Be Weird Friday

Running With the Old Dogs

The cardiac rehab I'm going to three times a week is something quite unique.  It's in a gym that's pretty much like any other gym with only a few differences.  The primary difference is that it has a crash cart available just in case somebody's ticker gives out while on the recumbent bike.  Of course, everybody is wired up to monitor their heartbeat and, every once in a while, you'll see the nurses run around to find somebody whose wire has slipped to make sure they didn't flatline.   But all in all, it is just a gym...with the exception that most of the people using this gym are, shall we say, seasoned citizens.

And that's really good for me because it means there is no intimation factor going on.  Nobody is showing off in the mirrors and nobody is trying to pick up a date or impress anybody else.  Everybody is working on their particular workout plan.  We are all there pretty much for the same reason....we want to get more fit so that we can live a few more years.

Though there is no real intimidation, there is still some things that irk me once in a while.  For example; every workout session usually starts with a brisk walk around the track for a few laps.  I usually begin at a pretty good pace and am counting how many times I'm going around the track and what machines I will be getting on afterwards.  Then.....out of nowhere....some really old dude all hunched over goes shuffling by me like I'm barely moving.  A couple of minutes later, he laps me again.  "Really?  Damn Grandpa, where are you getting your energy?"

Proof positive that age and fitness are not correlating values.  Also proof that I am way, way out of shape if I can get showed up in a gym by Methuselah.

Wednesday Cat Blogging

You Are an Inconsiderate Asshole

I'm not hating....I was one too.  Nearly a month of being a non-smoker has really opened my eyes to just how disgusting the habit is to those who don't smoke.  It has also opened my eyes to how smokers are blind to these offenses.

Cigarette smoke stinks.  There is just no way around this and the aroma hangs around a smoker like a fog.  As well, five minutes in proximity with a smoker leaves you with the same odor.  Smokers are immune to this because they are use to the smell.  It's kind of like being in a feedlot....initially the powerful smell of manure knocks you back on your heels, but after a while, your nasal passages get overloaded and don't register the stench anymore.  This phenomenon causes smokers to assume that nobody else can smell their cigarette smoke either, so they happily puff great clouds, usually right in your face. Nice folks who would be mortified if they publicly let loose with a fart that could curl paint give no thought to blowing out toxic pollution from their mouths.

"Do you mind if I smoke?" say the ever polite smoker who doesn't really expect an answer to the question.

"Hell yes!" I reply.

That response usually gets me sneers and grumbles as if I was impinging on their right to stink.   I guess that makes me the one who is an inconsiderate asshole.

Wednesday Cat Blogging

Rehab

This was my first day in cardiac rehabilitation.  It's an exercise center run by the hospital staffed by nurses for heart patients.  The idea is to do cardio to help heal and repair whatever damage you may have with your heart or circulatory system.  They wire you up and monitor you closely....I guess in case you seize up on them or something.  It's a pretty nice place, very modern with lots of state-of-the-art equipment, and it is also populated entirely by older people.

Intimidation factor here?  Zero.

Some of these guys though....really can punch out a workout.

Back to Work

Not really a fun vacation....but the longest I've been off from work for several years.  Pity I had to have a heart attack to take it.  Still, it was nice to goof off and take it easy for a week.  I did peek at emails every once in awhile but managed not to really care about what was going on or feel any desire to respond.

Nice.

I could get use to this.

All the more reason I need to get my ass back to work tomorrow.

Cold Turkey

If you had suggested to me over a week ago that I quit smoking cold turkey, I would have said "no fuggin way".  I was convinced that I couldn't cut myself off suddenly from nicotine without dooming any quit smoking attempts to failure after a matter of hours.  I needed patches, gum, lozenges, e-cigarettes....anything to keep the nicotine going while not actually lighting up and inhaling smoke.

And it's really stupid when you think of it.  I mean, for all other types of addiction the course of action is to stop using the addictive drug.  Alcoholics aren't given an alcohol patch.  Crack addicts aren't given cocaine mints to suck on.  Yet there seems to be an acceptance around nicotine addiction that it is okay to keep taking nicotine while trying to detox from nicotine.

All other addictions have a 12-step program.  I've never put much stock into AA, NA, or whatever Anonymous group ...I mean, don't get me wrong...if it helps somebody I am definitely all in favor of whatever works to get somebody to stop using a harmful drug.  That's the point, when you boil it all down, of 12-step programs; stop using the drug.  So I boiled it down a bit further and just have a 1-step program....stop smoking.  I refused a nicotine patch while in the hospital.  I wanted off the cigs.  I wanted off the nicotine.  I actually used the hospital as a detox.

It worked.  I am nicotine free.  Oh, I still have the cravings and the urges, but I can deal with them and I'm dealing with them with a clean body (relatively speaking).  Cold turkey is really the only true way to quit smoking.

Also good for sandwiches...of which I would kill for one right about now...but that's another post for later.

Long Week

There's an old saying...Life is what happens while you are making other plans.

