Tales of a 31-year-old white belt: 3 lbs of furious wattage

So things have been a little crazy the last few days or so….I have a major project due on Monday at work and it’s brought with it a lot of new challenges, particularly around project management. The root of the issue is that when you take a new businessperson and team them up with a new information architect (me), and a few other individuals who haven’t necessarily ever filled their exact roles before, and let them loose on a project with a vague scope, well, there’s a lot of cat-herding going on.

And I’m not afraid to say that I panic easily, am terrified of upper management as a general rule, and get obsessed with having pixel-perfect wireframes (yes, I know that’s a contradiction in terms). The end result is an all-nighter last Friday into Saturday (along with a few other assorted hours throughout the weekend) to get my wireframes done, crazy hours Monday, crazy hours again yesterday, and crazy hours today.

And OH MY GOD I’m exhausted.

The problem is I’m so exhausted I forget I’m exhausted. Case in point: I was smart enough to go home Monday after work instead of going to martial arts because I knew I couldn’t get through the calisthenics and I’d collapse. So that was smart.

What wasn’t so smart was not realizing that I wasn’t any better off yesterday.

Yesterday, I ate a healthy breakfast, ate a healthy lunch, and then spent four hours in an intense stress-filled situation cramming to finish a presentation that I then had to give to upper management (see point A about my feelings on management above). As soon as the presentation was over, I literally ran to my car (choking down a York peppermint patty on the way) to go to martial arts, which is in another building down the road.

At class, we did the usual warm-ups, then this cruel thing where you go from standing, to a squat, to kicking your feet behind you, do a pushup, back to the squat, then stand back up, then do it again. Ten of these. This was new exercise to me. My heart started pounding.

Then 50 jumping jacks. OK, I can swing that.

Then we went from standing into a squat, into a jump to tap our partners’ hands, back into a squat, like hyper frogs, for a total of 60 seconds. I think that’s probably when I started to lose my breath.

Then what I’ll call “laps” up and down the room – front kicks, then side kicks, then this cruel thing where you hop on one leg while kicking the other.

OK, look, I’m 175lbs on a good day and I’m 5 foot 3 when a generous nurse runs the scale. I’m built like a fire hydrant. Hopping on one foot sideways is freakin’ impossible to begin with, forget all the way up and down the room. Each lap I fell further and further behind the rest of the crowd, breathing harder and harder, heart feeling like it’s going to explode, which because I’m one bullheaded sunovabitch, just made me push myself harder. If all these other folks can do it, then the problem is I’m just not trying hard enough.

And I continued with that attitude until the edges of the room started to get kind of fuzzy and both Mr. and Mrs. Robinson made a point of saying “If anyone can’t handle this, you can bow out” while looking pointedly and directly at me.

Even I’m not dumb enough to ignore that particular mix of signals. Which is good, because by that point I was panting so hard that I couldn’t catch my breath at all. I think I might have been hyperventilating. Thank God I have a class of caring intelligent people — one of our highest ranking red belts came over and talked me through holding my breath just to slow my heart rate down so I could breathe again. And I got a good (positive, effective) talking to from both of my instructors, which I totally deserved for being so dumbass stupid and bullheaded.

But I couldn’t figure out what the hell happened. Yes, I’m out of shape. Yes, I shouldn’t try to keep up with people who have been practicing since 2005. Yes, I’d totally screwed my sleep schedule over the weekend and skipped not one but two workouts since the previous Wendesday. But I haven’t had a full breakdown of physical mechanics like that since college, when I discovered that not eating for an entire weekend is not conducive to crossing campus Monday morning.

And then tonight Nighthawk and I watched Human Body: Pushing the Limits, which we’d DVR’d, and something clicked. We were watching the episode on the human brain, which talked about the need for sleep, the need for cooling, and the need for energy. Turns out this three pound lump of grey matter between our ears uses on average 1/5th of our energy in a day. That’s right, the brain’s a giant energy sucker. And I ran it ragged for 4 hours.

