Saturday, November 18, 2017

#stashhatproject


You remember pussyhats, right? Pink knitted hats with little ears, seas of them, at women’s marches from sea to shining sea basically. I knit a couple of them. So did, apparently, everybody else. I remember thinking, that... is a lot of hats. And also, that is a lot of knitters!

I sort of developed a hat tooth from that. Sort of specifically a Harry Potter hat tooth, to be honest. Okay really specifically, a Hufflepuff hat tooth; adding a stripe was easy enough. I learned from Brooke how to shape the crown of a hat, which meant knitting in the round.

Then Nina gifted me with all her knitting things including her yarn stash, and then there was this little miracle where it yielded not one but two Slytherin hats, three if you count Abby’s. Abby is a little plastic penguin; I made her a teeny pussyhat, too. At some point I decided to turn the whole stash into hats.

I mean, you know how a stash sometimes sits around: you can’t bring yourself to toss it, but what can you make from a little of this and a little of that? Well, a hat! Particularly a striped hat! And knitting a hat is a nice thing to do when you’re watching TV or hanging out with your friends watching football.

Oh I forgot to say, these are hats for the homeless. Incidentally, I did not attend the Women’s March; crowds give me anxiety. After the election I started volunteering at a foot care clinic for the homeless, and that’s where I was during the march.

One thing I’ve learned from foot clinic is, you can’t show up with just one hat. You don’t want to give these folks another experience of scarcity, it’s nicer to provide a feeling of surplus or, even better, choice. And I was thinking about all the knitters that all those pussyhats represented and wondering if they had stashes that they would like to knit up? You could donate your hats to your local homeless shelter, or send them c/o Care For Friends who runs the foot clinic as well as a number of other programs:

Hats For Friends
c/o Care For Friends
530 W Fullerton Parkway
Chicago, IL 60614

Links for the PDF files are here for the outside and here for the inside. Pro-tip: if you copy them to a single double-sided page, they should fold into a nice little quarter-sheet pamphlet. Eeee. Should. The business, though, i.e., the hat instructions, are on the inside sheet.

And now, we wait. Or well, I wait and knit!

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Pumpkin Granola

omg look at my awesome #pumpkin #pecan #almond #cranberry #granola #linkinbio in thirty

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Tch this picture is terrible. Too bright!

Ahhh, I'm alive! I'm very alive, thank you, just living and not blogging so much. But I did just make this amazing pumpkin granola, long story, I wanted to make my own pumpkin noosa, so I made some pumpkin butter and ate that with toasted almonds and pumpkin seeds on plain yogurt (so good) and then I started intermittent fasting so not eating yogurt for breakfast and had a good amount of pumpkin butter left and I think I saw a granola recipe using apple butter and was like, Ah.

I used this recipe for pumpkin butter but with brown sugar and no maple syrup and maybe twice as much apple juice? It was a little while ago, I don't remember. Also I cooked it in my crockpot forever. Anyway, I really like things not sweet and you might not like it. Trader Joe's makes a very good pumpkin butter this time of year, too. I say this like it's hard to find pumpkin things this time of year :|

THEN, originally I made this with two cups oats, but this afternoon I only had one cup of oats in the house and, overtaken by laziness, decided to substitute one cup of rice krispies that I still have from my Salted Brown Butter Rice Krispies Treats for two, and it's like really, really good, for lack of a better descriptor, it's crispier!

I was going to make this with golden raisins, but I had two ancient bags of cranberries in my pantry and now I have used them up.

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup rice krispies
1 cup pumpkin butter
1 cup pecan halves, broken up
1 cup almonds, chopped
1 cup cranberries

Heat oven to 300 degrees.

Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl until everything is well-moistened with pumpkin butter. Lightly oil a baking pan and spread the granola evenly to fill the whole pan in a thick layer; this amount nicely fit a quarter-sheet pan.

Put the pan in oven and set a timer for twenty minutes. When the timer goes off, gently stir up the granola with a wooden spatula; this is how you make nice crunchy clumps of granola. Repeat, oh, three or four more times? Maybe around the third time, let a clump cool on the counter and see how well it crisps up. When that's to your liking, take the pan out of the oven and let the granola cool and crisp up.

