Training Day

I joined a gym this month. I've thought getting a membership since I moved up here, but I have this thing against monthly payments. Something about that automatic-debit gives me the heebie-jeebies. I also recently joined Netflix, despite it's auto-debit system. It's been a big year, so far. Big steps.


Anyway, with this membership came two free sessions with a personal trainer if used within the first thirty days or whatever. Sounds like a good idea, right? A free thing? Give me that.

So last week I met with my trainer who we'll call Cathy. Cathy is a short, slender (but not skinny), powerful woman. She is toned, has a thousand-watt smile, a tan in the Northeast in mid-January (take from that what you will...), long dark hair, and a raspy voice that reminds me of Phoebe's voice in friends in the episode where she has a cold and tries to sing on stage and use it for her "sexy" voice. The joke here, for those of you who haven't seen the episode, is that Phoebe's voice doesn't sound sexy so much as it sounds like she has a perpetual smoker's cough/rasp...

Our first session is supposed to be half assessment, half workout. Two minutes into the assessment, I realize I do not like this woman. Looking back, I'm not even sure I can put my finger on what first triggered it. Maybe it was that when she asked where I lived in Manhattan and I told her Chinatown she casually mentioned that her soon-to-be ex-husband owned a certain restaurant in the Lower East Side, and because that certain restaurant happened to be where a recent ex had taken me on a first date, I immediately associated her with a vortex of negative things.


If that's the case, then I'm not being fair and she obviously never had a chance with me. But hear me out--whatever it was in the beginning that triggered the vague uneasiness, my suspicions of awful things to come were entirely gratified when I stepped on the scale. 

Let me preface this next part by saying this: I am not fat. 


I have never been fat. No one has ever called me fat before. I do not consider myself a fat, nor even a chubby, person. Not that there is anything wrong with being either of those things. Just sayin', those are things that I am not.


Did I join a gym to lose weight? Yes. What woman in America doesn't want to lose weight? That's Cosmo's fault. Everyone knows that. I won't even lie to you and say it was "to be healthier," or "more fit," or "more flexible," or anything else that unconvincing and entirely hollow. No. I joined to lose weight and to look better.


But does that mean I feel like now I look like some completely undesirable monster? Well, apparently that's what I should think according to Cathy.


I hopped on the scale. When it leveled out, she asked, "Is that the number you were expecting?"


"Yes," I answered truthfully.

"Really?" 


"I weigh myself every day."


"So you're not at all surprised to see that number on the scale?" the bitch asked a third time. 

I turned to her. I think I was sort of in shock, really. I can't remember ever having been so subtly and entirely insulted before. 


"No. No, I'm not surprised. I weigh myself every day," I repeated. 


"Hm." Cathy responded and hopped into her little chair while she crunched the numbers and determined that I, just as she suspected, was "upper-average" in weight. The situation was dire. She really wanted to have me at at least average. Time to hit the mats for some emergency strength training, STAT.

 What followed was a forty-five minute workout where I performed lunges, push-ups, squats, sit-ups, etc. while Cathy offered words of advice and encouragement like:

"You're twenty-three years old. This shouldn't be that hard for you."

"How does it make you feel that you're really having a tough time with this right now?"

"Butt out, chest up, legs wide--too wide, no, now you've got them too close. Look."

"See how you're standing in the mirror? Pull your shoulders back. You'll look like you've lost five pounds."

By the time we were finished, my body, but mostly my ego, had taken a HUGE beating.


She shook my hand and promised to reschedule for next week. "Be prepared to be sore tomorrow," she said, grinning. "Drink lots of water. Some people call me from home crying--they can't walk up the stairs."


To answer any questions about how I felt the next few days, yes I was sore, but no, I did not have any trouble climbing up stairs (thank you very much!).

Continuing with my story, we scheduled our next meeting for last Tuesday. Unfortunately, (and not on purpose I swear!) I forgot my workout gear that day. So we rescheduled for today, Thursday. Well, sometime between Tuesday morning and Tuesday night, I became deathly ill with a really bad cold. I spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday popping cough drops and then all night Tuesday and Wednesday night sleeping it off in a cough-syrup induced coma. I averaged about 12 hours of sleep those nights.

Today, I felt much better. So well in fact, that, not wanting to give Ms. Cathy the satisfaction of canceling our workout twice, I decided I'd go through with our next training session despite not being 100%.

