I am definitely feeling my lack of sleep last night. I haven’t figured out how to adjust from weekend schedule to boot camp schedule yet at all. The easy solution, of course, would be to not get things so out of whack on the weekends, but then I’d also like a trillion million dollars (I still haven’t received that check).
My trip to San Antonio was…well, it just was. The training was really good, if not a bit slow paced in parts, but I definitely learned a lot. The location of the training however, sucked massive donkey balls and I’d rather eat my eyes out than go back to that part of San Antonio ever again.
I’m not much of a fan of the city to begin with. It’s not attractive, and besides the Riverwalk, I don’t find it very interesting. And I’ve been to the Riverwalk a lot, so that’s not even that cool anymore. But this training wasn’t anywhere near there anyway. Rather, it was in north San Antonio (right off loop 1604 and hwy 281, if you know the area), and by gods that place is just a big freeway surrounded by the world’s largest Walmart parking lot.
Who designed that area, really? Or did it just expand too quickly and new businesses just kind of pooped themselves anywhere they could fit?
The access roads to the highway are frightening, and good luck ever getting in without cutting someone off who’s going 70mph down them. And if you avoid the access roads, you’re stuck in this maze of a parking lot–I can’t even call them roads, though I guess technically they are. There’s just not much sense of direction–they just twirl around commercial buildings.
Luckily, the training center was within walking distance. And also luckily, I did not get run over by some shit fuck going 80 in the parking-lot-roads.
My mom told me I’m just spoiled by College Station, and she’d be right. Which is frightening in its own right really, that I’ve adjusted so much to the ass-clowns driving around here that I find it worse elsewhere. Everyone here is just slow-paced. Often, rather addle-brained, honestly. But I’m finding I do prefer it to the sheer lunacy I find in Houston or San Antonio.
In other news my knees hurt. Boot camp went well this morning, despite my taking a week off for this trip (and no, I didn’t exercise while I was gone–shocker). But I wasn’t in the dead-last back of the pack the whole time (haha), and managed to not vomit up last night’s dinner all over the place. The only place I’m sore so far is my knees. I must have put too much pressure on them at some point, but I didn’t notice it at the time. My blood sugar wasn’t nutty this time. Started at 84 and was exactly 100 when I got home. So it’s still rising a little, but not a nasty 50+ like the first week.
I actually read in the diabetes LJ community that a “hard” workout can often raise a diabetic’s BG, where as a “medium” workout might not. This is just some random person saying this, so who knows if there’s any truth to it. But they mentioned that it might raise temporarily and then drop back down shortly after, which does hold true to my situation that first week. Meh, something to ask my doc next time I go, I suppose.
At the end of the workout today, we did a bit more stretching than in the past, and as we straddled our legs, I realized just how ridiculous I’ve become. There was a time when I could straddle my legs all the way out and lay my chest on the ground. These days I can’t hardly reach my toes. I miss that flexibility, and I was never a naturally flexible person to begin with. That’s one of those things I probably won’t ever get back though. Too old. But hopefully, one day, some of it will come back. Maybe even enough that I could take dance classes again. If nothing else, starting to exercise has made me wish more than ever that I never stopped that activity which dominated near 20 years of my life.
I noticed the humidity when I stepped outside to head out to Adventure Boot Camp this morning at 5. I thought, well, we had one week of awesome fall-like weather, it had to end sometime. It did not occur to me, however, that with humidity comes EXTREME MOSQUITOS until I was already outside and warming up on the grass.
I forgot just how much I hate humidity. I now have at least 800 mosquito bites. And Google is telling me it’s the first day of fall. Apparently Texas missed that memo.
Other than the humidity and the fact that I ate pizza last night, I noticed a major improvement between today and my first day of exercising last Monday. I kept up with other people so much better today, which makes me all the more annoyed that I won’t be able to attend the rest of the week because I’ll be out of town. Sure, I could exercise while I’m gone, but I honestly don’t think I’m even near a point where I know how to push myself to do the right things on my own.
Anyway, I brought up the fact that I ate pizza last night because at one point this morning I had to stop because I thought I was going to puke. We just finished doing these things called “burpees,” where in you put your hands on the ground in a squat, pop out your legs straight behind you, jump them back in, then jump up–and repeat. Ugh. I didn’t feel it until it was over. We were doing them in partners, which always makes me feel obligated to do more (maybe that’s the point). I did not recover well.
