the slack daily

The 24-Hour Hobo Fitness.

It began with a barbell.  A solitary rusted-out barbell that sat under our neighbor R.'s white pickup truck with the faked "Delivery Vehicle" placard (there so he could double park.)  I wondered if it was leftover from his Garage Sale days.  Every Saturday, R. would haul out odds and ends - a white pleather sofa with cigarette burns, a lone bicycle tire, a side table missing a leg.  It wasn't until we saw the selection of little boys' clothes and board games that we became concerned.  There haven't been children in this building for over 40 years.  Y'know how there's always one person in your apartment complex that you think sure, he could be a serial killer...well, in our complex, we have more than one.  But this guy topped the list. 

Will asked R. point-blank where the clothes had come from, and he told us that he had been dumpster-diving in Beverly Hills.  Someone had told him that Garage Sales were where the money was at, and he was certain rich people in Beverly Hills threw away perfectly good stuff.  We were thankful that we weren't going to have to bring in the police to find a stash of boys' underwear under his bed, but everyone in the building came to the same consensus: moving trash a couple of zip codes doesn't make it treasure.  The Garage Sales  stopped, and R. returned to doing whatever it is he does. 

Which brings us back to the barbell.  It rolled back and forth between the cracks in the driveway, shedding flakes of rust like a snakeskin.  I've lived here long enough to know not to touch it.  Clearly someone had a plan for this barbell.  I just had to wait it out.

Sure enough, a few weeks later I pulled into the driveway to see another neighbor, P. working with the barbell.  He was alternating biceps curls with swings from the bottle of Stella that sat on the bumper of R.'s white pickup truck.  If the number of empty bottles were any indication, he'd been through a regular Ironman workout. 

I climbed out of the car. Hey, P.

Y'wanna work in? he asked.

Nah, I'm good.  The beer's a nice touch, though.

It's what Hulk Hogan does.

I couldn't disagree.

Over the next few weeks I noticed other people had joined him.  Our neighbor G. added a rusted chair for dips, and the guy without teeth who doesn't live here but who always hangs out in our backyard is always handy with a spot.  Morning, noon, and night someone's out there throwing around some iron, swigging a beer, and washing themselves off in our hose.  Instead of going around the building to his side door, P. climbs in and out of the open window of his apartment to adjust the music and fetch another six-pack.

The biggest excuse for not going to the gym is that it's not convenient.  I have no excuse.

There's a 24-Hour Hobo Fitness.  In my own backyard.

More on the hobos here.

Stay Right There.

Stay where you are, Tevia said, keep your pace.  Sometimes the hardest thing to do is stay exactly where you are.

Sweat trickled from my hairline into my eyes as I worked out at the gym this morning.  I stood a little taller, pushed a little farther, worked a little harder.  My focus became a little clearer and once again, I was silently grateful to be in West Hollywood at 10am on a Wednesday morning, even if I was tired and the sweat stung my eyes and every muscle in my body wanted to be done.

Three weeks from this very moment I'll be wrapping up dinner with Mr. Boy's family. 

When's the last time you had dinner with both of your parents? I asked him.

Probably when I was 6, he responded.

There are still a million and one details to attend to, as well as the business of everyday life.  The last couple of days have been eye-opening in that regard, and there are some decisions I have to make in deciding what parts of my life I move forward with and what parts I let go. 

But the only thing I have to do right now is simply be here, be present, and maintain.

Tevia's right.  It's the hardest thing to do. 

Before & After.

BEFORE:
Ex-roommate's pee-stained room.

AFTER:
Happy puppy bedtime!

BEFORE:
A perfectly adequate living room.

AFTER:
A detective agency.

 

BEFORE:
My 4'8"baba climbs gutters at 75 years old.  I am around 200 pounds and can barely climb a set of stairs without dying.

AFTER:
I'm a shade under 160 pounds and I spin five to six days a week, sometimes taking two classes a day.

 

BEFORE:
Bad orthodonists can ruin your face. Mine "fixed" my overbite by moving my upper jaw back instead of my lower jaw forward.  For over 30 years, I never allowed anyone to take a candid photo or a shot of my profile.

AFTER:
Good jaw surgeons are worth their weight in gold. I finally look like what I was supposed to look like.  Take all the photos you'd like.

(My surgery x-rays here, and you can see more after photos of the apartment on my Flickr!)

Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend?

