Friday, October 9, 2009 | by nathan

Moderation – Who Knew?

I mentioned earlier today in my Daily Photo post that Brian and I really enjoy taking walks together. We’ve always enjoyed doing this, and with two great and locally-owned grocery stores within walking distance of us, not to mention an absolutely gorgeous neighborhood and a hyperactive (if somewhat arthritic) dog, we are almost never at a loss for reasons to walk.

A part of our new determination comes from our ever-continuing and never-abating struggle to remain healthy. Brian and I are not, by nature, athletic people. Given the opportunity, we will – and occasionally do – stay on the couch ALL DAY on a Saturday playing video games. Seriously, on one particularly cold weekend last winter we finished the second two Zelda games in one day. Also, we love red meat on our grill, and we love beer.

Please, by all means take this moment to note what horrible gays we are.

All this is to say that over the last several weeks Brian and I have found some heretofore untapped impetus within ourselves to keep active and to eat well, and this has given us the chance to take a lot of walks, to prepare a lot of meals, and spend a fair amount of time at the gym together. It’s been nice.

But here’s the thing I’ve noticed about the tenor of our weight-loss efforts: they’re not frantic, angsty, "NOTHING TASTES BETTER THAN BEING THIN FEELS" bullshit flailing about in the land of small salads and three-hour gym visits. When I was 23 I got into the best shape of my life; I looked great, rocked a 30-inch waist and thought I looked fantastic. But do you know how I did it? BY BEING TWENTY-THREE YEARS OLD, mainly, but also by working out a ridiculous amount six days a week and eating just enough to avoid kidney failure. It’s also possible that ephedra was involved, before they banned it, but only just for awhile. Then, when I got sick of working out so much, I took up smoking a pack a day.

God, I looked so great. I still have most of those clothes, too. They’re in the bottom of my closet; Sam sleeps on them.

Then a whole bunch of stuff happened. I got older – dammit. WHO KNEW? Also, I quit smoking a pack a day, because I had traded up to Newports, which I only did because they were the only cigarettes I could buy with the absolute certainty that at the end of the night, people wouldn’t have bummed my entire pack away from me. I went to live with my dad and grew up a whole bunch.

I quit smoking, really, truly quit, when I started grad school. The same day, actually. Four months into that project I fell in love with Brian, and a few months after that I became a teaching assistant for the broadcasting department at my journalism school, which was an experience so stressful I occasionally have surreal flashbacks; it was my Vietnam.

Some people lose weight when they’re stressed. I gain. I GAIN. In 2 years my waist went from a 30 to like a 34, 35 at least. And it’s gone up and down since then, because every once in awhile – twice a year, say – I’d get so disgusted with my disgusting self that I’d throw all my determination behind going to the gym and eating like a bird with diarrhea. Until I got sick of that, because that kind of determination gets old, eventually.

But being in love does a funny thing to your vanity, or at least, it did to mine; it started to suffocate it. It’s wonderful being able to see yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you and finds you attractive. It took awhile – we’re almost five years into this relationship and I still stare awkwardly at myself in the mirror almost every morning. But I do it less.

For the first time in my life I am keenly aware that I have much better things to do than sit around looking sexy, that I have more to give this world than what it can see. So two weekends ago when my dad came up and wanted to take us all out to Eischen’s for more fried chicken than the human body was meant to hold, I did. And I ate until I stopped being hungry; it was delicious and revelatory. When I’m at the gym and I am sick to death of working out, I stop. When I pass by the overfull candy dish at work and my taste buds are SCREAMING for something sweet, I ask us if we’d like to have a Starburst. And I have one. And I don’t go around for the rest of the day feeling like I’ve done something naughty.

I’ll never look like I did at 23. Never again. I’m turning 30 next year, and the thing I love the most about getting older is how I’ve grown out of my youthful attitude that everything in my life has to be all or nothing. Just because I had a cookie with lunch doesn’t mean I can’t go to the gym. Just because I only had 250 words in me to write for the day doesn’t mean the whole project is crap. I’m probably never going to do a triathlon; that doesn’t mean I can’t spend half an hour on the elliptical every day. Not every thought has to be followed to its ultimate conclusion, and doing the best I can does not require that I destroy myself in the process.