I’m quite sure the pizza dinner did not help. Pizza always makes me feel like ass crackers; I honestly don’t know why I eat it. I think it’s like Lewis Black and candy corn.
I’ve had quite the interesting week. And I’m not sure why I decided to write about it now, when I’m incredibly pissed about wasting 30 minutes of life sitting behind a bunch of ass-fucks on University Drive trying to get somewhere I don’t even want to be at all. The traffic today is just astoundingly shitty! Which is saying a lot, because it sucks on a regular basis. I don’t know if it’s people up from Galveston, a football game this weekend (I don’t keep up), or just students being shitheads in general, but GOD.
Okay, now that that’s out of my system (not really, maybe I need to browse the internet and come back), my week was interesting because I joined this thing called Adventure Boot Camp. Which basically entails getting up at 5 in the morning and exercising with a huge group of women, and dying a little bit. If you know me at all (even just from reading my posts), the idea of me exercising at all is completely laughable, made even more laughable by the idea of me waking up at 5 in the morning.
So why did I do this? *Shrug* I’ve pretty much thought about my state of patheticness and how I need to do something about it 24/7 for the past several years. I came across this Adventure Boot Camp on a blog, looked it up, and decided to join. The idea of just joining a gym, or starting to figure out how to exercise on my own accord when I haven’t done so since I was a child always seemed like a massive fail to me. But committing to something like this, that’s everyday in a big group, sounded like something more up my alley (actually, it reminds me of drill team). The 5:30 in the morning thing sounded absurd at first, but then when I thought about it, I realized when would be a good time? After work? That’d be hot and still hard to do. Plus it’d be daylight hours and more people would be around.
As it turns out 5:30 in the morning is much like night time to me still, so it’s actually not so bad, and as far as exercising times go, it’s really quite perfect. No one else is around but our group, we’re outside with only moonlight, so my shame factor is significantly decreased.
The hard part is going to bed earlier, and going to work afterward. Fucking work. I’m in a very anti-work mood for the past several weeks, but that’s a rant for later.
So how was my first week of exercising after an eternity of being a couch potato? Torture! I’ve been walking funny all week. But at the same time I like it, and I want to get better. It’s made me realize just how pathetic I truly have become. It makes me miss dance and how flexible I used to be. How strong my legs used to be.
It’s funny because I’ve hated my body since I turned 12. I’ve never in my life been a skinny person, and I’ve resented it big time. Looking back, I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was when I was younger, it was more just that most teenagers are skinny, and I wasn’t. I wasn’t fat, like I thought I was, I just wasn’t a size 0, and while actually some what toned, I was larger than near every one else on my high school drill team and in my dance classes. Perhaps that was my problem, trying to fit in with a bunch of tiny dancing teens.
Anyway, when I was a senior in college, I quit dancing. I think I gained a few more pounds that summer and combined with an impending course load of doom, I decided to take off from dancing that semester. Fully intending to come back of course. But did I? NO. Biggest mistake ever.
Long story short, and there are certainly a million more reasons behind it, 5-6 years later and a billion pounds, and you have where I am today. Very unhealthy, and apparently more out of shape than 70 year-old women. I say that, because there are women in their 70s in this camp (there are also college girls, it fits all levels/ages), and I shit you not, I struggle to keep up with them. I am bottom of the pole for sure. It will take a very long time for me to undo what all I’ve done (I could lose 10 pounds a month for a year and still not be skinny), but I hope I can keep up with this and not poop out.
My main challenge so far has been stupid diabetes. Of course. My blood sugar very much affects what I’m able to do in terms of endurance. If it’s really high, fucking forget it. The first three days were perfectly fine. Thursday, I woke up with a low (48). Fan-fucking-tastic! So I corrected it before going off to camp. Came back from camp and it was a whopping 280. Way to go, you stupid, stupid body. I’m used to my body retailiating after a low, but this was just absurd. Tried to correct after that, went to bed for an hour, got up and it was still 280. I had a massive headache at this point and decided to take off work and fell back asleep. Woke up for lunch, and what was my blood sugar? 38!