Monday, July 31, 2017

July Review

Well I said I would do one more of these, so I'm knocking this out to be done. with. it.

HOME

In the "above" layer, foot clinic. In the "below" layer, I keep rearranging the tops of my bookcases. No pic because they're not done yet; there's pothos up there now, the secret turned out to be terracotta pots to keep them from getting dried out.

SYSTEMS

Running and yoga, la la la. Down to every third week for therapy, that seems to be going fine and frees up some time. Not anything else done, though.

But look, I can do handstands now:

haha it's like the blair witch #handstand

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PLAY

Ramping up very slowly studying for my orthopedic specialist certification, due in part to the aforementioned new client. She's a teacher and will be moving to evenings when school starts, so I'm not stressing about it; I'll go back to school in the fall like everybody else.

PASTIME

Going out

Sooo let's see, Sparty and I went to Mystic Waters with Flo and Annie on the 4th, I could float around that lazy river forever. Minerva hosted UFC 213, though Nunes vs Shevchenko was scrapped. A bunch of us went standup paddleboarding at 31st St Harbor, surely there is a picture of that about... ah there is, but embedding is turned off. The last Saturday of the month Sparty and I went to TS's dad's memorial and then a bunch of us went to see a magic show for Biggie's birthday. And then drinks with TS on Sunday night before she went back to Portland.

Haha, I have transcended the need to photograph my social life.

Staying in

I feel like I've also been staying in a lot and being crafty, mostly potting plants and cutting mirrored tiles out of CDs and gluing the tiles to yogurt containers for plant pots:

tadaaa i only severely burned myself once 🙌 #planter

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Welp! That's all she wrote! For now.

Friday, June 30, 2017

June Review

Still feeling good! Not even gonna lie, kinda counting down the months (two) to fifty so I can stop doing these. The more I live my life, the less I have to write about it. Or maybe the less I write about my life, the more I get to live it?

HOME

In the "above" layer, foot clinic was very good. I sent a fax, I guess, via resistbot to my senators about protecting the ACA and not just playing defense on healthcare. I have a ton of thoughts about this and other stuff. Things have been settling and making room; when they settle more and make more room, I might work some of that out.

In the "below" layer, I mended all my leggings again; that gives me a lot more breathing room between laundry cycles. I'm trying to figure out where to put all the branches I cut down last month:

then on my day off i made an altar to the ancient ones

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I moved them again, though. I really want to put plants on top of those bookcases, though the plants I've made up there haven't done so well. Still working on it.

SYSTEMS

I'm still running and doing yoga with Box every other Sunday, and also I've started doing sun salutations again three times a week. This is the best, more balanced fitness program I've ever had I think as an adult, I really should write a book. I'm still doing therapy every other week, too.

What I have to do systems-wise is stuff like setting up my new Quicken software and draft a will for myself, stuff like that, those are the big ones. I'm not even clear why all of this is taking so long to get done. Running, maybe? I've fine-tuned my running program (again), so hopefully that frees up some time for this.

PLAY

Two things: one, I got a new client! Two, I finally signed up for my CECs! I'm doing the Orthopedic Exercise Specialist Certification, so excited:

🎶 chriiiiistmas tiiiiime is heeeeere 🎶

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PASTIME

Going out

A very outie month: started the month off with Problem's birthday dinner, we walked to the 606 Block Party (that was to Humboldt and back! I remember when walking home from Western plunged me into a depression, yay recovery), Tomy was in town and we had brunch one day and drinks on Sunday, Tami and I met for fried chicken, Sparty and I went out for pizza, and I went to breakfast with Kristen from running group. No pictures!

Staying in

I feel like I watched a lot of TV and movies this month, too: John Wick 2, Orange Is The New Black, season two of Powers, all of Wentworth, the next season of The Night Shift, San Andreas, and Fate of the Furious.

So far it's been a very summery summer, very relaxing and fun. Is this my life? Because I'm okay with it.

Monday, June 5, 2017

Elementary Pothos Care
 free downloadable PDF

For best results, print two-sided! It's meant to be folded into a pamphlet.

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

May Review

Still feeling good, May was a great month!

HOME

In the "above" layer was just foot clinic this month, it was hoppin' though. I love foot clinic.

