I am trying to get back on
the health bandwagon. It’s damn-near
killing me. While experiencing a
moderate sense of success, I do encounter lapses in judgment. Sometimes it’s stupid stuff like breaking
down and eating an entire sleeve of Ritz crackers, or scarfing down one too
many Milanos, or adding more sugar to my sugar-laced cereal.
Sometimes I flat-out
lie. Today, for example, I decide to
stay inside and read. First of all, it’s
like -175 degrees wind chill outside.
Second of all, I have cold beer in the fridge, and someone has to drink
it. Third of all, my ass-cheeks
hurt.
Let me explain.
To be honest, I am damn
tired of going outside and having my earlobes freeze off. Every morning when I leave for work (which
hasn’t been much lately due to the weather), I have to run outside, start my
car (no, I don’t have an automatic starter), lock it so no one steals it out of
the driveway, run back in, finish getting packed up for work, then run back out
again and pray to the icicle gods that my car is warmer than the temperatures
atop Mount Washington. By the time I get
to work, the heat is just starting to thaw out my frozen fingers and toes, and my
inner ears ache from the extreme wind chills that penetrate even the heaviest
of hoods and hats and scarves. When the
temperature reaches 10 later this week, we’re all going to the beach in our
swimsuits – that’s how warm it will feel.
Until then, I’m staying inside and reading.
As for the beer, well, I’m
lazy. Okay, lazy and I drank up all the
margarita mix already. (Truly, there wasn’t
much left after the last few weeks of constantly being housebound by
storms.) Today I decide to relax in the
over-stuffed living room chair and read, and I also decide it’s a good day to
drink ice cold beer because it requires neither mixing nor a glass. My daughter decides to stop by on her way
home from work. She catches me sucking
down a beer, which I tell her is my first … until she reminds me I left the
other empty on the kitchen table. I’m
pretty sure I napped somewhere in between all of this hoopla. I could claim I’m confused about the empty in
the kitchen, but instead I just admit I’m a big old lazy liar sitting in my
big-ass chair and drinking my ice cold beer #2.
Or #3. I don’t remember nor care
at this point.
But the real reason I
decide to be lazy today is because my goddamn ass cheeks are killing me. Screaming.
Protesting. Oh, get your minds
out of the gutter, people. Remember when
I started this post I said I am trying to get on the health bandwagon? Well, this, apparently, is my problem.
Lately my main exercise
regimen has been to shovel snow. Anyone
who has watched news anywhere in the continental United States knows by now
that New England has been whacked by four major snowstorms in the last three
weeks. Usually we are lucky to see one
of these monster storms in a season.
Sometimes we don’t see these blizzards and semi-blizzards for a few
years. But no, we get not one, not two,
not three, but four right on top of each other.
I have been shoveling anywhere from eighteen to thirty inches of snow
with every storm at a pace that seems to be every other day.
I’m not complaining. I now have biceps of steel.
I also have some exercise
equipment that I invested in as a means to get back on the health
bandwagon. I have been struggling with
Achilles tendonitis for so many months that I’m starting to suspect that one of
those babies is partially torn, instead.
Being the staunch and pompous idiot I am, though, I will kick my own ass
right through, even if it means often wearing ankle braces in my spare time and
occasionally grabbing the crutches to keep handy in case my right leg decides
to stop working… again. In an attempt to
mix up this shoveling routine then being too sore to hit the treadmill, I turn
to the exercise DVD my sister recently sent along.
The DVD has four workouts,
each fifteen minutes long, each featuring three levels of engagement, and each
targeting different areas in need of attention.
Since it hasn’t snowed in two whole days, and since it’s not supposed to
start snowing for a few more hours, I decide to pop the DVD into the kitchen
television and give it a go. I’ll take
it easy on my legs, though, so my tendons won’t be too swollen to shovel. Just to be clear, even though squats involve
the legs, I do the squats just not the jumps because my butt needs all the help
it can get, even if my ankles decide they’re not going to come to the party.
By the end of the DVD, I’m
feeling pretty good, so good, in fact, that I tag on some extra stuff and kick
my own ass for another fifteen minutes or so.
When it’s all done, I’ve spent well-over an hour on something that doesn’t
involve shovels, ice melt, or kitty litter.
I’m feeling pretty good until I look out the window. It’s snowing again.
According to the weather
reports, another eighteen inches of the white shit will be falling, blowing,
and basically shitting all over us for the foreseeable future. Less than twenty-four hours after I tackle
the exercise DVD, I’m outside in the wind-driven snow, tossing tons more of the
white crap up and over six-foot snow drifts while the incredible gusts are
basically blowing it back at me. I eat
more snow in two hours of shoveling than I have in my entire lifetime. By the time I come back into the house, my
body is so physically tired that I almost fall asleep on the stairs taking my
boots off.
All of this is a wonderful
story, but it still doesn’t wrap up my last point. Stay with me here.
I finally drag myself to
bed and do something I never do anymore: I sleep for seven hours and don’t get
up once to walk the floors. I always
walk the floors. It’s my way. It’s like I need to get up and check on the
night – yup, stars are still there, moon is still out, clocks are still
ticking. But this time, nada. Nothing but crazy dreams all night. I even dream that I look out the windows and
see grass and green leaves on trees, but then I look again and it’s snowing and
I have been tricked even while dreaming.
When I do actually wake-up, the wind isn’t howling as much, and no fresh
snow covers my car. I toss my tired legs
over the side of the bed, stand up, and …
Damn.
I cannot stand up. I can only partially straighten up because my
goddamn ass cheeks hurt. Between doing
the exercise DVD and struggling to shovel, I think my glutes have joined my
Achilles tendons and quit on me. I try
to get down the stairs, but I can only take one stair at a time, both feet
meeting on each mini-landing, then gingerly try it again, all the way
down. Sure, the tendons are a little
tight like they always are, but my rearend is feeling like I have giant knots
in both ass cheeks.
So, you see, it’s all
because I’m trying to get healthy that I must sit inside my warm house today,
glued to my comfy chair, reading books and drinking beer out of bottles. If I weren’t trying to get healthy, I never
would’ve done that DVD, nor would I have shoveled so vigorously, nor would I have
slept all night like the overly-exhausted, snow-beaten aged person whom I am,
nor would I have stayed in that chair to read, nor would I have been caught
lying about drinking that second (or third) beer.
Getting healthy is
dangerous. It can literally break your
ass and give you nightmares and force you to drink beers while you are stuck in
a comfy chair on a cold day.
Let that be a lesson,
folks. Learn from the master.
