Wednesday, December 31, 2014

All Bets Are Off...it's 2015!

I used to be an overzealous resolution-maker. Every year, without fail, I would resolve to stop biting my nails, to lose 15 pounds, and to somehow get fabulous hair.

Then, in my early thirties, I shunned the resolution. Banned it. Kicked it to the curb.

It had no place in my life. I was just gonna live, and do the best I could, all year. I wasn't going to vow to change every January. The whole idea of it was ridiculous.

In January 2013, I cautiously re-introduced the resolution, and vowed to start doing yoga again.

It worked. All year.

So in January 2014, I upped the ante and started attending Nevada Fitness Club. Suddenly, things like Insanity and Combat Cardio were not only within reach, but mountains I climbed and obstacles I conquered.

And now, here we are on the cusp of 2015, and it's almost too much.

Because there is real shit happening in 2015.

And although I'm going to try a 21-day-to-sugar-elimination program, and although I got a Fitbit and am fascinated with how many sets of stairs I climb every day, there are more pressing things on my 2015 plate.

You see, in 2015, I will stop working three jobs and 60 hours a week.

In 2015, I will turn 40 years old.

And in 2015, my son, the light of my life, will finish high school and start college.

The year 2015 will bring more change than I'd care to think about. I have really enjoyed being a mom, way more than I thought I would when I told people that having kids wasn't really my thing.

I LOVED raising this child. I loved every bit of it, even the post-age-16 years, when I realized that I wasn't going to get out of the difficult times after all.

I remember getting my last driver's license renewal, seeing that it expired in July 2015, and thinking, wow, Hunter will be out of high school by then...that's so far away!

And now it's here. The second half of his last year of public school. It still feels like he should be that little boy with the giant backpack walking into preschool for the first time while I held back tears.

There's a lot to do. Like, actually get him to fill out all the scholarship applications. Like, actually get him to go to school. Like, actually get him to look objectively at more than one college.

But that's a job for 2015 Jen. Right now, I'm still in 2014, trying to remember that although there was a lot of bad in the last 12 months, there was a lot of good, too.

In a few short hours, I will welcome in the year of my son's graduation. And not just my son, but all of the other kids I watched grow up these last thirteen years.

Damn it, you guys. Why are you doing this to us?

Congratulations, anyway.

I'm still going to try that 21-day-to-sugar-elimination plan, though.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Murrr.

I got a Fitbit for Christmas.
Did you ever get one of those presents that you 

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Things I Learned From Nevada Fitness Club, Part Four.

I consider myself in good shape...for me.

That means that I'm equal parts desire to look bangin' and desire to lay in bed and have all the great foods (read: cobbler, cookies, chocolate, and anything else delicious that starts with C...or the other letters) teleport to me, where I will then consume them all until I feel completely disgusting and start crying that "This is why I will be alone the rest of my life!" until I fall asleep amid the crumbs.

But I digress.

The point is, I'm in much better shape than I was a year ago. Joining Nevada Fitness Club kicked my ass, don't get me wrong, and did so on a regular and unrelenting basis.

But for the first time since I played competitive tennis all summer long in the broiling mid-day heat on purpose (aka the early 90s), I felt like I was in shape.

Until Wednesday night.

The first time I did Insanity, a girl with a bad ankle out-performed me while I lay sprawled on the gym floor, dazed and wheezing and generally questioning both how I had let myself get this out of shape and what the hell I was doing there.

The first time I did Asylum (Insanity Part Deux), I swore I tasted blood in the back of my throat through the last half of the workout.

The first time I did Insanity Max, I thought there was something wrong with the DVD.

It would have been comical if I hadn't been fighting so hard to suck air. As it was, these people were not human. If this DVD wasn't Insanity on speed, I don't know what would be. It was as if the DVD had been set on fast-forward. The entire thing was people going so fast it seemed like there had to be something underhanded going on. People don't MOVE that fast. I don't even think Olympic athletes can go that fast.

If it hadn't been for the three 30-second water breaks, I would have "maxed" about seven minutes in.

It was hard to explain. Imagine just going through speed drills as fast as you can for 30 minutes straight, with the exception of those three water breaks. Burpees, squats, running in place, jumping, push-ups, mountain climbers, and GO FASTER! GO! GO! GO! GO!

I made it until the 22 minute mark. And then the 23 minute mark. And then 25. By the end, I really had no idea what was going on. My eyes were full of sweat. Or tears. Whatever, they stung. My mouth was Sahara-dry.

And there was so. much. sweat.

I would like to say I left and consumed a completely reasonable, low-carb dinner.

But that would be a lie. Instead, I ate a fourth of an apple cobbler, six pumpkin Oreos, and a loaded baked potato.

The second time I did Insanity Max, I told myself I was ready.

And it didn't seem as bad.

I'm just kidding. It was pretty bad.

Because JUMPING AND LANDING INTO SQUATS.