I’m learning how to hold paradoxes and contradictions within myself and just be, better. And to be honest, I wouldn’t trade that for a 31-inch waist, because it’s made my life so easy and free and fun. I like me, now, however I look. I just LIKE ME. Amazing, right? Who knew?

Thursday, August 13, 2009 | by nathan

The Right Side of 6 a.m.

I have a friend who says that if she wanted to see a sunrise, she could just videotape a sunset and then watch it in reverse. In general I’m a fan of this line of thinking; who needs early mornings? Unfortunately, it seems, I do, as I’ve gained a bit of weight this year, and so every morning finds me struggling to drag my carcass out of bed and make it to the gym to do that thing … oh, Jeez, what’s it called … exercise. Move around. Turns out? It helps. Only the problem is you have to do it every day. I mean, we all know someone who smoked and drank every day of their lives and lived to be 98, but you have to assume this won’t be you. And as I have a few plans that involve not having to buy new jeans anytime soon, there I am, every morning.

I actually rather enjoy going. Which is to say, for me, that I try to keep a positive attitude about the whole thing. The other day when we pulled up in the morning, there was even more to enjoy:

Now. I enjoys my sleep as much as the next, and while a sunrise in and of itself will never be reason for me to see the non-dreamy side of 5:30 a.m., this did make it all worth it:

I’m not sure what they’re building down there, but there is a lot of construction, and I really loved the look of those cranes silhouetted against the sky.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 | by nathan

You Smell Awful

When I tell people about my gym they sometimes ask why I continue to go there. The short answer is that they have a pool and cheaper membership dues than most other places. The long answer is that I joined in May 2007, and then in April 2008 the gym’s ownership changed and I had to go under another one-year contract, which is now almost up, allowing me, as of the end of this month, to quit at a moment’s notice with no penalties. I’m just not sure I can handle another commitment right now.

Also, the people at my gym are not those too-attractive intimidatrons that populate most workout spaces, the people who look they’ve been carved out of cream cheese and likely spend all day on the treadmill. They’re older doctors and state legislators, mostly, with just enough ridiculously attractive people thrown in to keep me running maybe that extra mile when I want to quit but have no excuse to.

Some of the people, though, my God. There’s Inappropriate Talking Guy. ITG, for short, is about 60 years old and creepy, one of those people who corners total strangers and tells them his whole fucked-up life story about his alcoholic, abusive parents, a story that is somehow woven throughout with a fair dose of conspiracy theory and really jag-tastic sexual commentary. People get cornered in the locker room or on the tradmill by ITG and immediately get this look on their faces like they’re being drowned in their own bathtubs. I avoid him at all costs. Mostly he chooses to catch young 20-25 year-old girls on their machines and talk their ears off, all while leering at them so hard it looks like his eyes are going to pop out of his skull. Every time he comes anywhere near me I give him a threatening look; so far I have yet to be cornered.

ITG has a new habit as of this week. He seems to have purchased a new 13" MacBook, and he brings it up to the workout floor, sets it in one of those plexiglas holders normally used for propping up magazines and books, and proceeds to surf the internet while on the elliptical machine. It’s weird, but he’s not surfing porn, and he’s not talking to people, so I’m content just to peer over his shoulder and see what sites he’s reading. It’s mostly CNN.

Then there’s Perfume Lady. PL arrives about 45 minutes after I do and always takes her place on the arc trainer next to me. Her face is buried so deeply in layers of makeup that she looks like someone iced her, like a wedding cake. Her hair is always perfectly tressed out in a style one assumes is meant to resemble Dido circa 2000. In her mid-40s, she purchases her workout clothes at Victoria’s Secret. One imagines she’s, oh, I dunno, maybe a Federal Judge or a world-renowned neurosurgeon.

