Money Monday 20/12

Happy belated Monday, everyone!  And also Blessed Solstice and omg did everyone see the total lunar eclipse last night?

source here

I was up at 3 trotting around my house with the cat stuffed inside my coat for company and warmth (she was fine; she eventually went to sleep) to watch it.  Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see much but it was still pretty cool - we're not going to get this particular type of eclipse again for 19 years, and I think that one will be on the day before the solstice instead of directly corresponding.  So this was a pretty special event, and I'm glad I got to be conscious during it, even if the actual viewing part was difficult.

This week's questions (original post here):

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on presents again!  I am SO excited for Christmas!.
2. Today I feel optimistic towards money.  I think I've done a good job of managing it in the past year, and I'm excited for all the ways I can make that even better in the upcoming one.
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was helping T with his big huge semester-ending school project, and the finished product is pretty awesome, meaning there's a lot less stress on his end, which always makes me happy.
4. I will consider this week a success if I wrap everyone's present before Christmas morning!
5. My favorite holiday movie is well, I was going to say "A Christmas Story" before I read Miss Pretty Pennies' reasons why she loves "It's A Wonderful Life," which brought back all the lovely mushy sentimentalism that goes with watching that one (even though I do hate the fact that he never gets to travel).  So I'm gonna say it's a toss-up between those two, with "The Star Wars Holiday Special" rounding out the list for a complete marathon.  If you've never seen that last one, DO.  Even if only to make a drinking game (nog, glogg or wassail) based on it.  It's just that spectacular.

-N

Three things that are weird

1. My dinner tonight was CRAZY.

Tonight, it was "Throw all kinds of random shit in a pan and see how it turns out."  No...really.  Sauteed celery in EVOO, mixed with a can of sardines and some chopped up roasted red peppers, with two eggs scrambled in, topped with muffaletta (sundried-tomato-and-olive relish stuff) and 1/4 avocado.  Skim milk to drink.  It was AMAZING.  Practically a religious experience.  You don't even KNOW.

2. Noises affect me in really. weird. ways.  

image via mentalfloss.com

I remember as a kid going through these bouts - maybe 10-30 minutes? - where every sound I heard became what I described then as "the same sound, but the loudest and meanest one possible."  I think they were sometimes brought on by loud noises, but I honestly can't remember.  You know how, in horror movies, when they're trying to up the tension and they focus on the clock or the dripping faucet or something similarly innocent and the sound just builds and builds upon itself, echoing and beating and vibrating louder and louder?  Yeah.  I'd go to my room and turn out all the lights and hide under the covers, but sometimes even the blood beating in my ears and rustling just a little bit against the blanket with each beat would be too loud.  Even now, if there's a noise that's very loud, or sudden, or of a certain pitch, I'll jump or flinch or (if it's VERY loud and close) I'll start to collapse a little - my knees will give out and my vision will get starry and blurred, and I'll have to catch myself.  It's very strange and not at all fun.

Tonight at Crossfit, part of the WOD was pushing these metal "sleds," shown below  We were supposed to get down as low as possible and shove them across the parking lot, making this horrible, mind-wrenching screech of metal on asphalt the entire time.  It's bad enough hearing it from inside the building when other people are doing it, but actually pushing the thing and having that sound up close, vibrating through each of your bones is, quite literally, torture.

image via crossfitwilmington.com

Oddly enough, while doing the image search for the sled, I came across this one here:

image via crossfithanover.com

That's how I felt.  Like someone was reaching into my body through my ears with both hands, rending and ripping at my brain and spine and throat and ears and tearing the shreds out through them.  It's faded now but for a long while I felt like there was blood pouring out of my ears - literally, could feel it dripping out..  I finished the WOD but just barely, and had to go hide behind the cars and cover my ears and shake for a while before I was ok.  Usually I try and tough it out through workout parts that are uncomfortable or painful because of something weird about me, but NOT this one.  Never doing those sleds again, except with some seriously heavy-duty ear protection.  Period.

WOD: 21-15-9 reps for time of:

• med ball cleans (20lb ball)
• pull-ups (blue/violet bands for the first round, blue/black for the second two)
• push that invention of pure evil back and forth across the parking lot once (not 21 times!)

And then we did Tabata squats, and I got a score of 15 (squats in 20 seconds, as the lowest number in 8 rounds).

3. My cat likes AVOCADO.

She just crazy.

-N

How to drive a cat insane (two ways!)

Method #1: Eat something fishy

Lunch! Tomato, sardines, roasted red peppers and balsamic drizzle (no, not chocolate sauce). Background music was incessant, plaintive, feed-me-now-or-I-shall-perish yowling.

Method #2: Be another cat

The interloper appears. Gracie is unamused.

Other Cat decides to take a closer look. Gracie decides the proper course of action is to go apeshit crazy.

Ignoring him won't make him go away...