In the "below" layer, house cleaning was on a roll: organized the wardrobe, cleaned the shower side of the bathroom (last month was the toilet side), and MJ rescued a branch that was blown off the tree in front of our house and I took it apart for pothos support; that was a bit of a saga. First there was a terrible storm and the branch was hanging by a thread, in this case a strand of xmas lights:

if it weren't for the xmas lights that branch would have been blown right off 😂

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Then it fell off the thread into the gutter. These xmas lights, which have been up since two Christmases ago, are funny to no end to me:

idk why i think this is so funny but i do

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I picked the branch out of the gutter and stowed it in the front well, but then Mitch tidied it away and I was like Aw. But then MJ rescued it from the trash, and it was in the kitchen for me when I got home from training Nora:

I must say, I didn't realize it was as big as it was when it was not in my house. It was in the kitchen for the rest of the week and Saturday morning MJ had laid out his saws for me and showed me how to put them all together, so I figured he wanted me to get a move on taking it apart.

Much fun was had:

fErNgULLy!!! #domokun #domo #hygge #bosonbuddies

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higgy is the bravest #domokun #domo #hygge #bosonbuddies

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SYSTEMS

But wait, there's more, first of all, therapy, and running, AND this month was Problem's annual birthday challenge, this year's was the best yet, many videos of this on my instagram. But also I finally did my quarterly cash flow review, and I made a little calendar to track when I take klonapin. At Dr Wolowitz's suggestion my dosage is down to .25 mg, that is super ^_^ When I started on them back in October, I was supposed to try .5 mg and that did not do shit. I was on 1 mg for two weeks straight before I finally started to calm down. At the moment I only have trouble sleeping when I'm really excited about something, and I take the klonapin just to stay on track with sleep; I do not want to go down that rabbit hole again. I was wanting to be down to only needing it every other week, but that was a little ahead of myself and creating a little anxiety therein. Which is when Dr. Wolowitz suggested cutting the dosage, which works to put me to sleep and works to reassure me that I am indeed getting better, good and gooder.

my klonapin calendar, so pleasing!

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PLAY

Still haven't gotten to my CECs, but I got my CPR certification! I did a really great eight-hour class with Brawla and Chicago Adventure Therapy, best training I've had to date. I spent the rest of my time earmarked for PLAY on client work, a recovery module for Rachel and a core module for Steven. There's some stuff up in the air with my gym that I need to work out, but that's for June...

PASTIME

Going out

A pretty outie month, though not in photos: Problem hosted cocktails where we made The Bad Word, oh wait, I did take pictures of that:

it looks just like the picture! #thebadword

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...we were joined by Box and Brawla, and the four of us went to Rojo Gusano for tacos; the next weekend Box and Brawla hosted UFC 211; the next weekend was WCR vs MRD at the Broadway Armory, oh ha, there's a pic for that:

Then actually that Sunday after yoga, we worked on this bison puzzle all day at the Aloha Palace:

pin the tail on the bison

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Annnd Sparty and I went out for brunch, we'll be doing that more now that she's out of school for the summer.

Sooo outie!

Staying in

But then everybody went out of town for Memorial Day, and I had the whole three-day weekend to myself. I love my friends, but that was lovely. Every morning I slept in and then picked something to do, like take apart that tree branch, and completed it at my leisure. What else did I do? Oh ha ha, I made a little guide for pothos care:

look what i made! #pothos

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I've had this idea in my head for a while, but then Vanessa texted me to ask if she could bring a plant home and of course I said yes and hand wrote out everything I had been thinking in a little pamphlet for her. So then it was only a matter of an evening to type it up in Photoshop and add a little color. I will be making a separate post with a downloadable PDF soon, the better to pin me with, whatever. I mounted it on cardboard for the bulletin board at work.

Anything else? I similarly typed up my whole running program, worked on it for an entire Monday evening, but Photoshop crashed just as I was finishing up and I hadn't saved it at all. I just went to bed at that point, and then some days later I redid it on Google Sheets, which is a better medium because it involves math and customization. A blog post might be following for that, too. Maybe. It's summer, the good times are rolling!

Friday, May 26, 2017

Happy Birthday Odie!!!!!

birthday party! #domokun #domokun #hygge #bosonbuddies

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Photo.

odie is 5! #domokun #domo

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Video.


