Tag: Gym

  • I Went to the Gym Today

    I sure did. I went to the gym. I had this thought in my head that I wanted to add a fourth day of gymming to my life. (I have decided that “gymming” is a word, and that it is spelled with two m’s.) I don’t know what came over me last night, but as I was going to bed, I said to myself, I can go to the gym on Tuesday, and now work out four days a week.

    See, at least since 2022, I have been going to the gym three days a week, Wednesday thru Friday. The thought here was that Monday and Tuesday were dedicated to doing all of the stay at home dad stuff. Not that there weren’t other stay at home dad stuff things to do during the rest of the week, but Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were my days to work on my stuff – writing, art, time with the kid, and those were my gym days, too. On the whole, it’s been working fine.

    But of late, I have started to think that I could and should be doing more. I could be writing more, working on more projects, doing more around the house, more work on our family’s finances. And that just led me to think that I could do another day at the gym. I would find an extra hour, somewhere, and wedge in some treadmill time.

    There is a very important fact here, you need to remember – I hate working out. I equate the gym to eating your vegetables as a kid – you don’t like it, but you know you need to do it. That’s the gym for me. My doctor told me that as I get older I need to do at least 30 minutes of cardio workouts, three times a week. So, I have been doing that. Eating my vegetables and staying in the good graces of the doctor and the wife. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be healthy, and have as much time with my wife, kid, friends and family as possible. If I could do that without the gym, I would, you know.

    So, for this thought of adding a gym day, to do extra gymming, seemed surprising to me. And I was surprised that I was open to this idea. That I woke up this morning thinking that it was still a good idea. That I put on the running gear and headed out to the gym, got on the treadmill, and was surprised at how fast the time flew.

    I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but I might be making a positive change here.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Premier League Begins, Commuting to School, and Change is Coming

    (You can have yours, just gimme mine…)

    Later today, the Premier League starts up for the season. Clearly, and no one can dissuade me from this, Tottenham Hotspur will win the whole League. Yup, they will sit atop the table and lord it over Man City, and the forever a league-bridesmaid; Arsenal. Sure, Spurs qualified for the Europa League, just falling short of the Champions League goal, but hey! We’ll take whatever hardware that is offered. Am I over confidant? You Bet’cha! (I am a Cowboys fan, after all.)  I have paid for all the services, against my better judgement, so I will be able to watch every match. Not sure if I can get myself to go to the local Spurs bar and start drinking at 7am on game day, but we’ll see – that still feels like a goal to aim for in the next year or two. Either way, I’m ready for English football. (An Aside: I will still keep my eye on Brentford, as I still like the scrappiness of that team. They’re fun to root for.) I do feel that a new Tottenham scarf could be in my future, maybe even a sweater. Putting it out there, see if it manifests itself. You know. #COYS

    I had a moment this morning, when I was taking the kid to school, I started to ponder how different the way my kid goes to school is compared to how I went to school when I was her age. The kid takes the subway to school, and is accompanied by me. Sometimes a friend from school will be on the train with us, but most mornings, it’s just us. Sometimes we chat, sometimes she reads. It is the subway, so every now and then, an incident has happened; crazy guy, someone begging for change, homeless guy sleeping on a bench, or people yelling at each other. On the whole, most mornings the people on the train are tired, not in the mood to interact with anyone, and just want to be left alone. At her age, my family lived in a generic suburb, and I walked down the block in the neighborhood and caught the school bus with about five or so other kids. No one escorted me; I would say bye to my mom, and walk out the door. The bus stop could be dicey on certain mornings. This was grade school, kindergarten to 6th grade, so you could have 5 to 12-year-olds out there. Some mornings it was “Lord of the Flies” with kids being shitty to each other, but most days it was just a conversation about cartoons. Getting on the bus had its own perils; social order, and ostracization could be on full display. Would you get a seat? Who would you sit with? Would it be an older kid who would bully you the whole way to school? The anxiety, drama and fear! When I think about it, the subway isn’t so bad.

    And as school has started and Autumn is on its way, I have started to think that this is the time to begin the process of change. Or at least evaluation to determine if change is needed. I do know that if I am thinking about change, I should change. I need a better work schedule, and a more rigorous regime at the gym, as pants are getting tight. (I might have mentioned that.) I should get better sleep, and possibly change up my wardrobe – more sportscoats? Maybe this is a moustache year? Not that something needs to give, but it would be nice to change things up. I don’t think I ever want to be set in my ways. Roots are good, but being unable to bend with the wind sounds detrimental.

  • Waking Up Early

    This school year, because the kid switched to a different school, we had to start our days earlier. Her old school started at 8:20, and we were a five-minute walk from it, while her new school started at 7:20, and it was a 30-minute subway ride with a walk to top it off. It would be easy to say that our whole life shifted back an hour and fifteen minutes. Not an enormous amount of time, but being that we are a family that is made up of a bunch of anti-morning people, it was a heavy lift.

