Tag Archives: exercise

So this is what is going on with me.

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Right now I am on a brief rest break before I either decide if this is a longer break so I can go to the queer social night or if I am going to go outside to work in the garden. Right now I am trying to get the house/garden set up for an open house with the home ed folks so I feel a lot of get up and go for the work. I’m trying to figure out how I can lay out walkways that let people understand clearly where I don’t want them stepping in my chaotic garden full of plants and different kinds of mulch all over the place.

So that is one piece. I have various irons in the fire with the home education community. I’m trying to figure out which relationships I should cultivate harder and which ones are unlikely to be a good usage of my time. I am feeling incredibly scheduled again. Time is, as it will be for the rest of my life, the biggest limiting factor for everything I do.

Exercise is going to be really over-represented in my schedule for the next five months. I am increasingly conscious of just how much cross training I need to build supportive muscles that are not used in running and to relieve tightness. I’m old. I need so much more effort to get to baseline and it fucking sucks. I’m tired.

Which means that if I am going to effectively absorb and use this exercise to actually get stronger I must sleep. Like, a lot. Even though it looks like daytime until almost midnight and then it is dusk for a little while again before it is daytime again. I’ve never been a great daytime sleeper. Which means I have to get up pretty dang early every single day and get in bed before 10 every single night. I don’t do well with adding in a run later in the day. As my runs get longer and longer I need to mostly just start earlier.

Dang, the other day in the park I met this older lady who told me that she ran her first marathon at 51 and she did it in 4 hours and 45 minutes. Fuck. I can’t even. I am really really really really really really hoping that I will be at least 1 minute less than 6 hours. I am not greedy. My previous shitty time was 6 hours and 45 minutes. I would desperately like it to be shorter than 6 hours. But I’m nervous sending that wish into the universe because I kept saying “I would just like to finish labour in 24 hours” for all three births and I never fucking did. That was a giant failure to manage a prediction/hope/goal for my bodily functioning. I actually went into the first marathon thinking I’d be something in the neighbourhood of 5 hours and 30 minutes. lololololsob

Since I am trying to decide if I am going out tonight: I could go find the giant pride flag and figure out the flagpole situation right *now* and have it up for my ride in since it’s pride month. 🏳️‍🌈 And it is pride month. Seems like a great time to be bonding with my local homies before the big event happens with all the folks who travel in from the villages.

Sometimes I wonder if we really understand people in the past as much as we think we do. Like, if I did not practically tattoo “queer” on my forehead every so often I would be entirely unremarkable and perceived as a normal cis-het mother. I really do believe that queerness is an aspect of my personality that is outside of what other people describe as their normal. It is part of the ravenous predatory streak I have. I sit on myself so hard at this point. Although the funny thing is that I don’t feel it as intensely as I used to. I suppose I would describe it as once upon a time I know I would have gone there. I am not going to speculate if that would have gone well back when. That would not go well now. Ok, bounce eyes.

Sex is complicated in a place this small. Holy crap. The dynamics scare me. Like, honestly. I fucked around so casually for so long. I would not understand how to avoid pissing in other people’s cheerios. No freaking wonder most human beings have low body counts. Yikes it could get really challenging in a place this small. I think I lack the diplomacy to do this tactfully. I am glad I don’t have to find out. It will never matter because Noah is not allowed to die before me. He has been informed.

But good golly I’ll dress as a garish motherfucker and wave a flag sometimes and coyly answer questions about for whom am I advertising. Since it really will never get to anything other than friendship I must fly that kind of outrageously if I am going to find my people and I am going to find them and find ways to integrate them into my life. I believe that queers need each other. Many of us don’t have families of origin we maintain contact with. A very large percentage of us do not have children. That doesn’t mean that any of us deserve to be alone. We have to find each other.

I mean, I can literally say: “Hey if you are one of those queers who feels like they really want a place to go and spend time and make deep community… I am going to be buying a tiny piece of land.” A piece of land small enough that we can do the vast majority of work by hand with folks not feeling exhausted at the end. I know so many people who talk about how much they wish they could build something like that. I want to make community. You’ll be welcome to come hang out in the forest you build anytime. The gates don’t lock.

I don’t wanna be Auntie… but I wanna be Auntie. That woman has had a full house of people she has been helping all of her life. First it was foster kids her mom took in and then it was all the stray people having troubles she knew. She raised her sister… and her sister’s kids… and her sister’s grandkids…

I wanna be Auntie with upgrades. She helped people in a way that resulted in a lot of deeply dependent, incapable people. Not all of them. Some of them just needed a safe place to sleep and eat for a couple of months then they went on their way and did fine. But then there are most of the rest of them. Last I knew she was in her late 70’s and working to pay a mortgage to cover the refinances her husband took out and to pay to take care of all three of her children who live with her.

I am not fucking interested in disabling my children.