Sunday, April 30, 2017

April Review

Well, I feel pretty great. April was a good month.

HOME

In the "above" layer, I helped with foot clinic and 2nd Ward cleanup. I hadn't really imagined picking up litter when I was thinking about thinking globally and acting locally, but I think acting locally means actually acting when something local comes up and that's what's come up so far. And, I rescued this tiny robot:

beep boop #hygge

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In the "below" layer, I started cleaning my house! OMG. I've been having a surge of creativity that mostly involved picking up twigs off the street to stake my pothos with and finally started actually making the planters I needed to repot the plants and tidy up all the damn twigs. Yogurt containers make great planters, by the way:

boy spidey loves his new pot #spiderplant #planter

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So that cleared the way to finally rehang all my pictures that I had taken down when MJ put up my new shelf:

i have finally hung the art (after a year)

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OMG the next morning when I walked out into my front room, my heart just sang. And and and, I cleaned my bathroom. My towels are the way I want them for the first time since MJ moved in, sploosh.

SYSTEMS

As previously mentioned, I ran a 5K this month. I'm ramping up my yoga practice to every other week and tapering my therapy from every week to every other week, both are going very well. I got a good report card from the dentist, too.

And, I got my tax refunds and my passport.

PLAY

Still haven't gotten to my CECs though I have a little start on my CPR certification. But, I have a little room to work on them now.

PASTIME

Going out

Also not a very outie month? Idk brunch tends to follow yoga, and there was brunch after the race. Box and Brawla had Easter dinner at the Aloha Palace. Sparty, Ska and lil EB (eee), and MJ had brunch at Whisk:


And I went to the WCR bout. That's pretty outie, I guess.

Staying in

Still, MJ and I spent most Friday and Saturday nights in. We watched Legion, that was great; The 13th Floor; a couple episodes of Powers, which I also liked; more of The Expanse; The Kingsman; and London Spy.

This review seems short when the month has felt so full: running, some yoga, brunches, making planters and repotting plants, house shaping up. Well, I didn't mention the baby giraffe :) that too

Monday, April 24, 2017

No Job Too Small
 my couch to 5K

Photo via Athena DeCrime.

First of all, I'm talking about the couch to 5K trope, or actually quite literally my progression from my couch to running a 5K, and not the Couch To 5K ™ program. I've never used or even read Couch to 5K, I've only ever been aware of it out of the corner of my eye and had a client once who used it to run one 5K and decided that he hated running. But also I'm aware of it as a frequently recommended training program, like 5x5 for weightlifting. Sigh, I wish I could think of these snappy names. But on the other hand, snappy names are kind of the opposite of what I do and I do think there's a need for what I do even though the long shaggy dog story tends not to go viral in this 140-character world we live in.

Anyway, I sort of instinctively felt that Couch to 5K would actually be too progressed for me and then I was reading this article about how to start running, and it was like "start with a small distance, like two miles" and I was like Eff youuu, two miles is not a small distance for me >:( ughhh it's even more insidious that it gives lip service to starting small, like it wouldn't have been half as bad if it had just said start with two miles! Instead it implants in your head that two miles is small and if you can't run two miles, you can't even run a small distance—that is just evil, if you ask me.

Luckily as a trainer I have a thicker skin than most that protects me from these sorts of arrows; but also as a trainer I feel bad for all the people who are not so arrow-proof, which is why I'm poking my head back in here for a sec. Personal training is personal, really, that's largely what you pay for, like a professional bulwark against the bullshit and mixed messages about body issues that you get bombarded with, and ideally a weekly bulwark because I'm teaching you to be your own bulwark and it's a process. One blog post isn't much up against an avalanche of fitspiration, particularly as blogs are mostly dead and hardly anybody reads them. But, I felt like my one blog post should at least be out there. And it should not go without mentioning that my one blog post is personal to me; this is how it went for me and my personal circumstances, the physical and psychological condition I'm in. It's not meant to be a turnkey solution for anybody; it's only meant to be one example, perhaps a little bit of a different example, and if I only get one point across I hope it's that the right way to "get in shape" is the way that works for you.