Mistake.


Cathy greeted me and then asked how many times I'd been back to the gym since our last workout.


I admitted that I had not, in fact, been back at all. I'd been pretty sore and then gotten sick, but was feeling better.


"You haven't been back at all?"


"Nope." Apparently exercise accelerates hearing loss.


"Ok, well... let's walk this way," she led me to the mats where we warmed up for a few minutes. Then she handed me some weights for squats. It became clear halfway through my second set that I wasn't going to make it.


"What? What is it? Do you need to sit down?"


Yes. Yes I needed to sit down. Immediately. And I did. I could feel the color draining from my face. My ears felt like they were swimming away from my head, it was that woozy sort of feeling. Probably had something to do with my cold. As I was explaining this, Cathy became a bit annoyed,


"Why didn't you tell me you were sick? You could have canceled." I had told her before and she'd ignored it, but that didn't matter.


"I didn't want you to think I was faking," I answered truthfully, although now I'm not sure why I didn't lie and say something more socially acceptable. Must have been the dizziness affecting rational thought.

"What, are you an adult?" she asked in a voice that clearly suggested that I probably wasn't. And that's when I nearly lost it.

 The thing is, I don't feel like one most of the time. But I know I am. My rent check says that I am and my pay check and my grocery lists and all of those things point to: adult in the room.

Still, though, I have a student's complex about emailing in "sick." It will probably always ring fake to me to do that, and I expect for it to ring fake to other people as well.


I did not have a freak-out at Cathy. Instead, I pocketed her question for a moment of introspection and reflection later on and said the lie I should have gone with in the first place, "I really thought I was better. Sorry, guess I'm still sicker than I thought."


She told me it was OK. That being sick really throws off your equilibrium, and once she'd had to quit a workout because she was sick, but she was also "working with some pretty heavy weights at a really high intensity." Bitch.


Long story short, we're rescheduling for a half-session some time next week. I've decided it's probably for the best to just go and accept my fate passively in an effort to maintain the ability to noncommittally wave "hi" to her when I pass her on future, solo gym visits. I feel like things might get awkward in that department if I totally go off on her, and I have signed a year-contract, so...


Thoughts?


Snarky, passive-aggressive one-liner suggestions for the next session?


All would be more than appreciated in the comments below.


Also, I realized the irony of the above post juxtaposed with what I'm about to say, but I wrote a couple of health quizzes for Lifetime Television's website, mylifetime.com. 


You can take them here and here if you haven't already! And revel in the realization that if you don't pass them, hey, it's OK, because they were written by the fattest of fatties and, in light of that fact, you probably should just do the opposite of whatever the results are, anyway.

'Tis the wind, and nothing more

It's that time of year again up here in the Northeast: the time of year when temperatures drop so low the numbers make my southern eyes widen in disbelief and the sun goes on some sort of sabbatical, flat-out refusing to shine more than six hours a day. 

7 a.m. weekday mornings I can be found in bed, staring in horror at the temperature app on my phone and the time on the device's clock. When I glance at the darkness outside my window which looks as if it would probably rival that of the depths of hell, it is entirely incomprehensible to me that it can be time to start my day, or to do anything for that matter that does not involve flipping my pillow over and going back to bed until some sliver of sunlight has the decency to peep through my shutters, signaling the start of a new day in the appropriate fashion.


Last year I distinctly remember a moment where I was entirely convinced that I would never be warm again. Well, I overcame that. I did eventually have an opportunity to remember what warmth was, and even experienced some of that up here this summer; however, this year has seems to come with its own set of challenges. 

I woke up in the middle of the night last week to the shrill sound of steam escaping from a tea kettle at the foot of my bed. I was perplexed, and deeply irritated. It was a horrible, loud sound entirely unwelcome in my bedroom at any time of day, especially 2 a.m. on a Tuesday.

Upon further investigation, I realized my radiator, the innocent metal fixture that had sad idly by the entire duration of my stay here in Chinatown, was emitting steam in rapid, LOUD bursts. The effect was sort of like the sound eleven-year-old boys make with their mouths in mimicking gunshots; and it was just as obnoxious, if not more so because no amount of arm-twisting or "I'm going to tell MOM!" action would shut this up.


Ok, so this is probably a necessary evil. I mean, heat in my apartment is a necessary thing, considering the arctic conditions described earlier in this post. But... really radiator engineers?? This design seemed like a good idea to you?


