Alenda Lux

So, inspired by Sara, advice to myself 10 years ago.

In 1999, I was either finishing my freshman year of college or starting my sophomore year.

That guy you broke up with? That’s a great idea. I had this long-term boyfriend that I spent a LOT of time with freshman year of college. I’m not going to say that time was wasted, I was also way more upset about breaking up with him than I should have been. Girl, you are not even yet 20.

In spite of my previous advice, just go ahead and accept that you feel everything on 11. It’s one of the things that I’ve really grasped about myself in the last year, but I am as stubborn as my dad and I FEEL EVERYTHING, well, like I’m permanently set at 11. I don’t think of it as being sensitive, per se, but I have very, very strong feelings and reactions. If I’d realized really what the hell was going on in my head ten years ago, I might just managed myself better, and felt better about it.

When you graduate in 2002, shit will be rough. It will be okay though. Just try to relax more.

You are going to date a string of very strange guys. This is going to be good in a few ways, one of them being, you are going to have a lot of fun. Another of them will be that when you meet the guy you end up with in the end, you will have equipped yourself with enough radar to know you’re making a good decision. Some of these guys will be stinkers and people will judge you not only for nearly always dating someone, but also for having friends with benefits. You already think this, but just to reiterate: Fuck those people. At least one of those FWB guys is going to help you through some rough spots by putting the emphasis on the friend part and understanding that “benefits” in this context don’t always mean sex.

Finally, go dancing more. Make better friends with Ross earlier and just dance.

Today for Father’s Day, Thomas and I went up to Dawsonville to see my parents, and while my relationship with my dad is complicated, this isn’t about my dad. Warning, this is long, and I have no idea why I’m writing about this.

My mom has one sister. I think that A., as I’m going to call her, is four or six years older than my mom, and their relationship has always been tough. Jokingly my mom would tell me how she and her sister used to fight so much, they broke a lot of my grandmother’s antiques from Scotland; how A. hit her in the head with a glass baby bottle; how her pet bird was let loose outside. All pretty standard sister stuff. When I was younger and we lived in Lawrenceville and my aunt’s family lived in Snellville (if you are unfamiliar with Gwinnett County geography, it’s not terribly far), my mom and my aunt used to go shopping, or at least out, every weekend at Gwinnett Place Mall, and we traded holidays – we would do Christmas at our place and Thanksgiving at theirs and vice versa every year. Maybe this is normal, but instead of the tension falling off between them as they got older and had families, it seems to me that things largely stayed the same. I remember my aunt, even when I was 8 or 9, used to do weird shit like show up early and then freak out that my mom and I weren’t ready to go yet. She used to make my mom cry over all kinds of weird stuff, things I don’t even really know the gist of, but given what I *do* know, I assume it was all chock full ‘o nuts, if you will. When we moved away, for example, my aunt accused my mom of moving to “get away from her,” which was pretty absurd – generally speaking, no one moves their entire family 50 miles north just to escape one person. After that we made some effort at the every-other-holiday thing, and mostly stuck with it until my cousin got married, which threw a whole other wrench into the works and is probably another story all on its own, and after that, we just trailed off with it.

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So, I volunteered to do a five-day-cleanse with Amber and we set the date as November 20 to get started. I ordered the kit and cut down on my caffiene leading up to the Big Event. Yesterday I started the day with Future Breakfast, made up of a variety of cleansing herbs and “superfood” and a glass of juice fortified with psyllium husks. I very nearly did not make it through the super silty (and that is the way I’d describe it) juice, but managed to keep it down and made it through getting ready and made it to work, where I drank about a gallon of water. I spent the entire morning with a lowgrade headache, feeling both jittery and tired, which was trippy as shit. If I wanted to feel like that, I could stay up all night and then take a load of caffiene pills. Oy. On top of that weird ass trippy feeling making me super, super cranky, I contantly felt like I was going to hurl. There was this hot, metallic, herbally-tinted taste at the back of my throat and I could not even breathe without tasting it. It tasted like pennies smell. Pennies that have been around a while. It was foul.

Lunch time rolled around and I tried to make peace with Old Silty again, but it was just not happening. Like, definite so much as smell we’re gonna be seeing whatever is left in there, which is not much, but it will still hurt and be gross. At this point, since I could not even deal with what was supposed to be sustaining me through this exercise, I thought perhaps I should consume some calories.

In retrospect, the pills that are in the pack are the molded ones – herbal stuff pressed together under pressure and held together by something that was at some point sticky. Thinking back over my experience with herbal supplements of any particular stripe, I’ve realized that I do much better with the gel-encased ones. Maybe the way the molded ones are done, whatever it is that holds them together, makes me ill. Or, I’m not cut out to do a fast/cleanse that involves herbal supplements.

In either case, I am tipping my hat to Amber, who’s still at it. I am not sure how much actual “cleansing” goes on with these things, but I do think it does make you examine your relationship with food. Even my half day off food was interesting to me intellectually. I could have dealt with it if I were just hungry but the whole constantly tasting really bizarre penny-tinged-vomit just canned it for me. I might look into doing a juice and water fast, but I’ve not decided yet.

I have noticed that I seem to start out a bunch of sentences with “So.” I am not really sure why I do that. It’s annoying, even to me. Anyway.

