Cheryl Katz

After a whole week with a sinus infection laying me flat, I dragged my butt back to the gym last night, and rode the momentum tonight.  45+ minutes each evening of sweat-dripping action, so something good must come of it.  I can’t say much for my motivation level at present, but once I drop another couple pounds, I’ll probably be into it.

Today I gave notice that Sami will be leaving her current day care to start at the Silverman preschool in March.

I had to do it today, because yesterday Sami’s favorite teacher told me that the 18-month+ teachers were already fighting over who gets Sami in their group. And I also know that Sami is quite attached to said teacher (Melissa) and cries whenever she leaves the room. I learned that sometimes Melissa would carry her around to other classrooms, which is how the other teachers already know her.

Knowing all this, I had to give my notice. I told Melissa when I ran into her in the parking lot this morning. At work I took a short break to write the letter, and I literally cried writing it. Sami has learned and grown so much with her current teachers, and they have loved her and taken such good care of her. Not to mention that I have seen them every morning for several months now. I’m going to miss them.

In other news today, I’m feeling generally better. I still wake up feeling like I’ve been drinking heavily and continue to feel that way all day, then collapse in bed well tired out. And it’s not because my doctor sent me home with cough/codeine syrup. (I haven’t been taking enough, I guess, afraid to overload Sami even though I take it a full 8 hours before she is supposed to nurse.) I think that the rapid drainage of mucus from one’s head sets a person off kilter.

So, no gym action since last week, and there won’t be any until I kick this sinus ordeal in the butt.

Finally, got some spinning done tonight. I felt well enough to stay up past 8 PM. I’m spinning some buttery soft, brown Blue Faced Leicester wool, but it’s just so monotonous because it’s really hard to see progress building on the bobbin – it’s all thin and brown. Someday this bobbin will be done and then I’ll decide if I want to spin another whole bobbin, or just ply it back on itself a la center pull ball. Only time will tell, though when I finish this bobbin I will definitely need a break from this particular fiber.

I’ve had the flu for 4 days running now. I had a high fever of 103 on Sunday night, low temperatures all day yesterday, and now my fever is rising again. (I am going to see my doctor this afternoon, no worries.)

The worst part is this dry cough, so irritating that I have practically no voice left.

Anyway, it’s funny what the delirium of sickness does to you. Yesterday I spent part of the afternoon weaving in and out of a haze, clicking links on YouTube. (I’d been looking for information on Neti Pots, which search led me to YouTube in the first place….) I found myself chain clicking in ways I’m pretty sure I’d never normally do.

But I found this, which is awesome, I think. It was funny without being so funny that it made me laugh out loud, which would have triggered a coughing fit, which would have tainted the experience for sure.

Wednesdays are my scheduled Days Off from the gym, seeing as they are hallowed holy days on which Ben pays tribute to the Bar. (That would be, Belgian Ale Mecca of San Diego, the regular Wednesday Bar, O’Brien’s.)

So even if I weren’t still swimming in my own sinuses, I would still have stayed home. Though in my case I finished up some of the work I had left unfinished when I left the office early, and otherwise rested up and went to bed early.

Back to the grind tonight, methinks. I don’t see how a half hour of moderate cardio should interfere whatsoever with what’s going on in my sinuses, seeing as how I’m not really sick, just severely irritated and suffering the dry air.

In other news… after dropping Sami off at day care this morning, I nabbed a cup of coffee in the lobby. At the same time, a dad was punching himself in using the computer login system they have, and he was holding his younger son while the elder one was bouncing off the walls (wish I had that kind of energy at 8 AM.) The younger boy looked straight at me and said, “NO MUFFINS!?”

It was true, there were no muffins out with the coffee. I shared his outrage. I love kids.

The Santa Anna winds sweep in from time to time and fill my head with snot.

This about sums up my day. But in the name of routine establishment, I dragged my butt to the gym nonetheless. I just turned on the elliptical and went for 30 minutes on some program. It was actually a decent workout, despite that I gave it no mental energy whatsoever.

8 oz of Dark Blue Faced Leicester

See my big 8-ounce pile of dark colored Blue Faced Leicester (I think I am in love with this fiber!)

This is quite an undertaking. My plan is to fill up two bobbins with it, think about filling a third bobbin with it, and then turning it into a two- or three-ply yarn, and from there, into mittens!

On the bobbin

It is soft and sensually joyful to work with, which is probably what is getting me through the monotony. That and episode after episode of Good Eats on my TiVo.