I want to help people learn more about how they can teach themselves the things they need to learn in order to move forward. I mean physical skills, intellectual skills, emotional skills, academic skills, and most importantly how to set goals and work towards something they want. They get to figure out what that is. As long as you are not able to pick one I’ll push you through picking something for a while and we will both learn a lot as you learn why you end up disliking it. Over time they gradually pick better and better projects for themselves. They still fuck up… a lot… but that is the point. Fuck up now. Fuck up in ways that won’t matter in 10, 20, 50 years. Hell, most of these fuck ups won’t matter in 5 minutes. Just do it. Fuck up. Learn the lesson. Don’t hold back and wait. Don’t waste time. Think of all the better decisions you will make once you learn this. Doesn’t that sound nice? At some point it will be easier for you to figure out which decision will work for you without having to suffer so much at so many junctions.

BUT THEN YOU MOVE TO ANOTHER FUCKING COUNTRY AND HAVE TO LEARN ANOTHER FUCKING CULTURE AND JUST FUCK YOURSELF ALL THE WAY UP.

Cheezits mother trucker.

So I’m sorta categorising my community efforts as:

  • bike
  • queer
  • kink
  • maker
  • community resource sharing
  • gardening
  • political
  • proximity

That’s why I feel like whoa. That’s why I don’t feel like I’m getting to know people quickly. I’m trying to duplicate the full spread of the type of web I had in California and build all aspects of it at the same rate at the same time. While I’m fucking exercising a lot. I suppose the bike community is sorta good for that but a lot of my time there feels super awkward because I am not able to hear that well.

I mean look at the size of the fucking social life I’m planning for the next few decades. I’m going to need to be a fit bitch to ride my bike around to all that shit.

Cause that is what I’m aiming for. I’m going to go do shit. I’m go to make things with people. I am going to invite people to help me with the property.

It’s a whole fucking thing. If you ask people to do something for you they will like you more. And co-working is my biggest love language so I will invite people into my bubble and see who self selects in. And that will be a lot of the inner layers of the core of the web. That’s how it tends to work. It won’t be a perfect alignment, sometimes those very first points on the web are smaller but they lead to a giant nexxus.

That’s how your bestie picked by proximity ends up being the one to tell you “You really should go to the Disaster House Party. I think you will have a very good time.” Reader: I married the guy throwing the party. And then she leaves you to marry an admittedly rather cool guy who happened to live almost halfway around the world. So you name your children after each other because you miss each other so much. Then you decide that 10 years is long enough and you move 2 fucking miles away from her.

I mean, some aspects of my story are pretty hilarious. I follow arcs a long way. I know I should write you an email Pam. Hello, this is my social anxiety voice. You write your journals privately and share them selectively in email. You have what normal people might call “boundaries”.

Hello internet I’ve missed you. I miss this part of my inner story. Most of the time since I moved here I shut it off as fast as I can. In any conversation there can only be a couple of paragraphs and I know that I’d better keep my transition points SUPER FUCKING OBVIOUS while not in any way shape or form seeming to put effort into my, inevitably slightly graceless, transition into the next topic. Cheers, mother trucker.

Fuck every person who has ever told me to just be myself. Dude you don’t even know. Cultivated, curated, deeply thought about choice goes into so much of how I hold my body. I fucking pre-game for social events. I specifically think about what attitude I am supposed to exhibit. I think about how I need to hold my body to get the response I want. It varies based on the crowd and reason for the event. I am not natural but I am comfortable with what I am doing. I have worn this personality/skin-suit mechanism for quite some time. I struggle when I know I’m going to spend a lot of time pin-ball whacking against a lot of barriers. That is the natural and normal early stage of a relationship.

That’s where you have to refine your mental image of this person to progressively more specificity as they become more and more of an actual specific ensemble cast member instead of being part of the chorus in setting B. This is an especially graceless stage for me. Because I am shifting through everything I remember about someone as I talk to new people. I’m trying to come up with every detail of every conversation for the first long while. That way I can follow up on specific topics and build a sense of connection. What? You don’t think through this process? You think I just know so much about you because I happened to have that for you? Nah, babe. I am far from perfect but good golly I work hard. It’s hilarious how often whatever that person’s name is doesn’t make the connection. It depends on how often I hear other people talk about them. It depends on how well embedded in the web they are from multiple directions. If I hear their name I place it in a storyline in a way that I don’t from talking to someone and looking at their face. I will remember all the feelings I’ve had with them and I can sometimes, when I’m lucky, get people to also have that glimmer of oh yes. We had fun. I’m fun. Then we go on with our lives without even having to get into it. But goddess that takes time.

I’d really like to figure out how to figure more rhythm around my efforts in various places based on moon stuff just so that I have to synch with it more. I think it would benefit my garden tremendously. There are a lot of gardening tasks that want about a month in between the next thing. I need to build that feeling into my body and associate it with other definitive parts of my routine and that means I need to tie it in with patterns in the house.

