I decided that it was time to brush the dust off this particular blog and show it some love, and today's verbiage is perfect for the theme of this blog.
I know most of us are beyond tired of hearing about or even thinking about COVID, and yet almost a year later, it is still a major part of our culture and our lives. It has caused illness, death, fear, and yes, in some cases, even strange and ridiculous behavior. It has also done a number on people's mental health as we have become a society that no longer can be face to face or have the human interactions we have always relied on to soothe us, guide us and help us to feel....human.
We as a family have had COVID go through our house at least once that we are sure of, and we have been put on self-containment several times as we were closely exposed. The fact is, no matter whether you wear a mask or not, wash your hands until they are sandpaper, and/or avoid crowds like it's your job, you can still fall ill. I have always known this and because of knowing this, I have never panicked over it. I have always used common sense, but when it went through the house, it was what it was. Thankfully, we all had mild to moderate forms of it, and we all came out okay.
I will say though, that aside from making us all physically sick, it has also changed us and our world. It has changed how we view everything from crowds to even socializing. It has caused mass fear, and with mass fear, there has also been mass irrationality. Mental health has been affected, and there has been a rise in abuse cases as well as addictions of all forms. People have hidden in their homes with nothing but delivered food, their TV's and their social media, and they have become slaves to negativity and fear.
There are others though, like me, who weren't the most "social" people on the planet to begin with, so isolation and no contact hasn't been quite the challenge for us that has been for others. There have been changes though and yes, they have affected me. The biggest change has been helping my granddaughter with her schooling. It began last year after spring break. You remember....the never-ending spring break?! She was in first grade and teachers, students, parents, and grandparents were thrown into a tizzy over schools being shutdown. Somehow, we managed to get these kids through the end of school, never dreaming that in August, we would still be in pretty much the same boat.
I will say, that this distance learning has been one of the more stressful things in my life. I am constantly aware that....NO! I am not smarter than a second-grader. And it is not so much what they do, but, HOW they are expected to do it. More than once there have been tears and you better bet, they weren't always hers.
There have been a lot of positives though, that I think have come from the COVID chaos. One of those has been a sense of time slowing down a bit. For a while, many people were sidelined to work their jobs from home. People didn't feel so rushed as they didn't have to get dressed up and fight traffic to get to work. There became a more laid back feel to our lives. Sadly, there were others who lost their jobs or were laid off, so this gave them new found time with their families. Suddenly people were cooking, baking, sewing, playing games with their kids and life was feeling much like life had been in the old days (the 70's and 80's).
I myself slowed down a bit and decided to use my daily time in the kitchen (this is where we did school work), to do some cooking, baking, and canning, while Miss W did her schooling. After years of failure, I learned to make some pretty decent cookies, and loaves of homemade bread were always available to family and friends. I even made some pretty great jelly, that lasted about five minutes in our house.
I also noticed that how I felt about the world and what was going on in it, was also changing. I was realizing that the big things like politics and even COVID, I was very limited on what I could do or change. What I could do though, was change me and maybe here or there in some small way, change my little piece of the world.
As we drew closer to election time, after a summer of countrywide upheaval and unrest, I grew more and more discouraged with social media and the people on all sides of the issues, as they seemed to all have become angry, hateful and so self-assured that they were right, that there was no longer anything even resembling respectful discourse. I began to shut up and just watch people implode upon themselves. Then I just gradually walked away.
It was about this time, just after the election but before Thanksgiving, that I went to the doctor. It was my yearly visit and he looked at me with a bit of disdain. I was on two kinds of blood pressure medicine, and my BP was still 140/100. He was not pleased and truthfully, neither was I. He gave me a month to get it down, or we were going to have to have a "serious" talk. I walked out of the office numb, as I had a million reasons why it was likely so high, but I wasn't sure how or even if I was going to make any changes. With everything in the world, I was just so neutral in my emotions that I really felt kind of stuck.
Something must have hit a chord with me though because, on that day, I made a conscious effort to "social distance" myself from social media and to make a very unplanned and unexpected stop on my way home.
My older son Wes, for several years, had devoted at least 3-5 nights a week to working out. Sometimes he went to our local gym and sometimes he worked out in the garage, but it had become as much a part of his routine as breathing. I know the rest of us, who in his vision did nothing more than lie around the house and eat, frustrated him. He watched us get sick, struggle with our health, and live in a mess of stress. I watched him though too. His body had definitely changed over time and he was strong as an ox. He did on rare occasions catch some precarious bug flitting through the house, but while the rest of us might be down for a week, he was usually up and over it in a day or so. I knew what he was doing was working and I also knew that working out on a regular basis was keeping him sane.