This morning in spinning class, we were going up a hill.  We weren't actually going up a hill of course, we were pretend-going up a hill, meaning that the resistance on the bike was cranked up and my hamstrings were screaming as this was my second class of the day.  I already had 45 minutes of sprinting under my belt and I was exhausted and shaky and blind from the sweat dripping in my eyes.

Turn it up! Katie the Instructor yells into the mic.  This is a hill.  Turn it up!

I crank my resistance up until every fiber is thrumming.  I've reached the numb point where I just know that I just need to Keep Going.  I curse silently that I let myself get out of shape.  I check my form in the mirror, and I climb.

Remember what you do in here is indicative of what you do out there, she reminds us.  Do you let opportunities pass you by?  Do you coast on through life?  Are you too easy on yourself?   Turn it up, everyone, turn it up.

As I turn up the resistance I think about how I wanted to stay in bed this morning, how I was sleepy and weepy and just wanted to hide under the covers, how I spilled coffee on my shirt and how Daisy went batshit crazy when we ran smack dab into another dog as we rounded a corner on our daily walk, how I was petty and weird with Will, I think about how I'm crampy and the zits on my chin announce that I'll be graced with my period soon*, then I push it all from my mind and focus, pulling it all in.

A beat.  Except you, Nina, she continues into the mic, you turn it down. 

I shut my eyes and reluctantly turn the knob to the left.

After class she tells me you're in amazing shape, you should teach.

I laugh.  I used to be in amazing shape, I tell her.  I'm working on getting back.

She shakes her head.  How you work in class really is how you are, she said, and you're too hard on yourself.  Cut yourself some slack.

I laugh and tell her I'll see her later.

I leave, thinking about what she's said, wondering how someone who barely knows me can nail me down that easily.

No one ever pressured me while I was growing up - the only pressure from my parents was that if I was going to attempt a task, then I needed to see it to the end.  I couldn't simply give up - I had to try.  Of course, there were expectations - that I would get good grades, that I would excel at whatever I did, that I would get into a good school - but it was just something that was assumed.  No, the pressure, it always came from me. 

After all, pressure is good, right?  It forces us out of our comfort zone, it gives us the chance to see what we're really made of, it creates diamonds.  I knew I could do more because I had more to work with (as I said to a girl I knew in high school who complained that it wasn't fair that I didn't have to study as hard as she did, I'm just smarter than you.)  I have constantly been focussed  forward.  I took my SAT early, I applied to college early,  while everyone was in Cancun on Spring Break I was setting up information interviews in Los Angeles, and while people were backpacking across Europe and finding themselves I was working hundred hour weeks at ICM.  Hard work put me in the right spot where I got lucky. 

Suddenly my hard work was paying off in the form of my career.  Of course, I couldn't let up and we were writing a script a month (which in TV, is a lot - you normally write one to two scripts a season, we did nine).  I added a physical aspect and started pushing with the weight loss and the weightlifting.  It was intense and difficult and I loved it.

As everyone here knows, the past few years haven't been kind to my career or to my body, but I haven't let up on the pressure. Will told me the other day you need to relax, but I don't think I know how.  There's a wedding to plan, it's five weeks from tomorrow and then after that, there's the whole question of what am I going to do with my life?  How am I going to contribute to our household?

The pressure is increasing. But it's not creating diamonds at all.   

(*Your explanation as to why this is clearly emo week over here at the slack daily.  Mea culpa.)

 

Gut Reaction.

In spinning I catch myself in the mirror and it's obvious that I'm bigger than the other women, I am not lithe and slender and aerodynamic, my shoulders are broad and my traps are large and my biceps flare.  I am here not for some magic weight loss pill but to see what my body can do.  Some days I take two classes in a row, just to see if I can.  Tevia, our instructor, is a jewish lesbian in her 40s who has MS but who can kick anyone's ass in the entire place reminds us to pull ourselves back, to lift each pedalstroke into our gut, because our gut is where everything comes from.  While it's trendy in the fitness arena to talk about working one's core, she's not just talking about having strong abs.  She reminds us that what we do in class is how we deal with life outside of class, and it's not about what we look like but what we do with it.  I remind myself that I'm here to work, I'm here for the challenge, I'm here to see if I can just push myself a little farther.

After class, we hop off the bikes to stretch, and as I reach my fingers past my toes, I feel my gut, the one that got me through my workout, the one that held me up and stable as I spun, spilling out over the top of my waistband. 

Ugh.

