Mayhem 30 Hard

I do CrossFit. Not this summer because I'm taking a break (my plantar fasciitis said so). 

I start up again in September, and because my gym is a Mayhem affiliate, the Monthly Mayhem challenge is the Mayhem 30 Hard (based off the 75 Hard challenge, which, if you know nothing about it, Google that shit and then applaud everyone who is determined enough to do it because damn, I could not repeatedly set myself up for that much failure. And my colleague who did it looked exhausted. I'm digressing).

It's a challenge designed to test your resolve and self-discipline. And it's a little easier than 75 Hard. 

But does that mean I'm going to do it? I mean, I could, but does Mayhem not know that people (or their children) start school in September, so it's not just "here are 7 things you need to accomplish everyday to be worthy complete this challenge", it's "here are 7 things you need to accomplish everyday to be worthy complete this challenge and you need to prepare / help your kids prepare lunches, get them to school, drive them to all their extra curriculars (I love having nerdy introverted children), make supper and do laundry on a regular basis. Also have sex with your significant other. Unless you're so exhausted that all you want to do is cry in the shower and maybe sleep there because the bed is way over there and now that you're in the shower do you really need to get out? Because yeah, I need to add to my existing get-up-at-04:30-go-to-bed-at-22:00-but-you-need-8+-hours-of-sleep day.

This is what we have to do (and what my inside voice thinks about it all):

For the September monthly challenge, we’re doing a condensed version of the 75 Hard program, which you may have heard of.

To successfully complete this challenge, for the next 30 days, you must do ALL of the following EVERY DAY (the notes on this say that this scores a 7, and that if we don't do all of it, score what you did do. Also, you don't have to "start over" like you do in 75 Hard):

• Complete two 30+ minute workouts (at least one workout MUST be outside) If I do Shavasana for half an hour on the deck and then for half an hour in bed, does that count?
• Drink 2/3 of your body weight in ounces of water
  (For example: if you weigh 200 lbs, you will need to drink a minimum of 133 oz of water each day) Hahahahahahahahahaha. Wait. Didn't someone die from this? I can get about 60% of this one, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to get a 7/7 day.
• Read 10+ pages in a nonfiction book Do CRA rulings count? Financial Statements? Lavender's Blue is non-fiction, right? I'm learning how to deal with drunk people and escape weddings so it counts. 
• Consume zero alcohol for the entire 30 days The blueberry apple ciders will stay in my fridge for another 30 days. No problemo.
• Choose any diet and stick with it The notes on this say that even just logging all food everyday, or reaching the goal of no snacks after supper can count. I do actually want to follow the 800g Challenge diet. You do feel amazing on it! But that means that I have to prep salads for work lunches, and not eat just pasta for supper like you do when you answer a kazillion unread emails on your first day back after a holiday whilst putting out Sage fires. Accounting, not brush.
• No cheat meals Someone I know has a birthday in September, so we all know how that one's going to go.
• Take a daily progress picture There may not be publishable words for this one.

I'm going to bed now.

Saturday Ski

 Cross-Country skiing is great. Until you need to slow down or stop.

Took a new trail yesterday, and on the map the trail is green. IE, easy, gentle slopes if there are any. 

I did okay. Enjoyed it even.

Got to the last loop of the trail. Bit of a hill. Okay, I've done green hills before. No problems. I don't need to take the little connector to the flat trail I've taken before, I tell myself. Down I go, and all is going well until the left ski left the track and wouldn't come back in and I had to bail. On my face. Good times. 

I get back up with a bit of assistance from someone who has probably been skiing since the beginning of time. I didn't even have to take my skis off! Win for me. 

"Oh," she says. "There is a bit of a divot there," and points up the trail a bit.

"Yeah, that was me. That's where I fell." Apologies to everyone else who had to ski that afterwards.

I continue on. The next hill looks just as intimidating. I follow some other newbies across a gap to a nicer looking trail. Fall on my ass stepping down onto the main trail. 

I make it to the top of the hill just above the lodge, and even though I know it's okay to ski down (I've done it before, even), I calmly ski into the upper parking lot, remove my skis, and take the stairs.

I log into my fitness app and have a look at my ski. I compare its map to the Ski Trails map. I look a little closer.

