June 22, 2023 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

Although the training plan that my husband and I got from our online rowing coach provides for a rest day every Sunday, we haven’t been taking it regularly. Sometimes we practice with our quad mates on Sunday afternoon, and sometimes we go for an easy row when the weather is nice. If we travel to a Saturday regatta towing the boat trailer and get home late, then we have to take the boats back to the boathouse on Sunday, so it’s not the most restful day whether or not we do any rowing.

My husband always has plenty of energy, but it takes me longer to feel fully recovered after a long road trip. To make sure I get enough rest, for both the mind and body, I’ve decided not to do any rowing most Thursdays. That is an easy day on the training plan, in a low heart rate zone, allowing for cross-training if desired. Today I did 20 minutes of yoga and then took a quiet, peaceful walk.

Photo of concrete steps with hostas and other plants on both sides.

(Photo credit: Sergei Gussev)

Although I enjoy rowing, it does get a bit hectic sometimes when I hurry to get my work done so that we have time to go down to the river and finish whatever we have on the training plan before it’s late in the evening. Too many days of that can get overwhelming. Blocking out Thursdays as a day when there’s no rush to do anything should help to give my weekly schedule a more restful flow.

I had a demanding interval workout on the rowing machine Saturday afternoon. My results were much better than a similar exercise I did last year, and I was able to stay more consistent from one interval to another, so I was pleased with my efforts.

When I woke up on Sunday, I felt okay—no aches or pains anywhere. All my energy seemed to have drained away overnight, though. I sat down on the couch with my coffee and breakfast, and then I couldn’t bring myself to get up and do anything else for a very long time. I just browsed aimlessly on my phone, with occasional thoughts that maybe I ought to do some spring cleaning or write a blog post; but it was pretty clear that neither of those would be happening anytime soon.

After what seemed like a very long time, I did get up and do some short yoga exercises, and later in the day I went for a walk with my husband. So, I wasn’t a total couch potato, but I felt that I wasn’t anywhere near being back to myself, either. Nothing whatsoever came to mind for a blog entry, and I wasn’t sure that I could put words together usefully even if I had a topic.

Monday morning didn’t go well. I had a woe-is-me internal narrative on auto-replay in the back of my mind, along the lines of, “Oh, yuck, the weekend is over already, back to sitting at my desk all day, and then I have to go sit on the rowing machine again, I’m so tired of having all my time and energy sucked up by these workouts, why can’t we have good spring weather so I could at least row on the river.”

Although I felt somewhat better on Tuesday, the blahs came back on Wednesday morning. That was even worse because it didn’t seem to make any sense; I’d had difficult workouts before, and they hadn’t left me feeling totally tired of everything for days. I put a “down under” image from New Zealand on my art display because it seemed to fit the upside-down feelings I’d been having.

New Zealand beach photo.

At that point, it occurred to me that my New Year’s resolution of feeling unburdened by self-imposed obligations wasn’t going too well either. That Saturday workout, however tiring, was not actually much more than 12 minutes of hard exercise, plus warm-up and cool-down time; it certainly shouldn’t have left me feeling overwhelmed by life in general.

“But you know it wasn’t just the workout.”

The girlish voice came from Dot, who had appeared in my New Year’s resolution post representing my to-do list personified as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Toto trotted happily at her heels over the warm sands of the beach picture.

“It’s all the disruptions and uncertainty of the past few years, plus all the time and effort that went into better fitness. Needing time to rest and take care of oneself is perfectly normal. For example, when my Kansas house got blown away to Oz, of course I was terrified for some time, but then I fell asleep. And before starting out on the yellow brick road, I took time for a good breakfast. That’s healthy.”

“Okay, maybe,” I answered, still feeling doubtful, “but if it’s healthy, then shouldn’t I feel better? And why haven’t I had any energy to write the simplest thing in my blog this week?”

“Don’t rush it. Get a good night’s sleep,” Dot advised, “and write that blog post tomorrow.”

When I got a Fitbit four years ago, I started using the food-tracking feature in the app. I didn’t have any interest in counting calories precisely, but just thought it might be informative to see how much I was eating, on average. Even after the original device was replaced with a newer model, I kept using that feature.

Photo of Fitbit.

Because my preferred exercise is rowing, which does not have motions that Fitbit can recognize, the calories in vs. out calculation was never accurate. Fitbit sometimes would record my rowing as some other exercise, such as swimming or an elliptical machine, but more often it was left out of the calculation. As a result, the food tracker usually showed that I was eating more calories than the amount needed.

The incorrect calculation was somewhat annoying, but I kept using the food tracker anyway because I had gotten used to it. The small graph was not intrusive, and I wanted to track my water intake anyway, so entering calorie amounts (quickly estimated and rounded off) didn’t seem to take much more time.