Edited to add, that since this post looks somewhat akin to refried crap with the text being so short, I’m going to add that I absolutely, utterly find spinning fiber to be a daily necessity. I am making the executive decision to prioritize it below my gym routine, but the upshot of this is that I’m just getting an hour less sleep at night, because giving up the spinning is not an acceptable solution for me.

When this particular spin is done with, my next project will be to finish my mom’s and my dad’s Christmas presents. Yeah, they are late, but there was too much going on in December, so I already gave them the heads up. They will be spectacular, whenever I am able to complete them.

Gym check – 60 minutes of cardio Monday night. I put Harry Potter 5 on my iPod and it got me through. 500 calories, and boy am I feeling it this morning; I was starving!

I have been steadily working on my current spinning project, a dark blue faced leicester top that I got from Spunky Eclectic. It is nigh upon the softest thing I have ever touched, and I’m working on an 8-oz pile of it which is… taking nigh upon forever to spin up. But it is a fantastic wind-down activity in the evening, especially after a workout and a shower. (Haha, winding on yarn to wind down… ok, I will not make a career out of punnery.)

For someone who sure loves my camera a lot, I haven’t been on top of the photojournalism lately. I promise pictures of the wheel, my spinning, and maybe a new shot of Sami sometime soon.

I recently heard that a friend of mine has lost 37 pounds over the last almost-year. I am beyond impressed at her achievement and dedication, not to mention totally stoked for what this means for her overall health and happiness.

I then realized that I have gained as much weight in the last two years. Realizing that you’ve gained as much weight as someone’s phenomenally substantial weight loss is, to say the least, discouraging.

So here is a frank discussion of my health and fitness that has been a long time coming, thrashing through a dense jungle of excuses, a swamp of misaligned priorities and dodging a fair measure of legitimate time management concerns.

When I found out I was pregnant, I weighed 158 pounds. This was my lowest recorded weight since before college, and continues to hold that record. On Monday (a week ago tomorrow) I weighed 194. This is lower than my highest pregnancy weight (204) and lower than my highest non-pregnant weight (218) but nonetheless an unhealthy weight. Since giving birth to Sami, my lowest weight has been about 178 – not a bad starting point. But between struggling with the wholesale committment of being a mom, post-partum depression and a general willingness to explain away any free time I have, all with a heaping helping of dietary laziness, I managed to pack on some pounds. I am sure I don’t look as heavy as I am. But that is neither here nor there.

If I had it all to do again, there are a laundry list of mistakes I’m ashamed to have made that I would know to avoid. I would have started putting Sami down to sleep on her own much earlier – at night, age 3 months, and from birth any time she was already asleep. I would let my husband help me, and I would take the breaks that everyone says Mom is supposed to take that I really never did. I would pay attention to my portion sizes even while breastfeeding early on, to jumpstart the weight loss process. And I would recognize that taking this time for myself did not signify an abandonment of my child or a lesser committment to motherhood. A huge lesson I’ve learned is that part of being a mother is recognizing that Dad has a role, too. That, and that babysitters are OK.

So with that all said, and the gusty winds of newfound conviction in my sails, here is my Fitness Plan:

1) At least three nights a week, after Sami has gone to bed, haul my ass to the gym for at least 30 minutes of sweat-dripping, heart-pumping cardio. I’ve found that maintaining a minimum average heart rate of 140 is required for me to see results. If this committment means I spend a bit less time spinning, so be it.
2) Two workouts every weekend. There is SO MUCH TIME every weekend, there is no excuse not to use one hour of each day toward improving my health.

3) Drink more water. I chow down on a lot of junk food when in fact I might be just as satisfied with a glass of water. Certainly, agreeing to myself to drink more water will at least get me thinking about things more.

4) Up my veggies. Ben and Sami are not so fond of the leafy greens. I can’t change Ben, but I can cook healthier things for myself, and make a regular effort to offer them to Sami. At least one of us will eat healthfully, possibly two, but ultimately, I can’t wait for Ben to be on the wagon to get there myself. So it’s every mom for herself, ’round these parts.

Toward these ends, this weekend I’ve worked out twice! Last night Jen and I bust out 40 minutes of cardio. This afternoon I mustered up 50 minutes of cardio, including 10 minutes on the StairMaster (the down-escalator kind) on Level 5 (which I had serious doubts about being able to complete.) Today’s workout, according to the machines, racked up a total expenditure of 400 calories. I doubt that’s what I actually burned, but it’s a number to vaguely quantify in my head what I accomplished.

