Life Like Water

So apart from a nasty case of the flu I’ve been going to TKD pretty regularly. I’m totally wiped out when I walk out of the dojang but at least I’m not crippled by sore muscles. Jyllian says I look like I’m losing weight which is one of reasons I love her: she lies.

No, having made my way through the tortures of sore muscles I had about a week before my body decided to again remind me that I was fast approaching middle age. It started out small, just two little sore spots on the fronts of my shins. Just enough to make me think “that’s odd, I didn’t know I had muscles there to make sore”. And over a week it blossomed into feeling like leprechauns with baseball bats were trying to knock their pots of gold out of my pant legs.

Skipped a few times and have just done push-ups, sit-ups and kicks at home and I’m about ready to go back on Wednesday. I’ll just have to take it easy with the jumping rope until whatever I tore up has a chance to rebuild.

My wife is wonderful

Well not really. I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. What I did do, however, is start taking Taekwon-Do at one of the local dojangs. The Bean has been learning taekwon-do for a few months now and I wanted to both get a little more exercise and provide a good example for her to make it easier for her to stick with it.

I’m really in a lot of pain though. The first day was actually yoga because the school has a new yoga instructor and wanted everyone to experience yoga if they already hadn’t done so. I have and I mostly enjoyed it but it was just a little embarrassing to know most of the postures but to not really be able to hit a single one of them. The Saturday class was my first real martial art instruction in about fifteen years. I didn’t do too badly but I was literally starting to gray out after an hour of jumping rope, crunches, doing kicks up and down the dojang and learning the basics of the first form (Chon-Ji / Heaven and Earth).

So I’m still really sore but I’m still stretching every day. I realized that I’m about as flexible these days as your average steel girder so I’m also doing some basic stretching every day. Once I can walk without cringing I’ll add in some time every day to work on forms.

This is technically about Halloween but it’s definitely creepy enough to go in that bin. Makes me wish I lived in Iceland.

http://www.cracked.com/article_15816_5-most-horrifying-bugs-in-world.html

I believe in taking care of myself, in a balanced diet, in a rigorous exercise routine. In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I’ll put on an ice pack while doing my stomach crunches. I can do a thousand now. After I remove the icepack, I use a deep pore-cleanser lotion. In the shower, I use a water-activated gel cleanser, then a honey-almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub. Then I apply an herb mint facial masque which I leave on for ten minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an after-shave lotion with little or no alcohol because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm, followed by a final moisturizing “protective” lotion…There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping you and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.

Briefly switching to another theme template to make this thing readable again.

There is nothing more humbling than doing yoga with a five year old.

E: Touch the ground Daddy, you’re supposed to touch the ground like this.
J: I’m trying sweetheart. Daddy can’t quite do that just yet.
E: No Daddy, like this. See? It’s easy.
E: What was that sound, Daddy?
J: That was my spine sweetie. Daddy has to stop for today.

He’s always been our little guy. He’s very timid and quiet. He hides from strangers. Never bites or bares his claws. As far as cats go he’s a seven foot queen of a gay man with a tiny chihuahua peeking out of his man purse.  But the one thing I forgot was that every gay man I know can fight like Mike Tyson after smoking a $20 rock.

He tried to climb the walls. He tried to climb me. He knocked me over. My wife thought I was moving furniture. Our soft, fat boy had, in a matter of seconds, converted the body built by a life of leisure into an engine of muscle and bone with a single purpose: escape. I muscled him back into the tub and got the soap on him. He was now not only wet but slippery. I know there is a part of me that is suicidal because I suddenly had the thought “I can keep him in the tub if I get in with him and slide the shower door shut”.

With a laugh that is only possible when your reptile brain has seized the wheel and screamed “THIS IS THE END! ARMAGEDDON!” I  followed the instructions and began to build up a  luxurious lather by rubbing the soap into his fur, being careful to avoid his eyes.  It’s kind of a blur of lathering, rinsing and repeating after that. I’m pretty sure I lost consciousness at least once but Mr Teatime appears to be clean and won’t come anywhere near me.

Wife had an operation and the daughter got bronchitis / pneumonia. Not a time to be adding to my schedule. New start date is now 7/2.

Ran in the wheel (elliptical trainer) for 25 minutes. The real work begins on Monday.