Filed under: Exercise, Middle Age | Tags: Exercise, gym, horseback riding, Horses, mindfulness, orange theory, pilates, training
In our efforts to become more and more efficient with our time, exercise has become something we do to be healthy, look good and relieve stress. And the faster we can do that, the better.
So, hat’s off to all you exercise psychos who get up at 5:00am, be at the gym by six and showered and at your desk by eight. You’ve knocked it out for the day and you’ll sleep better knowing your blood pressure is lower, your muscles are tired, and that eating the donut Kevin brought into work isn’t going to wreck your dietary world.
I used to be one of you.
But, since the pandemic forced me to work from home, I’ve learned some unpleasant truths about myself:
- I won’t exercise at home unless it’s walking the dogs, and even then it’s really only because my apple watch talks to my health insurance and I get $1 for it.
- Watching exercise videos on YouTube is like watching TV – I’ll just turn it off when I don’t like what they’re doing. It’s a lot harder to do that when you have a trainer blocking the gym door against runners like me.
- I need physical and mental separation from my work, which doesn’t happen for me, working from home. Compartmentalizing is not my thing.
As soon as I could, I started going to a Pilates studio. I was too out of shape to go back to Orange Theory (no way was I going to go back to being a “Walker” – if you know, you know…). I had injuries to heal, and I knew Pilates is good for strengthening your core. Since my “core” had expanded to include a lot of peripheral areas, that sounded perfect.
And it was, for a while. But just like with all the other exercises I’d tried, I got bored. It became an appointment I had to keep instead of being something I looked forward to. Worse, I still couldn’t disconnect from work. I’d be doing stretches and making a “C—Curve” until my body shook, but I would still be thinking of all the things I had to do.
Finally, after a lot of bitching and a heart-to-heart with Daughter #1, who is now a personal trainer herself, I understood that I need to find an exercise that is something physical that I enjoy doing away from the house/work, but that also takes my complete attention.
Enter Daughter #2, who asked for the millionth time why I didn’t just start horseback riding again.
From the mouths of both my babes.
With horses, you must be present. They can read your emotions form the moment you enter the barn, and trust me, if you’re in a shitty mood, they’re going to be too. And who can blame them? Would you want someone sitting grumpily on your back, hands clenched, attached to the reins and the bit in your mouth? When I’ve tried to ride Daughter #2’s horse like it’s a mission to accomplish, he simply refuses to walk out of the barn, and I don’t blame him.
From grooming to riding to walking them to their field, horses demand your complete attention. There’s no sneaking out when you’re done, like I used to do at Orange Theory, when the rowing part of the class was just the last straw. If you’re not paying attention with a horse, you’re either on the ground, chasing an escapee or simply stepping in a big pile of shit.
So this fall, after Daughter #2 heads back to college, I’m going to start riding again in earnest. God help the poor horse that has put up with me flailing around until I’m strong enough to stay balanced (and on).
Now, I know riding isn’t for everybody – that’s not the point. The point is to make exercise something you want to do, not an appointment you have to keep. Go find your thing – hiking, canoeing, pickle ball, swimming, rock wall climbing, yard work, whatever it is that floats your exercise boat. Just make sure it’s something where you have to be completely present – the rest will follow.
Filed under: Middle Age, Parenting | Tags: adulthood, humor, marijuana, Middle-Age, parenting, pot, weed
Recently my state made it (sort of) legal to smoke weed. It’s not my drug of choice for a lot of reasons, but I have enjoyed watching Bougie, middle-aged people decide that it’s now ok to try it, or at least openly talk about trying it.
But I suspect that, like all things that have been cool, this too shall pass. We’ll ruin it for our kids like we do everything else: Face Book, Tik Tok, using the word “woke….”
Here’s how it will play out:
- We talk it to death amongst ourselves, like we’ve discovered some huge secret.
- We start trying to talk to our kids about it, who take pity on us, thinking we’re cute for trying to be hip, and let us know how much we don’t know. They give us lots of tips, glad they don’t have to hide what they’re doing anymore.
- We wait for hours in line outside strip mall weed stores to get the 4 free seeds they’re giving away as a promo, with visions in our heads of growing our own and becoming 21st century weed homesteaders.
- We grow it, dry it, roll it, bake it and whatever else you can possibly do with it. We post our epic fails, techniques and recipes on Tik Tok with the same enthusiasm as we post about Karens and dueting with other people much cooler than we are.
- Older Weedies marvel at the fact that middle-aged, middle class parents are now paying top dollar for the seeds they used to pick out of the crappy weed they could afford back in the day.