Okay but, before all this, there was this car dealership under construction at the end of my block for, idk, a while. And they took away the bus stop at the end of my block, which meant I had to catch to bus at North and Ashland. And it's weird, but that turned the most convenient bus to the gym into THE WORST, because if I was stuck on my side of Ashland and could see the bus pulling up, I had to fight the urge to run into traffic and then be consumed with rage as I helplessly watched the bus go by. So now planning to catch the bus was a thing, which I weirdly hate, I love to plan everything but I really like to spontaneously catch a bus, and actually now that I think about it, this started before I got my smartphone, which I got up and going at the beginning of last year. Anyway, it seemed much less stressful just to walk to the gym, and so I did that for like a year, a mile to the gym and a mile home, two and a half times a week (the half is because Nora always gives me a ride home.) The cool thing about this is, I used to think that the gym was sooo far, but now it's in my head that a mile is a short walk. I don't think I would have gotten started walking if they hadn't taken my bus stop away, I should send them a fruit basket. The car dealership is constructed and the bus stop is back, but now I prefer to walk.

Okay so, where was I: pretty salty about the two miles. Actually I think this starts last August, remember, I'm in the thick of a depression then, and kind of randomly I suggest a ten-minute cooldown run on the treadmill to my Tuesday client and the other treadmill is free so I run with him and actually run the whole ten minutes? I'm not sure if I did. I vaguely remember two things, rolling a joke along the ground and following it like Bluebell and Captain Holly to keep going, and thinking at the end, woah, I'm in okay enough shape that I did that right out of the box. But like, where "right out of the box" is having walked five miles a week for like a year.

So I sort of haphazardly start running, and not with a ton of success. I ran three times in August, six times in September, twice in October, and apparently just gave up in November. Well, October and November is when I started on antidepressants.

This is my brain on drugs: I decide to commit to running in December and, still salty about the two miles, I decide that I will run a half mile twice a week. This same month, Katie Jean is doing a fifty miles in a month challenge and as a joke I make my own five miles in a month challenge, and I come up with this really useful and truthful #nojobtoosmall hashtag. It's a pretty tiny goal but even with a tiny goal, you still have to make that choice to get off the couch and go to the gym and get on the treadmill, every Tuesday and Thursday. And really this is the proto-habit that I needed for the rest to follow, and I think it would have been less easy to talk myself into getting off the couch if I knew that what was waiting for me at the gym was some mountain troll and not just a garden gnome—annoying, but pretty easy to dispatch. Spoiler, I did it! You've seen this star chart.

Let's talk briefly about that star chart, I am very strongly motivated by patterns. If I can at all avoid a hole amongst my gold stars, I will walk in a snowstorm to the gym even if my client has cancelled. But also I had a fail-safe goal, the five miles a month; if I did end up with a hole in my chart, all was not lost and I could still make my mileage goal. But also I ran a little bit more than half a mile most days like putting away money in mama's bank account, which was more trickery! Because mainly that just got me used to running more than half a mile, though by the end of the month I had enough mileage socked away that I could take a week off for the holidays. Let's also talk about the gym, why not leverage that my body is already in a gym three times a week. And also later, that there's a gym in my building that my work will pay a one-time fee for me to access for free, that I have never availed myself of because I knew I would never go because I had derby and I avoid guilt debt; but of course, I haven't had derby for two years now. All of these things worked for me, though I've since outgrown the star chart. It was good for getting started, though, simple, and I think if I'm going to do something hard I have to get my inner child on board and what kid doesn't love stickers.

And boy howdy, hardly anything is motivating like success. Which is sort of the fitness equivalent of needing job experience to be qualified for a job, but not as annoying because for fitness—at least for Fitness alla Poppy, anyway—you can succeed at something you can succeed at. Though this might be easier for me to grasp than for a gen pop person, because of my aforementioned thick skin and because I have pretty well dismantled the idea, well, that some jobs are too small. Remember in the eighties when they told us that you had to do forty minutes of cardio to burn fat, and anything less didn't count? Like all the fat cells are gathered at the edge of the lake of fire looking at their watches and trudge dejectedly back to your thighs if the clock stops at thirty-nine minutes. No, you don't remember, don't tell me, because you were born in the eighties. Or maybe they're still saying this and I'm finally old enough to wear purple and not give a shit. Maybe I'll tell you that no job is too small to no avail until you're my age, some stuff my mom was always trying to tell me I just got like six months ago. Sorry mom.