The last part of the loop is blue, with yellow high-lighting to show that it's lit up at night. And that looks green. Definitely is not green, though.

Swimming with Little Old Ladies

Last week I was able to go swimming at the public pool before work. As in, Hubby had the day off, so I didn't have to take the kids to daycare, so I could have slept in, but instead I chose--chose--to be at the pool at 6:15 a.m. On purpose.

There are three four types of people who are at the pool at opening time, and they can easily be identified by the lane or zone of the pool in which they congregate.

1. Dedicated, fit, "Advanced" swimmers who are able to swim an Olympic length over and over and over again without ever looking like it's an effort. These people are actually in the minority, and their zone is the Advanced swimming lane. That's not my group.

2. The Aqua-Fitters. These ladies are rocking the leisure pool with excellent coordination and range of motion, and they never look like they're going to expire at any moment. This isn't my group.

3. The "Intermediate" swimmers. The Advanced swimmers are way too fast, and the Leisure swimmers are way too slow. The Intermediate swimmers set a nice pace that is nothing too strenuous, but at the same time isn't a Sunday Drive. There may be a rest at the end of every lap or two, but the pace is steady and true. I thought this was my group. I was very, very, wrong.

4. The "Leisure" swimmers. These sharks little old ladies--and when I write little old lady, you should be reading Driving Miss Daisy--look like they are out for a Sunday Drive. No, really. They bob along the Olympic length of the pool doing something that is a cross between the doggy paddle and treading water. They are, in fact, quite literally treading water in an upright position, but their arms are paddling just enough that they are actually moving forward. This should be my group.

I walked to the lap pool, looked at the Leisure Lane, saw the bobbing, and thought to myself, too slow. I'll be mowing those poor women down.

Okay, maybe a little back story is in order: I remember being an awesome swimmer. I couldn't run to save my life, Sports Day at school was an embarrassing form of torture, I could maybe fake one push-up if I was on my knees, but put me in a pool and my weak little arms could pull me along faster than all the fit kids could swim. Swimming was easy.

So, I'm thinking, at this point, that just because a (tiny) broken bone in the bottom of my foot has kept me essentially immobile for the last two years, swimming should still be easy. I should be able to do a few front-crawling laps in the Intermediate Lane no problem.

I was wrong. I was wrong like a four-year-old is wrong when he thinks it's okay to teach his younger brother that it's okay to flush toilet paper rolls down the toilet (full or empty--either way). I was wrong like the Church was wrong when it excommunicated people for thinking that the Earth was round.

I was wrong like a fat, 40 year old woman who had two kids in her late thirties and whose life just kept getting more and more sedentary for various reasons is wrong when she thinks, hey, I used to ride my bike to the recreation centre, work out in the gym for an hour, then swim a few laps, then ride my bike home to do yoga on the lawn for half an hour or so, then maybe go horseback riding for a few hours, so how hard can this be?

I front-crawled for half a lap before my brain realized that I may actually drown in this really freaking big pool. There's a bit of a feeling of safety when your laps aren't Olympic length. When they are, and the "shallow" end is still over your head? The edges are so very far away. I had to back-stroke for most of my swim just so that I could breath!

I did manage two full laps (one lap being there-and-back), but I'm pretty sure that the little old ladies out-lapped me. The old men in my lane most certainly did.

I'm going again this week.

The Kazoo Catastrophe

Wow, I kinda dropped off the face of the Earth there for a bit, didn't I? Well I think I'm back. I want to be back. I'd love to be back every day, but that might make things a little crazy. Well, that might make me a little crazy. As it is, I finished the dishes and I thought, Self, you can reconcile your bank account like a good little girl, or you can write a blog post. I'm over a month behind in my bank rec. That's not going to be any different tomorrow, now is it? Kind of like sticky floors. They can wait.

Ah, the patience of chores waiting to be done.

On to the Kazoo Catastrophe.

I picked the kids up from daycare on Friday, and I thought that since it was K2's Birthday Party this weekend, K1 might like to stop at the toy store and pick something out for his brother (and yay, K2 gets to wander around!). 

I laid down the law of a quick visit to a toy store, and K1 (who's 4) agreed with them. K2 of course agreed, but he's just 2, so you always take that with a bit of skepticism. 