I jammed along with my iPod, to actually the strangest collection of unsuspectedly good workout music. I kicked things off with Neil Diamond’s “Hell Yeah,” not the fastest song, but it is one fierce mother, and the perfect pace for the StairMaster, which wears me out at a deceptively slow cadence. Here’s what I had on:

Neil Diamond:

Hell Yeah
Solitary Man
You Got to Me
I Got the Feelin’ (Oh No, No)
Thank the Lord for the Night Time
Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon
Shilo
Red, Red Wine
The Boat That I Row

Neil Diamond is strangely inspirational. There’s nothing “virtuoso” about his music, but it’s all just well composed, melodic and with an uplifting rhythm. And “Hell Yeah” is one of the most inspiring songs I have ever heard. (Much moreso than “Coming to America” (the Neil Diamond song, not from the Eddie Murphy movie), Eye of the Tiger, or that mega-dance song that gets played at nearly every sports event ad nauseam.) The idea of someone looking back and examining their life, unapologetically, and determining that he gave his one hundred percent, well, that idea will at least get me through a forty minute workout. It inspires me to really consider what I want in my life and make sure that I’m setting priorities rather than making excuses. What will I say for myself when I am sixty or ninety?

I think that “The Boat that I Row” is my new theme song, however.

The boat that I row won’t cross no ocean
The boat that I row won’t get me there soon
But I got the lovin’ if you got the notion
The boat that I row’s big enough for two

I’m not going to be a supermodel in this lifetime, most likely. I may never be a professional spinner, I’m certainly not a mom that “everyone’ says is “doing it right.” I’m not the smartest person ever, I’ve got my strengths but my weaknesses also, and I’m not perfect. But I’ve got my own groove going, and I’m not so much interested in what others think of my choices any more. I row to my own rhythm, so to speak, and I may be saying this as more of an affirmation for myself than to really describe it to y’all, but there it is. I’ve got room in my boat for anybody, really, who doesn’t want to throw rocks at my choices, even if they do disagree.

Raffi: Bananaphone

This song is so hilariously funny, and also just so much fun to hear and to sing, it makes a perfect break in the middle of a workout. It may be cheesy, but I think it’s a good song, and I love it.

Peter, Paul and Mary: Puff, the Magic Dragon

Go ahead, take the pace down a little bit. Just don’t stop. Got a little more workout to go.

Laurie Berkner: Victor Vito

This kids’ song came on not too long after I moved to the treadmill. I was right in front of a TV that was showing an ice dancing competition (is it the Olympics already? This is what I get for cancelling local channels on Dish) and the dance and the music from my iPod synched up perfectly. And was thusly hilarious.

By the by, I think that kids’ music make awesome workout tunes, because the songs are generally upbeat and fun. Tell me I’m the only mom to whom this ever happens – a kids’ song slips in by accident on the iPod playlist? It CANNOT BE TRUE.

Rufus Wainwright:

Do I Disappoint You?
Going To A Town

Mmmmm, politically relevant modern operatic pop music. Working out to these songs felt kind of like surfing a huge ocean wave (not that I’ve done this, but I’m just imagining.) I harnessed the energy of something enormous and it bumped me through an extra 5 minutes of grueling treadmill work.

So there it is. No more excuses, from here on out it’s priorities and accountability only. You are my accountability, internets. There may be periodic gym checks, and the occasional weight check. This is my committment. 2008 is my year.

I hate other drivers. I suppose this is partly related to the fact that my schedule has me in traffic during morning and evening rush hour every weekday, but I also think that it has to do with the fact that other drivers are inconsiderate at best, and dumb as rocks at worst.

First, the people who won’t let you change lanes if you turn your signals on. I assure you, NOT letting me in, isn’t going to get you to your destination any faster.

Then the people who not only don’t signal their lane changes, but do the slow drift from one lane to another. This move is even better when the driver is traveling at 75-80% of your speed and the waft over in front of you as if it simply isn’t possible that you could hit them.

My favorite is when someone tailgates me. I signal to pull over a lane, and they decide to speed up and go around me (again, no signals). This usually results in some confusion, and a near-rear-ending of my car.

Well, this isn’t turning out to be quite the rant I thought it would. I simply cannot recall all the rude moves I’ve experienced on the road even this week alone. However, the moral of the story is that my blood boils at these stupid encounters, and I should truthfully find a way to excuse myself from driving at all. Let the barbarians have the road; I’ll just walk civilly.

Edited to add: The too slow person in front of you, who speeds up when you politely go around so that you can’t pass them and slip back into the lane you were in. Passive aggressive driving nonsense.

Jar Jar Kucinich. Princess Leia Orbama. Admiral Akbill. These aren’t particularly relevant, but they are hysterical.

Posted here so it can never die.

Runner-up: Looking to raise a child in the UNIX method, to keep shell users alive.