Because BRING YOUR KNEES UP TO YOUR HANDS, NOT YOUR HANDS DOWN TO YOUR KNEES.

Because JUMPING PUSH-UPS.

A push-up that you do, then "jump" your entire body (like the WHOLE body, including hands and feet, leaves the ground and lands a few inches away), IN PUSH-UP FORM, and then you repeat it.

What saved me in Insanity Max's night two was that I can handle ab work a lot better because I get to lay down, and I can handle tricep work pretty well because that's always been one of my favorite things to work (read: easy for me).

It wasn't quite as miserable.

I'd like to say I left and consumed a completely reasonable, low-carb dinner.

But that would be a lie. Instead, I ate two Poptarts, part of a chicken fried steak with gravy, fried green beans, and two beers.

So yeah, all the Insanity Max in the world doesn't make up for a completely garbage diet.

But it was pretty badass anyway.



Friday, December 5, 2014

OREOS MAKE YOU FAT.

...and that was what I took from the passage, back in my Wannabe Beatnik period of early 1995. I was going to Cottey College, trying to figure out who I was, recovering from a bad breakup, going through that "Oh yeah? Watch me lose weight and be all like Sandy in Grease and then there's a carnival and guess who's in skintight black and feeling sassy? Oh, and I can sing now" phase that girls go through when they're deeply hurt and deeply disillusioned thanks to unrealistic movie plots.

So there we were, on the cusp of 1995, and a friend of mine shows me a copy of The Portable Beat Reader.

That was IT. I decided that these beatniks were me, that I was them, that we're all the same deeply tortured soul deep down, man, and isn't life an awful trip when it comes down to it, and Everybody Hurts...sometimes.

...and on and on. Sure, I didn't live in a stripped-down, rat-infested room in Manhattan, and, fine, maybe I wasn't running from the law and trying to find myself in a warm bottle of tequila in Mexico, but this Beat Generation really GOT it.

But there was one piece that resonated with me more than anything else, and it wasn't by Kerouac or Corso or Ginsberg or Cassady.

It was by a woman named Diane DiPrima, and the paragraph that so captivated me, that WAS 19-year-old me, that cut through my early-college pretentiousness to my vulnerable core, went a little something like this:

*Credit, Diane DiPrima, Dinners and Nightmares: What I Ate Where*

i remember the winter the january i ate nothing but oreos...to get through january in manhattan is hard, to get through january and february the same year almost impossible.
one of the best ways to get through i found was this of eating oreos. except it makes you fat. really fat. even if you don't eat anything else and you think, shit, how can i get fat i haven't had breakfast or lunch or anything like that, but don't kid yourself. OREOS MAKE YOU FAT.


And even though I wanted to look like Sandy and blow everyone away at the carnival, even though I wanted to do all of the amazing things and be rich and famous before I exited my teens and maybe date Brian from NBC's Wings, the reality was that I went to class and worked full time and came home at 10 p.m. with a box of donuts from Ramey's and watched Jerry Springer until I fell asleep next to a by-then-empty donut box.

So it was that essay that spoke to me, and provided a strange comfort that I reached for, like a security blanket, again and again. It was THAT essay I returned to, not Ginsberg's Howl or Burroughs' Naked Lunch, which were amazing, true, but a little intimidating.

DiPrima, man, she GOT me.

And it all came crashing back to my consciousness today, when I got off work, came home, made a Peach Caramel Butterscotch cobbler, mindlessly ate a row of Oreos...

...and I was 19 again, reaching absently into the box of donuts before realizing it was empty, listening to the crowd chant for Jerry and wondering what exactly I was going to do with my life.

It's mind-blowing, because my son is almost to that age of all questions and no answers, and he's experiencing some of those same feelings that were trapped and fluttering in my rib cage, that I tried to smother with those Oreos and donuts and Springer, and it just reminds me how really, really hard it can be to be on that cusp of adulthood and feel that pressure to know what you're supposed to do with the rest of your life, that it's time to be a grown-up and there's nothing you can do about it, and where are you going to go to college and what's your major and where will you live and who will you room with and here's a new town and oh by the way classes are all over campus and you don't know every single person you see and these are the best years of your life, kid, cherish them!

How RIDICULOUS is that? I wouldn't go back to that uncertainty and that confusion for anything, even if it meant being young and free again. Because it wasn't until I was older that I was set free.

You can HAVE 15-21. I don't WANT those years back. Give me 39 any day.

To the Class of 2015 that I watched grow up, I wish the very best for you. But it is this uncertainty, this fear, that make the good times feel so much better. Out of the darkness comes the dawn, insert your own cliche here, but they're true.

It WILL get better. High school isn't going to be the best time of your life. You have so many experiences ahead, good and bad, light and dark.

FEEL it. Collect those life experiences, because these are the things that you learn from, and that is far more than you'll ever learn in a college classroom.

I'm proud of you guys.

And it's okay to admit that maybe you don't know everything.
Illustration courtesy of Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh (check her out!)