RouletteWeekend

I decided that it was time to get back on my exercise kick. I go through phases where I walk (a lot) and I feel good and healthy and happy. And then I go through phases where I binge eat empty calories and watch my jeans get tight. It’s really a see saw for me. I wish I could balance somewhere in the middle but that’s obviously not my style at all. I toggle between 170 and 201lbs. Right now I’m on the 200 side of things.

When I do get on these exercise kicks, I usually go to an app to help motivate me. My go to in the past has been the C25K app. That’s the couch to 5k, app. It’s a really cool little app that you train with a few times a week and within six weeks or something, you get to the point where you can run a 5k. I usually get halfway through and stop. Not for any good reason, either, because I feel good and accomplished after each workout. This time, I had downloaded a running app called Running for Weightloss on my iPhone. I downloaded it probably 3 months ago with the intention to start running. I always talk myself out of it because I tell myself that I don’t have a runner’s body or I am too fat or my knees are too weak. I can literally come up with a thousand reasons not to run or attempt to run. So I sucked it up today and put my dog, Athena, on her leash which she loves dearly and I opened the app and started the workout. It was a nice little five minute warm up. When I saw that it was five minutes, I paused the warm-up so I could get to the park I like to run at when I’m attempting to run. I don’t like to run on the sidewalk, or near the street, or where anyone can see me flailing or gasping for air and since I know that’s what’s coming whenever I try running. I like to do it in the privacy of Chilhowee Park, near my house. I get to the park and start the warm-up again. I put on my Ky-Mani Marley mix, because I love him and in my sick and twisted mind, if I can’t have him and if he won’t call me to tell me he loves me, then by God, he’s gonna fucking sing to me while I get skinny enough to wear a bikini in front of him on the next cruise! So I’m walking, jamming out to the reggae/rap mix that he’s so good at and listening to the voice on the app tell me that it’s time to run “for one minute” she says ever so politely. One minute. No problem. I can totes do that. I do the first minute. I’m only slightly gasping for air. Whoa, I’m in way better shape than I thought, I think to myself. Then she sweetly tells me that I can walk for two minutes. Cool. I walk for two minutes. She whispers in my ear through KyMani’s singing, “time to run, for one minute.” I run. No big deal. Slight gasp. I’m cool though. We continue to do this for about 12 minutes. Then, this bitch says, “time to run for a minute and thirty seconds.” By this time, I think I’m dying. I know that I am not going to make it those extra thirty seconds. But this Siri imposter is not going to break me. So I run. In my mind, I know when that minute mark is coming (or at least I think I do) and now I’m gasping. I’m talking to the app. “Bitch, you know it’s been more than a minute and a half.” “You’re trying to kill me.” “Well, you know what? Fuck you. Big girl, gonna run.” And so I kept on. By the time she told me I could walk, I’m literally yelling into the universe. I can feel every single fat cell in my body, like frostbite. You know when you have to walk out in the cold, but you wore jeans and a sweatshirt instead of clothes that were actually made for the cold and then you walk back into somewhere warm after you’ve been freezing for forty five minutes and the tops of your legs start itching from where they are warming back up? Well, if not, it’s exactly like that. So my thighs were doing this weird itching thing. My stomach was doing the weird itching thing. I had on a sports bra, so my girls were safe. My hips were doing the weird itching thing. All the oversized parts of me were slowly warming up and not in a good way. And I was sweating like a whore in church. Athena, my German Shepherd keeps trying to pull me to the little pond so she can have duck for breakfast. I have to threaten her life and keep pulling her to me every few seconds. But I kept going. Because I saw the little animation for this app and I want my body to shrink like the girl on the ad did. Not that I’m uncomfortable with my body, really. I just want to be toned, in shape, and healthy. And I’m trying to cut my seasonal affective disorder off at the pass. Fall will be here before I know it and I don’t want to spiral into that dark winter depression that sometimes gets me. So I get a halfway warning. Each time, walk for two minutes, run for a minute. Until finally she says, “it’s time to cool down.” I was like, “holy fuck, I’m alive. And I did it!” So I high five myself and come home and throw some change in my tip jar because sometimes you have to tell yourself, “you’re doing great,” when nobody else is around to do it. Then we walk back to the house. Now, when I take one dog for a walk, I usually have to take all three before it’s all said and done. My other baby, Zeus, loves taking walks. So we get back home, Zeus had tried to get our attention when we left by jumping on the door yelling, “take me with you.” So when we got home, Zeus had locked us out of the house by jumping on the door and locking the deadbolt. Of course, he doesn’t know how to unlock it. I can see my keys right next to the door in my head. I know I’m fucked. The only way to get in, which has happened before is to send my kid over the fence and through the dog door. He’s at school and my ass isn’t climbing over a fence. As a last ditch effort, I check the living room window to see if it will slide open. To my surprise, it’s not locked. I put Athena’s leash on the door knob so she doesn’t run off.  Grab the recycling tote that I brought out with me to empty on my way out the door and flip it upside down. Step on it. Pray it hold me. Step into the window. Almost break my vagina, but didn’t. Get in the house. Give Zues “the death look.” Open the door. Bring Athena in. Tell Zeus he’s not getting his fucking walk because I just did the last of my working out trying to get in the house. And then I sat down on the couch and took my shoes off. Workout done. Still alive. And I learned a valuable lesson, If you’re dog is a vindictive prick, put the house key in the mailbox before heading out.