- Older Weedies have mixed feelings about the new weed on the market. They are wary of the new, more powerful and branded weed, but happy it’s regulated so their grandkids don’t experience the same flashbacks from laced weed they “got that one time from Jimmy.”
- Boutique brands have their own lines of weed-related products – Lily Pulitzer wrappers and bags, Toberlone weed-infused dark chocolate, Trader Joe’s weed/pesto ravioli bites.
- Younger Weedies turn away from weed entirely, shitting all over it and the benefits they shouted at us until we made make it legal. Weed has now become uncool. They identify something about the new weed that is the equivalent of side parts and skinny jeans.
- The states once again make money based on the middle class’s desire to be young and cool.
So enjoy it while it lasts, my Bougie friends and Young Weedies. There aren’t many times when our worlds intersect before we part ways again over what is cool and what isn’t.
Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor | Tags: drugs, hormones, menopause, weed, women's health
- I’m hungry – A LOT. At 1:00am the dogs look up at me, wondering why the Maker of Cookies to Steal Off the Counter is rummaging through the fridge and pantry, devouring everything sweet and salty.
- They’re edible. I’m seriously considering a venture start-up for hormone edibles. It would kill two birds with one stone – you get the hormones in a tastier form and you get to eat. Bonus: no one would have a problem with enterprising Girl Scouts camping outside that store front and making a killing.
- They make you spacey. Since taking this pill there has been a definite increase in the airhead factor. In one day, I managed to attend the wrong gym class, almost go to the wrong doctor’s appointment and wear my pants backward in public. So…wait, what was I saying?
- You still need a prescription to get it. Ok, I know having a prescription card isn’t a thing very much anymore, but a lot of the reasons for the prescription are similar, too: anxiety, sleeplessness, pain. You get the picture.
- You need a dealer. Dealer, doctor…whatever.
- It doesn’t make me paranoid, just occasionally bitchy; and frankly, that’s only a problem for the people around me….so bonus in my mind.
- It’s regulated – there’s almost zero risk of some crazy shit causing flashbacks, blackouts or accidental heroin addition.
- My insurance covers it – completely.
- It keeps the night sweats away and (mostly) helps me sleep at night.
- My house doesn’t smell skunky when I use.
- I don’t have to hide it from my kids. I can continue to be the pillar of my family’s dubious moral high ground and still get all the bennies.
Filed under: Country Living, Exercise, Middle Age | Tags: Axe, axe throwing, Exercise, guns, lagertha, vikings
After the possum-in-the-driveway incident, I realized I may need some skill with a gun to put animals out of their misery. Well, I’ve changed my mind. Sure, there are some valid reasons for getting a gun, especially when living in the country: coyotes, cops don’t hang around the end of my road for my convenience, and the creatures going bump in the night can be a little more menacing than the neighborhood tom cat calling for his ladies.
But there are a lot of reasons for me, personally, to not get one:
- I can’t see 10 feet in front of me without contacts or glasses (which are nowhere to be found when you actually need them), so night protection is out. All I’d be able to do is point my gun in the general direction of the problem.
- The kind of gun I would have to be able to shoot in order to actually wound anyone would be too heavy for me to use. (But OMG I love the image of myself charging out of the back door with a shotgun at my hip yelling “Come and get it, Mother F@#$%r!!)
- I don’t like loud noises, and using a silencer just screams “I’m going to end up in a Netflix movie.”
- Even with practice, I still can’t hit the side of a barn because it’s impossible for me to keep my eyes open and shoot. So, I pull to the side. Every time. Honestly, I don’t trust anyone who can keep there eyes open while shooting – they can probably do it while sneezing, too, and that’s just messed up. If you can do that, your body clearly isn’t functioning properly and you should start surfing WebMD to find out what the Hell’s wrong with you.
- Snakes (a.k.a. “danger noodles”) have tiny heads and move fast; therefore I will most likely still be bitten if I try to shoot them.
- Trying to shoot a dying possum in the driveway as an act of mercy would probably result in bullets ricocheting back into me, rendering me unconscious, next to the possum. I don’t want to die lying next to a possum. But if that happens, that shit better be in my obituary because that is FUNNY.
All of that said, I am now in the infancy of becoming the Lagertha of my neighborhood. For those of you who don’t enjoy bloody, Viking sagas on tv, Lagertha is a bad-ass, axe and sword wielding Viking Shield Maiden on the show Vikings. Oh, and did I mention she’s gorgeous? So yeah, I decided to channel my inner Lagertha these days.