I get to play with building a system. The funny thing is that it will go best if I make a plan and organise and make whatever decisions I want to make then I inform the kids what work they will be doing the next day so they’d better make sure they don’t have an emergency project to do tomorrow morning. Planning and making an agreement about what you will do 100% OF THE TIME RESULTS IN SOMEONE BEING EXTREMELY ANGRY AND FURIOUS.

See, I’m teaching them life skills. Muahahaha.

We have a real live group project all around us every day. We are all working on projects big and small all day long. We bounce around talking to one another and then going off to do one on one with someone for a while then we have another most-of the group contact for a while then the whole family again. We do it over and over all day. They are all managing different pieces of it.

Dude. I need to start clearing off one wall at a time in the studio and deep cleaning it. Cause then I can invite other people to scribble on the wall when they come over. I’ll clean it very slowly adding new nice white space only gradually. That way if people ever want to come claim a new place much further around the room their part of the weft will show up brightly.

But right now I feel absolutely knackered. I feel like I have a 20lb sack on my head; I am so tired. I am going to be running 3 miles tomorrow morning. I am going to be running 6 miles on Saturday morning. I uhhh think that I probably ought to stay home tonight and not go out. Ok, one decision made. I need to be in bed by 9, not in a bar in town starting home at 9.

Yeah. I think I am out of typing. That’s all I can be semi-coherent about and I doubt any of that was coherent. But I feel better. And that is good enough.

It’s not about you, David.

The trouble with willpower

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I am trying to plow through a lot of work. Between gardening and running there are a lot of tasks that are time sensitive and I have to execute the plan with precision in order to manage to get the end result. We have slid out of cleaning the house again. I literally can’t enforce a clean house and get a lot of other stuff done. For the past few years we have maintained a shockingly clean house and it has come at the cost of many other activities.

I will not choose a clean house over actually completing important work I care about.

The thing about running is it doesn’t just take up the time it takes to go run. It means I have to be rigid about my sleep schedule. It means I have to be careful what I eat because I need proper fuel in the tank. I can’t eat shitty or I will hurt myself. I can’t miss sleep or I will hurt myself. If I hurt myself my ability to hit my targets will slip and I won’t reach my goals.

It is not easy for me to maintain rigid consistency. I can feel the internal fight. This is where I have found it fascinating to research PDA over the past few years. I am the only person making these demands upon myself but I can feel my anxiety spiking. I am not having an easy time with the constant need to refocus and align my attention with a narrow set of goals. It feels controlling and subjugating and it makes me want to completely zone out and go on “vacation” (when I keep the kids alive but zone out and don’t get anything done for a while).

Mostly I shift back and forth in between what pulls my attention and interest most on a given day. I suspect that my obsession with keeping the house clean over the past few years has partially been because I have been in the house all the time and I didn’t have that much else that could pull my attention harder. Now, there’s a lot.

I am going through a really intense period of cross training, too. I don’t think I have ever done this much exercise as an adult and maybe never in my life. I ride my bike a lot. Running is still early days–I haven’t had longer than 5 miles yet and most of the runs are 2-3 miles. But I run straight uphill as I get started and it feels fucking brutal. It is forcing my lungs to be very sad and learn how to control my breathing with a much higher heart rate. I’m seeing improvement in my lap swimming that I do while Shorty has class. My shoulder joints are clicking less and I can make it down the lane nearly twice as fast as I could a few weeks ago. That’s pretty cool. I am really enjoying starting yoga again. I need the overall strength building quite badly. It does so much to improve the pain in my arms and my shoulders and my back.

But it’s a lot. I feel worn to the bone. It’s using up all of my self discipline. It’s making it tougher to continue reading all of the permaculture books. Mostly because I have finished the ones that are most relevant to garden-level work and now I’m struggling my way through textbooks that focus on major installations, city, or true forest level designs. I have a very low likelihood of ever needing to design the layout for a 10+ acre piece of land. It’s hard using willpower to force myself through reading something that is never going to be fully relevant. But some of the details and the philosophy can be applied and is relevant so I really should finish them. Ugh.

I would much rather continue my binge of The West Wing, thanks. I’m already 48 episodes in. (Sure, I’m mostly watching them so I can detect defects…. right….)

I have not been keeping up with budget tracking. I am keeping up with laundry.

Holy crap. In the past 24 hours my polytunnel has had a minimum of 5C and a maximum of 32.7C. That means the soil temperature is staying way over 5C. Time to plant all these boxes! (I love a new way to get data. Yay thermometer!)

And I’m super sick, again. Last week it was an intestinal bug and this week it is a head cold. Ugh. Missing all the first Saturday stuff is annoying because it means no trip to the farmers market and we miss Kidical Mass.