So anyway, I was feeling good about my five miles in a month under my belt (seven, actually) and Katie Jean started a 50 miles in a month facebook group and invited me and I said LOL okay but I'm only running ten miles. And she said that was fine, so I accepted her invitation. Here's the thing about that, I had intended just to keep an eye on the group out of the corner of my eye, as inspiration, but not post my piddly little runs, and then I thought that was sending myself the wrong message that what I was doing was something to be embarrassed about. Not cool! So I decided to post my little runs along with everybody else's... and everybody was so supportive and nice! And nothing at all is motivating like success and support. Like I finally signed up for the work gym and everybody was like GOOD JOB GO YOU, hell yeah I was gonna get up there Friday after work and make everybody proud. So in January I ran just short of 25 miles.

Somewhere in there Tami peer-pressured me into signing up for the BT5K. Which I was going to say no to, I felt like the slow and steady approach was working for me and I didn't want to shoot myself in the foot by biting off more than I could chew. LOL, I am the best at metaphors. But the race wasn't until April and I was already able to run for a mile nonstop after a month of consistent training, it was reasonable that I could get into 5K shape in three months. If I kept at it consistently! They always say Always Train For Something and I have mixed feelings about that, I'm not extremely pro The One Validating Event, but I do think it helped keep me even more honest, being that I'm basically honest.

But I did have to work with this idea of validation, because I was running with Katie Jean who I was seeing do nine and a half minute miles to say nothing of Tami who just started running last year at an eight and a half minute pace, sheesh. And of course there's the nice roundness of the ten minute mile. But my treadmill work was pretty consistently clocking in between eleven and twelve minutes. So I had to make a decision about what I was chasing for now, I had to remember that I started just barely being able to run a half mile and to run a 5K at a ten minute mile was really two goals. One goal at a time, please: run a 5K, full stop. So that became my goal: run the whole thing, and then I added don't get sick afterward. Because the last and only other time I ran a 5K, I came down with a cold the very next day—that's recorded in this blog, as a matter of fact, in July 2010.

And that was basically it, I ran 26 miles in February and 35 miles in March. Along with not stressing out about running faster than I am, I did have an additional epiphany in March about running slow, up until then I had been running intervals and cranking them up to tolerance. So like after four months of being a self-taught runner, I finally looked into a running program. Actually I was sitting on a bench waiting for Maul and Rosito Polito, googling "how to run faster" and I came across this how to get started running program by Runner's World, and the steps were:

  1. Start Walking
  2. Start Running
  3. Run Non-Stop
  4. Run Longer
  5. Run Faster

...where I had been trying to run faster before I could run longer. And how to run longer is, run slower. And running longer helps you run faster. I think this was the point where I really got into running, but I'm not sorry that it happened four months in. I basically figured out the first three steps on my own: walking to the gym, then running intervals on the treadmill, then I got bored walking and just ran slower between intervals until I was running non-stop, and then I started running outside which was all non-stop and building up to that two miles, remember the two miles? So basically it took me four months to build up to the two miles that that first article said I could get started with.

Anyway, goal accomplished! I ran the whole 5K, and I'm not sick. Sick can happen when you overstress your body, and it wasn't at all stressful to run that race. It was a very comfortable race. I ran a twelve-minute mile, for the record. And I still like running, and plan to run more, and I'm pretty sure that's because I figured out that being in physical distress doesn't have to be part of the plan. YMMV, but if something hurts, I do it less. If it feels good, I do it more. And if I do it more, I can do it better and and it feels good. And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo bee doo bee, but that's just the physical part. I think the harder part is weeding out psychological distress when it comes up, where you let yourself enjoy yourself and be proud of what you can do, and that's the part that I think I got right this time.

couch to 5K #nojobtoosmall #notthatsmall

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Friday, March 31, 2017

March Review

It occurred to me in bed the other morning that I could keep up these monthly reviews until my birthday, and then that would be as good a stopping point as any. So, onward to 50...