Last week, I decided I’d had enough of it when an update changed the food-tracking display to show, in all caps, “OVER BUDGET” or “UNDER BUDGET” whenever the total calories consumed so far that day was not within 100 calories of the amount Fitbit’s calculation showed—which, of course, it almost never was. I asked myself, why was I still using that feature when, by now, I had a good idea of my usual calorie intake? The only answer was that it had become a mindless habit.

So, I removed food tracking from the features on the app, and I don’t miss it. In fact, my subconscious mind seems to have cheered on that decision, because twice this week I put down the Fitbit somewhere in the house and forgot to put it back on for several hours. I suspect that my subconscious is telling me I’ve let my life get too regimented, what with rowing schedules and everything. To some extent, schedules and tracking are useful, but it’s high time to start unwinding whatever unnecessary complexity I’ve added.

When I went on vacation with my husband the last week of February, we brought along a rowing machine—a Concept2 RowErg, which has the advantage of being easy to take apart and move. It fit reasonably well in the back of my husband’s SUV with one of the back seats folded down and our daughter in the other seat, with her little dog on her lap. Arranging the suitcases around the RowErg was manageable, and the boats and bicycles went on a trailer.

Our plan was to row our double scull on the Florida Intracoastal Waterway for a week, so as to get back in practice after being off the water during the cold northern winter, and then race in a regatta on Sunday, February 27th in Sarasota. The regatta was smaller than usual because a circus had taken up much of the space in the county park where it was held, but we still had good competition. Bringing the erg to Florida allowed us to keep up with the winter fitness schedule our online coach had given us.

We set up the erg on a screened back porch of the house where we stayed. The view of the bay was gorgeous. Before rowing on the water in the early afternoon, we did our workouts on the erg in the morning, while the temperature was still reasonably cool.


I still felt like I was wilting in the Florida humidity, though. After being indoors all winter, I wasn’t at all used to it. A demanding workout on Wednesday morning, which focused on more strength at a slower rate, left me totally dripping with sweat and grumbling to myself about how I could’ve been so crazy as to be a fitness freak while on vacation.

The afternoon rows on the water were easier. We just paddled around with the dolphins and enjoyed the sunshine and the lovely scenery. Then we rode our bicycles in the late afternoon, on a path that ran beside the Gulf Coast for part of the way. It felt like a great, relaxing vacation—but for self-inflicted erg misery.

When race day finally came, though, I gained more appreciation for the daily workout schedule. Sprinting for the 1K distance that is standard for Masters races didn’t seem nearly as long, or as hard, as in past years. I was able to keep the pace more even, and each stroke felt more powerful. When I looked to see how far I had gone on the course, thinking that I was about halfway, I was surprised to see that my boat was already two-thirds of the way to the finish line. In the single, I was far ahead of my competitor in the next lane; and in the double, we nosed in front of a team that always used to beat us handily at regattas.

Now I feel as if I am recalibrating—that is to say, tossing out old assumptions about my limits and getting used to having a healthier and more capable body. My husband just signed us up to row our double next month in an open 2K sprint with a younger field of competitors, which we haven’t done before. We may not win, or even place, but it will be a good experience no matter what happens; and I’m not going to make any limiting assumptions before we even try.

After we got back home, I had a weird dream in which I lived in a messy apartment. A circus started setting up on the grounds of the apartment complex, like what happened with the regatta at the park. I left the apartment and came back to find that the building where it had been, just a few hours earlier, was no longer there. I saw a construction worker walking by and asked him what had happened. He told me that the apartment building had been temporarily disassembled to make space for the circus and would be put back together afterward.

There’s plenty of fodder for dream interpretation in that one!

Because I generally subscribe to the belief that the body has its own innate wisdom, when I am dealing with its quirks, often I’ll begin by asking whether it has something that it wants to communicate.

I’ve been wondering recently, now that I have reached that age, what message the female body is trying to get across by way of midlife issues. Given the fact that most women experience them to some degree, treating them as medical disorders does not make sense. But, why would a natural transition cause us to feel uncomfortable?

Maybe it wasn’t always this way. The modern world is such a busy place, vastly different from the world our ancestors knew. So, I’m inclined to believe that our bodies want to tell us something like this:

INSTANT MESSAGE
To: Overscheduled Mind
From: Busier-than-usual Body
Subject: Hot flashes and such

Sorry to interrupt your carefully planned workday, Mind, with these annoying reminders that you live in a body. Well, actually, I’m not sorry. For way too long now, you’ve been treating me as if I exist only as a beast of burden to carry you from one task to another, without taking time to rest. And you know what? I just can’t do that anymore.