Perfume Lady wouldn’t even cross my radar – at 160 beats per minute my thoughts are more or less restricted to "HOLY GOD WHEN WILL THIS BE OVER." Also I’m constantly doing math in my head, figuring out to the third decimal point exactly what percentage of my workout I have completed. It’s really, really hard to do long division in your head at 160 BPM. Perfume Lady has raised my ire because, as her name implies, she bathes in cheap Walgreens-brand perfume (one assumes that no sane person would pay more than a few quid to smell that awful). The gallons and gallons of perfume are a strategic measure aimed at hiding the fact that the woman smokes probably 3-4 packs a day, a fact that is betrayed not only by her yellowed fingertips but also by the fact that perfume cannot cover up cigarette smoke.

So, Perfume Lady walks around in a cloud of stink, and every morning she climbs up on the arc trainer next to mine – for some reason, always next to me – and sets the difficulty to 5 (default is 15; I do 40). Her eyes search the room for potential soul mates, or possibly just men who lost their senses of smell in childhood accidents. Her cloud chokes me; being on the machine next to her feels like having my windpipe pinched ever so slightly. Every day I work out next to her I have a headache the entire rest of the day.

So what do I do? How do I handle Perfume Lady without being a total douche? I could move machines, but see, there are only 3 arc trainers in the whole gym, and by the time she comes along I’ve usually been on the thing for 30-40 minutes and have got myself into a rhythm. The math problems are coming easier, Matt Lauer is on the TVs, moving is just not really that simple. Anyway, the furthest away I could get would be to put one empty machine between us, and the cloud is not small. This morning was particularly awful, and every time I closed my eyes I imagined myself reaching over and slapping her right off the machine and onto the ground, screaming "OH MY GOD DO YOU KNOW HOW BADLY YOU SMELL? YOU ARE CHOKING ME TO DEATH, LADY."

But I don’t. Not sure what to do, but it’s not that. In the meantime I’m going to take some sinus medication.

Monday, February 9, 2009 | by nathan

The Perils Of Gardening and Sulfites

This was my garden plot on Friday at about 1:30 p.m.:

Here it is on Saturday afternoon, probably about 3:30:

…which is how you give yourself a sunburn the first week in February.

Check ‘em out side by side:

The good news is that this got done. The bad news is as follows (and then more good news after that).

This was my mission on Saturday; well, this and to get done and cleaned up in time to invite some friends over for grilling and beer. All was on track to get done, but when I’d finished the insane amount of tilling and shoveling this all required – my husband, meanwhile, was occupied with cleaning out the garage and gutting the small flowerbed on the west side of our house – we both were deathly hungry when we finished. We showered and changed out of our nasty gardening clothes (I noticed that I’m starting to smell like my dad) and I said I thought that Braum’s burgers sounded like absolute heaven. So Brian went and got said, and we ate happily.

One hour later we were splayed out on the couch, full of burgers and crinkle fries and vanilla shakes that had tasted, in fact, like heaven but left us feeling like hell. A threaning nausea and a deep sense of foreboding had come over us, coupled with an almost pathological inability to get off the couch. For what was not the first time, Braum’s burgers had made us sick. We had to call off dinner with friends and just kinda lay on the sofa, not doing much and feeling like losers.

The next morning we felt better, and I knew there was still some serious work to do in the garden – the first round of tilling had gone well but a thick network of grass roots remained underneath that, and I needed to start tearing it up some more. This year’s patch is going to be the site of a war against creeping Bermuda, as this lawn has been in place since 1941 and I refuse to use chemical pesticides. So I got out the tiller once more and went to war with my yard. I dug up as much of the root system as possible and then tilled what was left. It seemed a good start.

Meanwhile, Brian changed the oil in my car because he’s awesome.

I was exhausted – two solid days of holding as tightly as possible to a gas-powered rototiller will make you feel like you’ve shaken your entire insides loose and now they’re all just hanging in there, sorta loosely assembled like a plastic model of the human body. We relaxed for awhile with a few Netflix-on-Demand episodes of Dead Like Me and, hungry in spite of the previous night’s episode, we had Chipotle. My head began to hurt pretty badly but I chocked it up to allergies. I’ve had more allergy-induced sinus headaches than I can count so it barely registered.