Lay out the plan then follow it.

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Today I ran 2 miles to start the day. Noah came with me even though he has been having a gout attack over the past week. So far it seems like he is doing better and he’s not in extra pain from the run and that’s fabulous. I tore open an adhesion between my butt and my thigh and it’s absolutely marvelous. It only hurt for a short time and now I can lift my leg higher and I’m thrilled. This will make it easier to get on and off my bike; it’s been a struggle to raise my leg high enough for quite a while.

I took a shower and washed my hair and did all the greasing for my body head to toe. I fixed my pocket/belt doohickey because it wasn’t done perfectly on the first go-round. That’s going to be ok.

I need to tidy up my room some, do some processing of food that is in deep storage out into the glass jars for usage. It’s important. I might even unload and reload the dishwasher because MC didn’t do it before taking off on their walk and I don’t want them staying up super late to finish dishes later.

I need to catch up on budget stuff. I’ve been not getting that done. I have a whole stack of books I want to get through. I have a lot of seeds that need to be started in the next day or two because it is *time*. This is hilarious because I am running out of floor in my bedroom and bathroom.

I have a meeting at 2 with a construction dude who is going to help with the rotting deck outside the apartment. That’s a good thing. Shorty has badminton at 4 and I have to ride her over there. If I have time I probably should go get some slate tiles before we do badminton so I can bring them home with me. I are tired. Then I eat dinner quickly and head right back out to a yoga class in town. All told I am going to be riding at least 11 miles today but it might be more. I get a little fuzzy on some of the exact distances.

It’s a good day.

I did a lot of seed planting yesterday, my bathroom floor is almost entirely covered in plants and the heat is high. I have about three more weeks of needing that room to be super warm and I am deeply ready for the temperature to go down. I think that next year I am going to try harder to figure out how to have a small enclosed space that I heat without heating that whole room. This is oppressive. Also I could really use a place to start plants where the cats don’t try to sleep on them. The cats are unhappy about their current ban from my room.

I continue to have struggles in many ways as a parent. Figuring out how to teach things, how to model healthy behavior, and how to get a kid to give a shit about something that I find important is… hard. Very hard. I am not feeling good at this. I will keep trying though.

Shorty is spending a lot of time on learn-to-read apps and she’s made a fairly shocking amount of progress. I told her she couldn’t have Roblox till she was 10 because that’s about when my older kids were able to read/write well enough to be safe on the platform. She is absolutely determined to get there sooner. We’ll see!

I am by no measure a perfect person. I will keep reaching for the light even though I am stunted.

Another day in the ramping up to a race life

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22 miles of bike riding today. It’s my cross training day. That was three trips to town.

I went over first thing for a chiropractic appointment and my neck is much better. It is still fucked up and hurting but I have more like 75% of my normal rotation rather than 30%. I told him that I do not expect miracles from medical providers but rather incremental improvement over what I can do on my own. I am not interested in the sort of aggressive treatment you might expect for someone who has a sudden acute issue. This is all chronic and long-term. I am going to be in pain until I die. Sometimes it is bad/irritating enough I ask for some help. But I can’t be in there all the time looking for relief–I won’t get that much relief. It is not in the cards for me. Chasing that is futile and a waste of energy.

At least the grinding cracking isn’t still happening?

Then I went home to get Shorty and we rode over to Jenny’s and grabbed her and her daughter and we rode back over to the leisure centre and we swam for a while. (I wasn’t actually “swimming” most of the time. I was being active supervision for Shorty as she splashed around in very shallow water. Then we had lunch. Then I lost the key to my bike. I ran back and forth across the parking lot in a panic. Thankfully someone found it in the cafe. Phew. Time to ride home.

Then I went back to town and rode around with Critical Mass then went to the queer gathering for a few hours. I had a really great time. I like a lot of the folks I’m meeting. I feel very comfortable around most of them. It was kind of funny when someone said something about how it would be nice to host gatherings in people’s homes but that means it is always limited to just a couple of people because everyone lives in small houses. I sidled right in and said, “Have I mentioned that I sold a house in California for an obscene amount of money and I moved here and bought a very large house? My lounge is almost as big as the lobby of the hotel we are standing in.” A dude who has been to my house said, “She isn’t lying. I’ve seen her house.” Then the other people in the conversation just about did the Mr. Burns hands thing.

I’ve been talking to one of the organisers of this year’s Highland Pride that will happen in town. I am thinking that it would be really awesome if our family contributed a space. I would like to get a really big tent, bean bags, a whole bunch of noise cancelling head phones, a low table with drawing supplies, probably a big pile of stuffed animals, a small bookshelf with a selection of easy to pick up graphic novels and food and water. It will be the chill zone for people who are overstimulated in the main event. I mean, California hippies have to represent–don’t we?