Even though I’d eaten a good 1000 calories or so yesterday, the same amount I usually eat, and I’d had plenty of water, I’m now realizing that I’d burned through a lot more energy than I thought I had. (Keep in mind that if I eat more than 1550 calories in a day I gain weight. 1000 calories through lunch is actually *high* for my slow-ass metabolism.)

By the time I got to class, as my cousin would say, my stubbornness was writing checks my body couldn’t cash.

When I finally did catch my breath, by the way, I recovered enough to practice forms with the rest of the class with no further issues except for the blister I got on the bottom of my big toe. (Apparently they are not yet made of iron.) But I popped that nasty thing and it’s healing nicely, so I should be fine by Monday.

Monday — when I have to give two more presentations and hand over this project. Yeah, I’m thinking that had better be a 2000 calorie day.

In other news, I think I’m going to have all my ducks in a row without resorting to another all-work weekend by Monday, and then I might just get to revert back to a normal work schedule. As an added bonus, my brother and I are going to the Phillies game tomorrow, so life is really damn good. You know, if you ignore the screaming thighs, angry toe, and pure flat-out exhaustion.

Things I learned today.

Lessons from a 31-year-old white belt:

  • Roundhouse kicks are more fun than side kicks. And that’s OK.
  • Jumping jacks are not my friend.
  • The instructor might say that we’re doing these slalom runs through the chairs to learn agility and it’s not a race so there’s no need to rush, but when you’re the lowest rank in the room and the highest-ranking red belt is suddenly two feet behind you on her second lap while you’re still trying to finish up lap 1, you pick up the pace a bit.
  • Running across the floor a half dozen times will loosen up a respiratory infection quite nicely. After that point you sound like a three-pack-a-day smoker for about two hours.
  • When trying to clear a respiratory infection it’s possible to sound worse than the smokers at the end of the drills.
  • No matter where you put your water bottle, you will inevitably be led to the other side of the room.
  • First form is in the shape of an I. So are second and third, but we don’t have to get to those anytime soon. Especially when we continue to look like a train wreck in first form.
  • The big toe is critical to balance, which is why I keep pulling all the muscles on top of it. Some day I will have toes of iron.
  • No matter how much you enjoyed class and what you learned, there’s not enough room to practice forms in the shower.
  • Hell, you can’t even get off more than a semi-decent front kick in the shower.
  • If you enjoy what you’re doing enough, not only do you forget it’s exercise, but people start to ask you if you had older brothers to fight. When you reply that no, you’re the oldest, you get odd looks. And that’s OK too.
  • It’s only 5 days until Monday, when I get to do it again.

On the other side of the clutter problem.

Thursday I found the living room and my desk. Now technically I have two desks – there’s the new computer desk, and there’s the old do-all-the-mail-and-stuff desk. The old desk was buried under a stack of paperwork about two feet high, prior to Thursday.

It took all day (and I mean ALL day) but I processed about six months of filing, including creating new empty files for 2008, cleaned my desks, took care of all the paperwork, and put away everything in the household financial category.

It also generated about three bags of trash and the breaking down of a ton of cardboard (Amazon is my friend, but the other side of Christmas usually looks like I’ve been running a warehouse), which was too bad because trash is usually picked on on Thursday at 6 AM. So everything I’ve processed since then has to sit out in the trash closet until Monday when they come again.

Yesterday Nighthawk wasn’t feeling well, so instead of continuing the decluttering, I played Final Fantasy XII for eight hours or so. I’m now about to break 160 hours, and and on my way down to the Feywood for the first plot-related time. I’m also around level 60. Yes, I’m doing way too much, and yes, you probably could have beat the game twice in the same amount of time. But I’m happy.

Yesterday evening my kid sister and her awesome boyfriend came over and picked up an old G3 450 Mac that we always said we were going to donate to a school but didn’t actually accomplish until after the schools said nothing lower than a G4 please, a PC case we’d never gotten around to using, about six or eight games, and an assortment of other oddball things that we didn’t need but that college students are always glad to take for free. As for me, I was just happy to get them out of my house.

