The wells of the sky now seem to be dry.
And I,
Alone again in my room,
Singularly sigh.
“I feel you, skies… I feel you…
Today was not as expected,
And I can’t quite tell if I am preparing to burst into song – somewhere way in the near future – or am replenishing the water within, that I might, once again, let it all flow forth, releasing all of this ick inside that cannot abide…
Ugh…”
Post-a-day 2019
Desperation seems to fill my insides…
My heart rate rises, ever so slowly,
As the rain pounds…
Kilos…
Down, and down, and down…
And the lighting in the sky lights my room through the skylights,
in full and varied, rapid, never-ceasing flashes…
And the fans blow,
Because this is Houston…
And the noise is like pressure on my chest, weighing me, pushing on me, toward the ground…
I hunch over, ever so slightly, at first,
And find myself, ten minutes later, almost in a seated ball, so hunched have I become…
Avoiding the pounds… kilos… of the rain overhead…
And I am tired, physically and mentally, and sleepy, with near/exhausted eyes…
Yet I cannot seem to turn out this little light of mine, this little lamp of warm, glowy, salt-lamp-covered light… my beacon in this night, my comfort, my accompaniment, my almost friend…
The storm reigns tonight, and the lighting has something to SAY, even if the thunder is only background… yes, this lightning has something to say, and it is saying it with much fervor and a demand to be noticed…
I can hear it, whether my eyes are watching it or not…
Yes, I can hear it…
She has much to say tonight…
Post-a-day 2019
I entitled this “Fitness”, but the phone decided to change it to “Fatness”, when I went to click on the writing section, and the phone offered/suggested alternatives to what I’d written… it still somewhat applies, so I’m leaving it… it’s like a Freudian slip for the technology age. 😂
So, after class today, I was talking with one of the coaches about when I might expect to see visual results with my body from these workouts.
We talked briefly about my diet, and then he requested to speak honestly.
“Of course(!).”
“When you first came in here…[…], you looked kind of sedentary…[…] Now, you already have definition in your body… in your legs… in your – you look like an athlete…[…] before, …” (makes faces) “… Now, you look like an athlete.”
It’s been a month of these classes, and I’ve attended 23 of them so far.
I checked my activity log for running, walking, and biking – and I only log my bike ride to and from the workouts, as well as any runs of a mile or more in the workout, not the actual workouts themselves – and I already have almost half the number of activities and half the distance covered that I had in all of last year… and I’ve gotten almost all of that this past month.
I had one activity, a 3-mile hike/run through the hills in Redlands, California, when I went with a friend who was moving there, logged this year otherwise… nothing else.
So, in one month, I’m already almost halfway to all of my official exercise activities last year.
Pretty cool, huh?
I mean, totally bummer that I had so few last year, but we can’t change that, nor can we change the mental struggle that kind of ran the show regarding all of that…, we can, however, embrace the freedom that is the new state of affairs, where I am now governing my fitness and my fitness activities (not some mental freak-out), and I am actively pursuing genuine and somewhat intense physical fitness.
So, woohoo!
Yay!
And, though I’ve felt that my progress visually is slow – aka my belly and haunches and inner thighs still seem so ugh – it is nice to have the positive encouragement from the coach today, as well as my sneaky shoulder muscle for when I brush my teeth. 🙂
Yay, for mental and physical fitness! 🙂
Post-a-day 2019
I never did do a ‘before’ photo for my workouts… and I’ve been a bit bummed about that this past week and a half or so.
You see, I’ve felt as though I’ve not really made much progress in my fitness… not visually, anyway.
I have no full-length mirror to access at the moment – flea situation still, you see – and so I only get to see my stomach, really, on a daily basis.
And it doesn’t seem to have altered much since we started CrossFit classes.
Perhaps it has, and I haven’t noticed the ever so gradual change…, but it seems slight, if it has, indeed, changed at all.
I almost have a sense that my arms really are more defined than before, but I can’t be sure about it… when I flex my tired muscles, not much shows up still…
So, it feels like I’ve no visual results with all of this… and I’m definitely half in it for visual results – bikinis and swimsuits and awesome outfits are in my future, so my body needs to get into shape, literally.