Now, this isn't just any toy store. It's not the big-box giant that sells what everyone else sells. It's not the mega-aisles at Wal-Mart. It's a tiny storefront that's jam-packed with real toys like Thomas the Train sets (the wooden ones) and Play Mobil and Melissa & Doug and creative toys (and I'm sorry, I don't have girls so I didn't look in that spot too clearly--probably special dolls and oh! Horses. They had lots of horses) and perhaps best of all, real sets of Lego. Not the sets that must be built a certain way and can only be made in to one thing, but actual boxes of random pieces! Like when I was a kid. Which feels like fifty years ago, but I swear it's not.

So, of course my kids gravitate towards the Thomas table that's set up in the back, and they're playing and not really looking at other toys, and so I drag K1 off to find a bath toy for K2, which he does and it's so cool that I want to have a bath just so that I can play with it (seriously, it's that cool). 

So then I try to round up the kids towards the front. I tell K1 that he has five minutes to pick something out to spend his allowance on, and of course he's too busy playing with the cool baby toys, so I decide that I'll pick, and I spy some Kazoos. Inexpensive, and they sound like fun.

I pay for the gift and the Kazoos, I (literally) drag the kids out to the car after prying toys that we haven't paid for out of their hands, ask K1 politely to get in to the car please, pick up K2 and realize that he's shit his diaper, ask K1 a little more firmly to please get in the car and for the love of all that makes Mommy happy please stop crying I said we had to go. I get K2 in to the back of the car, give K1 a lot of heck for not getting in to the car in a parking lot, hello, get him in the car, change K2's diaper without any wet cloths, yay, in the dark, double yay. Get him in his car seat, get K1 buckled in, and finally oh my goodness, Mommy where is our KAZOO?!

I pull out the kazoos, show the kids how they work (you have to hum to get noise, not just blow air through them), and get in the car. 

Hell. I'm in fucking Hell. But it's kind of a funny Hell, if you have a sense of humour.

I start driving. 

K1: I didn't WANT a Kazoo!

K2: Phhh. Phhhh. Mommy! Phhhh.

Me: Well, next time I say pick a toy, please pick a toy.

K1: But I don't want a Kazoo.. Whaaaawahaaawaaaa. Taaaake it baaaack.

K2: WhaaaaAAAAAaaaaazzzzz. KZzzzzzz. Phhh. Mommy!

Me: We can't take it back. You had your mouth on it.

K1: We can [hic] wash [hic] it!

Me: No. If you really don't want it, give it to me and you can get something else next time.

K2: Phhhh Zzzzzzz Phhhhh.

K1: NOOO! 

Me: Put it in my hand please.

K1: Noozzzzzz (crying in to the Kazoo).

Me: Hey, that sounds pretty good. 

The next twenty minutes are spent listening to K1 cry with and without the kazoo (with is much nicer on the ears) because he hates the kazoo but he doesn't want to give it back and he keeps trying to make music with it, and listening to K2 cry because he can't quite make it work, and every time K1 cries, K2 has to, and I'm pretty sure that by the time we hit the driveway they were both crying on purpose through the kazoo. Wackos. 

Moral of the story: Don't take your kids to a toy store for fifteen minutes on a Friday night when they're tired and hungry and you don't have the proper means to clean up poop, remove the poopy diaper from your car as soon as you get home or you'll hate your forgetfulness come the next morning, and if they tend to be whiny and cry-y on a drive home, get them a kazoo. Crying sounds much better.

Sleeping Beauty. The movie.

I'm watching Sleeping Beauty. And it's not the Disney version. It's not even for kids.

I can see why it's only 2.25 stars.

TV period shows have better makeup and costuming. And better writing and acting.

TV shows even have a bigger horseflesh budget; this poor prince has a cute, but shaggy posse of ponies.

Any adherence to the laws of physics is pretty questionable, too. I mean, just how likely is it that paper scraps would survive in a bird's nest for 100 years and still be legible?

Okay maybe it is magic. It is a fairytale after all.

The best two things about the movie?

Surprisingly decent CGI/special effects.
And Olivia D'Abo.

Worth watching? No, but I did. That's what a fairytale fetish gets you I guess.