Monthly Archives: February 2009

On Bathing Pets

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Last night after I took a shower, Cruz the Cat came to visit me in the bathroom.  He has a long-standing love affair with the shower; he loves to jump in after we get done showering and lick the drops as they come out of the faucet.  This is the one and only time that Cruz is a fan of the bathtub.  Other than the faucet fixation, he hates the shower.  He especially hates it when his owner decides that it’s time to bathe his nasty indoor-outdoor self.  

Just before I took the shower,  I noticed that Cruz had located my bathrobe (or, in cat vocabulary, The Most Perfect Napping Place) and was sleeping on it.  When I forced him to get off of said bathrobe, I noticed that he had left a dirty brown spot on it where he had been laying.  The dirty brown spot indicated to me that it might be time for Cruz’s quarterly bath time.  But he didn’t know that he’d left a dirty brown spot on my perfectly white bath robe.  He only knew that the faucet was dripping, the shower door was open, and the moment was right.  But I am smarter than the cat.  I remembered.  

So I thought to myself, self, this is a good time to just go ahead and bathe the cat.  He’s already in the shower, the shampoo is already on the counter.  Just go for it.  Besides, I reasoned, I am in the mood to take on a challenge that I can win.  And in the contest of Sarah v. Cat, Sarah wins. 

What I didn’t realize, though, is that it would be a really close call.  30 minutes and one angry cat later, Cruz was clean and moaning over his defeat in the bathroom.  

So tonight when I came home from work, I decided that in light of my recent pet-washing victory, I would wash the dog.  Zack and I are going out of town this weekend and my parents will be dog-sitting for us.  Giving Scout a bath has been on my list of things to do all week; I can’t send Scout to her first weekend away smelling like a dirty dog.  After washing the cat, the idea of giving Scout a bath seemed like a bed of roses.  Sure she’s not as small as the cat is, but she is surely more obedient.  Turns out that washing the dog isn’t a lot easier than washing the cat.  I’d liken the choice between them to one of the nastiest ‘would you rather’ questions you could come up with.  Would you rather take 5 years off your life from the stress of trying to catch your cat as he does soapy Nastia Liukin quality somersaults in the bathtub?  Or would you rather be soaking wet and covered with dog hair as you beg water to defy gravity and somehow wash all the soap off of the underbelly of your 45 pound beast who totally hates you for this?

I’m no idiot, though.  This time, I bathed Scout before I took a shower.

Idiot Move of the Day, or Vanishing Nose Ring Tricks Owner Into Doing Something Stupid. Again.

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I just realized my nose ring isn’t in my nose.

How can a piece of metal that had been previously shoved through a part of my body  leap off my very own face without my knowing it?  It doesn’t make any sense.  It’s 11:00, and I just finished making some salsa for an office party tomorrow.  I sat down at the computer, absentmindedly reached up to my nose, and realized that it was gone.

In a frantic sense of WTF, I started searching my face for the nose ring.  Was my nose pierced on the right side or the left side? I couldn’t remember.  So I felt the insides and outsides of my right and left nostrils in a very fast-paced sort of a way, in a similar way that someone would pat themselves down if they realized they didn’t have their keys in their hands like they thought they did.

That’s when I realized I did not have a nose ring magically hidden in my left sinus cavity.  As if my nose ring had sprung off my of my face and made a bee-line for the nasal concha?  Instead, as a result of searching for said nose ring in my sinus cavity soon after having chopped up several jalapeno peppers, I had a left sinus cavity that was ON FIRE.  Or, ENFLAMBADA*.  How many times to I have to shove my Jalapeno Juice Flavored Fingers up my nose before I realize that it HURTS? EVERY TIME?

Because it’s 11:00 at night, and because I have no idea how long my nose ring has been gone, and because I am not ready to part with my beloved facial piercings just yet, I did what any capable woman would do.  I used a hammer, some wire cutters and two pairs of pliers to re-invent one of my not-so-fantastic 2004 model earrings into a make-shift nose ring.  I’ve never loved my toolbox more than I love it right now.