HOME

In the "above" layer, I went to my second Hideout meeting and it was the gentlest of emotional rollercoasters where I'd been feeling like I really need that Saturday for myself but like it was necessary to give it another try and also necessary to give it two tries in a row, and right up to the meeting I'd been thinking thank god this will be my last wiccan meeting (I'd been calling it my wiccan meeting, which is sort of what I think about nice white people in groups, where not nice white people in groups are the klan) and then I settled into the meeting and right off the bat they improved some things that didn't quite work in the first meeting, and I do love an evolving thing, and I was listening to the speakers and knitting Sparty's hat and thinking, you know, this is a good thing, to listen to these things, and then Sparty texted that she was running late to pick me up, which was perfect because to my surprise I was just about done with her hat, and there's supposed to socializing after the meeting and I missed that part last month, but it turns out nobody socializes with you when you are utterly focused on finishing your knitting, no blame. And somewhere in there I came down from the idea that I would continue going to these meetings because I'm already active and I already have friends, so even if it's a nice thing, I have enough nice things, and I need that Saturday for myself.

Also in the "above" layer, I had foot clinic, which I love. Oh, I had the socks! I broke down the order into four bundles of three packs of large and one pack of medium socks and brought just one bundle. I snuck them into the bin because I didn't want them to make a fuss, but the I overheard one of the nurses say "sweet" when they realized there were two sizes to choose from ^_^ and then a man came in and whispered that he didn't need to wash his feet, just socks, and I brought out two sizes so he could pick and he was like, can I have both? And I was like, you can have two pairs of socks but do you want both pairs the same size? So he picked the bigger ones and I brought him a second pair of those and he smiled so big and gave me a fist bump.

After I filed my taxes and applied for my passport (YES!) I felt like I deserved a present, so one Saturday, well actually, I ran to Tsubo to pick up a knee gasket that Varla left for me and hung out with Biggie on her break, and then I walked back home and treated myself to some brow powder and a brush:

Nothing in the "below" layer, erk... see, that's what I need the Saturday for. This month!

SYSTEMS

BUT, I finally buckled down to do my taxes. I really need to get on this earlier in the year, like right at the beginning of February; it's just not that hard, and it's so nice to have it out of the way. This year has been such a kerfuffle of figuring out what #resist is going to mean for me, though.

And as previously mentioned, miracle of miracles, I finally actually applied for my passport renewal:

ermahgerd passport application started 8/4/2014, completed 3/24/17 🙌

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Yeah, that's only been on my to do list for three years.

Full boat of therapy this month, and a full boat of running. All systems are go!

PLAY

Boy PLAY is really getting squeezed, I did make this runner's strength workout, which I haven't done myself, what I'm actually doing very well is running and pushups and posting my progress on Instagram. Both of those are a continual process of learning and I suppose I'm at the point where I could write them up into some kind of news you can use... but, idk. Writing and living aren't synced up for me right now. Training for me right now is what I'm thinking to myself, talking about to my clients, and the not infrequent fly-by on Facebook and Instagram, and I feel like that's okay for now.

Though I do have to do my CECs this year and also renew my CPR certification, so there's that.

PASTIME

Going out

I feel like this wasn't a very outie month, Biggie and I had a lipstick date:

today we are trying purple #lipstickdate #urbandecay #moshpit which i thought was called no shit

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Another thing I could write up, if I felt like writing.

There was the aforementioned brunch with Sparty and hangout with Biggie, and a farewell brunch at Journeyman for Painbows who has moved to California:

Incredible women. Even better friends. Until we adventure again, my loves. #friends #love #ILtoCA #journeyman

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Hasta la vista, baby :*

And last but not least, a rare Thursday movie night: me and der schweetums, Brawla, and Karma went to see Logan. Man, that was really good. I have really lowered expectations for movies these days and pro forma go to superhero movies, but Logan was actually good.

Staying in

So if it wasn't an outie month, I must have been innie. We certainly hardly spent any month this month, which surprised me. On the production side, I wrote last month's review, I knit a hat for Sparty:

hat in progress

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Also new hats for Kevin and Odie are in there somewhere. And I repotted some plants at work, you don't need to see yet another picture of pothos do you.

