Oct
14
I would have guessed that horse-(HORSE!) loving Dylan would be the one interested in being a cowboy for Halloween this year, but it turns out he’s going to be a fractious 2-year-old that will rip your head clean off if you try and stuff him in a costume. Riley, on the other hand, is totally ready for the range.
Man, I can’t wait for Halloween. Three reasons:
1) You best believe this whole business of not eating a bunch of sugary bullshit at night is going right the fuck on HOLD for the 31st. There will be an unholy party happening in my food-hole, and all the Mars products are coming.
2) The kids going berserk every time someone knocks on the door. Which is like twice, since no one comes to our house, but hey, more candy for me.
3) Walking Dead premiere on AMC. Oh HELL yes.
What kind of costume plans—kid or otherwise—are in place at your house?
Oct
13
The woman next to me at CrossFit has immaculate form during her deadlift, if you rolled a quarter down her back it would probably come to a stop on her ass. In comparison, I can feel my back humping up as I struggle with the weight. I painfully, tearfully heave 130 pounds upward, my legs shaking. It’s awful and impossible and my form is shit and everyone else is lifting twice as much weight without a problem and I nearly collapse on top of the bar afterwards and I’m seeing actual stars, blinking and winking at me in the musty gym air.
Sprint tests are next and we’re sent on a route that winds through the busy parking lot and into a pitch-black road and around a block and back through the stupid Frogger-esque lot and up a giant flight of stairs, which we’re told to take two at a time. I try this, the two-steps-thing, and nearly trip and flatten my face on the concrete. At the top, I gasp until I’m sure my lungs are going to emerge from my mouth, twin frantic pink flesh-bubbles searching for escape.
The next day we’ve got overhead presses and overhead squats, the idea being to lift the max amount of weight that’s physically possible for us. It’s terrifying, holding a giant awkward metal thing above my head and trying to lower my ass towards the floor. I envision somehow dropping it on my neck, my head neatly decapitated and rolling bouncily across the rubber mats. During the press, I get the weight to eyeball level and my arms say hey, fuck you, and I can’t make it budge one more inch. I’m trembling and sweating and one leg is doing a weird involuntary dog-scratch movement and my teammates yell that I can do it and the coach yells that I can do it and I somehow, glacially, gruntingly, manage to shove the beshitted thing the rest of the way up and afterwards I am thisclose to crying, partially because it was so hard, partially because of these people cheering me on, partially because I’m flooded with . . . something, some rush of chemicals I’m unfamiliar with.
We do box jumps to max, the coaches adding weights on top of the boxes to increase the height, and I feel my brain shearing away at the idea of leaping onto what appears to be an unstable surface and I can’t make myself go any higher than a couple feet and I feel a tiny worrisome ping in my back.
One of the guys is leaping what appears to be his own body height. He floats upwards in a seemingly effortless movement, landing as lightly as a cat.
Rope climbing is last and I struggle with it, trying to get the technique of clamping the rope between your feet as you push yourself upwards. My arms and back and legs and everything have stopped working and it’s just not happening and all of a sudden somehow I find myself fifteen feet or so high. Before I can stop myself I shout OH MY GOD NO WAY then drop heavily to the mat, thunk.
My classmates nod and smile and the guy who can ascend two ropes at once just by using his hands like some kind of goddamned monkey says hey, yeah, that was good, and I kind of want to hug everyone so hard right now.
I leave, slowly and creakily, waving goodbye. When I get home I collapse in a heap. Later when I try and stand up I realize that in addition to all the other aches and pains, my back has basically exited the building. I can’t straighten up, I can only walk in a bent-over shuffle.
It hurts. It sucks. It’s not exactly the most safe exercise in the whole world. We run on unlit streets, we jump onto metal boxes that will crack our shins if we fail, we try to lift things that are too heavy for us. We are constantly told to do things we don’t think we can do. A lot of it doesn’t feel okay or comfortable at ALL.
You know how this ends, right? With me saying this: man, I love it there so much. Screw avoiding pain at all costs. Forget being so scared of danger we eliminate adventure. Fuck giving in to the voice that says I can’t.
I’m walking like a busted-up old lady today. My legs are covered in ugly bruises. My hands have peeling, bloody calluses. And I can’t wait to go back for more.
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