In those brief periods at home I did two loads of laundry and read lots of books to Shorty. All things considered it is probably good that I am not going anywhere this weekend. I have a bunch of stuff I want to get done. I am going to have a very busy summer. I have three Americans coming over in the summer. In June it will involve me putting together a teaching itinerary for my buddy. I’m grateful the July/August bits will be a lot more hanging out. Pride is happening in July and that’s going to be a big burst of energy. That’s a lot of time distracted from my life. I need to put in the time really paying attention to the kids before then so they don’t feel neglected. Gotta fill those buckets.

Sobonfu told me that I was never going to find a community that I fit into. I was going to have to make my own. I’m trying.

Now I’m finally getting sleepy. Time to go to sleep.

Emotional hangover

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My whole body aches and feels overwhelmed and dizzy and crappy because I’m having so many emotions. Emotions about lots of people and lots of situations.

The kink community up here is getting big enough/active enough that sometimes there are conflicting opinions and desires. That doesn’t mean anyone is a bad guy or that anyone is doing something that is wrong. I am trying to learn how to effectively communicate and so far I’m not great. I can pinpoint exactly where I was trying to communicate and it sails right past people. That feels bad. That feels like discounting when it isn’t.

It isn’t that someone noticed that I was trying to communicate a thing and said no. The way I was communicating was ineffective and it wasn’t understood that I was trying to say a thing so stuff went in a different direction. That’s reasonable.

But I spent like two weeks trying to figure out how to talk about a thing and I had to spin my wheels very hard and by the time I figured out how to say it the response was, “You should have said this earlier.” I tried. I can point at exactly where I tried and you didn’t hear me. Part of the reason the communication failed is because I was trying to speak as if no one has authority and we are trying to start from scratch and you are used to authority and you just went about your business making decisions without consulting.

It’s an overall apathetic group of people and if you want stuff done you need to make decisions. I get that. That is a really common dynamic. This is such a small group that I was hoping for something more leaderless. I’m not specifically gunning for being the boss. I don’t have that to give.

Our water is off and on because the construction up the hill knocked out a water pipe and it’s not going very well. It has made everything annoying and complicated in our house for two days now.

I had a thing where a friend scheduled a thing then couldn’t make it at the last minute and in this post-Sarah life of mine I am absolutely shit at handling this. T and I had a thing I don’t know how many months ago where for a little while his life got super hectic and he started being flakey about our chats and I shut down and couldn’t speak to him about it for weeks because I didn’t want to explode or completely over react and my feelings about last minute cancellation are fucking huge. I try not to have these feelings. Most of the time I can handle the fact that life has unexpected changes but it’s not easy for me. I set expectations around a thing happening and then when it doesn’t I feel a whole bunch of really overwhelming feelings in a rush and I want to go to my room and climb into bed and not come out for days.

I don’t have space for that in my life. I don’t get to check out mentally for days at a time. I don’t get a lot of undisturbed rest. I get a lot more than I used to, but these things are not easy.

It’s Tommy’s birthday this weekend and that’s bothering me more this year than it does some years. I feel really sad. He would be 47 this year. Only he never got older than 22. He’s been dead a fair bit longer than he was alive. His whole story arc is so sad and tragic and unfair.

My ADHD meds ran out and I apparently don’t get a refill until after some medical tests that aren’t scheduled till next month. So I’m going on and off amfetamines and that’s not exactly ideal for emotional regulation and getting chores done.

We tried to reassign chores. Then a few really expensive wool items of clothing got washed. I’m doing the fucking laundry again and forever after because washing my fucking wool is not ok.

I’m spotting on day 14 of my cycle and that’s not normal. It feels bothersome and emotional in a way I don’t like. I assume it is related to the increase in running lately but it’s always emotionally uncomfortable to me. Day 14 is usually way too early for the PMDD cycle of ugh and crappy to be starting but it sorta feels like I am tanking emotionally and I have no resiliency left.

I feel like shit. I feel sad and lonely and incompetent and stupid and bad at everything. I feel empty and hopeless.

I feel really good when I am out running. I feel fully in my body and alive and strong. Then I come down from the euphoria and I want to crawl under a rock.

Commit, then follow through.

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I have my eye on the Loch Ness Marathon; it’s the first weekend of October. I’ve been starting to improve fitness on the treadmill during the icy spells but today was a balmy 3C so I went outside for my 3 miles. Only 15 min/mile which isn’t fast yet but I have 35 weeks to go. I can work on fast over the next few months. It’s the uphill start that is really killing me.

This time I downloaded the Hal Higdon app since I have used his training plans for years but I did it with pen/paper and this time I don’t want to spend the time organising. Also the app gives feedback on your training and recommends workouts that will help with trying to meet intermediate goals. This is a good thing. I am going to work towards actually having a race pace this time: I want 13 minute miles. I am aware that barely qualifies as “running” and I don’t give a shit. I am going for faster than “I barely made it before they closed the finish line” this time.

