I've had enough

Like robins heading north, the bloggers are showing the surest signs of spring: talking about exercise. Spring into Summer, 100 miles, Walk like an Egyptian (yeah, okay, I made that one up) they're everywhere. So now it's my turn to talk about it:

Not.
Gonna.
Do.
It.

This year, I'm giving up on healthy diet and exercise. I flap my bingo wings at fitness. I stick my tongue out at mindful eating. I accept my fat! I love my rolls! (Bread AND belly!) I eat what I want and sit on my flabby butt as long as I want to! I consider cheesecake a breakfast food and "vegetable" is a four-letter word!

WHO'S WITH ME?!?!

/crickets

Eh, more cheesecake for me then.

(PS - I support you all in your efforts toward health and fitness, and weight loss if that is your goal. Just don't ask me to. I plan to love my body the way it is for a while.)

I blew it off

You totally knew I would.
Last night after Bug went to bed, I had no desire to play with that honking huge Tendrils, so I pulled out the IHS. That thing goes so fast, it's very gratifying. I think I did 5 repeats. About 6 inches or so! I love things that show progress after one sitting! I'll take IHS to SnB tonight too. Last week I tried to work on Tendrils there, and ended up really hosing the beads. (On one cable, I missed a bead in one row and put two in, two rows up. And I only knitted the three rows all night.)
Anyway, I stayed up too late again and I woke up late. Instead of being a whole hour late for work, I hopped on my bike. It was a brisk ride, and I got here huffing and puffing, but I'll live. I do enjoy riding. I just end up feeling a bit knotted up afterwards.
Oh yeah, and one more thing: I missed my own anniversary! TWO YEARS SMOKE-FREE. Awesome. (Even now, I wish I'd had my first cigarette of the morning before I took that pregnancy test!) I plan to start up again when I'm 70 or 75 and smoke a couple of packs a day, but until then I won't smell like an ashtray. YAY FOR ME!

Yesterday:
2.6 miles walked

Friday at last

Yesterday I measured Tendrils. 53 inches, only 12 to go before the edging bit. Roughly six repeats. Tonight we drive to Phoenix, and tomorrow we return, so that's about four hours of car knitting for me. Can I do it? Do I even want to? The Irish Hiking Scarf is so soft and fluttery - I want to work on that instead. I joined the second of four balls this morning, and would like to feel that light, airy yarn in my fingers, instead of the heavy, beaded albatross of a wrap that is Tendrils. (I'd said to a friend that I don't understand why it's so heavy, because it's only 250 grams of beads. She pointed out that 250 grams is roughly half a pound. Oh.) But I'm so close, I will work on Tendrils tonight, and then maybe tomorrow I will have IHS in the car.
Today I had to drive to work because I had to run out for my yearly bloodwork. (If I'm trying to be healthy and exercise, I might as well have my yearly exams, too. ...sigh... I suppose I should make an appointment with the dentist...) Anyway, I feel a little sluggish already. It may be that it's Friday morning at the end of a tough week, or that the clouds are rolling in and it's dark, but I think it's more that my body didn't get my wake-up walk. I kinda miss it already. It's been a few months since I started walking to work. I haven't seen any change in my clothes (I'm pretty sure the Christmas cookie intake far exceeded any calories burned walking) but BOY, I miss being outside!

Yesterday:
2.4 miles walked

Discoveries

Two days ago, I discovered that I can knit and walk at the same time, without falling down (much).
Yesterday, I discovered that, if I think a commitment like 200 miles is no big deal and I'll do it anyway, I tend to wake up late and get a ride to work, so my 200 mile goal isn't a sure thing. Also, I discovered that, while I can knit and walk, my posture is so bad that my back is aching after just a few minutes.
Last night I discovered that I may have miscounted the number of balls I'd already knit into Tendrils, and I may not have needed the $3.29-turned-$11-because-of-shipping balls of yarn I ordered in a panic last week.
This morning I discovered that no matter how comfy my high-heeled granny boots are to wear at the office, they aren't the greatest for walking that 1.2 miles to work. I took the short cut (.86 miles), and DH was nice enough to bring me my walking shoes so I don't cry on the way home. (In my defense, they're chunky heels. It's not like I thought I'd go for a long walk in stilettos or anything.)

Resolved

Rachael is doing this thing.



100 miles by April 1. Walk, bike, swim, run, etc. At first, that sounds obscenely difficult. Well, it does to my couch potato self, but it sounds like a standard Saturday morning to my triathlete brother.



Anyway, once I started thinking about it, it's not that hard. I walk or bike to work every day, with the exception of the days when I have to carry something big or heavy. The shortest walking route is .85 miles. It's not a big deal to go slightly out of my way, for nicer scenery, which puts me at 1.2. That means that, at the end of an average week, I log between eight and 12 miles. Two and a half months of changing nothing, and I've walked 100 miles. I'm challenging myself a little. My bike route (according to that Google map thing) is about 3.1 miles. If I alternate, I can walk 100 miles AND bike 100 miles before April 1. This will require a little extra effort, because I'll have to include some weekend "workouts": trips to the park or hiking in Sabino Canyon with Bug, a walk to the zoo, even walking to a restaurant for dinner. All in line with my goals to lose a dress size and take Bug on outings. So, that's my plan. 100 miles walked and 100 miles biked before April 1.
Once I figure out where everyone gets those neat little percentage bars for the sidebar, I'll set up my progress indicators.

