Life – Page 2 – SuperSonnek

Timing.

Been a rough couple of months! Moving prep. The actual move. After the move. I’m not moving again for a VERY long time.

(I say this, and watch us move in a year)

April turned out to be quite the stressful month. Well, March wasn’t much better. Living apart from your spouse SUCKS.

I had some fun times, though. In April, my team had our meetup in Dublin, Ireland and I spoke at WordCamp San Diego. Here are a few photos of Dublin – not sure why I didn’t take any photos in San Diego!

Tiny Guinness!

Drunk octopus wants to fight!

Then the moving. Oh boy that was fun. And by fun, I mean a nightmare. The three day trip took four due to a really shitty Penske truck. Here are the “highlights”:

Day one.: Portland OR to Coeur d’Alene ID. Husband and I in our car with the cats, my sister driving the Penske truck. Nothing too exciting aside from Pixel having an accident in her kennel. A bit slow going with the truck because it wouldn’t go over 60mph.

Day two.: Coeur d’Alene ID to Miles City MO. After climbing over the mountains in Idaho, in a area of flat terrain, the check engine light in the Penske truck came on. Spent an hour in a gas station parking lot on the phone troubleshooting the issue. Once we got back on the road, it was decided that I needed to drive ahead (and going the speed limit of 80mph) to our already-booked hotel in Miles City so the cats wouldn’t be in the car so long again. I got there around 10pm (after driving through one of the worst rain storms in a long time). The truck with my husband and sister rolled in around 12:30am.

Day three.: Miles City MO to Minneapolis MN. Well, that was the plan anyway. When we were all packed up and ready to depart, the truck wouldn’t start. GREAT.

Waited around for about an hour while the local diesel mechanic got things running again. Headed out later than normal, but since we’d be getting to our new house, I didn’t care how late it would be. Until we stopped to fuel up. When we got back on the road again the truck going up any sort of incline would slow down to a crawl of 35mph. On the interstate. To say this was dangerous was an understatement.

We pulled off in the middle of nowhere North Dakota and called Penske again. Said we should make our way to Bismarck where there was an International garage where they could take a look at it. We made it there around 5pm and thus we spent the night in Bismarck instead of our new house. 😦

Day four?: Bismarck ND to Minneapolis MN. Started off the day with a truck with a freshly flushed out fuel system (which was a lot of the problem) and our optimism of a day with no drama or surprises.

Wrong.

Going down the road for an hour, we needed to fuel up again, get some coffee/water, and take bathroom breaks. Back on the road, the truck started doing the EXACT. SAME. THING.

Pulled off again in a different middle of nowhere North Dakota and called Penske. Again. After troubleshooting, they had two options: they can send a new truck and movers to unpack/pack our stuff into a new truck, or they could just tow us to Minneapolis if we could make it to Jamestown ND. Since we had amazing movers pack our stuff up in Oregon and it would be faster to be towed, we opted for the tow.

We got to Jamestown where we met up with the tow truck driver. He was going to tow us to Fargo ND where we’d swap tow trucks with a second driver – something about crossing state lines or something – and the second driver would tow us the rest of the way. It worked shockingly well. In fact, the tow truck went 75-80MPH the rest of the trip. Fastest that stupid Penske truck went the entire trip. 😐

More photos of the move:

Bye by old townhouse!

My view for most of the damn trip.

I don’t remember where this was.

More scenery that I forgot where it was taken.

Pixel wanted nothing to do with being cooped up in her kennel.

Waiting on Day three for the truck mechanic.

Montana or North Dakota sometime on day three. Snow. >_<

Yes, that is a mug full of wine. After this trip, it was necessary.

We’re mostly unpacked – I still have all my artwork that I need to hang up and a few other little things to organize, but for the most part we’re all settled in! Since this is turning out to be a photo-heavy post, here’s some more photos:

Selfie with the husband.

Pixel and Roxy “snuggling”. Roxy is under the blanket.

African violet loving it’s new home by the kitchen sink.

Pixel on the window seat next to my desk. She loves it.

Roxy on her $4 Ikea pillow. She sleeps on it constantly.

Peonies from my backyard.

Next in my crazy life: going back to CrossFit. That’s for another post, though.

Cleaning House

While I’m excited about moving, it’s giving me a lot of stress.

I miss my husband so much.

I’m freaking out over shit like “is the moving truck we’re renting going to fit in the driveway?”

“I shouldn’t be relaxing – I need to pack!”

“How am I going to do all this by myself?”

Seriously, I was having dreams (nightmares?) about moving.

I’ve also been working on getting my running endurance back up, so I’ve been running every other day, but I can’t seem to get past two miles before I start to hurt.

I’m trying to fill every free moment with “doing something” to prepare for the move. None of those things, however, have involved “being around people.”

I just realized I haven't talked to another person in person for over a week. Not counting cashiers. Oops. pic.twitter.com/nj5Y6euSIS

— Carolyn Sonnek (@carolynsonnek) March 18, 2016

All this stress came at a cost. Every morning, I’d wake up in pain; every muscle in my body hurt and some days were worse than others. Like I was seriously thinking I had some awful disease and that I was doomed to be in pain for the rest of my life.

After the wake up about being a hermit as referenced above, yesterday I finally had to do something. Something to try and take care of me – so I called around to find a place where I could get a massage to see if I could relieve some of this stress and pain.

It was the best thing I’ve done for myself in a long time. I’m sore today, but that’s because I got one hell of a deep tissue massage on my sad, neglected body.

When we lived in MN, I would get a massage every 3-4 weeks. It was great and kept my stress levels down. It also was beneficial to my fitness goals because I was able to run further and push myself harder since my muscles were refreshed and not sore.

