If, if I do this next bench press competition, on a beach in a singlet, I will go about it all wrong. Last time: hit chest, tris hard. Kept other muscles just above maintenance. Hit the protein. Rarely did cardio. Outcome? Was bored and stressed. Announced retirement . This time: Working everything hard. Joining a "Boot Camp" plyometric/calisthenic class to keep up the conditioning. Am eating a mostly raw foods diet, aided by my ten-dollar juicer/major garage sale find. Why be contradictory? I don't want to be bored and stressed. I want to stay conditioned. I want to eat a healthier diet because it makes me feel better. I'll work at the bench all the while, and what will be will be. Not as much invested this time, which is ironic, because this competition is more formal and official--the pause at the chest kind, wear a singlet , qualify for state record competitions if you do well competition. If, if I do this, I'm doing it for fun. I'm doing it to compete a
I did not read for pleasure this year until May. The previous November, on my fiftieth birthday, I applied to graduate school having scrolled through subject areas for one that sparked more than a basic interest, as I enjoy many different fields. Most of early 2021 was spent climbing the peaks of academic texts, each chapter another foot safely planted, or an effort to find better footing. In this endeavor my synapses traced an old muscularity, underdeveloped but there--ropey, always reaching, sideways and upward and sometimes back down in order to ultimately ascend. Recollections of my Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit, read in May Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile, read in June Near the end of my first semester I sensed that my son needed me more, or that I should be home more often during his long days of remote learning. His father had stopped allowing him to see me on weekends, relying, suddenly, on the original text of the divorce decree written six years prior, when our son was 12. Now h
'Twas the night before Christmas, with yesterday spent boiling a mouthpad--twice, to sink those molars--and being hit, and hitting. Not your normal holiday preparations, but then again today is hardly usual for us. A sick kid is in the next room. Your average winter cold is ominous for the diabetic, and we had communicated with the on call endocrinologist twice before lunch. Next stop is the ER for IVs, he said. Merry Christmas. The line up was such at boxing class that I'd be sparring the teacher. "Oh man," Chad exclaimed, knowing what Emily could be like. "You're in for it." I had figured I'd be up against either a smaller, older man in the class or Emily, and it's saying something that I preferred the man. The preparation for being alone with your opponent and your wits requires people: the boxer is helpless to put on the gloves or the headgear. I stood as a fellow classmate pulled the headgear down over my face, was able to do nothing about t
I'm still giggling.
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