Cut to a few hours later. I took a bath and read a few chapters of The Corrections and by the time I got out the Grammys were on. My headache started getting so bad that I couldn’t think, and could barely open my eyes. Every sound from the television, all the lights in the house – all sources of extreme pain. So after snapping at Brian a few times – because I’m a jerk and an awful husband – I went upstairs to the dark, cool bedroom and lay down and closed my eyes. Brian, because he is sweet and kind, came upstairs and lay next to me, television off despite his extreme love for the Grammys. I was asleep by 8:30.

In retrospect it was stupid of me to ignore the allergy aspect of doing the first yard work of the year – I tilled up probably 50 square feet of raw Bermuda without taking steps to manage the inevitable allergy attack that would ensue. In addition I think I’ve uncovered a deep allergy to fast food and high-sodium food in general – I get headaches every time I eat lunch meat, soup, any kind of high-sodium and processed food (my recently acquired allergy to red wine makes me think I’m allergic to sulfites), and I think all these things (Braum’s and Chipotle within 24 hours of each other?!?! REALLY NATHAN?!?) conspired to basically whack me in my stupid head. I slept from 8:30 last night until about 7 this morning and just barely felt good enough to go to work.

Stupid body. Or, incredibly smart body, if this is its way of getting me the hell away from processed foods forever. However, I do need to say that if I can no longer enjoy fast food or red wine, the universe really ought to give me back pecans, to which I developed an allergy at about 21. Come on, Universe, it’s only fair.

The good news, however, is that my garden is now twice as big as it was, and my spinach and zucchini sprouts are going wild. Soon these tiny little plants will be spinach in my backyard:

How wild is that?

Monday, January 5, 2009 | by nathan

That Jacuzzi Is A Whore!

It’s the first Monday of the New Year, and so, like every other body-conscious-but-not-really-because-let’s-love-ourselves-holy-shit-my-jeans-don’t-fit-I’m-as-mad-as-Oprah person in this great American mass of humanity, I’m hitting the gym again today, hard. It used to be so easy to stay in shape, didn’t it? I seem to remember a time when my piddly little 30-40 minute workouts did the trick to keep me in size 30 jeans; now, we need the big guns. Brian and I are committing to weight loss and general fitness as a couple, getting up in the mornings to hit the gym so we can have our evenings free. My job also gives me an hour of paid time a week to do something health related; I’m using mine to go swimming on my lunch breaks.

It’s fantastic, my gym. There aren’t any roid-heads, just tired medical students and aging state legislators, mostly. It’s got a pool, which is a must for me, as lap swimming is my favorite form of exercise; it’s easier on the joints than running and gives me the added benefit of smelling of chlorine all year, rather than just in the summer.

Today was Day 1, or, rather, Day However Many Days Old I Am, as fitness really is a lifelong commitment and not something one should get into for short spurts. (I’ve learned this the hard way, like by taking the last five weeks off from working out at all).

I left my office about 11:30 and drove downtown. Despite being bundled against the 27-degree weather and dressed in a shirt, tie, slacks and sport coat for work, I was in the locker room and changed in a matter of seconds. I grabbed a towel and headed out to the pool. Greeting me as I exited the locker room was a big sign: "POOL TEMPERATURE 73.7 DEGREES (cold)".

The only thing I hate about this pool is that its giant picture windows look out on the Health Science Center lobby, where, among other things, dozens of people every day sit to enjoy their lunch from the Health Nut Cafe while looking out over a lap pool. They dream of watching the next Michael Phelps as he trains for glory; instead, they get me. Today, they got to see me read the sign, go and stick my leg from the knee down into the frigid, hypothermia-inducing water, give it a minute’s thought, and then decide, no, the way to start a new fitness regimen is not by contracting a cold by swimming in freezing water. I’ve done it to myself before, and it wasn’t pleasant.