...so we break out the Kitty Glare of Death!

And Gracie is reinstated in her role as benevolent queen of all she surveys from her throne...er, bag.

Stress relief

So we all know that different people have many, many different ways of dealing with stress. Some people stay in and meditate. Some people go out and party.

Some people curl up with a good book and a sleepy kitten.Some people roll up their sleeves and move furniture around.

[image forthcoming]

Some people make soup.And...some people make radical spur-of-the-moment decisions like getting all of their hair chopped off.
Yes, that's me. I've had short hair before, but never gone to quite this extreme. Normally I'd be running my fingers through it every five seconds, but 1. the stylist put all kinds of goopy stuff in it and 2. I'm just a little afraid to remind myself just how much is gone. Part of me regrets this. But then again, my trich was getting to a point where I needed to do something again, and it really is only hair. Plus, I do love the look of very glamorously-made-up ladies with super-short hair, and now I can make an attempt at that at V's birthday bar crawl on Sat! Yay!

Also, my latest haul of books is AWESOME. "The Barefoot Home" turned out to be just page after page of these stunningly gorgeous houses, all designed expressly for connection with the outside world as well as comfort, so I've been poring over this pretty much every time I have half a minute, lately. Total escapism. Gotta love it.

Time for work!

-N

I am Iron Woman

Breakfast: egg salad with mustard and cayenne on a Wasa, 1 tomato, 1 deliciously messy plum (you are spared the gory spectacle of me devouring it), coffee, cat and comics. Second day in a row that breakfast has been this leisurely, and I'm off work tomorrow so it will happen AGAIN! I am so spoiled.

Then work work work all day, with a salad for lunch and a Zone bar and a totally gross-looking and delicious green smoothie for pre-workout fueling.

Then...CROSSFIT! Dun dun dunnnnn! This was the last day of this session, so I knew it would have to be something horrendous. Little did I know...just how right I would be! Muahahahahaha!
Ahem.

So we got there as the last group, Dave included, was finishing their workout. I didn't think I'd ever seen Dave actually working out before, in a year and a half of going, and mentioned that to him...which may or may not have had anything to do with our WOD for the evening. Whoops! But at this point, all was light and happiness. The other girls and I went for a quick 400m to warm up, then gathered around the whiteboard, where our fates were being decided. We could hear Dave's evil chuckle even before he started writing. Our blood froze in our veins as he stepped aside, revealing the following list:

• 50 box jumps (20-inch)
  
• 50 jumping pull-ups
• 50 American KB swings (25-lb)
  
• 50 walking lunges
• 50 sit-ups
• 50 dumbbell push presses (2 12-lbs)
  
• 50 back extensions
• 50 wall balls (1 6-lb)
• 25 burpees (here he took pity on us)
  
• 100 jump ropes

That's right. We did the Filthy Fifty. And damn, but she was a monster bitch. I got cramps partway through the KB swings and had to step aside for a good minute, but that was the only time I really stopped for more than a few seconds, not counting water breaks and walking between stations. I definitely could have done a heavier wall ball, and was about to pick up the 10 but Dave told me to focus on keeping it short. Meh. I almost threw the damn 6-pounder over the wall several times, I'm so used to the 15lb. Next time...

Dinner was amam's coleslaw, a salmonburger, a big handful of strawberries and some milk. And some chocolate. My uterus made me do it.

So I looked at one of those healthy-weight charts and saw that I'm about 15 lbs higher than the "ideal" weight for my height. Given, I've got a bit more muscle than average, but that doesn't account for anywhere near all of that...and besides, it's all kind of swathed in pudge right now. So I'm reinstating the plan I had last summer: namely, doing semi-strict Zone 6 days a week, upping my weekly mileage (at one point last year I was at a solid 5k 3-4 times a week, working my way up) and switching to nettle tea instead of coffee. This last one I will ease into. Very slowly.

Bed time! Farmers' market day tomorrow!

-N

Monster mangoes and baby blueberries

Yes, this is a post about tits. Well, partially. The blueberries are from my breakfast.

1/4 c rolled oats, 1/4 c oat bran, 1 c 2% milk, a splash of vanilla and ridiculous amounts of blueberries...

...combined with 1 oz cheese, coffee my love, morning paper, morning sunshine and a very happy morning cat.

Hopped out of bed at 615, bummed around until 7, went for a 1.5 mi run amid bindweed, pine, heavy shimmering golden air (ah, humidity) and the inevitable torrent of birdsong. I saw two birds I didn't recognise: one that I thought might be a purple finch but which was a bit larger than described and also much more vivid - imagine a cross between eggplant and fuchsia on the head and shoulders, dark brown to black on the lower body and tail. The other had a wren-like silhouette, but was again much larger, and lighter in color.

