Feb
22
I got a FitBit recently (the Flex variety as opposed to the newer Force, which turned out to be a good decision on account of the Force being recalled for causing mysterious skin rashes) and I’m suddenly obsessed with metrics that had exactly zero impact on my life before I started wearing this naggy rubber band. Like sleeping, for instance. I sleep just fine, but now I find myself poring over my sleep data every morning like it’s a particularly cryptic episode of True Detective. I was briefly restless at 3 AM, what does it meeeeaaaan? If you rearrange all the lines from my sleep chart does it make a spiral? IS THE YELLOW KING INVOLVED SOMEHOW?
I am also, of course, preoccupied with how to get in those elusive 10,000 steps per day, which isn’t remotely easy given the fact that I spend most of my day within the confines of our not-exactly-palatial house. My current fitness routine mostly involves bodyweight circuit training, which the FitBit doesn’t really grok (yesterday it counted a one-hour spleen-busting workout as “two active minutes,” which felt deeply unfair), and while I wasn’t worried about my lack of brisk daily walks beforehand, now that I have a thing on my wrist telling me what a sedentary slug I am I find myself taking the most inefficient routes to complete my tasks in order to boost those steps. Why haul an entire basket of laundry out to the washer when I can ferry each sock one by one? Maybe I should pace a captive-lion-at-a-really-depressing-zoo path into my living room carpet while I’m at it. Hey, what if I just stand still but pump my arms vigorously back and forth?
This is all probably good in terms of peeling my ass away from the laptop on a regular basis, what with all those dire studies that basically say the only thing more dangerous than sitting at an office chair during the day is if you also smoke, shoot krokodil, and stuff wadded-up chunks of glazed donuts directly into your arteries. But also, like, maybe a tiny bit crazymaking? Yeah. *jogs vigorously from kitchen to bedroom 9691043 times in a row*
Feb
11
It snowed last Thursday, and the flakes kept coming down all through the day on Friday. Then it changed to freezing rain, and by Saturday morning it was like everything had been dipped in a half-inch coating of glass. Branches drooped with the unfamiliar icy weight, and soon trees started breaking apart and coming down with the heart-sinking tinkling crash of a collapsing champagne tower. Big green flashes from blown transformers, canceled plans, cabin fever creeping in. This suuuuucks, I moaned, leaving an oily noseprint on the window. Stare, stare, paw at the door like a cooped-up dog, pick my way across the crusted-over snow and screw up my face with a big AW SHIT when my foot plunges into bone-cold wetness. Ugh.
Riley, from the backseat of our truck as we skidded carefully down the street on Saturday afternoon: “Well, soon enough this will all be gone and it’ll be back to how it always is, just like you wanted. And it won’t be different any more.”
He was right. I mean, it is back to how it always is, for the most part. Wet and February-ish, with extra sogginess from the leftover slush. Dirt and debris everywhere from all those fallen trees. Everyone back in school, no snowmen to build, that strange icy wonderland already fading in the rearview.
-
My product review site:
[