* Don't be attached to your hair style. For the same reasons listed above. Just go with it.

* Schedule your massage for a time when you won't feel rushed. If you're bothering to get one in the first place, go the extra mile and take a portion of the day off. Hire a sitter, take the afternoon off work, bring a book, and let your muscles decompress. You're spending a fair amount of money; you might as well get all the bang for your buck.

* If you're an introvert, go alone. Plenty of peeps like to do this together, but take advantage of 80 whole minutes of not talking or interacting with anyone else.

* Book the longer time offered. Some massages give you the choice of 60 minutes or 80 minutes. Book the longest one. It's not that much more expensive, and it allows you more time to relax on the table. It may sound weird (it did to me until I experienced it), but 60 minutes isn't actually very long when you consider working on about 85% of your body.

* Plan time to relax afterwards. Have a glass of bubbly with all your water. Enjoy how you feel before getting back into the hussle and bussle. This was one of the main reasons my peeps suggested going to an actual spa instead of a chain massage place. And they were right.

* Afterwards, drink a lot of water. Like, liters. Like, more water than you've ever drunk before. Help your body flush out the gunk so that the results of your massage will be productive and long-lasting.

* If you're worried about being sore, take an Epsom salt bath. I'm not a bath person, so I didn't do this, but the masseuse highly suggested it. Instead, I foam rolled a bit more last night while G, L, and I watched TV.

This may have been my first massage, but it will soooooo not be my last. :) Off to do some back to school shopping! The summer is almost over...