*this is not a real Spanish word, insofar as I can tell.

**I was correct in my assumption that ENFLAMBADA was not an actual spanish word.  EMFLAMADA seems to be a word in several Latin-based languages that are not Spanish, but even then, it seems to mean ‘swollen’, not ‘OH MY GOD MY NOSE IS ON FIRE BECAUSE I AM AN IDIOT.’

P90X: Week 4 Update

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This post should be subtitled: Not Even Almost Perfect.

I’m a half-a-week late on this post, but I’ve decided to go ahead and write it anyway.

Last week was our first rest week with P90X, and all week long I felt like I was cheating the hell out of some cheating.  Sometimes I felt like I was cheating because the program is markedly easier on the off weeks.  Sometimes I felt like I was cheating because, well, I was.

Monday we were supposed to start the week with the Yoga workout.  I was still coming off the previous week’s workout high, thrilled because I made it though the Ab Ripper X video for the very first time without having to skip reps in any of the sets.  I can’t exactly remember what happened that Monday, but if I had to guess, I would say that the answer is Nothing.  I remember crawling into bed that night and saying something like, “We can’t skip the Yoga X workouts just because we don’t like them.”  Whereas Zack pulls me through most of the workouts, there are two things I have to pull him through: 1.) eating better and 2.) Yoga X.  I guess I just didn’t have the motivation that day to get up and press play.  Before I knew it, it was too late in the evening to start the video and be realistic about getting up for work the next morning.  It’s especially hard to really get psyched up for the video since it’s 1 hour and 3o minutes long. I know that we spend that much time doing a normal hour-long video + ab ripper, but seeing the 1:2? on the screen is really disheartening.

Tuesday we did Core Synergistics for the first time.  I don’t know what I thought this video was going to be like, but it was nothing like anything I imagined.  Zack and I both hated it immediately.  We made it all the way through the video, fueled mainly by the guilt of missing Yoga the day before.  We were miserable, though.  When we (begrudgingly) did the video again on Friday, it wasn’t nearly as painful.  I guess we had forgotten the awkwardness of doing the videos for the first time.  That awkwardness can translate easily into ‘hate’ if you’re not careful to give it a chance.  There are admittedly some super weird moves on the Core Synergistics video, though.  Adding to that video’s weirdness is the fact that Dreya (one of the instructors/Tony Horton’s Total Crush) is wearing a righteously 80′s outfit, complete with an I Dream of Genie pony tail.

Wednesday was Kenpo, and Kenpo is totally old-skool and routine for us now.  I did kick so hard that I got an awesome little twinge in my back.  Note to self, avoid that in the future.

And Thursday the Stretch X video finally made a debut in our household.  Zack doesn’t believe in stretching and seems to somehow never have any tightness in any of his muscles anywhere ever.  This is incredibly frustrating.  Even doing the most mundane of hamstring streches has me saying, “WOOOOAH, OWIE!” whilst he’s hanging out beside me, wrapping his body around a broom stick like a Barbershop Pole.  Needless to say, I am the one that is going to get the most benefit from the Stretch X video.  There were a few stretches that I thought to be unnecessary, one of which dang near caused me to aggrivate an old ankle injury.  Instead of doing the “lay on your ankles and lay down on the floor to stretch your quads” strech, I’ll stick with just standing and streching.  (*Zack did Ab Ripper on this day because he felt like this week was too easy. I didn’t. Cause I didn’t want to. So nanner.)

Then, on Saturday, we skipped Yoga again.  We had the best of intentions; we just didn’t get to it.  I have been working myself into a frenzy about this Government class that I’m taking.  I finally got to a place where I could take a test, and so I took it.  I could have stopped and taken the test later.  But at some point you have to make a decision.  Government is a key to the rest of my life and my whole future.  And even though I think getting fit is important and should be done in a timely manner, there is no deadline.  Government has a deadline.  I’ve been having a really tough time sorting out my P90X vs. School priorities.  At the end of last week Government won because government had to.

