The Burrow

The display on the table attracted my attention as I was leaving the gym.  A lovely woman, a bit younger than I, wondered if I wanted to take 30 seconds and determine my body mass index. Sure. I held that weird device in my two sweaty palms, arms straight out in front of my chest.  She took it from me almost immediately, asked my age, told me my number and directed my eyes to the chart on the table.   I smiled.  I was ideal. Not average, or low, or high.   Ideal.   Sounded pretty perfect to me.  I was proud, and expected the gym's health and wellness person to share my joy.   No such luck. She wanted to get me off my high cholesterol medicine (even though I failed already on a diet-and-exercise regime).  She knew that there was more I could do and she and her trainers were ready to help. I smiled, shook my head, told her I was satisfied with ideal  and left. I refused to be aggravated.  I was having too ...

Apparently, my sugars are high. How can this be true, I wondered, as did my little girl who emailed this query: How are your sugars high? Genetics? You eat like, NO junk… That's an affirmation I can get behind.  I don't like candy or chocolate.  I'll eat a piece of cake if it's yellow and your birthday, or a cookie or ten if JannyLou brings me her home-made goodies, but, in general, I'm a fruits and veggies, bread and cheese, kind of girl. Yet, the numbers don't lie.  The blood was drawn in October and then, again, last Thursday.  I was properly hydrated, I'd fasted the requisite number of hours, and the truth was in the digits on the page.   Pre-diabetic  is a frightening phrase. The doctor was wonderful and reassuring but I was bummed.  Peeved.  Annoyed.  Scared. Luckily, TBG was able to ride to the rescue. "Pre-diabetic" isn't like "incipient cataract," you realize. No, I hadn't thought that deeply.  I was stuck on...

Don't try to make me do it.  You won't win. Neither my body nor my mind is in the mood to exercise today.  I just don't wanna. I've been regular, six or seven days each and every week, with professionals and on my own, taking care of the body that survived bullets and surgeries and bed rest.  I am proud of that body, my body, the one that's sitting like a lump in this chair, watching its fingers type to you.  It's got remarkable bones that didn't need to be replaced and a resiliency that surprises me every time i get back up on the reformer and do the leg-and-foot-work once again. It's always willing to do what I tell it to do...  or at least to try.  "Can you do this?" the instructor might ask.  My answer is always the same.  "Let's try it and see what happens."  I've been operating under the premise that the worst that can happen has already landed on my doorstep. The surgeon promised that no one, no activity, no pulling...

There were three of us, then four, then five fit, strong women with perfect form using the machines facing the mirrors.  There was no conversation, there was no hair flipping, there was no adjusting of clothing.  There was concentration and breathing and, lurking in the background, a shared sense of purpose.  And then there were the men.  Clustered around the kick-back machine I use to strengthen my hamstrings and reawaken their connection to my glutes, five of them were discussing politics.  Actually, it was less of a discussion than it was pontification at a raised volume.  Over the D'Oyle Carte Opera's Pinafore on my iPod mini, over Buttercup bemoaning her fate, over the orchestra and the stomping of sailors on the foredeck, I was distracted by their laughter and their nonsense.  Did they think that they were the only ones in the room?  Apparently so. Their clothes were sweat drenched; they'd finished their racquetball game and ...

innerdivinityyoga.com I was making good progress.  I was strengthening my muscles and increasing my range of motion.  I could sit in cobbler pose ... with my back pressed against the wall .... with my knees wobbling way above the ground... no where near as close to flat on the floor as I used to be .... but, over several minutes, moving closer and closer to symmetry and Mother Earth. http://tinyurl.com/88oklu7 My injured leg could hang off the edge of the massage table and the raised mat in PT without causing every fiber of my being to protest.  I covered greater distances and heard less crunching in my repaired hip joint.  My feet reached both poles on the cadillac in Pilates even though I was in a long sit (legs straight out and wide enough to place my soles flat against the uprights).  All of that had been unattainable to me a month ago.  My treatment team and I were pleased.  I should have been aware of the consequences. A...

