Category: General Blather

Tweets from China

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Surreal moment: Watching “The Countess from Hong Kong” looking out my window at the “Silicon Valley” of Beijing. BTW: awful movie.

The reality that your options for TV include the umpteenth review of the recent plane crash, “Freaky Friday” (the newer version), or soap operas in a language you do not understand (and the subtitles do not help).

There is a horrible, horrible movie out there called “Painkiller Jane”. Do not watch it. Life is precious.

China is a lot like Italy: they want you to eat their wonderful food to excess, they are gracious hosts, there are a million dialects, there is rich and comprehensive history, and five days is not enough.

You do not miss the freedom of your ability to blather inanities into the ethersphere until it is taken away from you. #notweetsfromChina

Graceful moment: walking out of a traditional Chinese restaurant, full of glorious cuisine, in the warm hearty atmosphere of my team, and missing a step and sprawling on the floor. #spriainedankle

MSN has come up with the top 50 countries to grow old in. The top 25 are all countries with socialized medicine and progressive education. #notacoincidence

Insomniacs tell themselves they will catch up on sleep as soon as they get the chance. When a business trip and insomnia collide, you feel like the Powers That Be are fucking with you. I felt like somehow jet lag would work for me this trip. I was wrong.

No one need fear a society in which you can leave your bike unattended, and unlocked, just outside your office building. For nine hours.

When you have to make six plane trips in fourteen days, 24/7 news coverage of a plane crash and a copilot with suicidal tendencies is no comfort.

It’s rare that I ascribe to the wisdom of Angelina Jolie, but she does have a point: we have an excess of news, but a dearth of action based on it.

Hot Yoga: Confessions of a Reluctant Convert

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I had spent probably six years wanting to look down my nose at hot yoga, with all of its purported smelliness, its special gear, its special words (Namaste, indeed), and the trendiness of yoga pants that you could or couldn’t see through. How could it be real exercise when it’s just extrapolated stretching? How can anyone take it seriously in that gear? Then I took up cycling and the gear argument went out the door. After you shamelessly go to the Safeway in clippie shoes and chamois-padded bike shorts, any sense of dignity in costume is gone.

The kicker for me was about a six months ago when my dad told me he had taken up yoga and it did wonders for his back.

I have inherited many things from my father, good and bad. I am stubborn, I can be very black and white, I am very plain-spoken. I dislike mayonnaise, I can be extremely pragmatic, and my knees and back are increasingly problematic. I didn’t get the piano playing skills, but I got the good hair and straight teeth. When I got to my mid thirties we started comparing knee injuries, back injuries, and what color of therapy bands we were using.

So when my dad said yoga really helped him with his back, I listened. I didn’t march right down to the gym to go try a class, because that would take actual effort, but I did listen. And then I did attend a class at the gym and it was pretty much everything you think of when you think of “hot yoga”: a 15×15 room filled with various bodies in yoga-esque clothing, a calming instructor, seventeen or twenty painful poses, everyone dripping sweat, and I could tell who was a fan of garlic and/or cheese. It wasn’t awful but it wasn’t great.

I left yoga to its own devices; I didn’t look down my nose at it but I assured myself it was not for me.

My best friend and I were chatting a couple of months ago and, as I pointed out the new Hot Yoga place just down the hill from me, she pointed out she had been going and she found it better than meditation to calm her mind. As someone who also suffers from chronic insomnia, this sounded like a good idea. The new place had a deal: 6 classes for $10 in two weeks. For the price of three lattes I could scientifically test the benefits of yoga! That this coincided with the last week of my old job, and a week off, made for an excellent test bed. And so I signed up.

It’s been a month now. I haven’t had back pain in that time. I have had only two (2) nights of insomnia. I am inelegant in class, I am not the lean-and-limber yoga Barbie; then again there are many in my class who are not. I have seen progress in my flexibility and balance, but frankly, the fact that my back doesn’t routinely go out, and that I can run again without pain in my knees, is selling point enough.