Zack and I have taken our 30 day pictures, but I’m not going to post them yet.  I think I’ll put them all together at the end, my 1, 30, 60 and 90 and then post it.  I don’t really want to publish pictures of my body until I know that I don’t look like that anymore.

(On Monday, *we did the Ab Ripper Video again for the first time in over a week.  I was glad to say that I was STILL able to get through the whole video without stopping!  After a week of feeling guilty about P90X, it was nice that my benchmark workout didn’t show any regression.)

We are 1/3 of the way through the program. I’m still putting a lot of effort into eating right, but I’m not killing myself over it like I was the first two weeks.  I just don’t have the energy to do it right now.  I’m still holding fast at 129 lbs.  I’m also still wolfing lots of salads (dressingless ones, even)–I’ve eaten more salads in the last 30 days that I have in my whole life combined.  I haven’t ingested a Coke since before Christmas.  I have to confess, though, that someone brought some mini-snickers into the office in celebration of valentine’s day.  Those little jerks are impossible to resist.

Scout and The Kong: A Story

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Scout has a Kong, and Scout loves her Kong.  

Sarah and Zack put milkbones in the Scout’s Kong.  Scout throws the Kong into the air, and the milkbone slowly breaks into pieces.  Scout eats the milkbone pieces, and Scout loves the milkbone pieces. 

Sarah and Zack are inspired by Dooce to put peanut butter into Scout’s Kong.  

Scout loves her Kong, and Scout loves peanut butter. 

After a week of putting peanut butter in the Kong, Sarah puts a milkbone in the Kong for a change.  

Scout has Kong amnesia.  Scout can’t remember that she is supposed to toss the Kong. 

Scout attempts to lick the milkbone out of the Kong for 5 hours. 

Sarah loves the Kong, and Sarah loves Dog Amnesia.

Obsessions, Revisited

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For many much years of my life, I’ve been in love with a band called Sigur Rós.  Also, for many much years of my life, I’ve been in love with a boy named Zack.  Now, while Zack typically has a spectacular ear for music, for some reason he doesn’t like Sigur Rós.  As a result, I have done all of my listening to Sigur Rós solo for many, many years.  This was more difficult when we lived at Camp together.  We lived, worked, ate, drove and slept together.  That left very little time every day for headphones or listening to the music I love that he, well, despises.  

So, one of the secret added benefits to our no-longer-synchronized work schedules (I’ve gotta take all the positives I can get, okay?) is that I have the time (or solitude) to rediscover all the music that I used to thrive on.  In the past few days, I have found myself taking study breaks to lay on the floor between two speakers, destroying my hearing in the best possible way.  Whether I’m winding down to my first Sigur Rós love, an album entitled ( ), or appreciating Takk…, discovering EPs like Svefn-G-Englar, or indulging in the delayed discovery of their most recent release Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, Sigur Rós has become all I can think about these days.  This is not particularly good news, since, you know, I’m supposed to be finishing a government class, but HEY. CAN’T WIN THEM ALL.

Here’s some samplings for you.

Sigur Rós paired up with clips of BBC’s Planet Earth.

 

Sigur Rós and their 2001 award winning music video. 

– soccer video

And “Inní mér syngur vitleysingur” (‘Within me a lunatic sings’) from their newest album Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

Zack, On The Left.

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Today Zack and I have been married for 2 years, or 24 months, or 104 weeks, or 731 days.  However you’d like to put it.  And it has been most awesome.

In celebration of this occasion, Zack took me to a restaurant that we frequent called La Familia.  La Familia is a great place because they a.) have awesome salsa, b.) greet you at the door with a handshake, and c.) set their margaritas on fire before they give them to you.  The only not so great thing about eating there is that they are very particular about where the males and females sit at the table.  The owner or manager of the restaurant is the ‘greeter,’ and he takes you to your table.  Then he pulls out the chair and says, “for the lady.” And he’s serious.  He demands that you sit there.  Even if you try to sit somewhere else, say, because your husband has a slight neurosis about having to be able to see the door and have his back to the wall at every establishment that he’s ever in, they don’t care.  They’ll stand there at the table and stare you down until you buckle, get your ass out of whatever chair it was that you were sitting in, and you MOVE. To the chair that THEY picked.