I called around and it was confirmed that the steam noise was "normal" and that it may or may not last the duration of winter. Not okay. I've purchased some earplugs in an effort to combat the assault on my hearing, but that solution is proving less than satisfactory. Is that what everyone up here does? Anyone have any tips, tricks for dealing with this nonsense? 'Twould be greatly appreciated.


*****


Shifting focus for a bit:

I also wanted to make this post about a cool/nerdy exhibit I went to yesterday at The Grolier Club,  a library and art space for things book-related near Central Park. The publishing house I work for, John Wiley and Sons, has a showing there right now through November 20th of some rare and old books they've published over the years.


I'm a sucker for old books. Something about the craftsmanship that went into some of those things...and the number of hands that they must have passed through... It's also just really cool to see the way words survive in print, even (and sometimes, especially) after the person who wrote them is gone.


Wiley currently focuses on nonfiction professional trade, journals, and textbooks, but in its beginnings they published a lot of the big American fiction writers when American fiction was still struggling to become a respectable genre and British lit was seen as the highest standard.


The exhibit had first-edition books on display by James Fennimore Cooper, Washington Iriving, Charles Dickens, and, in my opinion, the coup de grace, Edgar Allan Poe.


I snapped a picture of his The Raven and other Poems on my phone for those little moments when I'm feeling blue. He can always outdo me in that department.


It's posted below for any fellow bibliophiles out there:

M

Don't do drugs, kids.

A few days ago I had the misfortune of coming down with a slight head cold. It began with all of the usual symptoms: slightly sore throat, slightly achy body, and an unshakable desire for sleep. All sleep, all the time. It was the only thing I could think about for days. 

Unfortunately, I somehow managed to use up all of my sick days earlier in the year... which left me in sort of a quandary. I had to be at the office. I also had to sleep. So, I devised a sort of makeshift, get-well-soon routine. Every day I could last week, I came home from work, drank two glasses of OJ, went to bed at 5:30 p.m., woke up at 7 a.m., drank two more glasses of OJ, then left for more work where copious amounts of herbal tea and cough drops were consumed. 

My routine seemed to be working alright, or as well as could be expected under the circumstances, until yesterday. 

Thursday night I made a fatal mistake. I swung by the pharmacy and purchased Tylenol multi-symptom cough syrup. This was the first introduction of meds into my regiment. I normally eschew all forms of unnatural treatment. I figure, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger and, if I'm going to continue to live in NYC and take the subway to work every day, my body has to be able to handle a few germs--I need to build up all the antibodies I can.

But Thursday I had reached the end of my rope. I needed to feel better, if only to remember, for the four hours the cough syrup took effect, how it felt to be well again!

I took the medicine before I went to bed and woke up on Friday feeling a little light-headed, but much better. I should have stopped while ahead. Instead, I took two more tablespoons before heading to the office.


Uh oh.


I'm not sure when it first hit me. I think it could have been on the subway to work. Or perhaps it was in the middle of my 9 a.m. meeting. The memory of the realization is fuzzy at best, but, I do remember realizing, in a half-panicked haze, that I felt exhausted all of a sudden and that the cough syrup I'd purchased was almost certainly not non-drowsy, and that I was an idiot and this was going to be the longest of days.


For most of yesterday I was little better than a zombie in front of a computer. Well, perhaps I was much better than a zombie at a computer because, if I had been a zombie, I probably would have destroyed the computer seconds before devouring the brains of all of my neighboring cubicle-mates, which would have created all sorts of problems for our IT and HR departments, and been a general distraction and inconvenience to workers in the surrounding area. But, you get the point.

I sat there, desperately trying to work, and, even more desperately, trying not to fall asleep. Loopy does not even begin to describe my state of mind. The place I was in was a special mix of delirium and purple haze. 

When the day finally ended and I somehow made it back on the subway and back to my apartment, I fell asleep around 6 p.m. and only woke up this morning at 8. 


Feeling much better, might I add! Although I don't think my cough syrup had as much to do with that as the 14 hours of sleep last night.


The moral of this story is in 3 parts: 1) Don't use up all of your sick days in the beginning of the year, 2) Always read warning labels on medicine bottles, and 3) If/when encountering a zombie coworker, throw a computer at him. It will busy him the amount of time it will take you to escape, brain undevoured and intact.