"Try-Athletes": Today, the Sh!tshow

I set my alarm for 6:20AM this morning. I woke at 5:30AM and thought "no frickin' way am I going to be able to get up when that alarm goes off"... so I reset it for 6:45AM... The next time I opened my eyes, it was 7:00AM and I was really struggling to get out of bed... at 7:06, I sat up and thought, "Holy Lord, I have to go to work today!"

I reached down to pet Harley and I said, "It's time to go to work about it!" in the cartoony voice I use when I talk to him... and immediately he did that cute little stretch and flipped over. I scratched behind his ear and my finger felt something that wasn't fur... he had food stuck in his fur... Harley always has something stuck in his fur - food, chew toys, poop... inevitably, these things are stuck when I am late for work. 7:07AM.

I try to take the food off his fur. He struggles. I pick him up, and try again. He struggles more. What a wake-up call. I turn on the light... the food in question is a half-eaten Halls lozenge - where in the world does he get this stuff? - and it is stuck in his fur really good... wrapped in around the fur. So I try again and Mr Harley promptly bites me hard. So I yell at him. Like he cares. So I carry him out to the kitchen to get scissors. Then we go back to the bedroom and sit on the bed. Harley hates the scissors. You would swear he knows what he looks like.

A couple of seconds later and the half-eaten lozenge is in the garbage, Harley is not biting anymore but he is pissed off. So am I. It is 7:10AM and I have already been bitten.

I get ready for work. Harley digs under the blankets and goes back to sleep, until it's time for me to leave. Then he gets his Chicken Breakfast, Chew and Liver Treat. Sometimes he gets a cheezy, blueberry or a carrot - whatever is hanging around. It's a surprise every day.

I get to work, and the PLUG-IN DOESN'T WORK. Nice. Frozen a$$ truck later today, for sure.

Grrrr.

First day of semester 2. The kids were great. I even had some of my previous kids come visit <3... I miss them already.

Jenny and I have a tight schedule to keep if we want to stay on top of work, rehearsal and 'Try-Athloning'.
8:00 - 3:00: work
3:00 - 4:30: extra help / meetings, visiting my dog, etc
4:30 - 6:00: rehearsal
6:00 - 7:00: supper & travel time
7:00 - 8:30: Try-Athlon (on Mon & Wed... Tue & Thur we start at 7:30)

I need to get a babysitter for my dog. He is going to get lonely. Lisa says I need to deputize a kid. That's a good idea.

So we had rehearsal today, and ended it at 5:30. By the time we got out of the school, it was 5:50. We grabbed MacDonald's (of all things to eat), left the Blueberry at Merc, got Jenny's clothes, then mine, and booted it to MacIsland. But not without incident, of course.

We went to Jenny's house. When we were driving away from her house, the radar van flashed. I was driving toward it, and wasn't speeding, so I don't know why it flashed, but maybe it was being the paparazzi. We are kind of a big deal, you know. Anyway, I wondered if I was the Illegal Beagle or if I was having a seizure. You never know.

We finally made it to my house. Since it's Arctic Frostbite Face outside, everything is frozen, including my fence to the ground at times. So I was stuck outside my fence while in a rush to go to the gym. I just wanted to lay my face on the frozen fence at this point.

Finally getting inside the fence, I ran to the door and then forgot to turn on the inside light, so I slipped the first couple of steps going down into the basement. Wheeeeee! Good times, there.

Grabbing the railing, I made the world right again and turned on the light and walked like a sane person down the stairs. Keep in mind that I am trying to hurry so that we get a bike at the Try-Athlon workouts. If you don't get there early, you have to work out on the Bad Bikes. Christ in Heaven, if the vag-busters are the Good Bikes, we don't want to have to endure the Bad Bikes. So I'm rushing, and endangering my life in doing so. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

Safely at the bottom of the stairs, I jam my key into the lock. Click-click, click-click. 'Oh my God, what is it now?' Someone changed the lock on my door. I'm pretty sure I paid my rent. No eviction notice. What in the world is wrong here? I look at the key... wrong key. 'Breathe,' I tell myself, 'all your problems in life have to do with air, so just breathe.' Literally stepping back from the door and dramatically taking the key out of the door, choosing the right key and then putting it into the lock, I manage to open the door, then try to rush through, where I immediately get stuck because I have a purse, a bookbag and 8000 pounds of clothes on because I LIVE IN THE FRIGGING ARCTIC. By now, my blood pressure is through the roof. So I get in the door, drop everything on the floor, including all my clothes... everything. Stripping the shirt, pants, and all, I run to my bedroom so I can get my jogging pants and workout shirt on.