Sometimes, they pick correctly.  Other times, they try to make him sit with his back to the door, facing the wall, the whole of the restaurant behind him and not under his watchful eye.  When that happens, Zack usually has a series of barely-detectible seizures until the guy leaves and I get up to trade him seats.  After being married for 2 years and friends for almost 10, I still have trouble in some establishments picking the seat that Zack is going to require in order to have piece of mind.  I can’t expect a stranger at a restaurant to be able to pick the correct seat for him, so I’m used to trading seats.  It’s really no big deal.  Today, though, I was determined when we walked in to eat that the greeter had selected the wrong seat for me.  I foolishly tried to sit in the seat of my choice, acting as if I hadn’t seen the fact that he was pulling out the chair for me, or like I couldn’t hear him saying, “SENORITA, THIS CHAIR IS FOR YOU. SIT HERE,” speaking to me in verbal Caps Lock.  Zack motioned to me that it was okay, the seat that had been selected for him to sit in was fine with him, since it also had a view of the door/restaurant.  As I went to sit down the greeter said, “Ladies always on the right.”  I said, “what?” I didn’t understand what he’d meant.  ”Ladies always sit to the right of the men, on his right hand side,” he explained, clearing up a year of seating-decision misunderstandings between me and La Familia Restaurant Employees with one sentence.  They simply always put me on the right side.  Now I understand that if we just request to sit on one side of the restaurant, they’ll always put me on the right, and Zack on the left, back to the wall, facing the door.  LIFE IS SO EASY.

So, celebrating our second anniversary according the mandates given to us by La Familia, I present to you a series of pictures entitled “Zack, On The Left (Side of the Frame).”

Accidental Murderer

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I Killed Blue Fish Home Fish.

It was time to change his water, but I couldn’t find his chlorine removal drops.  I went to the store and got some More Fantastic Drops!  Drops that would make his environment awesome and really healthy for him and make his scales shine wtih the light of 10,000 suns.

Those drops, however, apparently had nothing to do with chlorine removal.

Within 24 hours of transferring him into his gloriously clean bowl and placing him back on the mantle, he was a gonner.

WHOOPS.  RIP, Blue Fish Home Fish.  May you happily swim in the great toilet bowl in the sky.

I Did Not Eat Tater Tots

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This morning I was starving, and we need to go to the grocery store pretty badly.

I decided to pull together a fruit shake with some frozen fruit and some yogurt, and then, in a moment of weakness, I decided to have some tater tots.  We’ve had the frozen tater tots in the freezer for months.  They were left over from another life, a life I had once where I ate tater tots without worry about the fat, salt and carb intake, and whether or not that item was on the approved item list.  

I blended up my frozen fruit into a shake, and I went to blowdry my hair while I waited for the tater tots to broil into crispy golden deliciousness.  

25 minutes later, the smoke alarm started going off. 

I’m going to assume this is God and Tony Horton’s way of telling me that I’m not supposed to eat tater tots.  Point taken.

P90X: Week 3 Workout Update

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Well, tomorrow is the end of our 3rd week on P90X.  I figured I’d give you guys and any P90X’ers out there an update on how it’s going. 