After that, I went out for drinks and snacks and dessert with my friend Steen and we had a great girls’ night out over at Applebees, land of the half-price appetizers after 9pm. Their mini-desserts rock, too.

JessieDog wasn’t feeling well last night and wouldn’t settle down in the bedroom where my nice warm husband and nice soft bed are located. Around 4:30 I brought her downstairs and by 5:30 we were curled up together on the sofa fast asleep. I love the time I spend with her cuddling like that but would have loved it more if it hadn’t been on what’s rapidly becoming the sofa from hell.

Today I putzed around the house for a little while, and then decided that my back and knees weren’t going to recover from the sofa that rapidly, so I might as well wreck them further. I emptied every single cabinet in the kitchen including the food cabinets, and cleaned out the refrigerator. The entire first floor looked like a kitchen had exploded.

The thing about two people living in a house as compared to five, is that with five people there’s always someone who’s eventually desperate enough to eat food before it spoils. With two people, you buy something because it looked delicious at the time, but three days later it doesn’t sound as good or you get invited out instead or whatever. As time goes by, that food doesn’t necessarily leave (especially not dry goods) but it doesn’t get eaten either… and eventually you don’t have room for the new food you do eat, but there’s “nothing to eat” in the house either. That’s when it’s time to audit the fridge and cabinets, and that resulted in a bag of disgusting items exiting earlier today. (I’m pretty sure that Thanksgiving’s egg nog had reached the Bronze era of tool development.)

JessieDog managed tog get herself trapped in the maze of stuff four times during this process.

Once the food was put away I was able to weed through the equipment zoo and pull the duplicates — cake pans that had been replaced with new silicone, a coffee maker that had bit the dust, the foreman grill being replaced by the cuisinart grill, four basting brushes… That was the easy stuff.

Then I had the hard decisions to make. Do I really need four glass casserole dishes? Why keep a peanutbutter stirrer that I’d never use? How many coffee mugs are too many? Would Mom and Dad use these six bottles of spices that I accidentally bought twice faster than Nighthawk and I? Where’s the dog now?

Having put away the mass majority of the mess, I took a nice interlude to my folks’ place, where we enjoyed plum pudding and played killer bunnies with all the expansion decks for the first time. That rocked.

Then, returned home and put away the rest of the kitchen, took out the other two bags of trash (the trash men are going to have a coronary on monday), straightened up outside, boxed up six boxes (small ones) of the kitchen supplies I no longer need so they can go to my siblings and/or goodwill in the near future, hauled everything upstairs for storage, and finally sat down.

My house is as close to clean as it’s going to get for a good long time. And that’s good because my back and knees will kill me if I do much more than that.

It’s totally liberating, though, to be able to find the things I use. Most things didn’t move at all, but those that did were either moved to reachable locations, or disposed of altogether so I can reach things. I can find things. Things aren’t crushing other things. Every food item in the house is currently edible. I don’t have three bottles of cinnamon. The dog can find the floor. There are files for the filing, and there aren’t boxes stacked in front of the filing cabinets. All the computers are actually being used actively.

And having done all of that, I can enjoy the last three days of my weekend knowing that I’ll be going into the new year lighter and more ready to face the world.

After I sleep, that is.

Paint, and such.

So I can finally move my arms and legs without pain. That’s a nice start.

Last Tuesday we moved into the 2nd bedroom we finally finished in January so that we could start working on our bedroom.

Our bedroom is 18×14, with a walk-in closet that’s at least 6×6. It’s freakin’ huge. Literally half the 2nd floor. And it’s lavendar. With lime green carpeting. So of course, that had to go.

