I've been holding off talking about this past week, hoping that I'd have some changes to report. Something worth celebrating - heck, at this point, I'd settle for 'worth writing about.' It's not been a good week. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I think I can safely say that it was worse than the first week I worked out, and that's saying something.Becky's weights regimen is not working well for me. I've suspected this for most of the past week, but wanted to give myself at least through Monday to make sure that it wasn't just me bellyaching over new work. Sure, I am, to some degree, but that's not all it is.

Becky asked me to start all the exercises at three sets (see link in previous paragraph), with no instructions for increasing weight, reps, or sets over the next couple of weeks. It was just, 'do this, and if you can'd do it at this weight, drop down until you're able to finish the reps.'

I hate writing about the bad days here, mostly because my natural urge is to keep them to myself. However, I cannot present this chronicle of workouts as an entirely positive process, because that is not the case. I don't bounce in to the gym every morning, happy and perky to be there. Some mornings find me in workout clothes and shoes more through habit than excitement, and the workout is not an exercise of joy but in, simply, endurance.

It's unfortunate that ants won't die if you just swear at them. After yesterday's scrubfest, I have airtight scientific proof of this fact. While ants will die if you spray them with orange-scented cleanser (is it the fact that it's a cleanser or that it's orangey that does the killing, I wonder?) and swear at them, swearing alone does not seem to do the trick.Ants are difficult to squish.

The phone rang.

"Hey, can I get you to do something for me?"I put down my cereal. "Sure," I said. "What's up?"

"Have you seen Edmund this morning?"

My mind raced. Oh, dear, had Edmund gotten himself stuck in a closet again? This could be bad. He tends to get destructive if he gets shut in somewhere. "Yeah, he's right here in front of me, looking at me. Why?"

"Would you ... would you take a look and see if there's something still dangling from ... his ass?"

To which I responded with the only possible reply: "What?!?"

1. My current read, Booth Tarkington's "The Magnificent Ambersons," is proving to be one of the most delightful literary exhibitions of schadenfreude I've ever had the pleasure to read. I'm about a third of the way through, and I know that the lead character is going to get everything he deserves: to wit, nothing at all.
2. While we'll miss Sex And The City, we'd like to note that the characters depicted in the show, despite protestations to the contrary, bear as much resemblance to the rest of humanity as a soap opera about mutant Prada-wearing cockroaches.

If you aren't on Misty and Stephen's "Sprout Updates" list, it's unlikely that you'll get a link to what Stephen wrote:

"To Elijah on his First Week Anniversary"

:D