On the consumption side, we watched The Expanse, which I am concurrently reading; tried a bit of Taboo but eh; The Arrival, which I thought was great; American Ultra, also great; Iron Fist, not the greatest but which I don't really want to talk about except in my innermost circle of trust; and Dark City, which der schweetums wanted me to see. My absolute favorite of the month, though, was Ultimate Beastmaster, at which Koreans kicked ass as competitiors and as announcers. SEASON TWO!


Monday, March 6, 2017

Runner's Strength Workout

runner's strength workout

Weee, I made a thing! Of course if you don't know how to do a pullup or pushup, or if you don't know what I mean by rotations, you will need a trainer. But stuff that you find on the internet is just a starting point and not the be-all end-all, you know that right?

I'm mostly super excited about this because training pullups can be challenging sometimes, well, because pullups are challenging, but also because sometimes it's hard to find a place to hang from. Where oh where could you hang from.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

February Review

Full disclosure, I'm actually writing this on March 5 and backdating it to the last day of February. I feel like I know better to never say never and to never say that's how much fuck fish to writing, but it's certainly ebb tide around here and you could get this same story just by looking at my Instagram feed. But, I do happen to have a bit of free time on a Sunday night that I don't want to rot away just watching more TV so here goes:

HOME

All of my HOME stuff this month was in the "above" layer: I organized a call sheet for making calls to my representatives, I attended a meeting at the Hideout that Bork tipped me off to, I made calls to the aforementioned representatives, and I worked at foot clinic. Oh! I also raised money to buy socks for next month's foot clinic:

unboxing socks

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Haha, that was extremely fun. I can't wait to bring the socks next month.

SYSTEMS

Running is still going strong, czech it, I was up to 2.2 miles at the end of the month:

haha dang it ya big hand #25milesin30days #nojobtoosmall

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Therapy still also going strong, every week this month. And I also feebly started shuffling the papers around that I need to prepare my tax organizer for Elliott, and also my bank sent me a new credit card for no reason so I had to update all the expiration dates on my autopays, fuck you very much >:(

PLAY

The only thing I did for this was draw some planks for GOYB, who's in my running group:

Nora brought these to me, actually, she does tham and now Rachel does them, too. It's a good little plank sequence that emphasizes stability with mobility, which is the real brass ring. I like them a lot.

PASTIME

Going out

Did I go out a lot this month? Let's see, there was Brawla's birthday slash Super Bowl with goat, a.k.a. Super Birrierañera. Nina and I went out for pie at Bang Bang Pie, chicken at Parson's Chicken and Fish and then Bang Bang Pie at Parson's Chicken and Fish, a.k.a. #piechickenpie. And, the Juanna Rumbel Cup, where Rudy actually recognized me squee:

s: wanna say cheese rudy? r: NAAOOO

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Usually he only has eyes for MJ!

Oh and, the Oscars! Which we watched chez Problem. Sparty and I went out for brunch in there too, after the Hideout meeting.

Staying in

Not so much knitting this month, though I did just start a hat for Sparty. But instead I wrote last month's review, the only blogging I did all month—der schweetums has just expressed surprise to find me blogging now—and I potted a bunch more pothos cuttings that I rooted in January, which I think is not when you're supposed to root pothos cuttings, oh well, they are doing fine:

just making a picture for my blog!

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Eeesh I still have three more that need pots, sigh. It just came up in my fb memories, it was only a year ago that I started with all this pothos madness.

What else, I painstakingly mended my one pair of jeans, which promptly ripped in another place:

sorry jeans, you got more work to do in this life

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And cooking is much less of a chore than it used to be, remember twice a week cooking practices? Sheesh. Now der schweetums is in charge of vegetables and makes them whenever, so I never have to make dinner, and all I do is make a giant batch of chicken stew every week, and I'm finding I can squeeze that in wherever:

On the less active side, we watched the next seasons of Vikings, Lucifer, The Man in the High Castle, and The Expanse (which I'm also reading), and also Dr Strange. When I'm doing stuff around the house, and also at bedtime, I seem to have fallen into this genre of melancholy British detectives solve one crime per season (Broadchurch, Paranoid, Happy Valley)—yeah, back to "working" and "sleeping" TV but on the other hand I'm also back to working and sleeping, so—