Month: May 2011

Dear Redford, Part 5

Lately, I’ve been walking you the two miles to the gym and letting you make friends with the CrossFitters while I work out, before walking you back home again. You love the CrossFitters. You kiss them and smile at them and wag wag wag the whole WOD so they know you’re proud of their efforts.

All smiles all the time.

A lot of them will give you a scratch on the head or a belly-rub. You do your signature move. And then if they sit down on the ground next to you, you understand that they mean for you to sit in their laps. So you do.

Coach Phil always has a long conversation with you about how handsome you are and how it’s OK to lick wherever you can reach. It reminds me of that scene in Parenthood when Tod (Keanu Reeves) tells Helen (Diane Weist) that the conversation with her son went well: “I told him that’s what little dudes do.” I guess you could probably use a dad. I tell you all the time how handsome you are, but I never thought to tell you the part about the licking your junk.

Yesterday, you did the WOD with me. Part of it anyway. It started with running a mile and ended with running a mile. The stuff in between required opposable thumbs so you just sat outside looking cute. (Which you did Rx.) We did the first mile in under twelve minutes. The second took fifteen. You would’ve gone a lot faster except that (1) you were tethered to my slow ass and (2) you had to stop to poop twice.

Recovery after the WOD.

You’re quite the athlete, little man.

Love,

Amy

Nothing for Nothing, or Why I Love CrossFit, Part 4, or Why I Hate CrossFit, Part 1

I’ve pretty much always wanted something for nothing. I want to get the job without earning the credential; I want to land the role without auditioning; I want to find my soul mate without leaving my living room.

That’s not to say I haven’t worked in my life. I have. I’ve worked hard. (Ask me sometime about the three summers in college when I sold books door to door eighty hours a week. Or the unpaid overtime I’ve put in since becoming a teacher.) But I never want to. I always want goods and accomplishments and relationships to land in my lap as I rock in my rocking chair on the deck.

CrossFit is a constant reminder that, you put nothing in, you get nothing out.

Sure, I want to be able to do a pull-up without bands. But guess what, I sometimes skip the pull-ups in the warm-up, so pffthpt, I’ve been stuck on the blue and skinny purple bands for months. I’d also like to be able to clean & jerk more than 100.5 lbs, but I haven’t worked on it since that one time. So nope.

It goes the other way too, though. You work, you get better.

For one, I’m not sure when it happened, but all of a sudden, after months of push-ups with my hands on a box or my knees on the floor, I just started doing regular push-ups. They’re ugly, but I do them.

Then, Friday night, at open gym, I push-pressed 90.5. I looked back in my notebook. Last recorded one-rep max, back at the beginning of the year: 63 lbs.

And for the longest time, I couldn’t do double-unders. I tried. I would get one or two. I whipped great welts on my arms and legs. I cursed the rope. Four, if I put a single bounce in between. I bought a Buddy Lee because I figured the problem was the crappy ropes we have at the gym. The problem was not the crappy ropes we have at the gym. I kept practicing. I took out the single bounce. Last week, I did fifteen legitimate double-unders in a row during the WOD.

Why I love/hate CrossFit: You get exactly as much out of it as you put into it.

Agita

It’s been more than two weeks since Violet’s meniscus surgery. Sixteen since her ACL surgery. I’ve had her cooped up in the spare bedroom for four months, and she’s been beleaguered by the Cone of Shame for, it seems like, forever.

And she’s still limping.

It would be one thing if she were limping in a different way, if it looked like a recovery limp. But it doesn’t. Her limp looks EXACTLY the same as before I spent close to five grand, and many moons wringing my hands, and before I consumed whole days’ worth of calories in minutes. Which is what I’ve done pretty much every day for the last six weeks. (Because if your only tool is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. My only tool is overeating, so all my problems look like they could use some pudding.)

I’m getting a little…what’s the word?…

Vexed.

Perturbed.

Disquieted.

Edgy.

Goats and monkeys!

 

I Think I’m Onto Something

About four months ago, I’m not sure why, I went off coffee and onto tea. I had weaned myself off caffeinated coffee anyway, and I don’t know, I guess I just thought tea would be healthier. Anti-oxidants and whatnot.

I was also trying to implement some paleo stuff into my diet, and though coffee and tea are equally paleo (or non-), coconut milk in coffee is NOT GOOD, while in tea it’s semi-palatable.

Anyway, I tried decaffeinated English Breakfast, and Earl Grey, and Chai, and various ginger teas—burny! Burny in my throat! (My friend, Evers, when I told her that, asked, “Meredith Baxter Burny?”)

Then for no particular reason this weekend, I bought some half-and-half and brewed a pot of coffee.

You know what’s better than tea with coconut milk?

Coffee. With half-and-half.

Remember When I Said I Was Handy?

Previously, on the Avid Bruxist blog, our heroine had bought a new gas-powered motor because she had allegedly killed two electric mowers in five years (we’ll get back to that part). She had hesitated at buying a machine with a pull-cord because pull-cords that, when pulled, don’t result in engines starting make her throw a goddamn rod.

Her brand new mower had revved up like a dream the first time, and she mowed to her heart’s content….

Then came the second time.

Goats and monkeys! Fuck if that thing wouldn’t start.

Now it’s possible that my shed is a little cluttered. And, when putting away the mower, I may or may not have struggled to find room. So it could be that I sort of picked up the back wheels and set them on top of the broken electric mower. And if I did all that, perhaps I left it like that—slanty—for a week or more.

When I took it out to start it, not only would the motor not crank but some semi-viscous liquid began dripping out of a part that didn’t look like it should have any semi-viscous liquid dripping out of it.

I called my brother-in-law, who swooped in with a screwdriver and can of

Magic Lawn Mower Sauce.

What had happened was, when I supposedly left the mower tipped up like that, oil spilled into…I don’t know. Whatever. He got it started.

AND he picked up the carcasses of my electric mowers to see if he might tinker ’em back into shape. Turns out, the more recent one just had a whosie-whatsit popped off its anchor, making the ass end drag on the ground. No wonder it was so hard to push. E re-attached it, and it was good to go. The older mower, well, he took off the blade and it looked like

Jafar's teeth when he's disguised as the old guy in the dungeon.

Yeah, I may have hit a tree root. Once or twice. And a rock. Perhaps a coral reef.

And I guess I had taken the blade off at some point? Because it was installed upside-down. That’d make it run a little rough, I suppose.

One time I was visiting my dad at his office, and a colleague of his said, “When it comes to technology, your father has the opposite of the Midas touch. Everything he comes in contact with turns to shit.”

I’m feeling remarkably like the Scott paterfamilias right now.