me and my little iPlod

Like a mole in the tunnels, I'd been walking for a year-and-a-half before I had any rhythm, I mean, music. I don't mind walking to the thoughts in my head but they take a lot of taming and can't keep a beat for shit.

For Jesus' birthday I got one of those Apple things, you know the cute ones with the silhouette marketing campaign? An iPlod Shuffle. Yes. The people at Apple can thank me anytime. Because when you return from the holidays, logy, sated and out-of-practice, those first few weeks of The Return to Walking are not, um, peppy. Or strident. Or bouncy. They fall somewhere between a plod and shuffle. Suddenly I'm in that verdant valley between vocabulary and...v's be damned, design. Ah.

It's been 2 months or so since iPlod has been clipped to my bosom. I love iPlod dearly. (The accompanying ear duds, not so much. Don't fit my ear swirls quite right.) Anyway, I have been thinking about walking and musical beats. Like which time (4/4, 3/4, etc.) best matches my epiphenitan gait? Nike & Apple have come up with one fascinating, albeit expensive solution.

I, on the other–more frugal–hand, have begun to adjust my stride. It doesn't work with every song but works with quite a few of them. And musicians? Don't keep fucking with the meter within a song, I'm trying to not to look so white here.

The adjustment probably makes me walk funny anyhow but you know how much that's going to keep me up at night...iPlod, however, is going to have to learn to deal with embarrassment.

P.S. This is the second post in a week that talks about exercise. I will not go on again about this for a while. I find excessive references to exercise/diet tedious as all hell. This is borderline excessive. It's why my bloglob is not about one issue. I find it 2-dimensional; it bores the precious. So enough with the tunnels. On to glass-blowing or blow jobs or nose jobs or snotty noses...

sufferin' succotash

Okay, all I have left are the carrots and corn. I always eat those chalky lima beans first to get them out of the way.

An epiphenita, then: it seems that everyone around me is on anti-anxiety meds. Not judging, just noting. So when I start to torque out about something that seems...you know, like normal shit, I look around and everyone else seems so...fucking Calm. Placid. Unruffled. Being around people who have their anxiety medicated out, makes me feel a wee bit crazy. How's that for a side effect?
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Oh, look a stray pea: my coworker shared this with me a while ago and I've forgotten about it until now. If you do a book review of the Bible, don't forget to include this (but space down below the fold so you won't ruin the ending for those who haven't read it).

NEW TESTAMENT SPOILER ALERT: Jesus dies on page 43.
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I always feel like I have to apologize reassure people that my stress over the last couple of glob posts is nothing to worry about. There are things that I have been doing and things that I haven't been doing that contribute. One of the main ones is that I haven't been doing my daily must-control-fist-of-death walk. It is an unexpected form of therapy for the exercise-hater than I am. It also gets me away from that mind-numbing cube with the staring dual computer screens. Like big rectangular eyes boring into my soul...ha. Kidding. I can outstare them on my worst days.

Anyway, I resumed my constitutional today and have two observations (and feel much better).

1) I am the poster child for exercise discouragement. I do this walking thing five days a week (when the rare meeting or vacation doesn't interfere) and return to my cube in a lather. Seriously, be grossed out, I don't care. I'm a head sweater and I really push myself. And almost two years later, I don't look significantly different. Call it phantom metabolism. It kind of makes me smile. Because losing weight isn't my goal but I can see it is the only goal in the faces of the other regular walkers...damn, she's out here every fucking day and she's as big as she was 18 months ago. Aw. They noticed.

2) When I changed the clocks for Spring-Lose-an-Hour, I wasn't worried about extreme accuracy. What's 5-10 minutes difference on a Sunday morning? But, there was The Workday, tapping its schedule planner impatiently. So I started looking around for a clock while I walked so I could adjust my watch. The tunnels are a retail haven so I figured there would be clocks.

No clocks hanging anywhere.
Really, no clocks.
And that seemed odd.
Until I put my manipulative marketing hat on.
No merchant wants to remind patrons that time's awasting! Particularly during the work day. They want you to Mosey. Linger. Take a few more minutes. It's so subtle I never really paid any attention to it. It creeps me out that such a quiet, concerted effort to con the passerby is everywhere. Don't get me wrong, we are complicit in this shit. The merchants aren't duping the innocent. We choose buy shit we don't need or tarry when there's nothing we're really interested in.

Still. Marketing is eveeeel.

backlog 31

Bipolar chaos
On my desktop I have three folders. [The neatness of my computer's desktop is in stark contrast to the room in which it resides. I hate having icons splattered all over my virtual workspace but sitting in a room piled high with office and project detritus (you were right, my daughter! It's pronounced di-TRY-tuss) doesn't seem to irritate me enough into organizational fits.]

• stuff to do: pretty self-explanatory, my to-do lists, worry lists, project lists. I say organize your anxiety, people. Put it in labeled folder. You won't be less neurotic but you'll be a compartmentalized neurotic.
• shit that won't delete: bit more of a mystery. Swear to god some of those files have been there for five years and I have done everything I could think of to dump them but they cling to the hard drive like a lifeline. I've stopped giving a shit. They can stay as long as they're quiet and remain in their folders.
• blag: all the Athena stuff–ideas springing full grown from my cranium–that my day-to-day life prevents me from sitting down and spewing at sharing with you, my dear cadre of readers.