"What's going on in this house? Where's mommy's little man?" I say to Harley, my usual greeting to him when I arrive home. He barks and goes a little insane when he sees me.

I hop over the baby gate (which is across my bedroom door, thereby trapping Harley into my bedroom & bathroom area) and get dressed. Meanwhile, I feel something tap the back of my leg, by my knee. I always talk to Harley, when I get ready to go somewhere, and this is no different. When I turn around though, Harley is not a happy dog. He is walking on his hind legs, which is not unusual for him. Somewhere over the past few months, he has learned to do this... he walks for extended periods on his hind legs. It's a bit disconcerting. His front paws are straight down by his sides and he just balances there, then walks. Creepy. He probably practices that all day when I am at work. Just a little white dog walking around the house all day. Maybe he wears argyle sweaters and drinks tea, too.

Anyway, this evening, he was walking on his hind legs, following me as I got dressed. So I said to him, "Two high-fives!" and put my hands in the high-five position... he puts his paws on my hands when I do this (we're working on it)... well, he did it today, and then I went back to getting dressed. But he got MAD. I guess he knew I was leaving again because I didn't take down the baby gate - a sure sign that he isn't leaving the bedroom. He ran over to the gate, and barked in a shrill, screaming kind of voice, and kept doing it. I wanted to shove him under the blankets. I didn't, but I wanted to.

It was like he was trying to tell someone to come save him. I was a bit scared.

Finally, I was dressed and ready to leave. I grabbed my bag and locked the door. I tried to find my jacket but everything was in a tangle on the floor so I just threw everything across the room... there was valuable minutes being wasted!

Then I took off up the stairs, turned off the light, ran out the door, and sprinted across the icy back deck... and immediately screeched to a halt because I remembered that my sneakers were still downstairs.

I stomped back downstairs. Harley was still screaming. I grabbed my shoes and stomped up stairs. By the time I got back to the truck, I was vicious.

Jenny had already contacted Mat & Lisa so they were driving down on their own. We could go straight to MacIsland.

I told Jenny the tale and she laughed so hard her back hurt. I was so out of breath I could barely speak.

What is up with my lack of breathing? I must think I am an inanimate object.

Down at the vag-busters, we made it in time to be the first people there. How crazy is that? We were worried sick that we would be late. We got Good Bikes, though. Just last week we had no idea that there was a difference in bikes, and now we call the busters the good ones. Sacred Heart.

We were on the bikes for 40 minutes. Then we did 24 minutes on the track, broken up by core workouts.

Mat is a running machine. He constantly ran the whole time. Lisa did some laps today, too!! I ran, but only to pass slow walking people, ie., people who were slower than me.

Jenny said we look skinnier. We can definitely feel it in our muscles, that's for sure. We were supposed to take pictures and do measurements but we both forgot. We'll have to eyeball it.

We did The Plank again today. I wonder who thought that exercise up. "I think I'll just see how long I can hold myself up on my elbows here today... oh, oh... look at me... abs of steel, I can hold myself up for 5 minutes! You weakling, you can only hold yourself up for 3 seconds!"

"Yeah but I have bony elbows!"

"No excuse!"

We have decided that we are planning a big-a$$ party for the end of Feb. to celebrate our first month of success. This may be a 'cake and chips and ice cream and donuts and chicken wings' party but we don't care. Neither of us really drink, anyway. Whatever. Water & cake it is! We can't wait to celebrate!

We are in week #2! Try-athletes for life!

I think you should be able to make a deal with a Fat Fairy. For example, you should be able to go to the Fat Fairy and get all your fat taken off painlessly (as in, it just diappears with no work from you) with the deal that you have to work out but if you stop working out, all your fat goes back on, no questions asked. That sounds like a good deal to me. It's good incentive. It would make working out easier because you wouldn't have to work off all this extra business. All this extra business is what makes working out hard!

Well, the lack of breathing and the using of muscles that haven't been used in forever also have a little to do with it, but I'm working on every angle here.

While I was not as tired today on the vag-busters as I was last Wed, my legs certainly felt it today. Jenny said she felt like she was on the acid trip today. Sometimes I just want to lay down and have a little nap on the bike... let my legs keep going while the rest of me sleeps.

Meanwhile, Harley has taken up humping his Cookie Monster again for domination purposes. I haven't seen him do that in ages. I've traumatized him.