Yes, you’re busy, as always; but you need to understand that I am busier than usual too. It takes a lot of energy to rebalance those hormones and recalibrate my systems. I need much more relaxation and gentle nurturing so that I can recharge.

I’ve been trying to get your attention in other, less intrusive ways, but you haven’t listened. When I got so exhausted that waking up was a struggle, you plonked me down in the desk chair every morning anyway, sucking down enough coffee so that you could ignore how I felt. When I started to get achy from holding up the weight of the world, you just popped some ibuprofen and kept on going. You were so focused on meeting the culture’s demands that you never took the time to consider how poorly suited they are to the needs of midlife women—and everyone else, for that matter.

But I love you anyway, Mind, even though sometimes, you haven’t got the sense God gave a goose. That’s why I am still trying to give you this very simple message—slow down before you fall down. Instead of complaining about your change-of-life issues, understand them in the way they’re intended, and go take me for a peaceful walk in the woods.

Woods with autumn foliage.

(Photo credit: Jim Lukach)

Or listen to music for awhile. Read a good uplifting novel. Write a short story. Do crafts. Watch funny cat videos. Cook a new recipe to share with family and friends. Just look up at the sky and daydream for a few minutes, like when you were a child. You do remember being a child, don’t you?

I promise, taking a little break from the to-do list won’t make the world come crashing down on you.

I mentioned in a recent post that I might change my Gravatar/WordPress image to a cartoon avatar instead of a real photo, just to have more fun. I’ve changed it now, and not only as a Gravatar, but also on Gmail and on my work Outlook account. A few other people at work have done the same, so it’s not entirely silly—or if it is, at least I’m not the only one. Here it is:


Because the cartoon image looks younger than my real age, I’m curious as to whether seeing it every day will cause me to feel younger and more energetic as time goes by. There are research studies establishing that older people actually become healthier when put into an environment filled with reminders of their youth, showing measurable improvements in conditions associated with aging. It’s an interesting experiment, and even if it’s a bit on the goofy side, there can’t be any harm in it.

March 17, 2021 · 2 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags:

Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I went downtown to get the Covid-19 vaccine. County Public Health had set up a mass vaccination clinic in the convention center, and I was impressed by how smoothly it went. We were directed along rows of chairs when we arrived, and after we had been sitting for a few minutes, people came by with carts to administer the shots. Although the vaccine requires a long needle because it has to go into the muscle, I did not feel it much. The clinic had good attendance and left me feeling hopeful that our country, and the world, will soon see calmer waters.

Still waters of a lake reflecting a snowy mountaintop.

(Image credit: Millie Walker)

This morning my arm felt a little stiff at the injection site, but that did not last long. It’s fine now. And to be honest, I didn’t notice it anyway because I was sore through the midsection from doing planks on Monday. Usually I row for exercise, but the power went out just as I was sitting down on the rowing machine, so I decided to do a “core strength” online workout on my phone. That might not have been the best idea when I hadn’t done planks in a long time.

It did, however, leave me thinking about the hardworking public servants who contribute so much to our society’s core strength, such as the public health workers who organized the vaccination clinic. I am thankful for their efforts and dedication.

January 16, 2019 · 2 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

After taking down all the holiday decorations in my house, which included some evergreen cuttings that I put in a kitchen corner (as shown here), I felt like things were awfully plain and bare! So, when I was at the supermarket, I bought a new houseplant to brighten up that corner.

Kalanchoe plant with red blooms in a small pot with red tissue paper.

The plant is a kalanchoe, which is in the category of succulents and thus doesn’t need much water. It is commonly sold as a winter houseplant because it needs even less water than usual in the winter, and it actually flourishes in the dry indoor air.

I would say it’s a good reminder of how changes in our environment affect us. That little splash of red in the kitchen cheers me up when I get my breakfast on dark winter mornings; and because I’m not as well adapted to winter dryness as the plant is, seeing it also reminds me to turn on the aromatherapy diffuser on my desk, which improves dry sinuses by adding both humidity and helpful essential oils.

And, looking at it from a broader perspective, the plant has me subconsciously feeling more in control of my environment because I put it there, which in turn should improve my perception of how capable I am of making other positive changes. It’s all good!

My husband always does the mowing, while I am responsible for anything that grows in the yard and is not grass. Planting annual flowers in the spring is fun, but weeding—not so much. It didn’t really bother me at our previous house, which had well-established perennial flowerbeds and very few weeds. When we moved to this house, though, the neighborhood still had several vacant lots, and plenty of thistle seeds and other annoying weeds blew into the yard.