I like that the app asks me to rate my effort and how tired I feel afterwards. I was really pleased that I wasn’t exhausted at the end today. I have that lovely rush of adrenaline and endorphins. I feel great.

I love my body.

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Most mornings I wake up and Noah has a hand or a knee on top of me and Shortie has shoved one hand under me and the other is clinging to me so hard I can barely roll over. This is a bit of a quandary as I am both an incredibly active sleeper and I need to wake up to use the toilet long before them. Getting out of the bed is a very delicate procedure.

I love this feeling. My middle child really doesn’t like to get out of bed unless I come and kiss them awake. They will lie in bed and tell me that their alarm was the gate to waking up but they can’t open it until they get a kiss from me because the kiss is the key.

We are noticing that we can’t get all of our stuff done if we try to do it after 9am breakfast. It’s just not working. So today we are getting up earlier. I have been waking up between 6:45 and and 7:15 for the past few weeks so I said let’s do 7:30. I set an alarm to make sure I can come kiss them awake. What time did I wake up? FUCKING 4:15!! My body is a shit. But it means I spent time medicating and talking to myself. I will be in a much better frame of mind for patiently guiding along my not so little partner. This kid is coming for me in size.

We are working on increasing fitness together. We are not buying a car. We have to be able to easily and casually get around this city and it will always be difficult if we aren’t more fit than we are. We have been consistent about doing it for a bit and I think it will continue until the trip in February quite easily. I need to find a way to have it extend past then because they have to be able to easily get back and forth to town a few times a day. That should be no big deal. It’s not even a full 15 minutes if I ride fairly casually. Just biking is not getting me to where I want to be in my body. I have to run.

And so does my kid. I’m going to make a rule though: we can’t process intense family matters. This is practice for compartmentalisation. You have to be able to talk about things sometimes and not at other times. It is part of how you live in the world. It is part of how you build relationships over time with gradual increases in intimacy. If you walk around sharing every negative thought loudly with every person who walks past they don’t want to help you or be your friend they want to move away from you. That is a simple reality. You have to learn how to choose when and how you share different parts of what you are thinking. We all do. Learning that has been really hard.

This not so little one still needs a lot of support and it has to be separate from everyone else. Alright then. I don’t care that you really want to stay up late and sleep late. I can’t do that. I will be a nasty fucking cunt. I can’t. So. Hey baby. Here is your key to larkdom. Three minutes and counting till the countdown to the need for the key. I better hit post.

Finding a new normal is hard

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Ok my morning hour and a half before breakfast now includes blogging, medicating, and walking on the treadmill. Hoo it takes some balance to do this. That’s only for days when it is too icy for us to go walk on the road, not every day. Mostly I want MC training outside. We are both noticing how it is much much much easier going really fast on a treadmill compared to outside. It’s not just about incline, we increase that on the treadmill.

I think it is kind of funny how hard it is to convince my kids that maintaining enough fitness to be able to suddenly go off on an adventure is easy compared to “Oh shit we have to start training really hard RIGHT NOW and then we will still be less fit and have less fun than we would if we didn’t slack off in between.” But then again… I haven’t been forcing time to do it on my own either. I have allowed the kids refusing to go with me to stop me. I shouldn’t have. I am sorry.

Yesterday I was super keen to get off the treadmill quickly so I did more than a mile at 6mph. That’s really fast for me. It felt so good. It’s funny in that part of what feels good about it is the way my back and side fat waddle really hard. My experience as a fat runner turned slightly less fat by running and starting up again as a fat runner is that wherever it is the most jiggly is going to reduce first. It’s not that I stop having pudge there it’s that the edge of it is what is eaten first by increased need for eating fat in exercise and then the bottom layers plump into muscle. I still look fat, but it’s less jiggly and wiggly and bouncy.

That feeling means that soon I will be able to put on my fucking shoes again without panting. I really hate panting while I’m tying my shoes because I have gotten that fat. I need more exercise than I have been getting. Riding my bike isn’t enough. I need to run. I also need the fucking yoga and I should probably be doing more strength training because I am old enough I have to worry about bone loss soon. My bones aren’t starting out fantastically strong as it is.

I have done this for the past few decades. Early in my 20’s I decided to get fit because I was on the hunt for new social groups and people to fuck and someone to marry. I started dancing a lot and I ran to get in/keep in shape for that. Early 30’s I wanted to run a marathon with my brother and then that went sideways and beautiful, wonderful Blacksheep saved my ass and proved she is better than my brother in every way. (I mean, duh?) Now I am early in my 40’s and realising that I want more than I am right now.

I want to run a marathon in less than 6 hours. I want 30 mile bike rides to not feel punishing. I want to be able to run faster and longer than my fucking kids because ha ha just because you are taller than me that doesn’t mean you are stronger or fitter. 😛

I want the strength to be basically running a small-holding through my 50’s, 60’s, and maybe even my 70’s.

