Ayn's Multiple World

Obsessions win over

Good morning. It’s me again. Like a springy thingy … I keep coming back – did you notice that? It’s now 8:15 am. Rich got up about 20-25 minutes ago. We’d crept into bed with him and did some good snuggling. He says we only snore a little bit right now and he said that was reassuring because it meant that we were comfy cozy.

Pshwoo. He sure is a charmer! Can’t tell you how scrumptious he feels when we warm ourselves against him. Just gives me the jitters to think of it.

He’s being a happy camper this morning, cuz he got a good start with a few smooches thrown in for good luck, and now he’s up having his coffee and watching his fishy show. PLUS, he’s taping another to watch tomorrow morning before his favorite fishing show. I think there are too many commercials, but other than that it seems ok, especially because I know my honey is happy. WhooHOO. He just came by and brushed his fingers under my ear … yep definitely the shivers.

He was up getting coffee and now he’s back to fishing. I told him about a movie I had gotten for him and he said that we need to get a new DVD … I guess his had broken. We can’t get the door to open. I think that Maury is supposed to come by sometime soon and hook up the thingy so we can download DVDs. That should help too. I just asked Rich if he could help me pick out movies because when I looked the other day they really weren’t good ones. I’d gotten some nature movies.

That reminded me that I could be watching the nature movie now while I got some time … I’m going to put it on the background and see if I can write while listening to it. I’d listened to the section on caves earlier, but then Rich was going to put it on the TV and that’s when we figured out the door was jammed – and, I hadn’t gotten back to it. We put on the ear phones so that we don’t bother Rich. It’s all kind of a cool system in the number of choices we have now days.

Cool, cool … elephants in the desserts pretty cool. Ok, focus … on what? Now camels. Trying to figure out what’s happening to the sound … I guess it’s ok, we’re just getting a little background music. I don’t understand why there aren’t any words. Eh, we’ll let it play and see what happens. Makes it probably easier to concentrate. Just frustrating thinking I’m missing something. Whoops … Rich caught us … He said are you watching camels poop?! Yikes that’s what was showing. But, for the record I wasn’t studying it! Yeeks!

Hmm, there must be something wrong … I’m getting music, but when I pushed subtitles there seems to be narration going on. I think this is not going to work - too frustrating having to look to get the information. I’m going to switch over to Rhapsody and find some music to listen to instead. One thing I can’t do is be frustrated on a perfectly good Saturday morning. Ok, that’s good … at least the music is working the way it is supposed to. The only problem is that by listening to music I’m disconnecting to Rich’s world. I guess I’ll have to hope that he comes by and nuzzles me … Hehehe life is good!

Hmm, now experimenting with music … right now we’re doing Enya. I think it’s Enya radio so there will be others that are being played with her songs direct. It should help me calm down. Just gotta get the volume right now. I can still hear Rich’s fishy stuff in the background … that’s not a bad deal. I know where he’s at. Wow. Am I ever going to settle down? Ok, worked through the volume issues. I think I’m good to go … let’s give some thought to something seriously now, k?

First thing I wanted to write about is the gym experience yesterday. Oh, and there was some work transition thing going on too. We had to clear out our office because the cleaners were coming by this morning and tomorrow … they do the floors once a year. So, it means that the entire center works at getting the place in order.

Everything is picked up and moved toward the hall or the side of the room closest to the door inside walls. The clients help too and basically, by two pm everything was moved so that there weren’t many places to sit down at the center. Even my office chairs were out in the hall. Because of it we asked and sister confirmed that staff could go home early because everything was turned around. We stayed and did Thinking Group, and then left … WOOHOO!

It was nice. I had a nice relaxing drive home and then watched some distressing stuff on the computer. Pretty much we gathered our updated version of Tropical storm Fay and news and catching up with email. The question on the way home and on into some of the stuff I was doing was if and when was I going to the gym. I decided that I really needed to go, but I thought through that there would be fewer people later Friday night and that I could eat and even take my medicine before going. I ran into a bit of dread in that I was going to have to leave the house.

That was cut down a little when I made the commitment to go in getting dressed. I figured at that point even if I weren’t able to get out the door that I’d made a progressive movement toward the goal.