Then there are the personalities: I try to go every Thursday night (for a variety of reasons) but it seems I’m of a minority with a regular schedule. In six weeks of attendance I have seen maybe one or two people in any two classes, the rest of the cast members change out regularly. There are a couple of yoga Barbies — and they know it — but hats off to them because not only do they look it, but they can do that one pose where you balance on the ball of one foot while in lotus with your hands up. Or the other one where you fold yourself in half, and bend over (I think it’s called “sleeping eagle” but for me it’s called “impossible”). Then there was Tatooed Yoga Jesus: a man who looked like the Oxford-Christian Jesus picture but in yoga pants, no shirt, and tattoos all over his arms, back, and chest. Again, the inclination is to mentally tease him, but Yoga Jesus knew his stuff too. Even the inflated, gym-rat-football-player-looking-dude could get some of the more difficult versions.  And then there’s plenty of people like me: not quite with-it, but improving; dripping sweat and forcing muscles to do things they aren’t used to, secure in the knowledge of a pain-free back and a good night’s sleep.

That is worth any amount of self-imposed awkwardness.

Ramp

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As I have just recently changed jobs, which entailed leaving one job (and all of the transitory madness that is associated with that), having a purported week off (more about that later), and then starting the new job (I’m almost two weeks in), I’ve been a bit busy.

A prudent me would have curbed social engagements, extracurricular activities, and given myself some slack at the gym. But prudence is not one of the words that comes to mind when I think of me (although someone called me quirky the other day so now my quirky meter has gone up a bit and I need to see what *that* is all about), and I didn’t. One of the organizations I help with staged an intervention and dropped me from 2 of the 4 committees I was on, not because they doubted my abilities, but they feared for my sanity.

I spent my week off with a healthy checklist and a desire to make my son’s last Elementary School science fair something to behold. I think I marginally succeeded, given that the rules were simple: no fire, no liquids, no electrics. Naturally, we had all 3, including one experiment demonstration involving fire (that I had to forcibly shut down), one exhibit requiring not one but two extension cords, and a couple of suspicious watery areas on the floor of the gym (where the student exhibits were at). By the end of my week off, I was ready for a week off.

And then I started working at the new job.

Starting a new job is both exciting and sucks at the same time: exciting because everything is New And Different And Thrilling And Did I Mention New, and sucks because Guess What, I Don’t Know Everything — Or Possibly Anything– Anymore. It’s that awkward phase of not knowing a company, or any of your coworkers, or (in my case) your platform. My days are spent in Outlook, PowerPoint, and meetings; my evenings are spent learning a new language (when I so choose). There is more work to be done than can ever be done, and so the challenge of work-life balance rests solely in my court.

This sort of disciplinary requirement, plus the uncomfortable position of Not Knowing Everything, makes for an unsettling period. Throw in the end of the school year (6 weeks to go!), a couple of trips, a pending wedding (erm… mine), and a neglected garden, and you’ve got the recipe for an OCD breakdown. I may have required myself to wash the sink twice and empty out the dishwasher completely before I allowed myself to eat dinner tonight at 8:30 when I got home.

Which is all a very long and rambly way to say: I’m a bit swamped at the moment, and sorry I haven’t written. Fresh content is on the way, it’s just stewing in the back of my brain. Specific blurbs will include: The Sadness That is Washington State Education and Funding, Hot Yoga (the Opinion of a Reluctant Convert), and Woodinville Wine Country: You Aren’t as Witty as You Think You Are.

Stay tuned…

Cliché

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Clichés, as a rule, bother me. This has to do with my innate dislike for anything that must “be accepted”. The absolute BEST way to get me to not read a book, not see a movie, not do something, is to tell me I MUST read XYZ book, I MUST see XYZ movie, I MUST do whatever. It just won’t happen. If I’m in “polite” mode I will dither, if you are family I *may* humor you, but otherwise it’s just not going to happen. This explains why I still haven’t seen the “Breakfast Club”, why it took some serious cajoling to read Lean In (yes, yes, blog post coming about it eventually), and why, at 40, I don’t know if I own a hairdryer because I simply refuse to use one.