The neighbor in the giant fancy house decided to stay. I reopened the negotiation for me buying the acre next to mine. I told him “Wouldn’t it be nicer if instead of yet another house being constructed that close to us between us and the 150 home housing estate that is coming up in the field on the other side we had a food forest? I would plant walnut trees cause I can’t have them on my property. I would put so so so much food and you would be welcome to come share any and all of it. I would increase the plant and animal ecosystem around here and give them a place to hide as the city is moving outward. But I can’t pay what you want me to pay for a house-plot. My spouse says my limit is £50k and I can’t pay that much just for the part with the septic system.”

It is really useful being able to blame your spouse for things.

This winter I am doing a self-study course on permaculture design. I ordered all of the course books recommended by the top permaculture education organisations. I am going to increase bio-diversity, damnit.

And let me tell you: if I had an extra acre of land I could definitely feed my family in hard times. Probably a lot more people than that.

I would build a root cellar for storing food outside in the winter for preservation. The ground will keep it stable.

Paused for breakfast. Discovered major flaw in combining treadmill and blogging. I get no count for steps. This suuuuuuucks. Now I am flapping my arm like I’m trying to take flight; I feel stupid. Fixed that. Never came back. Oh well. Time to read those books.

Movement is good for you; I hear.

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I posted most of this on the book of faces. But I should start using this space more.

Neurotic tracking is neurotic.

I wasn’t great about tracking my bike miles for the first few months of 2021 so I am pretty sure my year total is lower than it actually was. Then in 2022 we went to Texas and did way more walking than usual… but I didn’t bring my watch charging cable so I didn’t track any of it and then the watch strap completely broke and took a bit to replace in late July/early August. So numbers are fudged a bit.

That said: in 2021 by Sep 1st I had taken 1,653,242 steps and ridden 883 miles. (By the end of the year 2,300,012 steps and 1,165 bike miles.) In 2022 by Sep 1st I have taken 1,438,755 steps and ridden 908 miles.

If I don’t want to be behind last year’s final totals I’d better get my butt moving. Last year I was under my goals for myself in terms of movement by a fair bit. I don’t shoot for 10,000 steps a day. Personally I try for 7,000 and I have not been hitting it. In a year that adds up to 2,555,000 steps. I missed it by 254,988 last year. That’s over a month of missing steps. Ugh.

This year I am so far waaaaay lower. This is not good. I am already 262,245 down this year. That’s super sucky not good. Ugh. My bike odometer says I have ridden 920 since I got it the week of Christmas, so there wasn’t a lot at the end of December on this bike due to all of the ice on the roads.

I feel like I am very much not close to where I want to be in terms of being able to run (I have not regained fast-twitch muscle activity *at all* since the youngest was born. Ugh.) I know I need to sit down with the training book Blacksheep gave me and make a plan.

I think that the work I get done in the garden this September is going to mean that next year I will not have any big structural jobs and I may even have time to go work in the volunteer gardens in town. I haven’t managed much this year because I’ve been drowning in house/garden work.

My birthday is coming up so of course I am going deep into that funk of “What the hell am I actually doing with my life?” Well this year my hide-from-life birthday retreat will involve a 90 mile round-trip bike ride before camping in the rain. No weekend long binge of The Witcher this year.

In order to catch up on steps I need 9,150 each day between now and the end of the year. *sigh* I don’t have any specific goals about bike miles between now and the end of the year… but I feel better when I ride more and my kids have never regained their full fitness after covid. So. Ugh. Fudge.

I watch this shit like a hawk because if I get too sedentary then I lose strength and then I injure myself then I am stuck in a chair for months and the recovery period is slow and nightmarish. I haven’t had a big injury… in a long time. I can’t remember the last one. I am dancing on the edge of overwork issues with my arms and back right now with all the gardening/painting. Oofta.

Ok. Now that I have reflected it’s time to get off my butt. Daylight is no longer endless and apparently I have a lot of miles to cover. It doesn’t help my sense of impending doom that my birthday is coming. Stupid birthday. I hate you. It’s not that I mind getting older. It’s just that it is usually such a very terrible day. I feel bad that I can’t be present with my kids on my birthdays. But I can’t. That’s just the reality. No sense in denying a thing that is just true. Thanks, mom, for this gift that just keeps on giving. I mean… I know it isn’t her fault at this point. She hasn’t ruined a birthday in over 20 years. But there is a broken piece there. I have tried to fix it and failed. I am putting all of my try into other places; I have none left for something as stupid as my birthday.

Alright. Time to work.

Good thing to notice

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I’ve been going to yoga classes for a little bit now–a couple of months? Something that I notice when I’m there is that I talk to/about my body differently than I used to. I’m not sure when it changed because I don’t write this kind of thing much anymore. It’s noticeable to me because of what the instructors say. They tell you to check in with your body then pause and then tell you to get past the negative vocies.