The Good:

  • This week is the first week that I’ve been able to see improvement in my numbers.  We’ve done all the same workouts for 3 weeks in a row now, and starting with week 2, I started writing down my reps and getting a better idea of what I was and wasn’t doing.  Because I’m familiar enough with the videos and the moves, I can really concentrate on my form.  I’ve started using the time alloted to do each different move to my advantage, taking breaks when I need them (as suggested by Tony Horton), and making sure I’m working to the end of the time to get in all the reps that I can while retaining the form.  Writing down the information allows me to make adjustments were I needed to, e.g. using more or less weight when necessary.  When we started the workouts I only had a set of 10lb. dumbbells, but now I’ve expanded to have a set of 8 lb. ones, as well as a set of 15 lb. dumbbells.  I don’t use the 15s very much yet, but I can tell that I’ll be moving towards them for biceps moves and shoulder presses soon.  
  • I can see marked improvement in my ability when doing the Ab Ripper X video.  I still always feel like death at the end of the 18 minutes of hell, but I can almost get through the whole thing without having to skip reps and recover.  I go back and forth on this a little bit, because I still have really bad days some days.  How well I perform on the Ab Ripper X video is directly dictated by how well I’ve eaten that day, and how much water I’ve ingested.  If I don’t eat right and make sure I get enough water, I fail during the Ab Ripper X video.  It doesn’t help that we always do that video directly after our other video, so I’m already beat.  I don’t want to change that, though.  My days are so crammed right now, I can’t find a better time to do the videos separately.  Plus getting drenched in sweat 2 times a day isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. 
  • According to my scale, I’ve lost 5 pounds.  I’m hesitant to write these numbers online because of several reasons: I don’t want people giving me a hard time about losing weight if they don’t think I need to, and mostly, I’m afraid that writing it on here makes it too real, so if I start to go backwards, it will hurt more.  I can’t see that I will start going backwards, though, unless the muscle gain is so marked that it wouldn’t make any difference.  I don’t see myself gaining a ton of muscle mass because of this.  I’m purposefully doing 12-15 reps of all the muscle building workouts in order to lean muscle instead of building it.  I’m also drinking the protein shake with water instead of milk, which helps avoid building muscle mass.  My weight was an all time high the day that we started this workout.  I’ve gone from 134 to 129.  My clothes don’t fit differently yet, which I didn’t expect.  We’re just a 1/4th of the way through the workout program.  For those of you who are about to flip out on me about losing weight: I’m really not trying to lose pounds.  I’m doing this workout because of my shape, which I’d like to change.  The numbers don’t matter too me as much as my shape does.  I am carrying all my extra pounds right on my waistline, which is one of the reasons I’d like to take care of it.  Not only is mid-section fat purely unappealing, Carrying weight on the waist instead of all over the body is bad for visceral health.  My heart, liver and organ systems will all be effected by carrying extra fat specifically in the stomach vs. all over the body.  So while it’s exciting to see that the scale says I weigh 5 lbs less, what’s more exciting is that the workout seems to be working.

The Bad (or, Confessions of a Not-Perfect Human):