Today was a busy day. We got up pretty early, in order to have time to eat breakfast and have it not be stupid to meet Ilene for lunch in Roswell before our board meeting. We had oatmeal pancakes, chopped veggies for soup after having let the beans soak the night before, and we did a bunch of laundry. (Note to self: I STILL need to pull all the clothes out of our closet and change things around for winter, rather than living out of bins.) Shower, scrounge around for a sweater, and we were off to Roswell, where we met Ilene, as stated, for lunch. We went to probably my favorite lunch place in Roswell, other than the Fickle Pickle: Magnolia. I nearly always get 1/2 a chicken salad sandwich on wheat with the tomato basil soup. Yum!

After lunch, we had a board meeting for NFDC, which was informal, featured a small amount of recreational vulgarity, and in which we also had no action items, so that was good. Action items are for people who don’t get things done the first time! Not really, but it’s nice to not have a bunch of BIZNISS to deal with, just report in on meetings with Cultural Arts Board people and management of long-term goals (ie, maintaining our current level of activity).

THEN, because we are gluttons for punishment, Thomas and I headed down toward Atlanta to meet my friend Heidi and her husband, Ilya (I think I spelled that correctly), for dinner. We were at Hudson Grille, which was fine, but loud because it was full of football people. None of us are football people. None of us “gets” it. I do find it funny, however, that there are guys in there in full mother-fucking football regalia – jerseys, shoes and shoelaces that coordinate with those jerseys, helmets, rally towels, the whole nine yards (ha!), and I have no doubt that at least 50% if not 80% of those guys would cream a nerd in equivalent Star Wars, Star Trek, or, I don’t know, Pernese garb.

OK, the Pern guy? Would be asking for it. But you get my point.

Anyway, it was loud as shit in there, but we managed to pass a pleasant two hours or so catching up. As two liberals produced from the same conservative, formerly home of the KKK region, she and I need to stick together, dammit.

So we took the cats to the vet this morning. It was, as usual, traumatic. Daeva is perfectly happy to be “going on an adventure” until that adventure ends in a stethoscope, a thermometer up the butt, and a couple shots. Daksha is not into travel, so even getting him in the carrier requires welding gloves and a ninja. So, needless to say, it’s a good thing we like our vet and it’s also never easy to force these guys, who are pets to some people but, and I realize I am anthropomorphizing here and I do not care, who are family to us, to go out to see Ye Olde Rectal Thermometer.
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It wasn’t a total failure, but I’ve been meaning to post about it anyway, because it’s just . . well, very w-t-f, mate. You can see photos from Fail-cation here and here. I’ve tried typing out the whole thing a couple times, and it really just loses something. Hopefully pictures are worth 1,000 words.

So, the final day is done and week four is over.

I’m finished.

I’m fairly amazed that I survived. Monday was a pushup workout, which was, to say the least, tough, and Tuesday we did a road run for (at least) 3 miles. It is not possible enough to voice my displeasure at running that much. I mean, yes, we always run, but I much prefer the run, do a thing, run, do another thing, model to the continuous pounding of the pavement. I’ve also got a great and wonderful case of shin splints so I had to stop after a while and rub down my stupid shins so that I could even go on any more at all. That shit HURTS. It was also disheartening – it was humid and nasty – really it has been for the last week, more than the first three weeks – and the whole exercise just felt like futility. But, I got through it.
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So, week three is over, and we are going into the home stretch. This week on Monday we re-ran our mile to see where we are vis a vis our beginning time. I took two minutes off my mile! I was pretty excited, and I really did jog nearly the whole thing except for a couple times where my left calf cramped up and I needed to walk it off. I am not sure what that injury is about, since I eat at least 1/2 a banana a day and I drink a ton of water. . . I am thinking it is an impact injury, which leads me to Tuesday, which, I have to say, I don’t think I remember. No, wait, I do – everyone was doing exercises to increase power in the hams and quads, but this means a lot of jumping. And I will try anything once but I avoid impact like that on my knee whenever I can – no power-skipping, no lunges, and sure as hell no attempting to recreate the long jump. My instructor, E., knows that I do not do the jumping stuff. So, instead of jumping, I got to do core for the entire workout.

Yeah, my abs STILL hurt.

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Sorry to leave you hanging all week, but it’s been a doozie. So we had Monday off, and I got up in the morning and did my 20 minutes of cardio and did some other exercises for which I did not have to go outside. On Tuesday, we worked out in the field again, and I had a really difficult time with the cardio aspects of the work out – felt not quite as short of breath as I had on Friday, when I completely lost my breathing, but still did not feel good. I felt off the entire work out, and spoke with our instructor afterward, so that I could find out if we were going to be on the field any more that week. I’d developed a lovely rash on my lower shins from the week before out there, and then with the breathing thing, I figured I was actually allergic to that particular grass, or else to something on it, so I wanted to take some allergy meds before we came back out there if that was the case. All things considered, I felt great afterward, even though I was kind of freaked out. (more…)

I was pretty anxious about the work out on Thursday. Our regular instructor (let’s call her “E.”) was not going to be there, and the owner of the company (let’s call her “M.”) was going to come work us out. I’d been told that she was more “hard core” than our regular instructor. For some reason I allowed this to build up in my mind until I was so anxious I couldn’t get to sleep on Wednesday night, and had to have a little chemical assistance in order to do so. (more…)