Utter failure.
Well, as it turns out this morning, I realized the true reason for this, and that reason is my stupid period. I didn’t even remember that it was that time already. Did not occur to me once. But assuredly this is the main reason behind the extreme ridiculousness. And this morning was a repeat of that ridiculousness, just to a lesser extreme (61 / 258).
Anyway, hopefully once my time is over, the morning lows will be too. Figuring out if I need to adjust my insulin levels with the new exercise will be tricky. I’m scared I’m going to really screw up once, and ruin myself on the entire exercising thing. Hopefully not. Fingers crossed.
So yeah. That’s pretty much that. I’m incredibly bummed though because I already have to miss four days of camp next week because of stupid work. Back in June I signed up to go to this overly expensive training in San Antonio, and I can’t back out of it now. Stupid training. Why couldn’t it be back in August? I’m very unhappy about going to this. Not excited at all, and I really don’t like San Antonio. Mostly, I don’t want to get more behind than I already am in boot camp. But, what can you do?
The only plus side is that I won’t have to sit in the little pit of hell that is my office building for a few days. Some times I get so burned out on office life and working in general, I completely lose it. Now is one of those times. Nothing about what I’m doing right now interests me, and emails are pissing me off. My God how I hate sitting here for so long, it’s just the hugest waste of life. And then I get to thinking how this seems to bother NO ONE ELSE here, and I get even more pissy. And un-punctual. Crawling in after 9:30 for the win. Fuck it, I just don’t care. It’s times like this I realize I should take long vacations each year. If I would take a week, maybe I wouldn’t burn out like this. But it never seems like a good time, and it never seems like a good reason. (What am I going to do on my break? Sit around and watch Days?) So I just resort to taking days here and there, and then feeling immensely guilty every time I do, imagining how everyone here thinks I’m a lazy, pathetic idiot, which I am.
In other news, some kid in town got “accidentally” shot by his roommate and died the other day. He was good friends with a co-worker, which is how I even heard of the incident since I don’t pay much attention to local news. This situation is just so absurd and disgusting. I mean really, what is some college age (or just out of college, maybe) kid in College God damn Station doing with a gun anyway? The kid got shot in the head while his roommate was showing off some feature of the gun to some other guy. WOW, really. Way to practice gun safety. I wonder what happens to people like this (the killer)? Nothing? I’m sure he feels like shit, and will forever, but if it were my family member or friend that got killed that would just not be okay. Reading news posts on the internet about it, the majority seem to be defending the “accident” and just plain too sympathetic toward the shooter here. I do not understand this, at all. It’s sad, absolutely, and the shooter was a friend, but regardless of what happened, he should be held responsible. If he was driving drunk and killed the kid that way, these people would not be so defensive of the offender. And gun carelessness is just as negligent. The more I think about it, the stupider the whole tragedy sounds. This should have never happened. Some kid living on “Fraternity Row” (I shit you not) should not own a gun, and he should not have kept it fucking loaded and ready to go while showing off to some buddies. That is a danger to everyone who may enter that house, the surrounding houses and anyone driving by. God.
Have I done enough ranting for the day? Maybe. Only a few more hours of the afternoon, and hopefully I can get over my extreme grumpiness.
I really am a boring person. I spend the majority of my time working, sleeping, playing The Sims or some other game, reading, watching TV–well, you get the idea. I like to stay at home and be a lazy bum.
Despite this, on the rare occasion that I do leave my apartment, the stupidest and most absurd fucking shit happens. Tonight was one of those nights.
On my way home from work, I stopped by Barnes and Noble. I’ve been flying through my Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels like mad and didn’t want to wait for the next one to ship from Amazon. I took a little while longer than I intended, because despite the fact that the series is getting an HBO show made out of it (or perhaps because of it?), they didn’t have many of the books. So I went searching around a bit to make sure they weren’t on a special display somewhere. And they weren’t, of course, College Station Barnes and Noble just sucks. But they had two of the four I was going for, so I guess that’s okay.
Andy has been sick so he asked if I could pick up dinner on the way home. We decide on McAlister’s Deli. He calls it in and I take off. McAlister’s is quite close to B&N, so I sit in my car and read the back of my new books for a few minutes before walking in to get the food.