And since once a year the condo association parks a huge dumpster outside for the whole development to use, and that “once a year” was last weekend, well, it had to go then. With the help of my dad and Nighthawk’s parents, we tore out the lime green carpet and the used-to-be-white yellow shag carpet that we found underneath it. We scraped the remains of the carpet padding off the flooring using a flat-nosed shovel, and filled at least two garbage bags. Then, just to make sure we were thorough, we tore out all the door trim and baseboard.

So needless to say, the first time I woke up this morning (at 4 am) I could about move.

This evening I bought the primer, ceiling paint, and wall paint necessary to go from lavendar to cayman blue (to match the second bedroom). Sometime this week I’ll patch the wallboard where necessary and sand so that I can paint this weekend.

In the meantime, today’s life lesson came while I was driving to work. It’s a twofold lesson, really.

Part one: While driving safely but at a brisk 75 mph pace in the left-hand lane down the highways of Pennsylvania, do not assume that the black car you just passed that looks like a Lincoln Town Car / limousine with the tinted windows and the heavy frame is in fact a limousine, because it may be an unmarked police car.

Part two: If you happen to be driving safely, but at a brisk 75 mph pace in the left-hand lane and pass an unmarked police car that looks like a limo, it’s handy to have some other idiot weaving through the much-more-crowded center and right-hand lanes going at least 80 mph, because the officer of the law is much more likely to go after that guy.

Or, to steal a phrase from my uncle, “Drive like an asshole, you’re gonna get hurt.”

Now it’s almost Tuesday and I just uploaded Saturday’s comic, so I’m going to bed. Sleep well, and drive safely.

Gather around for today’s life lesson.

Last Thanksgiving I got it into my head that I wanted a fresh turkey, so we bought Bob. But we also had a coupon for a free turkey from the supermarket, and free food is free food, so we also picked up Ralph, a beautiful 16 lb Butterball frozen turkey, and threw him in the freezer.

Ralph has been monopolizing the freezer ever since, so last weekend after playing post-food-shopping-Tetris, I declared that Ralph’s time had come, and we stuck him in the fridge to defrost.

Ralph is currently roasting in my oven. Mmmmmm. I’m having turkey sandwiches all week :)

Which means I have about an hour to clean the whole house, because my sister, and Mike and Steen and the baby, are all coming over to dispose of Ralph.

Which means I’m really regretting that while trying to move the cactus a few minutes ago I dropped it.

Today’s life lesson: never try to catch a falling cactus.

Finally finished the 2nd bedroom.

Well, after two years of work, I can officially declare the second bedroom refinished. Sure, it could use some more furniture, and I need a second set of curtains ’cause the current ones aren’t wide enough, but the floor, walls, and trim are done. The heater vent’s been replaced. The closet’s been refinished and reshelved. The bed and end tables are assembled. And most amazingly, all the trash is out.

I’m beat. We assembled the furniture and hung the curtain rod and curtains tonight. I bought the curtains and the blankets and washed everything. My feet hurt and I don’t remember having actually eaten dinner tonight. I still need to get a shower.

I bought loose tea tonight for my teastick but if I have it now I won’t be able to sleep. I got decaf chai for Christmas – time to crack that open.

Social circles and other tasks.

So yesterday (meaning Saturday) evening, we went out to dinner at Red Lobster with a friend from high school who I hadn’t seen in four or five years I think. I had an absolutely great time, ate too much, came home and wrote a little, then went to bed.

This morning, we got up relatively early (for us), so that we could go out to lunch with a friend from elementary school who I haven’t seen since June of 2004and her family. Once again I had a ball, and look forward to seeing them again in less than 17 months this time.

Around this, I talked to my folks a couple of times, and was invited out to eat twice by a friend who I see on a regular basis (she’s local). Also did some light shopping and watched the football game and spent five hours filing. (I was a little behind.)

My back is killing me, my sinuses are all screwed up (my fault), and I have eaten waaay too many things over the past two days that contain bell peppers, which apparently now that I’m almost 30, have decided they need to kill me. Despite all that and a tendency to overcaffeinate, I’m really, really happy right now.

I hope you are too.