Clichés are the verbal “you must”. It suggests that there is something out there you must do, or must allow, because it just *is*. The absolute worst one, in my opinion, is “Everything Happens For A Reason”.

Please. Just… don’t.

Things happen because they happen. There is little reason in someone going in to a school and shooting children, there is little reason in the antics of Congress (these days), there is little reason in Wall Street (as evidenced by a DOW nearing 16k whilst we have the hurdles we have. There need not be, and frequently there is not, a reason.

Saying “Everything happens for a reason” is a way of accepting a lack of control; it means “I can’t see a good reason for this to happen in a logical world so I will abuse this platitude and hope this changes the subject and/or gets the person who is trembling with doubt, pain, or hurt to stop it long enough for me to be comfortable”. Looking for “reason” where no good one is, is insanity. Or optimism.

I’m more of a fan of “It is what it is.” “Que sera, sera”, however sung by Doris Day, is accurate. Things happen: this much is true. Entropy increases. Time marches. But the notion that there is some underlying reason causing a typhoon to kill off five thousand people, or a tsunami and earthquake to hit the site of a nuclear reactor, is asinine.

OK: Point and counterpoint. Correlation and causality. That is to say, YES, ultimately there is a cause to every effect.  A ginormous typhoon hit the Philippines because global warming has warmed the atmosphere and waterways in that area to a devastating effect and the bomb that would go off there went off with a bigger bang; people tend to build nuclear reactors near waterways in order to easily flood the site to cool it down. But when people say “Things happen for a reason” they do NOT mean, “things happen because a series of events led to them”, they mean, “there is some good reason for this to have happened” and “good reason” usually infers somehow, somewhere, there is benefit.

You will notice that very rarely does anyone say “Things happen for a reason” where something happens that is obviously beneficial. “Things happen for a reason” is not applied to the lottery win, or the quick reflexes that get you OUT of a car accident, or the “A” you got on your Chemistry final. No, then you take the credit: you studied, you had quick reflexes, YOU picked the lucky number. So if it’s good, you controlled it with your abilities and your skills; if it’s bad there must be some better reason for you to have fallen on misfortune.

I have been in plenty of good circumstance that was of my own doing, and nearly as much malfeasance that was as well. I do not attribute this to “fortune”, I attribute this to the way things are. It is what it is.

But it may not have happened for a “reason”.

Tough (-ish) and Clean (-esque)

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Today I went to the gym for three hours.

About three months ago a bunch of (well, call it four plus me plus some outside) people from work decided we should Do Tough Mudder. To which my response was “I’ve just posted how I’m not signing up for any large events, so really? You’re asking? Really? Okay.” And so I signed on. I proudly told this to my trainer, with whom I meet pretty much weekly, and tasked him with getting me ready.

For three months I met faithfully with David (trainer), each Wednesday cursing things like burpees and pull-ups and push-ups and other things whose Official Names I do not know but that doesn’t prevent me from dearly disliking. And about a month before Tough Mudder, we lost a team member.  A week later, we lost a second. A week after that, a third. And then there were four.

Four is not a big team, and four may-or-may-not have been successful in getting us over hills and walls and so forth. Add that to the fact that I was now the only female on the team, and certainly the slowest runner (hello, 10 minute mile!), I was uncomfortable. So I decided to see if I could pad the team. I checked in with my gym, and found someone willing.

Except he was signed up for the Saturday, and I couldn’t do the Saturday (hey, I was snack mom for the soccer game! Priorities!). OK, fine, I put an ad in Craigslist.

Now, I like reading Craigslist for entertainment, and have used it to sell many things, but not really to do something social. I got one response. It detailed the length of some male person’s phallus and an invitation to ride it. I did not respond.

