Before I return to the project this weekend, this may be a good time to explain the workout routine and its evolution.
After going to yoga once a week for three months, then purchasing the record player, I decided that I would try doing the legs against the wall exercise a few times a week, for which side one of Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow worked nicely. I found myself moving in the position of lying on my back with my legs straight up the wall – good for menopause symptoms, so I’ve been told. I started doing a little aerobics on my back and even sit-ups. Eventually, I wanted to exercise for longer and Paul McCartney’s Ram fit the bill. Side one provided me with the inspiration to run, jump and dance around the apartment, though I was feeling like one of the dancing hippos from Disney’s Fantasia, just not as spry. I added weights to the floor routine that side two covered, till a friend said she was concerned with my lifting the weights over my head. I gasped, though I didn’t know why, and even though I knew we both had had a bit too much wine at the time, and still didn’t understand the danger, I added the three-pound weights to the aerobic portion instead.
So currently, to whichever album I exercise, I start slow, moving around the room, which I’m happy to say is now more like gliding, with the weights. To whatever song two is, I do an exercise that is supposed to address the bat wings. I don’t like it, but Max, my cat, really likes when I’m in this bent position and rubs on the weight that is not in use at the time. Then I continue the aerobics and weights through the rest of side one, with Max sometimes swatting me as I go by. While Max enjoys his participation in side one, he really likes side two when I am on the floor.
Now, before I put my legs against the wall, I do three sit-ups, followed by six leg lifts, then 24 (started at 12) knee-to-elbow sit-ups, the leg lifts again, the knee-to-elbow sit-ups one more time, another set of leg lifts, and the six regular sit-ups until I move back into the legs against the wall position. I just do whatever I feel like in the position, sit-ups, bicycle, stretches. When the album ends, I do yoga eye movements and 30 reps of a couple of exercises aimed at my turkey neck and jowls. Then I chant. It’s minor chanting, starting with three-part breaths and exhaling in a note that’s most comfortable, then inhaling and exhaling a note higher, inhaling and exhaling a note lower, ending with inhaling and exhaling in a note that’s even higher. Not complicated, but it feels good. Before I get up, which is becoming easier as I go, I do spinal twists, and end the routine with standing arm stretches and three repetitions of back bends and toe touches.
That’s where I am now. It started simple, and is still simple as I add to the routine only when it is comfortable to do so.
By the way, this is Max.
With the assistance of a very nice young techie, I have set up my blog and have been posting the first month of the project.
During the tail end of the break, which had grown in its intended length, I had some bad news regarding an old friend, and then some other annoying disappointment. So for a few days I didn’t exercise, not even to Ram. Plus I was still eating as if I had no weight to lose. Mostly, I look forward to my exercise routine and knew that I would feel better if I could just get my butt out of the chair and tear myself away from spider solitaire. I could feel my belly expanding. Finally, after a much needed shower I got myself moving, and writing. And it DID make me feel better, a little, then the next night, a little better than that.
The ex calls me at work today, freaking out, as he says, because he’s filling out his Social Security forms. Yes, he’s turning 62 at the end of the month, and of course now I’m freaking out. Seems like not too long ago we were the best bodies on the beach, and we weren’t even trying (we did wander off to a more remote and less densely populated section of the beach, so we didn’t have that much competition, not that we were competing, mind you). And now, we’re just a couple of fat old farts, and one of us is ready for Social Security.
But that is not the dilemma.
I am ready to hop from the B’s to the C’s. I go to pull the next album and it is George Carlin. How can I exercise to a comedy album? I wrestle with whether to skip Carlin or not. And just when I came to the conclusion that I would need to stick to the A-Z rules of the project and exercise to comedy, I remembered that I have a number of albums not included in the alphabetical line up. Peter Pan, Shirley Temple, old stuff like that including the cast albums of Broadway shows. So, if I am truly sticking to the project, I will next be working out to Camelot, and then George Carlin.