Digging those thistles out of the flowers often left me feeling achy the next day, unlike when I did the easier gardening at the other house. I started to wonder if I was getting sore because I was older. After all, I was turning 40, which had seemed quite far in the future when we were 30 and moved into the previous house. As time went by and I got busier with such things as the kids’ sporting events, I rushed through the weeding, with the mindset that it was a miserable chore and probably would always give me aches and pains.

This year, however, I decided to test the hypothesis that whatever aches I got were caused mainly by too much rushing around, rather than anything to do with my age. I did some weeding on Saturday while my husband mowed the lawn. Instead of rushing through it, I slowed down, taking a little time to walk around and stretch every few minutes. I also alternated weeding with a little pruning, so that I wasn’t in the same position the whole time.

A more leisurely pace didn’t actually take much longer; my husband was putting away the lawnmower at about the same time I finished the weeding. I felt fine afterward and spent a few minutes browsing through and uploading Creative Commons photos to the library for my art display. I particularly liked the photo shown below, entitled “Old Loggers Path.” I’m sure that must mean an old path used by loggers, but it gave me a mental image of a group of brawny guys with gray beards walking along carrying axes.

Loggers' path with sunlight filtering through tall trees.

(Photo credit: Nicholas A. Tonelli)

When I woke up on Sunday morning I wasn’t at all sore. I had to conclude that I would have avoided years of aches from weeding if I’d taken the time to consider possible causes and solutions. It seems simple enough in hindsight, but our culture doesn’t encourage a mindful approach to health. Instead, the prevailing assumption is that the body naturally falls apart as we get older and there’s not much to be done about it.

While it’s certainly true that the body, like a machine, sustains some amount of wear and tear as time passes, I suspect that much of what gets attributed to age is not really inevitable. Sometimes, all that’s needed is to make a few improvements in maintenance.

Chilly weather kept me indoors the past week, but that was all right because I stayed cozy while rereading the classic children’s book “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which is set in 1900 or thereabouts. A disagreeable and selfish girl named Mary, who always had servants to wait on her and never learned to do anything for herself, is sent to live with her uncle in Yorkshire after her parents’ sudden deaths. The local children befriend her, although at first she does not even know how to play with other children. She finds a secret garden that has been neglected for ten years and decides to make it beautiful again by weeding, planting seeds, and pruning overgrown roses.

Red and white roses blooming.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)

Mary discovers that her uncle has a son, Colin, whose mother died when he was very young and who is even more selfish and spoiled than Mary herself. Colin was sickly as a small boy and overheard adults saying that he would not live to grow up, which caused him to worry obsessively about his health. He became afraid to go outside because he worried about catching some disease or being stared at by pitying passers-by. Staying in his bedroom all the time and being a very picky eater made him so weak that everyone thought he was unable to walk. He did not go to school, and a servant pushed him in a wheelchair on the rare occasions that he left the house.

After Mary interrupts one of Colin’s frequent self-pitying tantrums by shouting at him that there is really nothing wrong with his health—which none of the servants had ever dared to say—she tells him about the secret garden and how happy she feels being out there in the sunshine. She persuades him to let one of the local boys push his chair to the garden, where he feels so much better that he embarks on what he calls a “Scientific Experiment” to become stronger with the help of the same “Magic” that makes the plants grow. After months of exercise in the garden and good nourishing meals, Colin feels perfectly healthy. His father is very surprised, upon returning from a long trip abroad, to find a much better-tempered Colin and Mary running and playing happily in the garden that Colin’s mother once loved.

The story is chiefly about the power of thoughts to change the course of people’s lives, for better or worse. It left me pondering whether the occasional aches and pains that I’ve noticed in recent years might have to do with feelings of being too busy. Although I am not really all that busy compared to many people, or even to myself in the past, I have spent a lot of time in the backyard the past few years, pruning shrubs and small willows that got damaged by recent cold winters and dry summers. Maybe that contributed to aches in my arms (from “pushing” to get things done) and my feet (from being “run ragged” by the to-do list).

So, like Colin, I’ve decided to make this year’s gardening season into a “Scientific Experiment” to test the hypothesis that the random aches and pains will naturally go away in a few months if I don’t feel overly busy. Instead of thinking in terms of always having “yard work” to do, I plan to look at it as playing in the garden and to be cheerful about going out to play. I am even going to look at myself in the mirror before going outdoors and imitate the country Yorkshire accent of some characters in the story, telling my reflection, “Eh, lass, get you gone an’ play you!”

Of course, I don’t really have any idea what a country Yorkshire accent sounds like, even in modern times, much less what it would have been like a century ago; so, needless to say, I’ll sound quite ridiculous. That is all right, though, because play is not supposed to be serious, so it will just add to the fun!