On the Wednesday before my original Tough Mudder–which I have now bumped off to next year — I devised a plan with David. I would chart the obstacles and the runs, and create gym-equivalents. Running is fine (treadmill), but how many pull-ups do you figure equates getting over an 8′ high wall (somewhat assisted — say a push up or a pull up from a team member)? David figured 3 sets of 10. How do you replace swimming? David figured you’d use the same muscles as burpees and knee-bend deadlifts with weights, so 2 sets of 10 of those.  To simulate running in mud he added ankle weights. The only thing David did not compensate for was electric shocks (which I was to skip anyway) and an ice bath. On the flip side, instead of the cushy wait times in front of obstacles that my more mud-laden brethren got, I got one (1) three-minute break.

Two hours and 40 minutes later, I had run just over 11 miles (well, I had run about 9 and speed-walked another 2 because the knee was hurting) and done crazy crawling, push-up, pull-up, weight-lift, balancing obstacles throughout the gym.  I left the gym incredibly icky (not muddy) and wondering if an ice bath would have helped.

There’s a few things I can take away from this experience, and yes, a couple more goals:

1.  No, you don’t have to train running-wise as though you’re training for a half-marathon. But I probably should have run something over 3 miles recently.

2. If you do it alone, or in the gym, or both, you don’t get the event-based adrenaline rush.  You trade that for the “comfort” of controlling your environment.

3. I could have done it by myself in the mud. And I probably should have.

4. I’m training as though I WILL be doing it solo next year, because I don’t want to have to do it in the gym again.

Not that I don’t love David. I loooove David (in a totally platonic, he’s like an uncle kinda way). He is awesome and patient and inventive and he doesn’t let me slide. But next time I want him waiting at the end of the route, standing in the mud, with a beer. And I want that extra load of muddy, muddy laundry.

The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself

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-FDR

Having nonchalantly signed up for Tough Mudder (NB: I didn’t actually yet sign up for it but I said I would so I will), I was initially apprehensive at the idea of a cold ice bath and a bout of electroshock therapy. But I spent a portion of this flight (greetings from 35k feet) actually looking at the event obstacles, both volume and detail, and see that there’s a whole lot of scary in store for my teammates and me.

Tough Mudder is aptly named, and aside from a couple of obstacles that include electrocution, and a couple (or 4) more that include ice baths, there are several that include enclosed spaces, and a few that involve heights. Oh, wonderful. It’s like someone gift-wrapped all of the things that freak me out and handed it over in one giant muddy package.

I can handle bugs, spiders, pretty much any liquid that comes out of an animal (thanks to a small child and a Zoology degree), heights that will kill me, the dark, speed, guns, knives, the unknown, and swimming with sharks. But while ice baths and electrocution are unsavory, confined spaces and heights that will only break a bone or two scare the high holy crap out of me. I have no idea how to train for this, except that this will be 10-12 miles of “suck it up and deal”.

Seemingly unrelated, but totally not, is a book I picked up recently that discusses (among other things) the value of “stuff” vs. the value of “experiences”. The bottom line is that we value the “experience” more than the “stuff” for the same dollar output. “Stuff” doesn’t necessarily make us happier, but “experiences” do; even people who do arduous, un-fun things reflect back on them and value the experience. (Anyone who has given birth or finished a physical event they weren’t really prepared for — cough — can testify to it having been a lot more fun AFTER it’s over).

I’m clinging to this. To be absolutely, perfectly frank, I want to quit this event before it’s even started, because I know not only what it will mean in terms of preparation, but that at some point I’m going to be stuck in a small, enclosed, dark space; I will be cold, I will feel useless, and I will want to quit, and the only reason I won’t is that I’m too stubborn to do so.

Here we go…

An Open Letter to My Personal Trainer, David

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Well David, it’s that time again, where I’ve done something rash and signed up for something I probably shouldn’t do. There’s a timeline involved, and some frankly optimistic requirements; I figured I’d apologize now and get it over with.

You see, I let the Ms.Krieant sign me up for Tough Mudder, and I have a little under 13 weeks to get ready. It has some impressive obstacles, most of which have me scared out of my mind, but as you know once I’ve said I’ll do something, I’ll do it…

…as long as I get to whine a lot about it.