From the blag bag, then
About a year ago, I got some annual health inspection physical blood work back from my doctor. For a big girl, I have been relatively free from the dire consequences of my largess predicted by all the fat-haters masquerading as we're-only-thinking-about-your-health advisors. This time, for the first time, my cholesterol was high and coincided with an uncharacteristic spike in my blood pressure.

Why, oh, why?
I knew exactly why this had happened: I stopped cooking. My kids were out of the house and my inner child screamed "Fuck it, I'm no domestic slave. I quit. Let them/us eat [box] cake. Or mac & cheese or order Chinese or go get some burgers." This unfortunate liberation dovetailed with an exquisitely painful bout of plantar fasciitis and a tilted patella that felt more like a tilt-a-wheel kneecap that was threatening secession. So processed foods joined immobility on their crusade to clog up the works.

Screwged
Anyway. Almost two years of this neglect and the blood-lipids fairy went all Carol Kane on me, smacking me hard with the cholesterol toaster oven.
My doctor, bless her pharmaceutical-loving heart, wanted to start me on medication to lower the ugly number of 257. I wasn't having any of it. I was already sick of taking too many pills (that, for another post) and pretty damn certain that this was nothing less than self-induced stupidity. (Let me make it clear that I enjoyed every freakin' moment of my junk sabbatical. Just didn't want to die from it.)

Onward Cursing Soldeirs
So I dusted off the kitchen utensils and started meal-planning again. Not dieting, for the love of all that is holy.

A note about dieting.
I began my body hate-fest early, at the ripe old age of 10. Many people today are not disturbed by this, especially now as we witness the rise in childhood obesity. As if all 10-year olds should be so concerned about their bodies that dieting books are lined up alongside Roald Dahl, Charlotte's Web and Harry Potter on their brightly painted shelves.

And I say that is bullshit. Absolute bullshit.

A ten-year old should be more concerned about streamers on her bike handles than munching celery sticks to erase love handles. A ten-year old should be outside playing or making a pillow fort or giggling with her friends. We feed our children shit and park them in front of the TV or CRT. Of course we have an obesity problem. Self-hate will not solve this problem.

And let me say again (and I'm not done with this) that the motivation for "good health" is not the fire under the ample ass that fuels the diet cult in America. It is the worship of a narrow-hipped, colt-like-leggy, über-skinny prepubescent ideal. This, combined with the predictable tendency of most adult women to be curvy (dare I say fecund? dare! dare!) in form, leads us to hate our body shapes for that which they are so beautifully designed.

This self-hatred, coupled with lousy, lazy food choices and a sedentary workforce, is murder. And an evil, lucrative business.

Grrr.

ANYWAY, last May we returned to healthy eating.

I didn't walk until I was 15-months old and other thoughts on a lifetime love affair with staying put
In June, I began a clandestine movement. What I mean is: an effort to leave the cube and try locomotion, that I kept to myself.

At some point, I realized that I was giving Corporate America my daily eight hours plus an extra hour working through lunch. Corporate America does not love me unconditionally. Corporate America does not even love me conditionally. My family, on the other hand does. Barbara, specifically, would love to have me around for a healthy lifespan.

Visualizing clear arteries
Thinking creatively, methought, should help solve this problem. But, I remained stymied and unmoved. If I couldn't do it for myself, like a smart feminist, then, goddammit, I could do it to avoid leaving my loving family prematurely. Barbara was my inspiration. You know, imagining her dealing with all my stuff postmortem. Leaving 10 or 15 years too early. Not getting to grow old older and cranky crankier with the person I love, etc., etc.

The Convenience, Proximity and Simplicity Trifecta
I started walking. Houston has a downtown tunnel system. Full of restaurants and mediocre card shops and the like. It's not pretty but you don't have to stop at stoplights. You are not subjected to the "how can it be this humid on the surface of the sun”weather. Also, the tunnel starts under my building, which means I don't have to do more than go down the stairs to start.

Mythically whiny
Over the course of 6 months, with no significant exterior change, I sometimes despaired. I am Sisyphus, pushing this cholesterol boulder up the slope with no hope of getting over the peak. I am Prometheus, serving up daily paté to an eagle without hopes of sating the ravenous raptor. I am Tantalus, reaching for water and fruits always receding from my grasp. I am Pathos, feeling like this almost 40-year battle is waa, waa, waa my unfair cross to bear. I HATE when I get like this.

Holding my breath
Finally, I go to the doctor for my annual physical. I've lost weight (an amount which, and I say this self-love, at my size is not earthshaking) and my doctor is all congratulatory. I stop her and say, my weight numbers can not be my focus, else I fail. Weight is too connected to self-hate, I rhyme. She nods and understands (but doesn't). I tell her my main focus is blood pressure numbers and cholesterol numbers. My pressure is fine. Normal. My blood is drawn for tests and I wait. A week later the nurse calls with my results.

The payoff
226. Two hundred, twenty-six. That would be a 31-point drop in cholesterol.
THIRTY-ONE motherfucking points, people.
I am thrilled. Vindicated. Talking-to-strangers-exhuberant. I know the next 26+ plus will be slower but this is one healthy shot in the arm.

And the boulder rolls over the first peak, the gluttonous eagle explodes and Tantalus crams a fistful of grapes in his mouth.