Sweetie called about 6-7 pm. He asked me how it was going. He had his first football game yesterday and then he was going to grab a hamburger with the guys on his crew. He didn’t end up coming home until about 11 or 11:30 pm. That’s ok … I’d fallen asleep on the couch by then listening to a broadcast from the fitness channel on two families who were both in a commitment to lose weight. I’d surfed to get there, and had loved all the options that we had … it was one of those nights that everything seemed interesting.

But, getting back to the gym …

While I was home messing around the computer, I gave myself positive messages until I finally got to the point where I was looking forward to going out the door. I’d thought it through that this was MY gym and we were going because I wanted to take advantage of this privilege to have a gym. After I finally made the decision to go, it was pretty surreal. I traveled by driving of course, but the thing was like I was buzzed and had not driven a car for a long time. Maybe part of that was that it had been getting dark and I usually do not go out at that time of the day. I was so proud of myself for getting out on my own.

I like that there is a whole long row of handicap parking in front of the building.

I find that there are not many handicap making use of the gym. There were definitely people there, but I’d say that it was only about 1/5th full. That was sweet. I had my choice of long rows of tread mills. I picked one that wasn’t in front of anyone directly … secondarily, I found that it was relatively close to one of the TV’s … well actually they are grouped in banks of 3. There is some canned music going on in the background and the sound of people working and clanking and whirring machines, but in general I found the atmosphere very comforting even though I was still being mind buzzed.

After I’d gotten onto my tread mill – committed myself – I found that it was an older model than the one I had first been introduced to. I tried not to panic as I studied the screen … part of being at a gym is not looking completely like you are a newbie. That’s an important element in that … somewhere in there I realized that I was at a real gym and that my workout routines were going to depend on me. Wow. It felt like a lot of responsibility. I had to rely on my background of being a very long ago past athlete and then with some of the new machines that I had some experience with them from Woman’s Workout World. That seemed to help.

Another part was that I had to figure out where and what I was going to watch and how open I would be to people. I’m pretty much incredibly shy at this time. It seemed like quite a few people might say hi and chat with them a few moments between sets. So, I get the idea that some of these diehard regulars there on a Friday night had been there and made introductions after time gone by. There were one or two ladies who visually acknowledged me, but I found myself looking down or away … or even studying myself in their abundant mirrors. It wasn’t until later in the routines that I started watching people to see what they were doing on new machines that I wanted to try.

But, getting back to the first part of the experience I chose like shown in training the treadmill first. After I’d figured out how to get the gizmo to work, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had a fan system that started automatically.

It gave me the sense that I was on ocean front property with a balmy breeze flowing over me. Yup … did I say I felt pretty buzzed? I started the machine on 1.6 and then upped it to 1.8 … that’s a normal size pace. Rich asked afterward the difference in that if there was a track why was I using a walking machine. But, beside that’s where a good majority of people work out … it’s that on a machine you get timed and paced AND as an extra bonus … it tells you how far you’ve gotten and your heart rate. I was glad there were so few machines that were broken. At WWW there were always like 4 or 5 of a valuable 20 or so machines down. Here I’d only seen one out of a huge bank of them. I will make an effort to count machines one of the next times I go. The advantage to walking though was something the trainer taught me in that … if you are using a machine there is some element of it doing work for you.

Beside the ball exercise where you put it between you and the wall, we let it roll down our back and that felt good, but otherwise we stuck pretty much to machines.

Maybe we’ll try out one of the next times doing the free weights for arm exercises, but I’m still intimidated by the step-up thing and the sit-ups … man those are a little too tough for me and I found ourselves the first time getting dizzy and unbalance on the steps and near impossible with the sit-ups to stand-up again after we’d sat down. So for those obvious reasons we’ll wait til we get stronger before considering them seriously.

On the tread mill … I was feeling pretty good and I’d started out thinking that I would like to do more than 5 minutes because I wasn’t feeling really phased out for it and I wanted to check my base level. I thought I’d go for 8 minutes, and then about 7 minutes, I’d know I’d go up to 10 minutes. I did it and wasn’t dying.

