These comps I'm required to write and submit by August 31st are taking entirely too much of my time. I was hoping to increase the workout time at the gym. Well that hasn't happened. I did finish the first paper on Sunday night. This was after a month of kinda writing it and four days of my butt glued to the chair with my laptop. If one were to walk in they would think the absent minded professor had taken over. I have books and articles spread around me, my hair is in all sorts of disarray, and I'm talking to myself. Saturday night as I was going to bed I was in tears because I hadn't finished and I could barely stand another day with the paper. Yet, that's what happened on Sunday. I spent another day with the paper. I went to bed Sunday night after a brief happy dance around the house where the cats looked at me like I had lost my mind. So after another of my colleagues provides her edit and I make a few changes, the Connection Statement should be a thing of the past until I have to orally defend it, of course.
I have been making it to the gym. The problem lies in the process of writing. If you are a writer you know what I'm talking about. Once you get going, you can't just stop. It's not something you can pick up and work on here and there for an hour or so at a time. You need large blocks of time to devote in order to get the thought processes working. What I'm trying to say is, even though I'm working out...I'm not getting all of my food in. The other day I started feeling sick to my stomach (TRAINER, Please, please, please do not yell at me after you read this), I realized I hadn't eaten in six hours. Sometimes I think I just need someone here making my meals and serving them to me at the appropriate time, but I'm not a superstar so that's not going to happen.
Okay the really exciting thing about my going to the gym is my new relationship with the treadmill. I have now shaved four minutes off of my mile. REMEMBER when I started I couldn't run an entire mile without stopping and insisting that I was going toward the light. Now I can run a mile and each time I get on there it's a challenge to knock some time off. I am so competitive with myself. Several times this has ended up in me at a full sprint for the last three minutes in order to reach a new goal, but hey I'm not complaining. I think the biggest change has been in the way I approach this. I do the elliptical for 5-10 minutes and then I stretch. Now when I run I don't get the leg and back pain I was getting before. I realize some of you athletic people are saying..."DUH!" We all have to start somewhere and learn things in different ways. Usually when I'm experiencing pain, I will learn a technique to lessen the pain. My technique is ON FIRE right now. I'm loving it. The scales are going down slowly, but they are going down.
Let me share my other new form of exercise with you. I grew up in a family with a Grandpa who LOVED to garden. That man planted more green beans and tomatoes than one could fathom. I wish we had pics of his garden. Once the beans came on, every Sunday the whole family would go up there and pick green beans for hours while Grandma cooked our fried chicken dinner. After dinner we sat out in the yard (no matter how hot it was because there was no air and they had a lovely shaded backyard) and snapped the green beans. On Monday morning mom woke Sandy and I up early and it was back to Grandma and Grandpa's. The three of us together with the two of them would can green beans for hours in a hot kitchen. Later in the season came the canning of tomatoes. It was nothing to have 80 quarts of each by the end of the summer. Grandpa had lived through the depression and he didn't want his kids to ever go hungry. So we all had beans and tomatoes. I wish I had some of his beets. YUMMO! I didn't appreciate them then, but I do now.
One of the requirements I had when we bought a house was a yard big enough that I could put in a garden. Over the years the garden has grown. I'll post some pics. I picked a bushel of green beans this week and on Friday I'll be picking again and yes there are still more blooms. Looking at the amount of cherry tomatoes and cucumbers we have on the vines just makes me smile. My dad and I used to sit in our landlord's garden (he planted huge amounts just for the fun of it because his wife wouldn't let him bring any of it home) and eat the cherry tomatoes out of the garden until we were sick. I sent Dad a picture of my cherry tomato plants and told him I'm going to need him over here soon. The cucumbers are winding through the whole garden and the vines are loaded. The regular tomato plants aren't looking too bad either. And for the first year EVER, I have green peppers. Not on all of the plants. I'm trying to figure this out. Also, this asparagus has me baffled but I will figure it out.
Anyway, Trainer says that for each hour I'm in the garden I'm burning 200 calories. Please know the weeds are disappearing quickly. That's an easy way to burn off calories. I'm taking full advantage of the situation!
I do hope to start writing more frequently, at least back to the once a week that I was logging, but the comps and garden have been taking up a lot of free time.
Until next time...
I hope to get back in the habit of writing every week.