Boy, is that a truism for me over the past week.  It certainly wasn't in my plans to be diabetic with heart disease.  I didn't exactly plan on giving up nicotine cold turkey.  I didn't really plan on having to watch every morsel of food down to the last carbohydrate.  I absolutely wasn't planning last week to be taking all kinds of medications, checking my blood sugar several times a day, and injecting myself with insulin.  I didn't plan for any of this.

Yet now, one week from last Friday, my life has been completely changed.  In a funny way, it may all be for the better.

Doesn't much feel like it right now though.

Shit Just Got Real.

Isn't that the way things usually go?  Everybody talks about doing this, doing that, not doing whatever....and we talk and talk and talk, but really, where is the pressure to change?  I have the title of this blog of being finally fit after 55.  Yet, here I am, after 55, still not fit.  Probably best to change that title.

It was always sometime in the future.  Someday.  Not today though...got too much to do and reaaaalllly don't want to get into all that effort of changing my lifestyle today.  Maybe this weekend.  Maybe next month.  Before my next birthday for sure!

It was all bullshit.

Oh, I was making small changes here and there.  Losing a bit of weight.  Kind of exercising.  Eating better.  But ignoring the big elephant in the room.  My father developed diabetes.  I knew I was a prime candidate for it, but I had myself in denial.  My father had a heart attack which eventually led to his death.  I also knew I was a prime candidate and also was in fever pitched denial about the possibility of following in Dad's footsteps.

Last Friday though, I started retracing some of those footsteps of Dad.  I had been having chest pains off and on for several days.  Usually they would go away and I would forget about it.  Friday night though, they didn't go away after a few seconds...they go worse.  Now, I may really thrive in the state of denial but even I know the symptoms of a heart attack.  So, with great reluctance, I told my wife who quickly whisked me off to the hospital emergency room.

While getting poked and prodded at the ER, blood was taken and it rang the bell on the super duper sweet side.  Into a hospital bed I went with IV's, insulin, constant monitoring, and scheduled for all kinds of heart tests the next day.  The next day confirmed a problem with my heart and a stent installed.

So the upshot is....diabetes and heart disease.  Neither possibilities any more.  I'm having to make significant life changes in just about everything I do.  No choice.  No choice.

Well....I guess I always had a choice.  I just have to live with the consequences of the ones I made for myself.

Wednesday Cat Blogging

Well Hell...Here I Go Again

I'm up late at night, avoiding going to bed, because I plan to quit smoking tomorrow.  Getting that last cigarette in and mourning the process of yet another attempt in giving up the filthy habit.

I've tried several times.  A couple of attempts have been for several days..even weeks...but I always relapse and quickly return to my pack a day habit.  It's really the one thing keeping me from my goal.  Not diet.  Not exercise.  Smoking is the most damaging thing to my health and life hands down.

Plus, it's costing me a friggin fortune.

Tomorrow is going to suck.  May as well suck it up and face it.  Goodnight.

No Time to Write

Actually....it's more like most of my time is writing, just not on any thing fun.  My day is filled with writing reports, reading other reports and writing responses, letters, memos, policies...I spend hours typing away.  So when I finally get home about the last thing I want to do is sit down and compose more writing.  Skip a day, then another, and another.  Before you know it, weeks have passed without doing a thing.

I think it is like exercise.  You have to set aside the time to do it or it will not get done.

Another Year Older?

Where does the time go?  It seems like only yesterday that I turned 55 and started this particular blog.  Now I've turned 56 and not much has changed.  Still kind of fat.  Still out of shape.  I think I have slowed down the spiral in turning into a blob...but I still have a long way to go.

And 56....man....that age has been bothering me all week.  Jeeze, four more years and I'll turn 60 and, no matter how you look at it, 60 is old!  I'm actually in spitting distance from Social Security.  If I make it to the national average on age, I only have about twenty more years left alive.

Then, I decided to stop worrying about getting older and started looking at age as an accomplishment.  I survived another year.  I'm in better shape physically, mentally, and even financially than a lot of other guys my age.  Let the birthdays come...fuck em.  I can take it.

 I'll keep on this goal of becoming physically fit because it is a REAL challenge.  Any 20 something can be fit.  Doing it after you've abused and neglected your body for over thirty years; that's an accomplishment.  So...away with all this self loathing just because I managed not to die young.  Back on focus.  Back to the plan.  Back in black baby.

Wednesday Cat Blogging

Bleah!

I'll catch up tomorrow.

Wednesday Cat Blogging

Dream On

So....today I begin a fitness challenge as a final push to get where I want to be, physically, by the time my birthday rolls around.  That meant taking the dreaded "before" photos....which I will be kind to everybody and not post them here today.  Instead, I will post my projected "after" photos.....maybe...well....the hair will be about the same color.

Another Notch

It might not seem to some that I'm making much progress in losing weight.  Certainly nothing dramatic like you see promised in so many diet and fitness programs.  Yet, progress is there.  My pants are literally falling off....as in dropping to my ankles unless I constantly hitch them up.  I haven't had much time to shop for new britches lately but the danger of exposing myself has caused me to take a nail to my belt and add another notch.  BTW, my forefinger is on top of the second notch....the one I buckled when I first bought this belt on my 55th birthday last year.

It's Friday! Be Weird.