No problem, I thought; I’ll just go upstairs for a run. Only in the rush to get home and changed after this morning’s semi-successful attempt at a workout (short version: It kicked my ass), I’d left my shoes on my bathroom floor. Fine, I told myself, today’s a wash, but I can at least get in the hot tub for a few minutes so I felt like I did something.

I lowered myself into the stew, my leg tingling where I’d put it into the melted glacier that was the pool. I was alone, and I closed my eyes, laid back and tried to zone out for a few minutes. When I opened them again, I realized I was no longer alone in the hot tub but had been joined by a, um, rather large gentleman who had stationed himself at the opposite end of the jacuzzi and whose back was to me. I didn’t welcome the company, exactly, but as long as he didn’t talk to me, I …

Wait, is he humping the jet? 

Sure enough, this rather large gentleman had a foot up on the underwater bench and was slowly moving his pelvis back and forth toward the jet. Had he not seen me in here? Did he not care? As quietly and quickly as possible, I leapt out of the hot tub and ran for the showers. Let me tell you: they don’t make water hot enough.

I dressed and quickly left the gym, stopping by Subway on my way back to the office, wondering if there was any way I might ever un-see what I’d seen. My newest Resolution is, of course, to never go in that hot tub again, and to pray I never see that guy anywhere, though I only got a look at his back, so I think I might be okay on that front.

Here and I just realized that in my rush to get away I left my goggles sitting on a chair by the hot tub. Oh, well, fuck. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 | by nathan

“Jim Never Vomits At Home.”

Brian and I woke up yesterday in the worst kind of funk. Before I left for work we’d both had pretty disgusting symptoms, and he’d been vomiting for at least half an hour. I was able to hold everything down – by pure force of will and not having breakfast, mostly – and so, it being a Monday and all, I decided I’d venture in to work. I was there for about an hour when I decided that, nope, I needed to go home.

Then the phone rang.

Someone needed to meet with me and would be there in 45 minutes. Unfortunately it wasn’t the sort of thing I could put off, and so I patiently waited, trying to hold back my impulse to run into the nearby (women’s) bathroom and throw up. I managed to get through two meetings before packing my stuff up at 11 a.m. and running for the car. I stopped by our local grocery on the way home and loaded my arms up with 2-liter bottles of 7-Up, Campbell’s Chicken Soup, and People magazine. I got home, let the dog out, and crawled into bed with Brian, where we both lay, groaning in displeasure, catching patches of sleep here and there.

It was awful, but by evening I felt well enough to have a bowl of soup. I drank almost an entire 2 liters of 7-Up by myself, which stopped me throwing up. We decided we’d watch my favorite movie Airplane and see if it made us feel better, but by the time the movie ended we were both passed out on the sofa.

At about 7:45 that evening I got a phone call from our friend Jayson, who knew that we’d been sick without us even telling him.

See, Saturday night we’d staged a sort of impromptu leg of the Great Oklahoma Road Trip, to a well-known rib joint in south-central Oklahoma, not too far from home. I’d taken a few photos and planned to blog it this week, fully recommending that everyone try it out. Then, we got sick, and I found out that two of the friends who went along with us were sick with the exact same thing, the symptoms of which closely mirrored when I got food poisoning last month.

Now; I won’t un-recommend it, exactly, though I’m not going to name the place here; usually when a place gets hold of some bad vegetables it’s not their fault, exactly. It doesn’t mirror unsanitary conditions within the restaurant. But seeing as how I’ve never been that big a fan of ribs to begin with, I will just say that it’s going to be awhile before I head back to this particular rib joint.

Everybody’s feeling better and back at work today. Tomorrow’s my birthday and I’m trying to decide if/where to have a small dinner, all while gearing up for our eleven-hour drive to Colorado on Saturday. Getting sick is never convenient, but this one’s been kind of a bitch.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 | by nathan

Sometimes Local News Has A Point To Make

I never, never, never pay attention to the "scare stories" on the news – "THE HOUSEHOLD PRODUCT THAT IS KILLING YOUR CHILDREN!" "GO OUTSIDE AND TURN OFF THE GAS!" "WHY WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!" 