    Ten months later, the wife and the kid still hate getting up early. I do, too… But I get up a half hour before them, which affords me the opportunity to exorcise my anti-morning-ness out of my system, so I am chipper enough to get the day started, and also annoy then crap out of them.

    But, as the school year draws to a close, and Summer vacation starts, I foresee that our child will not want to get up before 8am. And if my wife had her way, and she does work from home, a 7am wakeup call would be her preference.

    As for me… I’m toying with the idea of keeping the 5:30 alarm. Now, hear me out…

    I don’t love getting up at 5:30am, but I have to admit that I can do it, and it doesn’t ruin the rest of my day. I could, and I stress “could,” get up early and head to the gym? My best friend does that; out early, gets the day started with a win, feels good, and has a positive attitude toward the day… or at least that’s what he tells me. That would be nice to have. I could also get up early and work. I would have about an hour and a half to myself to get my writing done.

    I could list a couple of reasons why I don’t want to do this, and maybe even make a couple of jokes. Yet, I think, and I know, that my life is transitioning to a different phase. I’m a middle-aged dad and husband. I’m not in my twenties or thirties, and I am getting older. That doesn’t mean that I should slow down, or start to act like my parents did at this age. But I have to acknowledge that things change, and approaches to living change, and that’s okay.

    It’s just a different way to live.

  • ODDS and ENDS: I Want to Go to the Gym, The Greatest Upset in Cricket World Cup History, and Mowing the Lawn

    (If there is a remedy, I will run from it)

    Today, honestly, was the first day in my life wherein when I woke up, and I had a desire to go to the gym. Not sure what is happening to me. I hate going to the gym, or at least I did. Yet, running on the treadmill for 30 minutes sounds enjoyable. Crap! I think I might be changing for the better.

    Did you know that the Men’s Cricket World Cup is underway? Did you know that the US is the host country? did you know that the USA has a team? Would you believe that the USA is not ranked very high in the world, and is not considered a serious competitive team? Would you believe that low ranked Team USA beat the 6th ranked powerhouse team from Pakistan yesterday? Yeah, neither did I! This is actually a very big deal in the Cricketing world, and I feel that out of National Pride we should be celebrating this! As such, here is your 2024 USA Men’s National Cricket Team:

    I never really minded the chore of mowing the yard. My Dad would make me do it, and I think at first it was like a punishment. But I had a walkman and lots of tapes, so it became a time for me to zone out and fall into my music. If I remember correctly, I could mow the front and back yard in thirty minutes, but it was Texas, so in the summer I either had to mow in the morning, or at the very edge of dusk. I don’t know if I will ever own a house, but if I do, I am looking forward to taking care of a yard.

  • Working Out Together

    Who does this? I’m not judging; just wondering if I know any friends, couples actually, who go and workout together? I see this couple activity depicted in tv and movies, and there sure does seem to be a great number of people on social media presenting videos of them and their significant other lifting weights, running, or drinking protein shakes together. They seem to be enjoying each other’s company. Now and then, at the gym or in the park, I will see a couple running together, so I know it happens.

    The reason I ask is that the wife and I might start working out together. OR to be more accurate, both of us will be in the gym at the same time. See, I run and the wife does yoga. Recently, after a back issue, her doctor suggested that she might want to start lifting some weights. She does have a membership to the gym I go to, a perk of her job, so she thought that we should go together on the same day… you know, to help motivate each other.

    I’m not opposed to this idea. I just never saw us as a workout couple on our life BINGO card. When this happens at the gym, she’ll go to her weight machine, and I’ll head to the treadmill. After thirty minutes, we’ll leave together. Maybe we’ll talk about “gains” but I doubt it.

    And I would say that this is the unexpected path that middle-aged life is taking us on. I still hate working out, but I at least know that working out 30 minutes a day, five days a week, can have a huge positive impact on your health. So, I’m not stupid. It’s just not my favorite thing to do. Call it an “eating your vegetable” problem – I know it’s good for me.

    I never really thought about what being middle aged would be like, because I never really thought that I’d be middle aged. Not that I would die young or anything like that; I just never thought about being bald, with a little tummy pudge, worrying about retirement and the cost of college for the kid. Thinking about my life with the wife, I just assumed we’d get older, but look the same, and drink and smoke, eat food we want to eat, never change, and and stay up late every night.

    Didn’t turn out that way. I’m not unhappy about the way things worked out; most of it is pretty great. But now I have things in my life that I want to spend as much time with as possible, and though it’s like fighting the tide, if I can snatch some extra time, I will.

    So, we’re going to the gym together.