Tag: women

Friday April 24th, 2020

  • push-ups: 1:09 minutes, 30/tricep on the floor and 30/chest on a yoga matte
  • squats: 1:49 minutes, 70 squats, alternating with punches every other set
  • sit-ups: 2:12 minutes, 70 sit-ups, more upper abs in the morning

These are my times. Next week is my “meditation” week, though I will continue to run on the treadmill. The following week will be 80 sit-ups and squats, then I should move to 40/20 for floor and matte push-ups.

I emailed Sensei yesterday about this site. I hope he likes it, and is able to see it!

Oh, I reached Shannon on the phone last night. She’s fine! Such a relief! D suggested calling her at night, so I did. They don’t have kids, and, as D suspected, they were still up at 10pm. They were not upset that I called so late.

She was sick for several days last week with a fever, and received the COVID-19 test. Her results came yesterday: negative.

Shannon tried to check out this website but could not get it to load. It loaded as a broken domain. I may have left the site in a bad state one day last weekend. I should check it under a different user, just in case that makes a difference.

Loquats on my tree!

Miriam suggested taking loquats to Mikage and Jerry, two good friends of ours who recently moved back to Los Angeles, after living in Vancouver for several years. K loves loquats. She is originally from Japan, and told me once that loquats never stay in the grocery stores long there. They have a short season and sell out quickly. My tree is full of fruit. This will be my weekend: loquats. Picking, delivering, cleaning, preparing and and eating loquats.

I looked up the “shelter in place” order for LA County. Culver City, where Mikage and Jerry live, is fourteen miles away. Delivering food, however, is certainly allowed. Is there someone I can call? “Hello city official, I’d like to drop loquats off with a friend. Is that okay?” I may also simply ask Mikage if she is comfortable with me dropping off fruit, and make sure she wants them. I could also freeze a batch for her, and give her those when we’re allowed to see one another.

Granted, the idea of driving to another area is attractive: seeing different scenery, and just feeling how large the world is. I want to respect the order, however. I’ll ask D for his opinion.

Delivering home-grown fruit may be a grey area. Funny–if she paid for them, it would count as “essential” business since it involves food. I will just ask her. I can leave the loquats at her door step, then wave at her from the car or from the street, just like the delivery folks. She loves loquats.

I love my loquat tree, and love giving away its fruit. I like eating them, too, with lemon juice and honey, or simply as they are. They are a bit of work to prepare.

Well, that’s my timer. Time to pick!

Saturday April 11, 2020

The Back Log

I am taking the day off from exercises but I did run on the treadmill for twenty minutes, plus five as a warm-up and five minutes for a cool-down.

Last night, I got on the scale and I was 110 pounds. That’s up from my usual range of 93 to 97 pounds. I’ve noticed other changes: I can’t put my wedding ring back on, and a pair of pants that once required a belt to stay up actually fit in the waist now. Needless to say, the extra weight worries me.

For folks who don’t know me or do not know me well, I’m just over 5 feet tall. Some of that extra weight is muscle from karate exercises, but that would accounts for, say, two to five pounds, realistically. The rest is due to to the fact that I no longer work out at the dojo for three to five hours a week. On Saturdays, I would sometimes take two classes and I regularly attended an hour and a half class on Tuesday and Friday evenings.

My morning and evening push-ups, sit-ups and squats, while better than nothing, is no substitute for a ninety minute class. I do not walk four flights of stairs before and after work, because I work from home. Though I take walks during the day, those are not exactly strenuous. Additionally, F and B bake a lot of bread, pies and cookies, and D and I drink wine or make mixed drinks just about every day.

So, given I am:

  • 1. eating more sweets,
  • 2. drinking more alcohol, and
  • 3. exercising less

I guarantee some of that weight is just, well, excess weight! I don’t look particularly fat, granted, but that’s how it starts: a little more here and a little more there. Over time, it adds up.

The black belt test requires cardio fitness, and mine is in August, if we are able to do it. Might as well start now, before I get too out of shape.

The treadmill is in F’s room, but we all use it. Richard walked daily when F was in school. I put on a podcast and got on the treadmill with bare feet. Jogging on the treadmill is not something I enjoy.

I’d tried to talk D into going with me to look for a place to run outdoors. We do not live far from Griffith Park. It rained all this week and now it’s beautiful outside! On a Saturday! My idea was to drive to the zoo area and see if we could walk or jog along one of the horse trails. D thought everyone else in Los Angeles would have the same idea.

He’d previously emailed me an article about how people exercising outdoors could potentially spread the virus faster. Apparently it is also critical to be more reclusive for the next two weeks. Folks are being advised to limit our already limited contact. So I borrowed a pair of loose, old shorts from D, put on a podcast and got on the treadmill.

I admit, during that first five minutes of walking in bare feet, I considered getting off the treadmill to put on shoes. “But no,” I thought, “I’ve finally started and it’s important to push through.” My mind wants to get out of exercising, I told myself, rationalizing procrastination. I’ve started–I need to stick with this. So I did. At the end of my jog, the balls of my feet burned.

My daughter came into the room to tease me about running in front of the window. “I want the neighborhood to see my newly-muscled back. Why not?” I told her. “There might not be a lot of muscle back there by some people’s standards but it’s much more than I had!”

That’s the great thing about being fifty, I told her: you become shameless. “You know what?” I said. “I wish I’d lost my shame earlier!” She laughed.

She’d talked to me about the weight thing earlier. “A few extra pounds will not hurt you!” she said. “You do not need to diet.” I agree.

For context, one of F’s friends was hospitalized for an eating disorder shortly before the pandemic started. This poor girl–a beautiful kid and an overachiever–top kid in her middle school last year, was downright skeletal when she came to our home in January for F’s birthday party. She was quite ill by the time she was hospitalized in late February.

So I told F, “No diet. Just exercise more and eat less sweets. That’s all–just don’t let the weight gain get out of hand. And maybe I should drink less.”

So I was proud of myself for getting on the treadmill and jogging and walking a full thirty minutes, but boy, I blistered the balls of my feet. I showed F. We laughed. “You wear shoes if you go the treadmill, okay?” I told F.

Full disclosure: we both like running around in bare feet. I already had calluses on my heels from wearing Keenes as my normal shoes, even to jury duty. (Once, in the elevator in the court house, a dude in a suit, probably a lawyer, said to me, “Those sure look comfortable.” I responded, “Yeah, they help me get to court on time when I’m parked a good thirty minute walk away.”)

I popped the blisters on my feet with a safety pin dipped in rubbing alcohol, squeezed out the puss, then took a shower. Afterwards, I put salve and bandages on my feet. I wear two pairs of socks for extra padding, and sandals if I need to walk.

Goal for tomorrow: get on the treadmill with sneakers!