So I realize that up until now your charge has been mostly to try to get me stronger while avoiding the injury of the month; in our short tenure together this has meant occasionally avoiding my knees, my neck, my upper back, my lower back, or my right hip. Now we need to ignore all of that, because I will need all of those parts working and functional.

I also realize that this means that the chattiness of our sessions will have to reduce, that we can no longer freely evaluate others in the gym as you hand me five more pounds of something or have me do 15 more push-ups. It means that you’re likely to give me homework, that I will need to actually do weight work more than twice a week, and that I will be very, very sore these ensuing weeks.

But David, I’m turning 40.

I realize this isn’t much to you — I think 40 hit and flew by for you about a decade ago, not that you’d notice, being an ex-Marine and all. I realize this isn’t much to most of our early-morning compatriots, as I think the average age at the gym at our time of morning is mid-50’s. It isn’t technically even much to me in the sense that I’m not having a huge to-do over it, nor do I want to see black balloons, nor do I think the day after my birthday I will suddenly fall apart or feel older. The fact is, David, I’m tired of having my body feel older now.

Five years ago I entered into a half marathon, having never run, because someone told me I couldn’t do it. (Actually, he laughed and said, “yah, right”). Three years ago I entered into a 2-day, 160-mile bike ride because someone said I wouldn’t want to do it. Last year I did the STP pretty much under the same auspices. And each time, I injured myself either in training or in the event itself. But each time, I did the training without any professional help.

You’re here to fix that, David, because at 40, I’ve decided I’m tired of injuring myself. And this likely means I’ll have to do a lot of things I was heretofore unprepared to do, like go to the gym more than 4 times per week and maybe, actually, you know, stretch. Perhaps even do my regular PT exercises. I have a support group in my friends — one lent a very pertinent book (Supple Leopard, indeed), one gave me tips on how to deal with the electric shocks (or at least a realistic impression of what they’re like). But your job is to make sure I’m ready, and so I really do hope you’ll understand the bullet-pointed list you’re going to get when next we see each other.

I still reserve the right to whine, though.

Floating Along

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I am, once again, at the airport. Can I just say how refreshing it was to NOT have an instant sense of direction once clearing security? I have a whole new world opened to me, and it’s a weird one. Item one: I checked email two hours after leaving on vacation and no work urgency or email had appeared! (What is this alternate universe I have travelled to?).

No, this is a welcome weird; I am semi-secure in the knowledge that nothing really truly awfully bad can happen, that my company can survive without me, and yet my (brief) absence will not convince them they should get rid of me. Nonetheless I am travelling with two laptops, which means I’ll be totally buff when I return.

Like every vacation, I have a laundry list of things I’m going to do (that I probably will not complete). Like every vacation, I have forgotten something (although the kindly Editor dropped by work earlier today and delivered my knitting, which was the item forgotten). Like every vacation, the boychild and I went to Anthony’s for pre-flight. Like every vacation, I am looking forward to in-flight WiFi.

I cannot sit still. I really can’t. I noticed it a few years back, and it was again brought to my attention when the Brit was in a meeting with me a year back. It has peaked since: hour-long meetings in conference rooms either must include my laptop so I can multitask *or* folks need to suspend their seismographs, because the leg or the hand or the pencil or the anything else will be rhythmically moving to the sound of whatever song is in the head.  So sitting on a plane for three hours is going to be less than pleasant. For those of you recommending wine: thought of that. But I’m going to 110-degree weather, and so dehydrating myself on purpose seems a bit stupid.

In four days I will return, and will have to text my PT and tell him about signing up for Tough Mudder, and will have to acclimatize myself to the notion that in 3 months I need to train myself to 1. withstand electric shocks, or at least grit my teeth over them, and 2. be able to pull myself up (all of myself) (by my own hands) (several times). Up until now the directive for the trainer has been much more mellow, much more “hey can you make sure you don’t re-break the parts of me that are broken?” and more “I have this specific set of criteria I must meet in 12 weeks.”