Just weeks before, about 5 minutes down the road, there was a new gym in town. It was a Planet Fitness that was now taking residence in an old Dillons building. I had driven by it tons of times as they gutted and prepped the building. They were running sign-up promotions long before the building opened and even though there were already a couple of city-run gyms within a 10-mile vicinity, people seemed to be flocking to the new kid in town. Wes was one of those and he is pretty particular about his gyms and what he expects from them. He seemed please though.
So on that day, when the BP was high and I was blah, my car, as if having a mind of its own, drove right into the Planet Fitness parking lot and stopped. I had no idea what I was doing there, but I figured with all the hype I had seen, it wouldn't hurt to check it out. As I walked in the door, I was hit with Beyonce singing "Put a Ring on It," and purple! There was purple everywhere.....and it was pretty.
A young adult behind the counter greeted me. I told him that I was just looking and he said, "Let me show you around." There were free weights, weight machines for every part of your body, bikes, ellipticals, treadmills, and stair climbers. There was also a 30-minute room where you could get a full-body workout in 30 minutes and other rooms with machines and pulleys and things that I had no idea what they were. They also had tanning beds, massage chairs, and hydro massage chairs and beds. I hate to say it, but this place had me at the pretty purple.
As if my mouth had a mind of its own, I heard myself telling them to sign me up. I wanted "the black membership," which included all the bells and whistles.....especially that hydro massage chair. I had no idea what that was about, but I knew that someday in the near future, I was going to find out.
When I drove off, and the shock of my impromptu membership hit me, I wondered if this was going to be like ALL the other gym memberships that I had joined and never used. Somehow, I didn't think so, but I wasn't going to get my hopes or anyone else's hopes up just yet.
With Thanksgiving so close and everyone's schedules so crazy, I was only able to go to PF, a couple of times before turkey day. It was a test to see if my body would even allow me to exercise. I had visions of myself passing out in the first five minutes or worse, only going in to use the hydro massage chair and leaving. Because of this, I made a deal with myself. I could only try the chair after I had gone to the gym regularly for a month.
I started out slow, doing only light cardio, to find out what my body was capable of. It began with 30 minutes on the treadmill. Then I began to change up speed and incline and worked my way up to 45 minutes and then an hour. When I knew my legs would not crumble or give out under me, I then added the elliptical. I started with 15 minutes and worked my way to 30 minutes, using the elliptical for 30 and the treadmill for 30. Again, I would change speeds and inclines and would try to get the biggest bang for my buck in the 30 minute time allotment. Before I knew it, it was the New Year and I had managed to get to the gym 3-5 times each week. It was time for the hydro massage chair reward. Let me just say, it is all that and a bag of chips. I only have time to use it on the weekends, but you can bet, every Saturday and Sunday, my workout ends with the chair.
So here we are and it's almost the end of January. I am still making it work so that I get to the gym 3-5 times a week, and if I can't figure any other way, I will drag myself out of bed and get there by 4 a.m. to ensure that I am putting myself and my health first. It seems to be paying off, as I went to the doctor Friday and my BP is 110/68 and I have lost 11 pounds. The doctor said if I keep the gym up, that in a month or so, he will start weaning me off the BP meds. YAY!
Starting in February, I am going to start working with a personal trainer (all part of that black membership) and start working on my strength and muscle tone. This body has to stay strong in order to lift David's body around.
It has been an amazing experience that I am really surprised at myself over. I honestly think that the two things that won me over were, Wes's dedication and the purple....oh, and the chair. I have now been going long enough that my body seems to crave the workout. Today though, my body will just have to be happy with rest as my bed is about as far as I am going.
I think I have an ear infection. I can't hear, I feel water slushing in my ear and I get dizzy every time I stand up. I got up to get ready for church this morning and it took me about 2 seconds to realize that driving or even walking, weren't going to work for me today. I am trying very hard to get better about listening to my body and taking care of me. So this is me taking care of me. I can't just lay here and do nothing though, so I blog. I know the ears will be fine very soon and then I will be back to church, the gym, and my life.
Here's hoping that you all are doing well, finding your way in this new year, and taking care of you! Until next time....be safe, be happy, be kind, and I hope you find your own pretty purple thing.
