June 2004

chlorinated

I thought that four months in the gym had gone a long way toward conquering my fear, my embarrassment, my (dare I say it?) loathing of my appearance, but that wasn't the case as I headed down Hughes Road toward Dublin Park. As I was stopped at the next-to-last red light before turning left onto Old Madison Pike, I stopped for a moment and gave my thoughts their objective, silent, frightening due:

all tags: 
swimming
weight loss

a knot in next week's rope

"Oh, it can't happen to me," I said. "My trouble's eating enough calories to sustain my workouts, not paring down my calorie intake enough to make my exercise actually mean something."

Well, if I've learned nothing else from the month of May, I've learned that those statements are full of crap.

all tags: 
weight loss

Off to Atlanta for a little while

I loathe resorting to this, guys, but it's time. 'cat.net isn't on hiatus; it's just going to be quiet for the next week or so. I'm going to be in Atlanta for an extended period of time, DCTV and general techops stuff both need my attention, and my workouts are still eating up as much time as they usually do.I'll try to post something when I have a little time, and something interesting to say, but right now I have neither, and I'd rather not pretend otherwise.

all tags: 
trips
dragon*con

Starkly away

I'd fully intended for cat.net to stay silent until my return. Life rarely works out the way I planned it, though.

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arkansas
death
memory
extemporaneous

weight goal #2

When I slid the weight counters across the scale's slide and realized what the numbers meant, I didn't feel joy or excitement, or even my usual urge to get sniffly and teary. Just relief. I didn't care that it might've been - in all truth, probably is - partly due to water weight fluctuations. I'd finally made my second weight goal. Twenty pounds down.

I've been trying to grind my way through an ugly, nasty plateau since mid-May. By June 3rd, I was frustrated enough to write what became the entry "a knot in next week's rope," an entry that's gotten me more privately-emailed feedback than just about anything else I've ever written here.

(Those of you who have written - and I have not answered all of you - thank you. You know who you are.)

all tags: 
weight loss

Remember to pack your lip liner

I know this body like I know my own. Boastful girl, you know better; bodies change as lives change. The man of six years ago is not the man of now, no more than you are the sum total of six years' worth of change on the body that married him on that July day.

Silly girl.

We sat across from each other in the restaurant, sharing guilty giggles over queso on conversations that cannot be breathed into other ears.

"You know me well," he said, swiping extraneous sauce from his lips with the nearest napkin.

all tags: 
best
love
extemporaneous
x-factor

this in-between land of 16

From an email I sent to Val today:

I'm really struggling with the weightlifting, and something just doesn't seem right. I've had to lay off lifting a bit this month because of Atlanta trips, but I'm getting exhausted during weightlifting sessions and it's not the kind that I get a second wind and bounce back from. Something's not right, and I don't know what.

There was more said than that, but it's unimportant. Val's response was unequivocal:

all tags: 
dragon*con
weight loss
costume
frustration

Summertime stupids

Some recent finds from the joys of the interweb:

#1: What Planet Is This?

From this article from the Sun-Sentinel (italics are mine):

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stupidity
rants
weather
summer

violinesque

It had been nothing but a random provocation of muscle, an awkward-standing up that led to a consistent, throbbing ache in my right lat.

"Rub it?" I asked Jeff, hopefully. "Not like scritchies, but real massage work?"

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marriage
love
exercise
injuries

A red for everybody

The TV anchors were mourning the loss of Ronald Reagan, and I was sitting in a random Tex-Mex restaurant in metro Atlanta, wondering if I, too, had lost my bloody mind. My brain was having trouble processing everything going on at once: Brian telling stories, chipper music from the radio station, Maggie Thatcher eulogizing Reagan, the utter tastiness of the quesadilla I was eating.

all tags: 
extemporaneous
fear
makeup

Goal jeans #4, sixteen laps

It took eight weeks, but I can finally say it: the size 14 jeans button and zip. As usual, just because they button and zip doesn't mean that they're public-ready, but getting in them at all is plenty of a victory, given how much I've struggled since mid-May.

(Need a refresher course? Take a look at the 'weighty issues' category page for a listing of all entries on the subject.)

To retrace my steps:

all tags: 
weight loss

I fought the claws (and the claws won)

There's a rule in life. I know this rule, and I broke this rule, and now I'm paying for it. Never, ever say, "I'm having a good week," no matter how true the statement is. The cosmos has ears, and it doesn't take well to being taunted.

(Sigh.)

So, a complete recap of the weekend: swim a quarter-mile for the first time, fit into size 14 jeans for the first time in a decade, get mauled by skittish seventeen-pound cat.

Top of left arm:

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cats
photos
pain