That’s why when I heard that there was a salmonella outbreak in tomatoes affecting 16 states including my own, I paid it little attention. I grow my own tomatoes, I thought, so there’s nothing to worry about.

Then, yesterday morning at 6:15 a.m., I woke up, ran downstairs, and ejected at least 3 internal organs from my body. I spent the entire day sweating, puking, then sweating a whole bunch more, and puking again. I called my mom the pharmacist; she said it sounded like salmonella poisoning. I don’t think I had any tomatoes, but it sure as hell came from somewhere.

Effing just great. I’m feeling a tad better today; I made myself a smoothie about an hour ago and so far it has stayed down, though I can tell my body is still trying to make up its mind. Brian’s so sweet; he brought a television up to the bedroom so I wouldn’t have to lay all sweaty on the leather sofa downstairs. Regular posting, etc. will resume once I feel better.

Thursday, April 17, 2008 | by nathan

Blowin’ In The Wind

Oklahoma has been living up to its reputation lately; the wind is sweeping down the plains like a mother. I stayed home from work yesterday because when I woke up I felt pinned to the bed by centrifugal force, the way you feel after a night of really hard drinking. My head had been throbbing the night before but I’d managed to get to sleep; when I woke up it felt like I’d had brain surgery and they’d left the saw in. I tried to get in the shower and get ready for work – I really did – but I just couldn’t seem to manage it.

Having allergies really is the worst; you’re not contagious, so usually if you’re suffering from an attack there’s still really no excuse not to go to work, but you spend a whole lot of your time feeling sort of vaguely sick and congested. I’ve tried every medicine, prescription and over-the-counter, and found them to be of some help, though not a great boon. Allergy shots didn’t seem to help much, and when it gets really bad the only thing that really helps me to breathe is Afrin, which can be addicting if taken more than 2-3 days in a row. Exercise really helps, as it does for everything.

Have you noticed that? Have you noticed that in every single "scary medical story" they do on the news, it’s always like, "NEW RESEARCH SHOWS THAT PEOPLE WHO EAT ORANGES ARE 6% MORE LIKELY TO GET COLORECTAL CANCER!!!!!    … except unless they got regular exercise, then not so much."

I feel like my body just works better on a fundamental level when I’m getting regular exercise. I’ve been to the gym once this week, as we’ve been trying to get our backyard sorted out and that hasn’t left time for much else after work. Monday night I put down two cherry tomato plants, six bell pepper plants – two in each color: red, yellow, and orange – and jalapenos. I planted two mint plants in pots and put my first strawberries in the ground last night. Brian, meanwhile, has tilled the grass from our flower beds and cut down some very ugly bushes and weeds and pioneer trees we had going back there. Talk to me in two months when I have more vegetables than I know what to do with and see how much I like gardening.

Anyway, my allergies are better today, thanks to a nice little cocktail of pain killers, antihistamines, and nasal sprays, and the sleep-of-the-dead brought on by Advil PM last night. Here’s hoping yesterday was the worst of it.

Monday, February 11, 2008 | by nathan

Swolley Eye

Take a close look. See how my right eye is all swolley? I’m opening it real wide here for the camera, but trust me, it’s true, it happens often, and it hurts a lot more than it looks like.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008 | by nathan

The Abs Diet Audiobook

I really, really, really hate diet books. I do. I hate them so much that I’m not even sure why I gave this one a chance, except that I subscribe to Men’s Health magazine, which I love, and I’ve been frustrated with my efforts at the gym of late.

The science makes a lot of sense here, I suppose, but here’s what bugged me, what bugs me about all this kind of stuff: we all grew up knowing what was healthy, what was good for us, etc. I can’t stand it when "experts" try to tell us that the things we’ve known all along are wrong, are lies, are actually THE THINGS THAT ARE KILLING US. This book engages in less of that than most diet and health books, which is good, but it did just enough that when I was listening to it – usually at the gym, oddly enough – that I’d occasionally have to grit my teeth and try not to scream. Still, I guess I won’t be able to post a real review of it until six weeks from now, will I?