  • We skipped Tuesday’s workout this week.  We were supposed to do Plyometrics on Tuesday, but wound up not doing it because I was an emotional wreck.  I hit another speed bump in the road to nursing school.  One of those I mentioned earlier–the kind that dramatically reminds me that I want this Nursing School thing, and I want it BADLY.  I had breakdown after breakdown all evening long that would leave me in a crumpled, teary, snotty mess.  Zack turned on the video right as I was trying to compose a letter to see if I could get the situation rectified, and I hit the mother load of all weeps right at that moment.  Then, adding to the disaster, by the time I finally got the letter finished, I hit send (without saving it first) only to find out that my session had timed out and the whole letter was lost.  I absolutely lost it, and Zack came in and told me that it was okay, we were just going to not worry about doing Plyo that night, worry about the letter instead, and write it together.  (This next sentence really belongs in the “Good” section…) He’s the best husband in the world.  Despite the fact that I was a fantastic and impossible disaster at that moment, he loved me through it, and we wrote the letter again.  I wound up going to bed while he was editing the letter, (exhausted) and he sent it for me after saving it in 4 or 17 separate documents on my desktop.  
  • Yesterday I didn’t eat very well.  It’s hard for me to eat as much food as they want me to eat in this program.  Calling the P90X food plan a “diet” is something of a misnomer for me.  I usually eat less calories in a day than they want you to eat for the lowest-calorie diet plan.  Because they constantly warn you against under eating, I’ve been making a real point of eating as much food as they want me to eat.  So I’m eating more, and I’m eating different (I tend to eat carbs, carbs, carbs, [and fruits and veggies] for every meal and every snack.  They want you to eat protein, protein, protein, but no, no, no fat.)  So even though I’m on a ‘diet,’ I have to put a constant effort into eating enough food, sucking down boiled egg whites like they are going out of style.  Friday was a weird day, and I wound up eating not very much food, and by the time we were half-way through Legs and Back, I was wiped.  I had to lay down and drink a glass of juice so that I could finish the workout.  I’ve always assumed that they want you to eat that way for a reason, but last night I felt the very real effects of not eating properly.  Note to self: better effort required.  It’s easier for me to eat correctly on days when I’m home from work.  That’s the opposite of what I thought would be true.  I thought being home all day would tempt me to constantly nibble at something.  Instead, the rush of getting ready for work in the morning, and toting all the food I need to eat to work is the hard part.  I probably spend 30 minutes a day trying to figure out how I can get all the nutrients I need to work with me.  You should see the # of tupperware containers I use in a week.  It’s unreal. 
  • The sheer amount of time and effort required for these workouts is insane.  Even though it’s just an hour a day, it is dominating my life.  Every minute I’m thinking about what I’m doing right or wrong.  The cooking, the eating, the grocery shopping and the working out all has to be very well timed.  I find it to be exhausting.  Exhausting, but worth it.

The Ugly:

  • After looking at the incredibly hot babes on the screen for an hour a day, and being able to do what they are doing, I start to believe that I look like them.  ”I DID IT!” I think after I get done with a round of Tony Horton Torture, then when I strip away my tee-shirt to workout in my sports bra, I am saddened to find that I am not quite there yet.  I’m always surprised that my love handles have not magically melted away, leaving a sleek and trim midsection behind for me to enjoy.  Unrealistic expectations? Yes. But it’s true nevertheless. 
  • Me trying to do a diamond push-up.  That, my friend, is truly ugly. 

Feigning Discipline

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“I’m not a disciplined person,” I said to Zack while we were sitting at lunch today.  “I seem like I’m a disciplined person, because I do things like graduate college in 3 years, but I’m not.  I’m really, really competitive, but I’m not disciplined.”

Zack nods.

“And it’s just that I have been slamming my life full of discipline lately.”  Staring at the wheat-bread sandwich in my hand, I continued, “I can’t eat what I want, I can’t do what I want, I have to work out all the time, I have to stay up later than I want to and I don’t like it.  And now, I’m going to have to infuse even MORE discipline in my life, because I have to start working on this Government class.  I just want to watch TV, is that really too much to ask?”

Zack thoughtfully says, “Welcome to adulthood.  When we were kids, we always thought, ‘Mom and Dad get to do whatever they want!’  But we were wrong.”

We were dead wrong.  Apparently adulthood (and especially parenthood) is not the free-wheeling fun time that it seemed to be when we were 13 years old (and usually, when we were grounded, everything seemed free-wheeling when we were grounded).  

I was just thinking the other day, I’d be so relieved if one thing in my life didn’t require maintenance.  Work and school and food and the house and the dog and the car–even friendships, family relationships and my relationship with Zack.  All these things require maintenance.  I realized that this whole P90X thing that we’re doing, all this working out and being concerned about our body, that’s maintenance, too.  I thought for so long that my body was just mine, just there, the one thing that I just had that didn’t require my constant, undivided attention, lest it fall into a state of decay.  Isn’t it enough that I have to worry about the flower beds and nursing school and the ironing?  Must I also worry whether or not my oblique muscles have been properly used in the past 2 days?

So there you have it.  Old & Boring, yes, but also, Responsible and Feigning Discipline.  Perhaps I will be able to see the adage come true in my life; fake it ’til you make it.