Maybe the next time I’ll take it up to 12 or go for 15 minutes. It’s a great ego buster to think I’ve gone from only being able to walk 3 minutes to being able to walk 10 or more minutes. And, in fact after I’d gone the 10, I walked up the double set of stairs and did two times around the track and then went right into completing the hour of exercise. In all I walked around the track 6 times … that equates to 38% of a mile. I didn’t do the track though all at once. I stopped every 2 times around. And, I forgot to get how far we walked on the treadmill though. Just so happy that we could do 10 minutes. Man it’s just amazing. What’s going to happen by the time I hit 137? I’m just 125 pounds away now.  WooHOO!! This is happening. Poor Rich wants to take us out and we’re like not so excited because we think extra food extra weight. We want to get down there again. We’re down a pound from the last few days, but we were up from a low weight. Still need a pound to see 261 again. We’re trying though!

The other things I did after the treadmill besides the big ball and the walking were to test out a variety of machines. I worked for a little over an hour. And, I was feeling pretty good. There were only 1 or 2 machines that gave me way too much trouble. One of the machines I had to lift straight up like a barbell. I started it around 35 pounds which I’m looking at for arm movements and 50-60 pounds for leg. But, I ended up bringing it down to 15 pounds the minimum and at that I was still sweating it out. Each of the machines I did I tried to get in a count of 15, plus then I would do that twice. I probably did about 10-12 machines in total.

There was only one that I tried that I couldn’t figure out. Like I said, I started watching other people for clues. There will be some machines that look to awkward or painful to try yet. But, there are enough machines to keep it very interesting.

I’m still going to have to think through if I want to bring water or not … there are a couple of water faucets and that might work better than carrying it from machine to machine. It’s kind of a bother. I made peace with the small hand towel. I tucked it in my shorts. I’m not sure if that is happening for others, but it made it convenient for me without having to deal with it direct. It was long enough too that I didn’t have to untuck it to reach wiping down my face or upper head. Good deal.

Hmm, sneaky Rich just went by and turned off the air and opened the door. It’s ok for a bit, but it always makes me a bit nervous to getting over warm. I know that I can get up and start the air anytime, but most often I get way over heated before I think of it. But, it’s probably in the 70’s outside. I think it’s only supposed to get up to 84 today with a chance of rain.

Now I’m already starting to gear myself to going again. I am going to try swimming today, but I have to consider that I’m going to need shaving. I know that’s a kind of personal thing, but I’ve pretty much been against it for about 4-5 years now.

I’m not sure if I remember how and what all that involves. I am guessing it is something that’s going to be done in the shower. Ugh! I think it’s going to hurt.

Ok you – stop whimpering …

Hmm, Rich has just left … he’s bringing a load of clothes down stairs and he has three errands to make. Thinking post office, bank, and … hmm, what was the third?

Think he’s good on the library. Eh, we’ll have to ask later.

He had come to talk to us about 20 minutes ago … before his shower. Hmm, thinking if he’s out … it might be a good time to get that other evil deed out of the way.

Remember when we come back to mention our talk and about what we are going to be doing this weekend, Ok?

Ok, back … good lord this is taking awhile. I just bought something 2 months down the line. I know I’m getting too much, but all at one time I’m feeling like I can be connected and its making me go a little looney. Now the problem is that I want an IPod. It’s feeling pretty strong. Everything is like working toward that one thing, but it is $250 … pretty sure something isn’t going to get paid if I spend $250 on one. Rich is going to have a fit. I think too that I paid for the gym and got the extra services, but now I’m in the gym and going back and forth between one place and another. I have access with an IPod of connecting it to my car and getting books to read on it or podcasts or whatever … OR music … man I’m just being driven crazy. How am I going to do it? I asked Rich if he could get me an IPod and he said no and that we’ll talk about it in a couple of months. But, I’m like no … I gotta talk about it now. NOW! There’s always the thought of getting a nano IPod, but you know me … Nothing but the top of the line. I’m already missing out by not having an IPhone, but maybe those two devises are repeating services. I think I’m fine with the phone I’ve got. I like my phone service.

I wonder if Joe could take me somewhere to buy one today. We’re going to be having dinner with him today at 5:30 pm. I’m supposed to go to the gym today too, remember swimming? Can’t take an IPod to the swimming pool, right? We’ll be under water. I don’t know what to do … I’m going a little crazy, did I mention that already?

posted by Ann Marie @ 8/24/2008 08:16:00 AM Comments: 0