The Dog Ate my DVD Player

I very much wanted to complete Sara's inspired "Do an Exercise DVD Every Diddly Darn Day of August" challenge. Really, I did. But you see, one day in August I was baking my cousin's wedding cake when something terrible happened. The second tier of this wedding cake was supposed to be strawberry flavored. "No problem," I thought. I've made this recipe dozens of times. So I whipped up the cake batter, filled the pans and popped them into my trusty, preheated oven. I set the timer, then immediately began washing the dishes. Ha! Just kidding--I left the dishes to "soak," and turned to more important tasks like Googling my name (turns out I'm a fairly famous Harlequin novelist). Twenty minutes into the baking/Googling, I smelled a smell--not the fruitily fragrant smell of baking strawberry cake, but the acrid smell of a big fat burning mistake. With a heavy heart (it eats a lot of bacon), I opened the oven door, sending smoke spewing into the kitchen by way of my face (*cough choke sputter*). I found cake batter flowing out of the pans and onto the oven floor, where it was quickly turning into little mounds of carbon cake and creating the aforementioned billowing smoke. I turned off the oven, and began scraping the mess out of the oven, hoping that I could continue to bake the batter left in the pans if I was able to get the oven to stop smoking. (I'll save you the suspense--it didn't work.) Meanwhile, the smoke detector began to beep, sending the parakeets into noisy conniptions and causing my 3-year-old to start crying at a pitch several octaves higher than the detector. (I have yet to have my life saved by a smoke detector, but they've caused me to age 5 years on more than one occasion.) My husband walked in the door at this moment and asked, "What is going on? And why haven't you opened a window?" (see illustration). I responded the way any reasonable woman would, by throwing a handful of burning cake at him. (Hey! He happens to like burnt cake.) I missed him by a mile (I'm not good at sports [even those that involve cake] on the best of days, let alone in stressful smoky situations) and the cake landed on the dog's head. He (the dog) hardly noticed, as he was busy chewing the dickins out of my DVD player. So now you know why I wasn't able to complete the exercise DVD challenge or write in this blog for months. Thanks for understanding. 

We Are Nothing If Not Challenged

So apparently November is NaBloPoMo, or, for those of you who may prefer real words, National Blog Posting Month. This is clearly a spin-off (hee, I wrote that "spin-oof") of NaNoWriMo--National Novel Writing Month. Know what sounds a lot more pleasant than writing an entire novel in a month? Sitting on the couch eating donuts, that's what. And also sleeping. But since Holly's been pestering me about us being more dilligent about our little neglecterino (why, I ask you, doesn't spellcheck have a problem with that word?) of a blog (and by "been pestering me," I mean "mentioned it once or possibly twice")(and since, as far as I know, there's no NaDoEatMo, though there should be), I thought this might be more realistic. Of course I also once thought it would be realistic to organize my whole house in a month, so perhaps my grasp on reality ain't so great. But we'll overlook that for now, and sally forth on the assumption that maybepossiblyperchance we could post every day this month.

Or, as Holly's favorite humor writer and mine, Eric D. Snider once said, perharps perharps perharps.

I don't seem to be capable of being clever right now

I've been sitting here for 15 minutes trying to think of a good way to tell you that I did a DVD again today, but I got nothin'.

So.

I did a DVD again today.

Bee tee dub, Mari Winsor also says "pellow" instead of "pillow." She sure can bring the pain though.

When Legs Attack

Pilates again today, but this time the lower body workout. So between that and yesterday's "running" (really, that's such an exaggeration; even calling it jogging would be kind), I'm likely not going to be able to walk very soon.

Note to self: stretch! My calves are not my friends today.

Pie-layts

That's what I my husband calls pilates, and that's the DVD I did today. Upper body workout, to be precise. It's one I've done before, but this time I didn't have any weights to use, so it wasn't as good of a workout as it could/should have been. If I do it again before our stuff gets here, I'll round up some water bottles or something to use.

And a helpful hint: Don't do pilates in any form with a belly full of oatmeal. Um. Uncomfortable. Just sayin'.

