Feistiness:
I'm addicted to my sessions with my personal trainer...I've asked him to start doubling the length of the workouts. Ike has a closet full of torture equipment, I get positively giddy when he starts to rummage through it. 6:30 AM Friday morning, he pulled out boxing gloves. By about Round 5, I was dizzy and ready to puke, but I didn't want to relinquish my gloves. It's always a good workout, but it's a great one if I can push myself to the brink of upchucking.
By 7 AM, out on the sidewalk, we were strapped together with bungees. And no, it doesn't help to remind myself that I've paid to be cinched up in a harness and made a spectacle for traffic on University Drive. His job: keep me from moving forward. My job: drag +200 pound man, at a run. Sometimes I ran in place, sometimes backwards.
An athletic young black man being forcibly dragged around by a middle aged white woman. No telling what misinterpretations the passing commuters conjured!
If he put all his clients together, he'd have a team capable of plowing. I do not jest. I remember my Canadian history very well. The Doukhobors were a Russian religious sect exiled to Western Canada. They did not believe in using their 'brethren' (animals) as beasts of burden. Their women were at the bottom of the totem pole.
Denial:
A 1970's body can heal as quickly as a 1990's model. Friday morning, I had pulled with all of my little Clydesdale heart, so much so that I had water blisters on my heels and my left calf was tight like a grapefruit had been inserted under my skin. I hobbled through my jobs that day because Saturday would be better. It was worse.
I had a list a mile long of things to do around the farm over the weekend.
The horses hooves were trimmed, odd jobs were done and I cut some firewood.
Big whoop. Hardly the Warrior Weekend I had envisioned. Enter the next phase.
Sulking:
I made yogurt, breads, salads, quiches and grazed from my perch on the couch or in bed. A book in one hand and an ice pack for my calf in the other (unless one hand needed to be operating a spoon, then the ice pack was ditched). Pity party.
It's tough to sulk too much around here... with all the daylilies beginning to put on a show.
The hostas and I are wondering if our voracious slugs forgot to come out of hibernation. Unblemished leaves this year!
Tough to sulk when my in-house comedians put on a show.
For weeks, my 20 pound Kung Fu master has been demonstrating his skills to Cole.
The Karate Kid is getting whipped by the new girl.
Sadie demonstrating the proper way to apply the choke hold.
Utter humiliation.
Sunday morning, I figured my calf couldn't possibly hurt any worse, so why not go for a short run. See Part 2: Denial.
It quickly dawned on me that taking a Lab for a run around the old Fisheries Unit may not have been wise. Why run when you can swim? Alligator population in these ponds is unknown, therefore I said she couldn't swim.
She said she would. Kind of hard to disagree when you've been dragged down onto your knees and you're grabbing reeds to keep from going all the way in.
"I'm leading."
"No, I am."
"You don't even know where you're going."
Chaperoning an old married couple for 4 miles.