And I’ve been getting a bit down and out about this all, wondering morosely if it’s all worth it, anyway, if I’m apparently doing it all wrong and not getting any actual positive results.
However, tonight, while brushing my teeth – of all things, right? – I noticed something…just past the outside edge of my collar bone, there is a semi-deep indention… on the other side of the intention is an extremely solid-looking shoulder muscle(!).
I mean, I couldn’t have flexed that muscle if I’d tried, but there it was, flexed, shining casually in all of its toned, 3-D shapeliness…
So now, at the very least, thanks to CrossFit, I look like and extremely fit and BA individual whenever I brush my teeth. 😛
Not my long-term or short-term goal is, but I’ll take it for now. 🙂
Thanks, CrossFit!
Post-a-day 2019
I hope you’re comfortable with discussion of bodily parts and dirtiness, because that is what follows here. 😛
I’ve just got to say: What is the deal with toenails?
Every time I shorten them, or even clean some fuzz (from the socks I’d just removed) out of them, it smells so stinky!
My feet typically do not smell bad.
And I never notice anything coming from the toenails.
Except, of course, when trimming them.
Am I really struggling that much with keeping them clean?…. is it actually that dirty underneath them, because I don’t clean them well enough???
That’s the only explanation I can imagine… and it totally freaks me out.
Totally.
I mean, am I carrying around grime in my feet all the time, and it only goes away by cutting the nail free, and, therefore, the creepy contents beneath it???
Eeeew!
That’s just gross.
And, the thing is, it is always the same smell… it never changes, if it is there at all.
Okay, I must get something I can use specifically to clean underneath my toenails every single night, a solid scrape of clean, since clearly soap and water don’t do the job.
Yikes… what a discovery… especially for someone who has panic around dirtiness…
Haha… that irony is actually hilarious… so long as I don’t think about the actual dirty, of course… 😛
How clean are your feet and toenails, really?
Post-a-day 2019
Tonight, I attended a musical performance in an art gallery.
During the second part, after interacting briefly with a woman who helped me get water out of the near-empty water dispenser, the woman approached me:
W: As a mother of three boys, I have to ask you: Are you married?
H: [quiet laughter, because the concert has resumed in the next room of the gallery] I am not, no.
W: Good, because I like you… I have a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, so you can take your pick.
H: Didn’t you just say that one of them is married?
W: Well, yes, the redhead is married.
H: [quiet laughter]
W: … But that might not last… you never know… And then you could have him… I’d be a good mother-in-law… I’m great at presents… I’ve had to deal with multiple mothers-in-law, so I’ve learned… I can be a very good mother-in-law… and I wouldn’t live next door.
Another 45 minutes or so later, the concert had ended, I had had several more reasons shared with me as to why I ought to consider marrying one of this woman’s sons, and I left the gallery with her e-mail and phone number, not because she had me convinced with her son who looks just like the (absolutely gorgeous, in my opinion) guy in “Fantastic Beasts” (though I remember him from loving him in “Les Mis'”), or with the fact that his job is a promise of absurdly high amounts of money for the rest of our lives, but because of her job…
You see, I was thinking to myself just his morning that I was interested in learning more about this specific something in Houston… and here I was tonight, under hilarious pretenses, handed a woman who works in just that specific something.
I plan to e-mail her this week to set up a meeting about her work.
And, who knows?… perhaps I’ll end up going out with her boy after all. 😛
H: [totally cracks up, alone in her room, as she considers the scenario]
Post-a-day 2019
May the Fourth be with you…
I made that, using a Facebook messenger sticker as the foundation, and then adding the light saber and the extra message and stars and blue…., because I felt I needed a sticker of one of my characters holding a light saber for today (and the odd other occasion, of course, too).
At my friend’s wedding this afternoon, the string quartet played the Star Wars theme song as my friend and her now husband exited the chapel.
Our party favors, which happened also to be the main point of the send-off (which we faked way early, so everyone could go play, and then the bride and groom didn’t have to leave the party at any particular time [and they ended up being there as one of the last handful of duos present], and no one had to worry about breaking things), like a sword salute tunnel, were light sabers(!!!!!).