For cardio I relied on a little something Holly taught me. A few years ago, Holly--who has a really long, narrow living room--trained for a 5K by running in her living room. She called it Living Room Running, and since my dh's family has a penchant for turning everything into an acronym, I shortened it to LRR. Well, it dawned on me that my apartment--which is also really long--has a pretty straight shot from the living room (in the front of the apartment) to my bedroom (in the back). So today I spent 45 minutes walking and running back and forth the length of my apartment. I'm not sure what this would be called--Whole Apartment Walking and Running? WAWaR doesn't quite roll off the tongue, does it? For now I'll just stick to calling it useful.

Also, it occurred to me that I needed to clarify something from yesterday's post. It is very true that I neither own a lot of DVDs nor do I enjoy them very much, so it's probably a little crazy to challenge myself to do them for 6 weeks. While I have never claimed to be fully on the sane side of the line, I also know that a lot of my distaste for them comes from my unfamiliarity with the choreography and my resulting frustration when I mess up the steps. So hopefully this next 6 weeks will resolve a lot of that. DVDs are the best way for me to get a varied workout right now, so I'm trying to make the most of it. I'm actually pretty excited to make the most of this. Plus, it gave me the excuse to buy a few more DVDs, just to help infuse a little new life into my current supply. And also because I like buying new things.

P.S. Re: today's image, I didn't think it was necessarily the nicest thing to do to add an image of pie to a diet/health/fitness blog (says the co-blogger on a site named "Diet Cake"), so I went with a pie chart. Nothing tempting about that, right?

Rock *Your* Body

Day One success!

The DVD I tried today is called Rock Your Body by Jamie King. And guess what?! I didn't hate it! In fact, I sorta liked it--despite the fact that I'm white, 33, white, and a mom! (Dancing? Not my strong suit.)

The entire workout is a little over an hour, but I only made it about 45 minutes. Jamie breaks the routine down (yo) a section at a time and the entire routine into two halves. Then he puts both halves together for a "Dress Rehearsal" and then the "Performance." I made it through both halves, but wasn't even close to having it down enough to string it all together.

The amazing points are as follows:
1) I didn't feel like checking my watch every few minutes to see how much longer until it was over. I'm bored easily. Attention-span-of-a-gnat easily. And this is exacerbated when I'm uncomfortable (exercising = uncomfortable). But pitiful dancing abilities aside, this held both my attention and interest the whole time, despite the discomfort of working hard (I was dripping sweat by the end).
b) I am also annoyed easily. You know that saying, "Stuck in my craw?" Holly and I often joke about me and my seemingly overstuffed craw. Lots o' stuff in there, I tell ya. And near the top of the things that fill my craw? Aerobics instructors! But Jamie is not obnoxious! Go figure! I mean, sure there's a "I'm a young, cool, hip-hop dude" vibe going on, but he wears it well. And his style of instruction is pretty gentle and encouraging. I'm a fan of making fun of the people on screen that are only trying to lead me to good health, but this guy didn't make me feel even a little but derisive! (How's that for a compliment?!)
III) I'm looking forward to doing it again. Please note this day on your calendars, friends. We should probably make a National Holiday out of it. I'm not sure this has ever happened before, but I'm actually planning on doing this one again soon. Sure I've done other videos more than once, but it was always with more of a "I'm only doing this because it's good for me" attitude.

All told, I'll be back for more. I'm thinking once I get the whole dance routine down maybe I could put on a show for the neighborhood kids! Ha! That's an idea that should be filed under "How to Make People Feel Derisive."

Can't wait to hear Holly's report!

P.S. That image at the top? That's exactly what I looked like.

New! and Exciting!

Holly and I have come up with a new challenge. I say "new" because we come up with stuff like this a lot. And by "we" I mean "me." Mostly Holly is just a good sport. Though, in my defense, she has dragged me into a few of her schemes. For example, because of her I had nary a taste of sugar in all of February of 2001. And she made me do Body for Life with her once, too. (In her defense, she made it all 12 weeks; I made it 2.)

So last night we were IMing, and I was whining, er, brainstorming with her ideas for ways that I can get myself exercising regularly again. And then the brilliance hit. And again, Holly is a very good sport, so starting today, we are each going to do an exercise DVD a day--and report back here about it--through the end of August.

In actuality, this is going to be harder for me than for her. She is an old pro at DVDin' it up; I hate them. She has a collection of about 5 billion; I have maybe 10 (and I hate them). But the reality of life right now is that exercising at home is my best option to get a workout, and DVDs are going to give me the widest range of such. So, here goes nuthin'.