But until then I’m on vacation. Leave a message!

Phoning It In

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I’m freely admitting here that I’m phoning this one in: life, and work, have taken over as is wont to do with a new job, and summer approaching. The sun gets early and so do I, I am proudly Foursquare mayor of my gym and I sleep better now that I have in six years. Work is intense and yet has finite boundaries, home is satisfying although I do admit that this school year it feels a bit like I’m limping to the finish (to quote a Facebook friend).

This sounds pitifully like a synopsized email to my mother: I’m alive, I’m happy, I’m sorry I haven’t written, I’m just really busy, and it’s all good. As I have two plane trips spaced at one-month intervals coming up, I hope to have a new rant up soon. Ideas for said rant include:

1. Wow, people in Seattle have no idea how to drive at all once change is instantiated.

2. I may become a shoe fanatic. I bought new shoes that happened to be high heels and I’m really, really enjoying them.

3. Gardening is frustrating if you resolve to do it without chemicals.

4. I have no problem turning 40, the fact that my son is already 10 is scary.

5. I am a dabbler, and despite the best advice of many I think I’m succeeding.

There was a time in my life where I blogged because the volume of drama necessitated it; there is no drama and unfortunately there’s not much I can add in terms of overall social commentary that I feel has to be imparted RIGHT NOW. This is a good position to be in.

Moving On

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It goes to show that it’s been a while since I’ve blogged that the entire user interface of WordPress has changed since I last visited. Apparently I’ve been gone for a couple of months, courtesy of the legal quagmire I was in.

Now, to address the usual questions, NO I hadn’t done anything illegal and NO it wasn’t anything that impacted anyone else but my immediate family — such is civil law. But the entire affair — which could be measured at 15.5 months or 19.5 months or slightly over 3 years, depending on whose ruler you use and how petty you are — was exhausting. My ability to blog and post was limited to the most vanilla of subjects, as the process proved when you are in civil court the “other side” (or, more likely, their attorney) will write and say and twist things truly ridiculous given any length of rope.

I therefore had visions of scenarios like: “Bobbie posts about how stressful her job is, therefore she spends too much time working, therefore she is an unfit mother”. Or, “Bobbie posted about her recent dental appointment, where her dentist suggested teeth whitening, therefore she drinks too much coffee, therefore she is an unfit mother”. Like it or not, I was able to successfully (?) imagine in some weird six-degrees mental exercise all roads leading to the “other team’s” desired output, namely their contention that I am/was All Things Evil, Ever.

Now that that is finished, I’m free to post about whatever. Which, I am happy to say, I’ve actually given some thought.

My mother-in-law-to-be recently spent time with me in my kitchen and was extolling the virtues of a gardening blog she happened upon. When asked why I blog, I deferred to my older blog (which was divorce, and then dating, therapy), and then the current one (which before the Event was about physical triumph over a traitorous body and mental exercise over that which occupied me at work). The only consistent running theme has been “this is something that is occupying a percentage of my brain space”, but there was no consistency in the volume of the space it occupied or the genre of space. Nor, I must say, is it terribly useful (per se) to read. It’s more of a voyeuristic window in the frenetic ramblings of a mid-30’s (or, nearly 40) single mom with an interesting (to her) career and an inability to finally decide, once and for all, if she should get chickens.

Going forward, this blog will have three aspects: initially, I’m going to brain dump about all of my learnings of Court. It was a fascinating process, from beginning to end, and I certainly got my money’s worth (which, at best guess, is somewhere in the mid-priced luxury vehicle range). There will likely be a spike in Economics posts as I pursue my degree. There will be the occasional work vent, and possibly a vent or two in the parenting line, as my son is at the interesting and challenging age where I spend a lot of time playing chauffeuse, financier, and guidance counselor. You are hereby put on notice. With that, we begin again… seven years after we started the first time.

Welcome, again.