Ungh.

That's what I felt like this morning when I had to get up for work. I may have said that very thing. I think people make the new year's resolution to get in shape in the new year because of all the excesses of the previous two weeks, or in some places, 6 weeks. (I am too lazy to maintain the holiday frenzy from Thanksgiving on.) Cookies for lunch, cookies for breakfast, cookies for desserts and snacks. January is one long sugar crash for me. My only saving grace is that I still enjoy my morning walks to work. (Ask me again tomorrow after the storm hits and we have sleet.)
Anyway, I have a few more days of Tendrils, and I find my devotion flagging just a bit. I am craving light fluttery fabrics. Something that weighs about an ounce, finished. I'd purchased some yarn ages ago for Clapotis, but I think life may be too short to knit the same thing twice. (Except socks.) La posted about wanting to make Faina's scarf from FiberTrends recently, and OH BOY do I like that pattern. It calls for sport weight yarn, which I just happen to have in a lovely deep red/wine that was to be the base of Clapotis-for-me. I think it might want to be Faina's scarf. I'll have to find something else to do with the laceweight I got to carry along with the sport weight in the Clapotis-for-me. I gotta call my LYS to see if they can get that pattern for me. I hope they have to order it - if they have it right now, Aunt H's Tendrils might get put off a little longer!
Hypatia, Patty, are you there? I have yarn for you!

Saturday, at last

So, the last five days have nearly killed me. First, we moved to a new building with cubes instead of offices. This is actually mostly okay with me, since I sit at the end of a row of cubes and have only one cube neighbor, and I used to be fairly isolated in my old office. The not okay part is the fact that the woman in the next cube thinks that cubes are created to foster togetherness rahter than inhibit slacking, and thinks nothing of joining in any conversation within earshot. She'll stand up and lean over the wall if someone stops by to chat briefly with me, and twice I've heard her question people as they're walking by conversing about something. She is THE nosiest woman I've encountered in a long while, and has no concept of appropriate boundaries. (This is exacerbated by the fact that I have an overinflated sense of boundaries and get really tense and annoyed if someone gets in my space.) I'd hope she'd read this and get a clue, but a) I don't tell real-life people about this blog, and b) she wouldn't get it anyway.
Second, I started a new schedule at work, so I arrive at 6:30 and leave at 3pm. This is cool, because the afternoon just FLIES, but that morning has gotten long enough as to be soul-crushing.
Third, the bike riding is working out well so far. I have only been making the round-trip once instead of twice. I'd thought I would ride home for lunch, but at this point in my riding and my new schedule the lunch ride isn't feasible. My commute is 2.5 miles round trip, which is a nice short trip that still gets me a little exercise. The ride home is nicer than the ride there, since I ride a different way to avoid traffic. It's such a pleasure to get on my little bike and cruise on home through the neighborhood, past the park, down the little hill and into the driveway. Plus, the mornings are cool enough that I think I need to knit myself some mittens. Heh. (I know that 2.5 miles is piddly, but I suffer from two of those luxuries few outside the first world know: overabundance of food and complete sloth. I gotta work up to it.)
Anyway, all of this adds up to some serious exhaustion and not so much on the knitting. Yesterday I managed four rows on Tendrils and thought I was doing feats of Herculean strength. Today I hope for some napping, some house cleaning, and a little knitting. (The house cleaning is necessary - the cleaning lady is on vacation until the week after Thanksgiving, and I couldn't find anyone else to cover for her, so the house looks like the set of Lord of the Flies.)

On shapes

I would like to state that I am in terrible shape. Well, my shape is mostly spherical, which is not a bad shape as shapes go, but I would prefer something a little more svelte. Anyway, toward this end, I recently started riding my bike to work. Recently meaning yesterday. It's a short ride - today it took 7 minutes - but I arrive huffing and puffing and generally in a disgraceful state. I can see the bloody building from my front yard (the 7 minutes is due to the presence of a gated community between me and the building) and I arrive sweaty and breathless. Oy. The only reason this is going to work for me is that it is ONLY seven minutes. I can do that. I can do that no problem. Then if I want a little more later, I can go around the back way, or go up the street further and cut back, or what have you. When I get REALLY good, my intention is to ride the additional 2.5 miles round trip with a little kiddie trailer, and pick the Bug up from his daycare. We shall see. In the meantime, seven minutes, four times a day.
And can I just tell you something? Even though it's only seven little minutes, my sit bones feel like I rode a marathon. With as much padding as I have on my butt, you'd THINK that I wouldn't feel it as much.
No knitting content to show. Tendrils and Clapotis proceed. They look like slightly longer versions of the last photos you saw. Switching buildings, working hours (now I work from 6:30 - 3) and modes of transportation have served to tucker me out right good, so I hope that sooner rather than later I will have the energy to stay awake at night and knit. (Last night was SnB, and I only had energy to watch my friends knit. It was sad. Apparently I looked so tired that one woman was concerned that I wouldn't be able to drive the two miles home without falling asleep.)