I’m still early when I walk in, and no one is in front of the to-go checkout line. So I just stand there and look around at the lovely wall decorations. Well, a minute or two later, an older woman walks in the door, looking like she too is waiting for a to-go order. She stands behind me a few seconds, and then taps me on the shoulder.
Uh oh.
Her: “Did you know I’ve been praying for you?”
Me: “Huh?”
Her: “I saw you out in the car, and I just wanted to let you know I was praying to God about you.”
Now, at this point, bear in mind I’m in College Station, Texas which is why I assumed what I did. This woman had white hair tied back in a low bun and was wearing a long flower-patterned dress. My first thoughts of course were that she was some religious fanatic trying to sell me on something.
Then she opened her mouth some more. I will tell you she said all of these things, and I’m not exaggerating, though I may get them out of actual order, as my brain was in OHMYSHIT mode the entire time.
Her: “I’ve been talking to God, and I want to tell you that we’re going to make you like you were when you were 15. You’ll never grow a day older again.”
(I did not enjoy being 15, it was an awful, yucky, awkward stage and why anyone would want to be 15 for life is beyond me.)
Her, continuing: “You’ll never gain any more weight–and your teeth, let me see your teeth.”
She then grins to show her teeth and tells me to do this as well so she can get a look at them. I oblige.
Her: “Well your teeth are pretty white and straight. Okay, God? Do you hear me? We’ll keep her teeth exactly as they are now. Okay. What eye color would you like? Aqua?”
Me: “I kinda like my eye color as it is now.”
Her: “Okay, God, she likes her eye color, we’ll keep that the same. How about your hair? Is that your natural hair color?”
Me: “Well the roots are.” I bend down to show her. HAHA.
Her, pointing to the middle of my hair: “Well, let’s make her hair this golden red color all over forever. How about your bra size? How tall are you? 5′8″?”
Me: “No, I’m 5′6″.”
Her: “Oh okay, so what do you want a B cup?”
I shrugged. (I’m a D by the way, lol.)
Her: “God, let’s give her a perky B cup with bright pointy nipples.”
I honestly don’t remember if she said pointy or pink, but erm, either way, this was going downhill fast.
Her, continuing: “How about shoe size? What would you like a 5 or 5 and a half?”
Me: “8.”
Her: “Oh no, you want to go down. 5 or 5 and a half?”
Me: “Okay, 5 and a half.”
Her: “Okay God, do you hear me? Now lets give her nice naturally rosy cheeks and pink lips.”
She either pauses for a bit now, or I space out a bit and check to see if anyone is at the fucking to-go counter yet. They’re not. And now the big kicker comes.
Her: “I tell you what,” she says to me with a big grin, “I’m going to write you a cashier’s check!”
Me: “Okay.”
Her: “Now what’s your name?”
I should have made something up, but fuck, I was frazzled! Me: “Jaclyn”
Her: “Spell that–J-A-C-K–”
Me: “No, J-A-C-L”
Her: “J-A-C-K”
Me: “LYN”
Her: “Okay God, do you have that. We’re going to make it out to Jacklyn. I’m going to write you a check for one trillion million dollars.”
I am not making this up. One trillion million dollars. At this point someone is at the to-go counter. She’s still babbling to God about writing me this check. I pay for my food and as I turn to leave,
Her: “Do you have time to sit down?”
Me: “No, I really need to go…”
Her: “Can you wait in your car a minute? I’ll be there in just a minute.”
Me: “Okay.”
She then goes up and orders an iced tea or something and I bolt my fucking ass out of there as fast as I can move. I turn the engine on and peel out without putting on my seatbelt or glasses until I’m already moving.
Most likely she’s just a harmless old lady with severe mental problems, but hell, you never know with crazy people, and I didn’t want to stick around to find out. I was both as amused and creeped out as I’ve ever been.
It’s bothering me a bit now that I couldn’t think up a fake name. And that she saw me in my car? Hopefully she’s just senseless crazy and has already forgotten about me. I’m crossing my fingers anyway.
SO HOW WAS YOUR NIGHT? Can you top that? I motherfucking doubt it!