Anyways, boobs. Is this a normal occurrence? During about the week and a half before Lady Red shows up, good ol' Ralphie and Louie (yes I made that up) go all Hulk on me and turn into their alter egos, Shock and Awe (no I did not make that up). They grow literally 2.5 to 3 sizes: from a largeish C to an easy E. Not even joking. It's insane. It's like every month or so, they get this urge to relive their glory days when I was at my biggest and most bodacious, whether the rest of my body wants to go along with them or not. Even my most serious ironclad tactical sports bra, which I picked specifically because it had been raved about as being perfect for those ladies with an extra helping of blessings, does close to nothing. I end up running for stretches just clutching my chest to keep them subdued, giving heart attacks to the nice old men doing their morning constitutionals and getting Glares of Slow and Painful Death from their wives.

Questions for the lurkers: Do other girls have this problem? Are there any bras that actually help with this level of craziness? Is there a point at which the knife is worth it? Got any boob stories of your own to share?

-N

Change of plans

So for the past three days, I was supposed to be here:Instead, only a few hours before I was supposed to leave, shit hit the fan big time. My baby cat (alright, she's 13) seemed to get a bit of a cold - low appetite, snotty nose, slight lethargy - which excluded her from staying at the kennel we'd reserved. So I called up my friend the pet-sitter and scheduled a vet appointment that same day to find out what exactly it was and get some antibiotics or something, thinking it would be a routine fix and I could just leave that evening instead.

Well, as you might have guessed already, it was not exactly an easy or routine kinda deal. Seems that the hyperthyroid medication (it's pretty common for older cats to get this; the vet prescribes these exact pills ALL the time) gave her some incredibly rare, very serious reaction. Basically, it killed her immune system - instead of her white blood count skyrocketing because of the infection, it was practically gone. That's not an exaggeration - at least two of the vets I talked to used the same phrasing.She got very severely dehydrated and wouldn't eat, as well as having this horrible bronchial infection that clogged some airways with mucus and collapsed two of her lung sacs.

She stopped responding to anything at all - you know how cats' ears will usually flick when they hear something? Yeah, not a twitch. She barely moved at all - I'd put her down in one place and there she'd stay for hours if I didn't move her. On the drive over to the special vet school we got referred to from our normal vet, who simply couldn't handle a case like this, she overheated and started panting like a dog and made a mess all over the blanket I wrapped her in (all I can say is, thank you gods of semi-absorbent fleece, you saved my car and my jeans). It was pretty excruciatingly worrying, to say the least. I spent a lot of time staring very hard at fluorescent lights on the ceilings of exam rooms.Here she is as of yesterday evening. The wrapped-up paws aren't casts, just the way they give IVs (fluids and antibiotics) to cats so they don't chew the needle out. Fever's gone, as is the dehydration, mostly. Her blood info is slowly improving, and the docs have told me that now she's off the bad meds, it should continue to do that. No one wants to give me an actual "yes, you can breathe again, she's out of the woods," but I guess noncommittal answers are kind of mandated in the medical profession, and everyone's mood seems pretty optimistic, at least.

So I've had the house entirely to myself while the rest of the folks are at the beach. Crossfit started back up and I am hurting like a bitchmonster. The first two workout focused heavily on legs, specifically quads, so I can't really bend mine right now. Stairs are not so much the fun times.

Crossfit!

Monday:

• 400m-sprint to warm up
• 100 squats for time (3-something, without stopping even ONCE. yay me!)
• max situps in either 3 or 5 minutes (can't remember time or reps)
• then i puked
• max KB swings (American, 25lb) in 5 minutes: 74
• 400m sprint for time (can't remember time but I was first)

Wednesday

• 400m sprint
• WOD: run 400m, 50 front squats with 15lb ball; run 400m, 40 push presses with ball; run 400m, 30 walking lunges with ball overhead, arms extended; run 400m, 20 situps; run 400m

Wednesday was pretty horrible (not like Monday was a picnic). I started hitting the wall barely into the squats. Really need to remember that I've been off regular training for 3 weeks, so I can't just jump back to my normal go-get-em-tiger-hooah-rawr level of working out. Part of it is also food. Now that I'm back to this, I've been trying to come up with a plan to get me back on the Zone track, which means seriously limiting pizza, which means brown-bagging it like every day.

For now, though, I'm celebrating with the food money amam gave me for the week. Behold:

• little plain green (and purple) salad, mostly to take up space
• squid salad. or octopus. some kind of sea creetur. you get me.
  
• 4 fake-crab cali rolls with avocado and cucumber; eel, shrimp, salmon and tuna nigiri
• a couple pieces of delicious dagoba xocolatl
• blueberries with a drizzle of real local organic free-range CREAM.
• and like a gallon of water

This was on Monday, and it was totally the mother of all post-workout meals. Subsequent ones haven't quite been up to that standard, but all of them included ridiculous amounts of blueberries (they had 2-lb containers on sale. TWO POUNDS!!!)

That's it for now.

-N