It’s been a wake up that I need to take care of myself. To clean my mental house of all the garbage that’s littering about the place. I owe it to myself to be happy and be grateful for the things I do have and not be so full of self-loathing at myself and over all the things I don’t have or are missing.

I’m 43 years old. I’m not sick. I have two strong legs that can lift weights and run. I have two arms that can lift and grasp anything. My lungs breathe easy and my eyes, while needing glasses, can see clearly. I have a sharp mind. I can hear music and I can taste all sorts of food and drink. I have good friends. I have a great family. I have an amazing husband. I may have been though some difficult times in my life, but through it all my body hasn’t given up on me. Now I gotta stop giving up on it.

This healthy body that has seen me through it all is still standing strong and I need to start being grateful and content with that body. I need to stop punishing it for not fitting the “not good enough” mold that I’ve constructed for myself. So I’m throwing that mold away with all the other garbage that’s been in my head that’s been weighing it down.

Time to love the body I have now, not the one I “should” have.

Time to appreciate everything this body can do, not what it “can’t” do.

Time to put myself first so everyone around me will get the best me possible.

Time for me.

Time, Time, Time…and Fitness

I started this post a week ago.

I also started another post nearly three weeks ago.

Did I finish either one of them? Nope.

Why not? Time. You know, like the song…

Time, time, time, see what’s become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities.

Yes, I know Paul Simon wrote the song, but my first experience with it was with The Bangles cover of the song….

Oh my gawd, I so wanted Michael Steele’s hair back then. Curse you for being too chicken to dye your hair red and for being too afraid to ask your parents for a crimping iron!!

Oops, I got a bit off track. Sorry. 😛

What happened to make me feel like I didn’t have enough time? Life. Stress. Feeling like there’s not enough time leftover every day to indulge myself in writing. Feeling like all you can do is put one foot in front of the other just to make it through another day.

It’s exhausting. It sucks.

However, there are things you can do to help mitigate those feelings of worthlessness and anxiety. For some, it’s meditation. Others, doing something with their hands like gardening or knitting makes them feel better and helps them relax.

For me, and I’m sure a lot of you (all three of you that read my nonsense), it’s exercise.

And the past month, it’s been a bit up and down on the fitness front. I’ll just recap with a bulleted list (and in no particular order):

Life stress.
Eating and drinking my feelings.
My mind not being focused resulted in me aggravating my problem shoulder at CrossFit.
The scale not going down and my clothes not fitting again (more on that below).

Regarding my “problem shoulder” – I played as an outfielder in softball from the third grade up through my late 20s and a lot of those years competitively. Throwing my shoulder out wasn’t uncommon, but as a 17 year old, I didn’t have lasting problems with it. Well, not until my 40s, it seems. But if I look back on things, my right shoulder has been weaker than the left for a while and was more prone to soreness/muscle knots when I would start weight training. Since I work exclusively at a computer for my daily job, it was really only a matter of time before I had issues. Now I’m seeing a massage therapist every two weeks and have invested in some lacrosse balls for at-home massage therapy for those times in between. I’ve also slowed down on what I do with my training at CrossFit with regards to any overhead presses/pulls.

Speaking of CrossFit, my box had been ramping up for the two coaches to compete at an invitational somewhere up in Washington and it had felt like (right around the time I aggravated my shoulder) everything was all “push it! do or die!” etc. Very much not the environment that I loved when I first started – not the place where they were all about modifying movements to fit your ability.

My husband had come home from CF one night (I tend to go to an earlier class so I can make dinner) and he was really frustrated because he wasn’t getting them to understand he needed some modifications. He has some major limitations on the mobility of his hand due to some extensive tendon reconstruction surgery over 20 years ago. Certain core CF moves he can’t do because of it. After being told there wasn’t a mod for the move they were doing, he just gave up and came home. He didn’t go back for a while either, which was disconcerting.

I think after the competition was over, after hearing grumblings from others that things were getting too intense, and after a number of people were getting injuries there was an 180 on the attitude of the coaches – which I was so happy to see. Now that my coaches have been more accommodating with our limitations, it’s been slow going getting my shoulder rehabilitated, but it’s getting there.

To the issue of the number on the scale not moving; I know. I shouldn’t take that into account. But it’s frustrating working my ass off and not seeing any results. Yes, I can still put those jeans on that was my first real indication that CrossFit was a good thing for me health and fitness wise, but that goddamn number on the scale is still 10 lbs heavier than when I started and the jeans are starting to get a little snug.

But!

Last week I went to the Saturday class and got to see one of the primary coaches I don’t normally get to see (she works the early mornings and I go after work) and she said to me “you have really have slimmed down since you started – you’re more straight up and down now!”

I was taken aback. I’m 10 lbs heavier! My pants are starting to fit tighter again! She said “well yeah, you’re getting a booty now!”

…

A booty? Me?

Well, that would explain why my pants are starting to fit differently again. I can do a 200# deadlift now and squats are no big thing. Do you know what that means?

In addition to getting a booty, I noticed when I was getting ready for CF yesterday that my armpit fat is starting to disappear! For those of you who are 1) not women and 2) deal with sports bras, armpit fat is the fat near your armpit that gets squished out when you wear a tight sports bra. Just search Google images for “sports bra armpit fat” and you’ll see what I mean. You might ask “why don’t you get a looser sports bra?” Gurl, if you try to run and not wear a compression sports bra, you’re in for a lot of pain.

Back to yesterday; less armpit fat! This is great! It clarified for me that I didn’t gain all this weight in a day, and I’m not going to lose it in a day. I just need to take each day at a time, and over time I’m going to see results.

Just takes time.