Last month, when I turned 50, I asked Hubby for a different kind of gift, one I learned about from my friend Patrice. I asked for a set of throwing axes and a target, which he made, although not without some concern that his life expectancy might drop dramatically if I was having a bad day. On my birthday, when the world had iced over in one the many signs of the coming apocalypse, we threw axes at the target in the sleet for 2 hours.
Friends, I gotta tell you….it is life changing.
It is like being Lagertha (but in a semi-rural setting with the dogs barking madly behind the storm door because they’re too untrained to stay out of the way). There is something viscerally satisfying when you hear the THUNK of the axe sinking into the wooden target. When I picked up a powerful handgun once and fired off several rounds in a row, I could see how that firepower would have its appeal. But throwing an axe seems more connected, more intimate, more ancient. More violent. More…satisfying.
Yes, I know Millennials have been throwing axes at bars for a while now, and as usual, us old folks have probably already ruined it. But for a middle-aged woman, being able to forcefully throw something and connect with the target somehow makes you feel powerful, and more importantly, less invisible.
Will an axe beat a gun in a fight? Nope, probably not, but I’ll bet there aren’t many criminals who’ll expect to see a 2021, female version of The Shining coming at them.
Will throwing an axe make a difference in how others see me? Probably not, but more importantly, it changes how I see myself. So, if you come into our driveway and hear the steady THUNK, THUNK THUNK of an axe hitting wood, know that I probably had a bad day. You may want to loudly approach, holding a glass of bourbon at arm’s length. If you see me doing this with my hair braided and wearing some kind of animal skin, you probably should call the cops.
Filed under: Misc. Humor | Tags: Birds, Cats, covid, Meditation, pandemic, self care
Many of us are suffering from various forms of COVID Fatigue. For a lot of us, part of COVID Fatigue is “Zoom Fatigue,” or being tired after a day of zoom calls because our brains aren’t wired to see only part of the person to whom we are speaking. There are a zillion tiny body cues that we miss on zoom calls because we can only see the person’s face, leaving our brains working overtime trying to fill in the blanks.
One of my methods for dealing COVID Fatigue it is by watching TikTok – before bed, waiting for my lunch to cook, sometimes in the bathtub. TikTok, for some reason, has decided I need more cat videos in my life. (By the way, if you haven’t seen the video of the lawyer who accidentally used a cat filter and couldn’t remove it, I have provided this gem of cinematography below).
I don’t even like cats, but TikTok lets me belly laugh at cats falling off stuff, being given baths and otherwise being generally being humiliated.
Apparently, cats can get COVID Fatigue and need to relax, too.
For a while it was cute having my 17-year-old cat Izzy constantly jumping in my lap and trying to do all the things I do. My co-workers didn’t seem to mind seeing her tail wave back and forth on video.
Why don’t you just lock the door to your office, you ask? Because she sits outside and HOWLS, or sticks her little orange paw under the door, grabs hold and shakes it. It’s like living with a toddler all over again.
Enter cat videos and the BIRD BONANZA. Some people (yes, on TikTok) have solved the cat attention problem by setting up an old computer or iPad and playing bird videos for their cat. The theory is that if the cat wants to do what you’re doing, let them. I decided to give it a try.
When you Google videos for cats, there are A LOT of them. I had no idea there were so many bird voyeurs. The video I use is called BIRD BONANZA, and it’s 8 hours long. (You have to say BIRD BONANZA in your best, super loud and deep announcer voice because anything with the word BONANZA deserves it). The video consists of a variety of birds landing, feeding and flying away from this one particular woodland stump. So, I set up an old computer on the file cabinet next to my desk, hit “Play” and placed Izzy in front of it.
The first time Izzy watched it, she amazed. I was amazed.
It’s cat porn.
For over an hour Izzy sat and watched birds flitting about and chirping, trying to figure out where they went when they flew off screen. She made weird, gutteral noises and purred, and looked very happy.
All of that made me uncomfortable.
But even cats get Zoom Fatigue, I guess. Eventually her little brain got tired of only hearing half the bird conversations and seeing them fly off…to nowhere. It was time to take a cat nap.
The sad thing is….I couldn’t turn it off. That video is weirdly soothing, and now I have it on all the time, whether Izzy’s in the room or not. The only down side is that sometimes I have to explain that the occasional loud chirp is my BIRD BONANZA.
I used to be annoyed at the algorithms that put all those stupid cat videos in my TikTok feed, but without those videos I wouldn’t have laughed until I cried watching the lawyer cat video and I wouldn’t have discovered the soothing sounds of birds on a stump. Relief can come from surprising places.
What do you do to relax that you never saw coming?
Subourbon Mom 