These days when I check in with my body it’s gratitude. Thank you for being so strong. Thank you for carrying me so far. I am so proud of what you can do. Yeah, you hurt but isn’t it nice that you hurt so much less than you used to? I’m proud of us for learning how to take care of you better. I can feel the expression of love over time in my bones. I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am. I’m happy that I’ve had this kind of support and time.

I suspect that the combination of meds that I’m on at this point is helping. Amitriptyline is both for pain and it increases serotonin so it’s an antidepressant at the same time. The lisdexamfetamine feels like what I wish i could have had since I was a teenager. I genuinely believe I would have made fewer risky/bad choices if I had been on it.

I really wish I could have been properly assessed for ADHD and ASD as a teenager. It would have changed my life. I wonder if I would have accomplished as much? I wonder if I would have accomplished less? Ah well. It is what it is and all I can do is move forward.

It’s a lot better painting on this med combo. I don’t feel the urge to paint all night long “just to get through it”. I know it will make me feel like trash later and that’s not very tempting/alluring. I’ve been painting for a few weeks in a row now. My one short night of sleep (I got over 6 hours… so not a California short night) was when I was trying to clean up after painting. It took 15 hours to put things back in place and clean up the house enough for the cleaners to be able to come in and do actual cleaning instead of just walking around piles. My average for the last four weeks of sleep is about 8 and a half hours. That’s… kind of shocking for me being in a heavy work cycle. That’s just about healthy. Whoa. Balance.

I am finding a bit of appetite suppression from the amfetamine. I am eating smaller portions at meals (2 tacos instead of 3, 2 pancakes instead of 4, 1 bowl of soup instead of 2) and I feel less desire to have a late night dessert. Sometimes I skip lunch because I’m not that hungry but I eat a lot more dinner to make up for it and I think I eat about the same amount of food. I am drinking waaaay less alcohol (I’m probably taking 3-6 units a week down from 10-15) mostly because the amfetamine means you feel the alcohol less so I don’t feel as much desire to consume it. It still tastes good so I have some. And some of the wine I like is multiple units/serving in the glass I use so there you go. I’m flirting around 200. I haven’t seen lower than 203 since I arrived in Scotland and I’ve usually been in the 210’s and 220’s over the past 2 years so I am losing some weight. With the amount I exercise it has felt kind of weird that I keep as much extra padding as I have been. When I was in my 20’s and 30’s this much exercise would have kept me down in the 160’s.

Something that I think I am feeling in my body is I have dramatically fewer spikes of cortisol with this med combo. I really don’t feel anxious. Over the past two years I have noticed that in Scotland I feel dramatically less anxiety than I did in California as a baseline… even with the help that cannabis provided. I don’t have as much hypervigilance here. Prior to trying this med combo I was still feeling anxiety though in that way that I think is about my body being programmed to worry about everything as the natural state of being. That feels like it is stopping now. In California I had to be careful with my cannabis usage because I couldn’t/wouldn’t take it when I had to drive so I had a lot of up and down effect in terms of my experience in my body. I think there was enough break in cortisol production that my body could process food normally and not turn it all into emergency fat rations for later tragedy.

Since moving and being off cannabis entirely (the weight gain started right when I left California–I could tell in how my clothes fit) there has been a slow but gradual ballooning effect. Exercise and eating a balanced diet wasn’t having any impact at all. Despite the comments of ignorant people… I eat a fairly ridiculously healthy diet compared to the average person in the western world. We eat very little that is processed. We cook from scratch for something like 12-15 meals a week. (A lot of the other meals are leftovers.) We eat 4-9 servings of fruit and veg a day. I have cut a lot of the dairy and meat from my diet. (My family eats more than I do but I’m trying to limit inflammation.) My weight creeping up is not about eating too much and moving too little. Yeah yeah it’s anecdata but I have lived in this body for 40 years now and I’ve seen it through a lot of cycles. Cortisol/stress/anxiety.

It’s really dramatic having medications that lower the level of cortisol in my body on a 24/7 basis. I am consistent with the meds. I haven’t skipped many doses since I started so this is a really level sort of experience.

But my blood pressure has creeped up. I’m hoping that losing some weight will have an effect on that so that I can keep the meds. I really like how my brain feels. I have also halved the amitriptyline dosage on the advice of my GP to see if I can keep the positive effects with a lower dosage. She is mildly skeptical because my former dosage was already the “grandma dose” (her words) and she wonders if my body will be able to feel anything with half that. I’m trying it for a few weeks to see. I think it is worth trying. I really don’t want to lose the lisdexamfetamine. I feel like this is doing so much.

It feels like such a blessing that when I quiet down and look inward what I see is liking myself.