Week Two/Too Weak

This morning I rose at 5:30 AM for the 10th weekday in a row. Not having a group bike ride or Master's swim class planned, I took my time about getting ready, drinking my breakfast smoothie and tried to enjoy the morning. Mostly I enjoyed tossing around the idea that I could go back to bed if I wanted to. That, my friend, would set a precedent with which I was not entirely comfortable, so instead I put on my gym shoes and headed out to lift heavy objects off the floor. This will probably be my only weightlifting day this week. Despite the early mornings, I'm still having trouble finding enough time in the day to fit in multiple workouts.

I'm grumpy in the morning (surly, some would say) and often during the day I'm hit with sudden bursts of self pity. Pathetic. We've got to get motivated around here. I'm combating this with orange juice and additional calories. I need to make sure I'm eating enough.

Is this boring you? It's boring the hell out of me. Last night I skipped out on what would probably have been a fun social outing in favor of drinking a beer, reading a comic book and falling asleep by eight. This does not bode well. I slept upside-down on the bed, mostly on top of the sheets, as I am at times wont to do. At some point in the middle of the night, I woke, crawled to the top of the bed and slid under the duvet (Yeah, I have a duvet. What are you going to do about it?). I slept right up until the alarm. Nine and a half hours of sleep and I'm still tired.

Why am I doing this, you ask? Fuck if I know. Because I can? Maybe I want to see what happens if I try. Maybe it's some form of guilt or feelings of inadequacy. Maybe I want to look down on mere mortals with an insufferable sense of superiority. Maybe I'm doing it to meet girls.

Yeah, it's probably girls.

What's your excuse?

Seriously?

I got home from my first masters swim around 7:30 this morning, pulled into the driveway, turned off the engine and slumped my head into the steering wheel for a nice, long sigh. How do people do this? I thought briefly, before catching myself on my way down a typical slide into self pity. I shook it off, told myself to get over it. I'm not that sore. Other people do this shit every day, and they have kids and a busier work schedule than mine. besides I thought. feeling this way all the time will be good practice for when you're old.

All jokes aside, "what the fuck am I doing?" you might ask. Or I might ask. One of us should ask. And the answer is, "I don't really know." Most of my friends think I'm nuts for working out this much, and they're right. Then again, my triathlete friends would probably scoff at how little I'm doing and how much of a toll it is currently taking on me. I guess that's your answer right there. I'm doing this, because it's possible, and I want to see if I can.

If it all gets to be too much, if I start to wither and fade and that becomes a lasting condition rather than a state of a few months, I promise to tone it down. We can't, after all, let this whole thing interfere too much with my drinking. In the mean time, I'm keeping with it. It's tiring where I am, but I want to see what's on the other side.

In retrospect...

..."do you think the moment that drove her away was when I put your phone down my pants, or would you say it was when we started talking about your herpes?"

"Definitely the phone."

"Yeah."

I know by now that I've told you this already. I'm a bit of a jackass. Last night it was on in full force. I wasn't toning it down for anyone, come hell or high water, including the cute girl who came over to our booth to chat me up. She was able to hang for about 15 minutes before the color drained from her face and her body posture assumed that of a frozen animal, folded upon itself in helpless surrender.

"Did she really just up and tell you she was going to leave?"

"Yeah, she tapped me on the shoulder, said, 'excuse me, I'm going to go now' and asked if I could get up to let her out of the booth."

"Hmmm. She didn't even say goodbye."

"D. You had a hot, smart girl, totally interested in you and you blew it."

"Hey! If you can't hang with *this* now, it's not going to work out anyway."


and then we proceeded to dance in our seats to the bad techno music while making cheesy faces at the young dems.

Sometimes it's good to have jackass backup. Go us.

So, what have you been up to?

It always seems like I should have a better answer to this question. Have I blogged about this before? I've blogged about this before. Tough. People ask me this and I have no idea what to tell them. "You know. Working," I say. Sometimes I add, "working out a lot," even though I feel like that makes me sound like an asshole. It's the truth though (the working out, not the asshole part. OK, that too). Weekdays are a struggle to balance work with getting in shape while still trying to maintain a social life and wedge in a few hours for myself. I drive to the cove after work for a swim, then hit the gym. I sneak out mid-day for a yoga class or a bike ride. One of these days I'll get up early enough to start riding my bike in the morning. Really. I've just joined the tri club, maybe that will help. I'm trying to step it up from one workout a day to two or more and moral around here has been flagging. Some days I just want to sit on the couch.

On weekends, I volunteer. I spend hours driving foster kids around, trying to prevent them from beating each other to death in my car, trying to keep them in school, out of trouble, and vaguely entertained at the same time, but I don't really get into that with people I don't know well.

Sometimes I go to the movies. Often I go to the pub. I drink too much. I don't cook enough. Sometimes I stay out until 7 in the morning dancing with strangers (what am I, 19 again?) Changes need to be made around here. Do I tell them that?

I'd love to say I'd been writing, or even keeping up with my reading, and yet The Grapes of Wrath sits on my bedside table, the bookmark sitting in the same place-- just a few chapters away from completion-- that it's been in for months. (NOTE: It's not that I don't care what happens to the Joads, I just have a feeling it's not going to be happy). My blog is neglected and the story I started a year ago sits neglected on my laptop at about thirty desperately poor pages. Truth is, I barely have enough time in the day to get three meals in me and a few hours of sleep. I'm not complaining, mind you. A full day is better than one spent sitting on the couch looking at porn on my laptop.

Yeah, I find a little time to do that too.