Let's work out on Saturday morning.  Call me when you are on your way and I will meet you there.  I will warm up on the recumbent bike while you impress me with your speed on something and then we can see what we are capable of accomplishing with the weights.   That is part of the email I just sent to Amster.  Between me getting shot and she preparing and then trying her first case as first chair, the months have flown by.  She'd given up her gym membership around the holidays when she was saving for a down payment but life has intervened and the house search is on hold and we are both uncomfortable in our own skins. We did this once before and we can do it again. It will require discipline and determination and, as Amster barked it, that Army mojo .  We are good for one another in that way; we don't allow excuses.  When we are working out we are committed to the process.  We keep track of repetitions and the number of plates on the bar and we ro...

The thing you have to keep in mind as you read this post is that I cannot dance.  I missed the piece where the angels were handing out rhythm.  I can't carry a tune in a bucket with the lid on top.  I was sent to piano lessons until I absolutely refused to leave the house to take them; I knew how the songs should sound and I knew that I wasn't even coming close.  I was much happier listening to my teacher play.  I love to sing along to the radio, although, according to Little Cuter, I am always a beat or so ahead or behind.  These traits combine to make my appearance on the dance floor a triumph of desire over vanity. I also don't do aerobics classes.  In fact, I have never done aerobics classes, even when I could have bought those cool leg warmers to wear to them.  I don't have much in the way of aerobic capacity, and I don't spend much time developing it.  When we first moved to Marin I went to a jazzercise class.  At the end, the te...

I used to like opening the mail. A letter, a postcard, a sale announcement and the local weekly newspaper accompanying a bill or two, all placed in the mailbox just to the left of the front door, underneath the house numbers. The mailman was a friendly and familiar face. He shared lemonade and iced tea and once I even got to have ginger ale before lunch because he would share it with me. Now, sometimes I get my mail and sometimes I don't because it's mixed up with my neighbors' deliveries. And when it does arrive, it's advertisements for stores I've never heard of and solicitations and bills. And it's the bills I want to talk about. Actually, it's one bill in particular. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Arizona has raised our premium 9.2%. I just had TBG show me how to figure it out on the calculator (my miserable math skills will make for a very interesting post someday) and it's true. We were healthier last year than we'd been the year before. In fact, th...

I thought I'd be bouncing up and down with silly yellow plastic floaty dumb bells. I thought there'd be ladies in bathing caps and lots of good natured sharing of aches and pains. I thought I'd be able to keep up. Wrong. Totally wrong. Not even close. I was humiliated. I had to have someone teach me how to stay underwater and glide. By the fourth of 8 25 yard laps I was pulling myself along the lane divider, trying not to swallow any more pool water. Breathing was a dimly remembered skill, albeit one quite useful when trying not to drown. I knew how to do it - I just didn't have the energy. Breakfast was oatmeal and brown sugar and skim milk and vitamins and bee pollen. It seemed like healthy fuel for a work-out, especially after I'd carbo-loaded on semolina toast with strawberry jam last night. Maybe I should've had some protein - like half a cow? I didn't realize that it was possible for your entire body to be covered in sweat while you were swimming. Mi...

Personal responsibility is an issue near and dear to my heart. Hearing President Obama urge Americans to take charge of their health made me smile; it was so parental and so true. " No, you'll spoil your appetite" No, you can't have THAT for dinner" "Yes, carrots are a healthy snack" "Didn't the doctor explain that ice cream gives you a tummy ache because you're allergic to milk?" Parenting thrusts ordinary humans into the roles of nutritionist and pharmacist and ER nurse, and does it all without training or support. Sure, you can look on WebMD (what I would've given for that when the Little Cuter's 2 month old body was covered with the world's most awful rash!) and read the labels and use your brain, but most of it comes from experience. And if your experience has been watching your parents shove Big Macs into their faces while driving 2 blocks to the grocery store for chips and soda then that's what you're go...