Playing Catch Up

Well it happened again! Another week went by and I'm really behind on my blogs :/ Despite being a fairly organized and efficient person I still find myself playing catch up in nearly every aspect of my life...except my workouts haha. Thank goodness for small favors...although I'm pretty sure at this point if I didn't get my daily workout in I'd be a handful to deal with! So I'm off to a good start but I'm a little behind pace. And while I learned after doing the Half Marathon last year that it is NOT a good idea to push yourself early on to catch up to the pacers you think you should be following, I don't see any harm in doing it with the blog. haha.

Friday: For most people Fridays are the most beloved day of the week. There is a sense of accomplishment that comes with making it to this day because it speaks to the fact that, for most people, you have accomplished 4 days worth of work and with one more you will have two days of relaxation ahead. Notice how I said most people....I am in fact not most people, unfortunately. Fridays for me are still early morning wake ups, followed by long bus rides to downtown only to sit through a class that pathologizes the demographic in which I work within. Immediately preceding these two and a half hours of misery I have to hop another bus for an hour meeting, only to hope three more buses back to hyde park in which I can finally get in a work out! That point, when I get to get on the machine to do my cardio is my "Friday moment". This Friday was nice though because I was able to do some strength training on the treadmill. I added in my inclines, weights and intervals for a good 45 minutes. Transition into some abs and stretches and then it's off to the pool. I love being in the pool. I've spent the majority of my "younger years" in the pool, and one of my guilty secrets is that I love the smell of chlorine. When I transferred from Elmhurst College to Loyola in 2008 part of me was really upset because I would no longer get the satisfaction of having my pillow smell like chlorine in the morning from being at work at the YMCA the night before. The down side in all of this is how exhausted swimming makes you. By the time you have done your laps, gotten out, showered, taken the bus home and finally get to sit down, and I mean really sit down without having to get up a million times, I'm ready to cash in my chips. To me this is a typical Friday though.

Saturday: Gone are the days that I can sleep in on a Saturday morning. Or get up and watch cartoons. Remember that show, the Weekenders? That was one of my favorites, and honestly, sometimes I still use the phrase "Later Days" like the one blonde boy used to say at the end of every episode....I'm so 90s! Haha. Nope for me it's up and off to the pool to run my swim lesson program. As much as I'm making this sound awful I truly do love it. Imagine being a part of a full circle in swim lessons: When I was little I took these lessons, when I was in high school I taught these lessons and now at this point in my life I am running them. Pretty awesome phenomenon if you ask me :) But it's the kids that get me out of bed each morning. My instructors are great, and I love working with the high school demographic. But the little ones, there are no words for how excited I get to see them...even the ones that make me sit in puddles of water on the deck because they spend the entire 45 minutes crying, boogers running down there face and pleading with me not to make them get in. There's an image if I do say so myself. This week though I was waiting to call for lessons to be over when one of my older kids who was about to jump off the diving board does a HUGE belly flop into the water and legit soaks me from several feet away. I almost died laughing, after making sure he was ok and then complimenting him on his jump. Post swim lessons I am usually exhausted but there is still a small part of me that pushed me into the gym. I know I really should be giving myself a rest day but I have decided that a little cardio everyday isn't a bad thing and I'm not at the point right now where I feel like my body can't handle it. So I hopped on the treadmill and did some another strength based workout, only I didn't really run. I just did inclines and increase/decrease pace with my 5lb wrist weights and two 3lb weights in each hand. Don't kid yourself, I couldn't hold onto those 3lb ones the whole time, I switched off, 1 minute increments on and several off, and I only did 30 minutes of this.

But being me, being used to a 2 and a half hour workout a day, 30 minutes wasn't going to cut it. I opted for another 30 minutes on the bike, just to keep it simple. More so because I also needed to get back home and get ready for dinner with Pete's fam. But you can bet your bottom dollar tat after being up at 4:45, working and working out that I was in bed by 8pm, and it was glorious!

Sunday: One of my favorite sayings: "Messy room, messy brain". This is exactly how I have been feeling for the last week. Our apartment has been needing a good cleaning: the dishes were piling up, the kitchen floor needed to be swept and mopped, the laundry needed to be done....the list goes on! Put it into Polish cleaning lady mode and my morning/early afternoon was filled. I went from the kitchen to the bathroom to the bedroom, no dust bunny even stood a chance. And I always feel so accomplished when I finish a room and I look back and it's practically sparkling from how clean it is....or maybe that's just the soap I was using. It wasn't long after though that I was defeated by both the only washer and dryer in the entire building. I will admit that I MAY have overfilled it just a little....but apparently it was just enough to cause it to not rinse out the water. So there I am pulling shirt after sweatshirt after jeans out of the washer, ringing them out and then throwing them into the dryer. It was only after my hands were ready to fall off from the freezing cold water, that the dryer decided that it was going to just not work. Not only did it eat my quarters but I had to leave my wet clothes in there because guess what? The washer started right at that moment. You're kidding me right? Keeping a positive attitude about this whole situation, I loaded all of these soaking wet clothes into the basket and lugged what felt like the 800 pound thing up three flights of stairs where I immediately dropped it in front of the door and collapsed. Before I became one with my bed I decided there was no better time than now to go to the gym and plow through a workout. A nice hour elliptical followed by some weights was the best form of medicine to cure a broken ego. The only down side was having to work for four hours afterward, and I swear that the craziest people come to the gym on Sunday nights, almost like they know I am working!!!