I was trying to come up with a clever, almost witty first post, but since this is my third attempt at semi-regular blogging, who am I kidding? My sarcasm exists mostly in my head these days, as it’s “not office appropriate”, it flies right over the kid’s head, and World’s Best Boyfriend (aka Tom) is too involved in a new video game to engage in witty repartee.
Besides, intros are boring, & if they are super necessary, that’s why there’s an about me page! Plus, while I was chugging along the love/hated treadmill in my apartment complex’s gym tonight (mercifully alone, for reasons we’ll get to) a post popped fully into my head (finally…I only decided to start blogging again two weeks ago!)
Right now, I’m engaged in my first ever attempt to loose weight/get fit. I kinda sorta trained for the Beat the Blerch marathon…last year? The year before last? Calendar dates are not my thing. I finished the half marathon, barely upright and with a wicked rub burn in places where a newly not-single girl does not wants such things. But the medal still hangs in my cubicle & the Red Jeep of Sexiness bears the magnet proving that I was once capable of such things, so I must be able to again.
My fitness coach put in beautifully, after hearing me ramble for all of ten minutes; I want to be me again. Before child, I was an outdoor leader, a summer camp counselor, a horse logger, an all around stable rat. Even while pregnant, I was sliding 60 pound bales of hay across the snow to feed the horses (much to my midwives dismay). The thought that, post child, I’d have to make a long haul, concentrated effort to regain things like strength and muscle didn’t even cross my fluffy, post college, hormonal mind.
Fast forward four years later, and now I’m an office peon who would like to be paid more, but who also likes not shopping in the “plus size” aisle everywhere, who gets mildly winded climbing the stairs every morning, and really likes the boyfriends Midwest style of cooking way too much. But the thing that really spurred me to get a fitness coach, to find a good pair of running shoes, and figure out how to start tracking my food and exercise, was the thought that I can’t ask a horse-especially a borrowed horse, the only kind I have access to right now-to carry me around. Not only am I simply heavy, but I can feel all my marvelous core strength that could hold back four 2,000 pound horses and cut down trees with is simply melting away. Which means that while riding, my body remembers how to ride in a light, balanced way-but the strength needed to not be a giant sack of potatoes is lacking, and that isn’t fair to any horse.
Paired with this thought is an echo from way back in high school, when I had several long, mind opening conversations with a mentor of a friend of mine. The conversations themselves were hugely important to me, even more so now in the overly politicized, sound bite world we live in; covering such topics as the Bible, geopolitics, and the importance of a scientific frame of thought. Not that I’ve always faithfully applied such thinking, especially when confronted with my deadly trifecta of horses, chainsaws & boys, but nevertheless handy to lean back on when confronted with pretty much every issue, but I digress.
This mentor is now a motivational writer, among other things, but back then, looooong ago when high school bored me and sports kept me sane, he mentioned something along the lines of “You’ll go far, young Padawan.” I’m phrasing with a faulty memory, obviously, and since Kade’s dad and I split up and I accepted a job with an actual cubicle, I’ve started to think I haven’t gone far at all. But looking to loose a good 60 pounds and run a few more marathons this year (or however long it takes to get back in the saddle) I’m starting to remember there’s more than one direction to go in. Am I changing the world? Of course I am-but on a much smaller scale than college perhaps prepared me for. It’s just taking me a lot longer than most to realize it’s equally valid, and hugely important for that fart loving, lego building, mud puddle finding blonde child of mine that I’ll go as far as needed for him, and that includes keeping myself sane and healthy and happy.