And so, since I am still sick when I reached this conundrum, and figured my journaling of the project would definitely make a nice little blog, I decided to put the project on hold until I got all my notebook journaling typed up for the blog, and learn how to go about blogging in the first place. I’m a notebook kind of gal. Got tons of them. And as I have been inching myself into the 21st century, the whole blogging thing kind of scares me. Mostly the technology. It’s a hump – a big hump, but once I get over it I envision smooth sailing.
Do not despair or lose faith. As I break to regroup, I am still working out. Ram is like hanging out with an old friend. A good old friend. I’ve cut the workouts down to 3-4 times a week instead of 5-6 and am eating what I want (what a hardship), so I don’t get too ahead of myself and of the project. There has already been some positive progress like the squatting thing and a reemergence of agility, plus a slight belly tightening, so the project is working.
I thought this would be boring, and I would have been right if I had not crawled into myself and in deep thought just kept moving. I call it “zoning,” an ability I have that has come in very handy when put into effect during car accidents and biopsies and stuff of that magnitude. I am certainly not comparing Jackson Browne to a biopsy, but this is not an album that provokes a lot of movement. But there is the song – “Here Come Those Tears Again” that kind of makes the album worthwhile, and is the reason it is in my collection. And, I am certainly not comparing Jackson Browned to Barry Manilow, but – spoiler alert – there are no Barry Manilow albums in my collection, however there may have been if I had come across one with the totally fabulous “Weekend in New England” on it.
I had a pretty good workout, considering the material and being sick.
I have re-discovered Lean Pockets.
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A compilation of English Beat songs from the ‘60s, with Bowie and Twig the Wonderkid (aka Twiggy) on the cover, Pin Ups was better than the previous Bowie records, particularly for exercising as the songs are pretty peppy, but Bowie will have to remain a pleasant memory. Who’s got a voice like that, though? So distinctive, so seductive, so odd. Like Christopher Walken, in that distinctive way – and odd, and yes, seductive. I happen to think Christopher Walken is sexy, okay!
I’m still getting over this flu-like thing I have that makes the chanting part of the workout particularly difficult though I do it anyway, softly and slowly, even if it ends in coughing.
BTW – My goal in life, even as a skinny kid, never involved looking like Twiggy.
I’m tougher than that. So tough they gotta aim the big guns at me – and fire. Not cannons or Sherman tanks, but pretty big guns nonetheless.
I’m pissed cause I haven’t had the flu in years, not even a bad cold. I had one flu shot five years ago without incident, but now I’m pretty sick. It may just be a bad cold as I don’t seem to have a fever, but I sure am snotty.
Not as eh as the first record. If I remember correctly, this album was a Christmas present to me after I had already moved on. Ah, the fickleness of the high school girl. It seems I caught on to Bowie during the Ziggy Stardust era, but didn’t act quickly enough. And while the love affair was intense, it didn’t last long.
My thoughts on this day are for another notebook. My thoughts on the first record of the double album Bowie Live as best represented by one word – eh. Aladdin Sane didn’t turn out to be as wonderful as it started out to be either. I have higher hopes for Pin Ups and won’t be ditching my man just yet.
Here’s an interesting and totally relevant observation I made today. I was in Duane Reade looking to replenish my over the counter menopause medication, of which I take two kinds. I think I’ve found a decent combination. Of course, they keep them on the bottom shelf no more than an inch off the floor. So I squat down and took a couple of boxes off the shelf to read labels, which I am doing when it occurs to me that I was having no problem staying in that position. Instead of jumping up when I had to, which would have been immediately just a week ago, I convinced myself that I better not push it and rose without incident.
Losing no weight – which annoys me, yet I am less perturbed because I am enjoying myself. Plus, I can squat again!
Yeah! This could be my Ram 2. Whoooooo will love Aladdin Sane… I belted out with Bowie over and over.
Now the significance of Bowie is that when I was in high school, most of my friends were into The Dead or Pink Floyd. I was into glitter rock. I was pretty much alone in my circle. But Bowie was my man!
The Walrus Was Paul 