At one point, a friend and I were playing with ours, and he suddenly declared that he really wanted to go dance the current two-step with our light sabers just in our hands… and so we did… and the party progressively included more and more light sabers in active (and mostly appropriate) use.
It was such a blast of extra fun to have at the reception, those light sabers…. to the very end of the party, they were wonderful.
I also happen to have some fun ideas for photos now… 😀
Because, you know, I have four light sabers…. it pays to be one of the last ones around, helping. 😛
Also, my friend’s dad told me how, at the shooting ranger this morning, all the targets were from Star Wars: The Death Star, Darth Vader, Storm Troopers, and the likes…. and he said they discussed how you can’t take down a Storm Trooper with a direct hit, but that is have to miss, if you really want to get them. 😛 (Watch the first movie, if you don’t get it, and focus on the scene where Leia shoots at the Storm Troopers on the ship.)
Post-a-day 2019
… so dramatic…(!)
But I totally love it, and largely for its actually absurd level of drama – the characters in shows are just plain nuts… and, if you don’t think they are, just pay a bit closer attention to their words, and they’ll wind up nuts soon enough.
Seriously, though…. almost all the characters… in almost every show… 😛
It’s kind of great. 😀
Whenever my mom and I attend a Mozart opera, at some point in the performance – and it sometimes happens more than once, if the music makes it really too hard to resist the secret explosion – my mother leans over to me and whispers through slightly pursed lips, “Too many notes…”
She doesn’t mean it, of course – she is merely commenting on how clearly she can hear the amazing number of notes that happen in a matter of seconds in Mozart’s compositions.
And, of course, she does so by quoting Signore Salieri from the spectacular film “Amadeus”.
(If you haven’t seen it, watch it… if you have, feel invited to watch it again soon.) 😉
It always gives me a bit of crack up, while simultaneously bringing a sense of awe into the space: Mozart’s compositions truly are magical.
And the ‘too many notes’ thing really is magical, too, because, upon first listening, I never notice the hundreds of notes…, but, when I think of Salieri’s comment, I suddenly hear them all, flying about, going this way and that, like butterflies of all different colors, going in all directions, but somehow all painting a beautiful picture in front of you with their combined colors en masse… it’s like a Seurat with notes…
And I love it.
Post-a-day 2019
I had my hair cut today.
Actually, I had a whole lot of my hairs cut today… and voluntarily.
I’m extremely pleased with the result, though it somewhat freaks me out a bit… as though the person I see in the mirror is someone else from the person I saw every time before this evening.
The whole goal to the haircut was to step closer still to the person I want and long to be… and every time I take those steps, then tend to be quite scary… the fear of failure – and various tangents off of it, too – always makes me feel a bit wobbly as I take these steps, though they usually gain solid ground and confidence rather quickly once I actually take them.
So, with the hair, I’m still a bit wobbly on my feet, so to speak, but I am finding the ground to be increasingly solid and stationary, the more I allow myself to experience the panic and discomfort, and, therefore, to let it go.
And no, this is not over just a little haircut, just so you know – this was my hair this morning:
and this was the floor* after the haircut:
*Including the 18-inch section that I set down for the photo; hair that I am donating for wigs for cancer patients (yet again)
And my hair is not very thick, mind you… that’s a pile of an additional four and a half inches that came off after I relaxed a bit about it all, and I was ready for the real haircut and style to happen. 😛
That’s 22 and a half inches of hair for the longest parts, with the bulk of it being around 20 and a half inches long…
Kind of crazy, huh?
Post-a-day 2019
My protein shake thing had caffeine in it… I can still tell… twelve hours later… it is past one AM, and my eyes are only just starting to droop a bit, and my body grow slightly weary…
I have to get up to sub tomorrow, which means leaving home at around seven AM… which, rather, I suppose, is today, not tomorrow… and just thinking about it makes me feel exhausted…
I am so tired, so sleepy, but my eyes and body are not having it… the caffeine won’t let them relax.
But it is beginning, at last, to give in, ever so slightly…
So, I suppose, I shall see if it will allow me to fall asleep now…
Fingers crossed!
P.S. I bought a plane ticket today to visit Japan this coming winter… woohoo!
Post-a-day 2019
hannah ananas 