I would never in a skillion, berjillion years have thought, twenty years ago, that today I would call myself an athlete. Is one an athlete if one does pushups, planks, situps, leglifts, and strength training every day, plus swim every day? Ride horses twice a week and do roller derby twice a week / skate outdoors once or twice a week? Or is that just the average American's BTU output?
Maybe I've fallen into a threshing machine and a changeling took my place and I didn't notice.
I actually enjoy the pushups. This is proof I'm a changeling.
It's kind of cool to wake up and feel stiff, as if I were wearing very tight spandex body armor over my upper arms and shoulders and back.
I do a fair amount of stretches every day before the morning's exercises. Thank goodness for Pominatrix and Queen B and Poppy Z Frite teaching us stretches and The Derby Asana. The quads pish and moan at first, but then they thank me.
Also, from a single aqua-cize class I took at the Y early this summer, I learned this thing called "wringing out the washrag" where you stretch the arms out like an airplane, then twist the left hand up, the right hand down, looking right. Then look left. Then twist the hands in the opposite directions. This "wrings" the muscles all along the arms and upper back. Delicious!
Oo, I just did it again, to test-drive my instructions above. Mmmm!
If you have a favorite stretch, I'd love to hear about it. Between skating and horse riding, I'm stiff from here to there.
All of my stretches are at the ballet barre. I'm in the studio 3 days a week for a total of 4 hours. Then there are the hikes, got to keep track of the wildflowers.
There is something so very marvelous about becoming active in mid-life. We do appreciate the changes in the body more than younger people can. For the first time in over 20 years I have a waistline and defined calf muscles as well as taught skin across the back. Now if I could just get the belly, bum, and thighs to go along...
Phyl, you write, ++There is something so very marvelous about becoming active in mid-life. We do appreciate the changes in the body more than younger people can.++
Hell yes. It's like I finally live here all the time, not just visit for events like like sex or chocolate.
++For the first time in over 20 years I have a waistline and defined calf muscles as well as taught skin across the back. Now if I could just get the belly, bum, and thighs to go along...++
The belly bum & thighs have lined up for me since I went on the bacon diet. When I was losing the fastest, I had %50 fat, 40% protein, 10% veggies, no fruit, no grain, no sugar, no alcohol, no *sob* chocolate.
Now that I'm done losing most of the weight, I eat about 40% fat, 30% protein, 20 veggies, 5% fruit, and cheat on myself with a little chocolate or other gratuitous carbs every day.
I'm so god blessed active these days, I can cheat a lot more than when I was trying to drop pounds.
Gotta go. Must sew tucks into the straps on a bunch of extra derby pads. I got 'em at resale shops. The pad part is fine, but the stretchy straps have stretched too much from age. Our group is having a "try-out" day, where members of the public can come and skate with us and see if they want to join.
We have bears on the back deck! Fewer sightings since we took down the bird feeders. Mr. Bear trashed too many of them. Look back on my journal to mid June, you'll see pictures.
(Checking pix) OMG, that's AMAZING! Do you have a relationship, so to speak, with any of them, or do you pretty much avoid contact?
I found out that bears are my new totem animal in 2002, after we lost all our crows in the Chicago area to West Nile Virus in the summer of 2001. I cried every day that summer. I would dream about seeing the crows, in their thousands, somewhere else, somewhere very hilly with lots of oak trees. I prayed that some of them at least escaped the plague.
And that winter I began dreaming about bears. I wasn't really up for a change of, or addition to, my totem animal, but they didn't really ask. They just showed up.
We avoid contact. These are wild animals. 300lbs of bear is not a close encounter we encourage.
We live by the maxim that a fed bear is a dead bear. When they get too comfortable around humans they cause problems and have to be elimintated. It is illegal to "bait" them, put out food attractions or salt licks.
Earlier this year Fish and Game had to put down a bear that invaded a kitchen. Another one attacked a woman who tried to shoo him away from garbage cans.
So we watch from a distance and appreciate their wildness.
"A fed bear is a dead bear." That's what the Bear Society in the Tahoe region says. It makes sense. People can't be relied on to be uniformly rational around wild animals, so just...leave them alone.
In Banff, a local law permits residents--not cops mind you but any citizen--to fine a tourist