As we finish up and wipe down our bikes, I think about what's just happened. I think that it's rare that we take every opportunity that life presents us, but somehow we're able to take every single opportunity that comes up to put our physical selves down.  Our ass is too big and our thighs are too jiggly and our hips are too wide and our boobs are too saggy and our foreheads are too lined.

Five years ago I was 141 pounds and 17.5% bodyfat.  I was also working myself into the ground.  Lifting and running and sprinting and living off 800 calories a day of protein shakes. Just to see if I could.  I still wasn't small back then, I wasn't slender or lithe but instead all powerful quads and cut shoulders and visible abs.   My boyfriend at the time, a well-known diet and workout guru, finally took me aside and said you have to stop, you're going to go crazy.  And I did, although I was able to maintain my level of fitness until the undiagnosed thyroid issue/surgery. relationship problems sent me into a two year crash and burn where the weight piled back on and it wasn't that I didn't care, it was that I didn't care to do anything.

I've preached body acceptance and self-love (not that kind of self-love, although I am a fan...) for ages now, but I've felt like somewhat of a hypocrite, as for the past couple of years I haven't been able to be so kind to myself.  It was easy to play the trifecta of failed relationship-failed career-failed body.  I wallowed in that for a good long while, and then this year I decided that it was time to stop complaining and start doing.  But this time I was going to handle it a bit differently, walking the fine line of trying to both accept my body and change it.  I would push myself but I wouldn't punish myself for not being perfect.  It wasn't about looking good in a wedding dress (after all, it already fits and looks fine), it was about getting my head and my heart back into shape.

It's a weird transition to think less about what your body looks like and more about what it can do.  I know that my body can handle eight classes (twice on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, once on Tuesday and Thursday) a week.  But it's going to take my brain a little time to catch up.

Last week, before last Thursday night's class I took photos in my mirror (the evil one) to track my progress.  I was going to put them up to shame me into continuing with my workouts except that I don't need to be shamed into doing so. Tevia's right. It doesn't matter if it spills over my waistband or reveals a perfectly cut six-pack, my gut has everything I need to get me through anything.

So this is my before and after photo.  No shame at'all.

Scenes from a Monday Morning.

From the I-Wish-I-Was-Making-This-Up Files:

(Overheard in the Sherman Oaks Fashion Square Macy's.)

Teenaged Girl#1, upon spying a woman in a wheelchair: 
My feet hurt. I wish I was in a wheelchair.

Teenaged Girl#2:
Me too.  Plus you get all the good parking.

I started to chuckle until I turned to see that they weren't kidding.

From the Sometimes-Teenaged-Boys-Are-Awesome-And-Not-in-the-Creepy-Sex-Way Files:

The plus of eating a metric asston of cookies yesterday is that lifting today at the gym was a dream.  Two teenaged boys were working in the middle of the floor next to the squat rack, but moved quickly when they saw I wanted to use it.  I thanked them and they nodded. 

I rarely talk to anyone at the gym, as conversations usually end in someone convincing me that I need pilates, or personal training, or someone calling me a bitch because I have the audacity to suggest perhaps if they're strong enough to press the 8937543 plates in the leg press, perhaps they're strong enough to re-rack them.  Needless to say, my gym sessions are about getting there, getting my workout done, and getting home.   

I set up the squat rack and warmed up, as I usually do.  My insanely light bar felt even more insanely light.  I added more weight (still insanely light) and got ready to start in on my third set when an Old Gym Guy approached me.  Old Gym Guys are one of two types:

• Former coaches, donning Zubaz and torn sweatshirts and smartly accessorized with headbands and wristbands and armbands and a weight belt worn low and tight across the hips so their enormous belly hangs over or;
• Frail old men with see-through white v-neck undershirts, 70's running shorts pulled up under the armpits, black socks pulled up to the knee and grey velcro-strap running shoes.

My Old Gym Guy was the second.  His clawlike hand grabbed my arm.  I whirled around.

Can I help you?

Honey, you need to be careful, he said.

I was waiting on a lecture for how I'd hurt myself around the free weights when he continued--

You shouldn't be lifting that.  Boys don't like big girls.

Before I could burst out laughing, one of the teenaged boys placed themselves between me and my gentleman caller.

Back off, old man.

Old Gym Guy left and I thanked the knight-in-shining-Adidas.

I knew you were fine, he told me, I just hate when guys are assholes. 

Me too, I told him. Thanks again.

No problem. And by the way, you squat like a badass.

Who says chivalry is dead?