Inertia: the tendency of a body at rest to become a blob

Thus ends the sixth week in a row in which I haven't worked out - as in "with an eye towards fitness" worked out. I had lots of good reasons to stop for a bit - very bad back issues, house renovations, etc. - but suddenly no reason to start again seems good enough. I don't think I've gone this long without working out since I was 15.

Be it resolved: starting Monday, that good-looking new set of bleachers on campus is my new jungle gym.

Two people, two cats, one household

Life has taken its latest happy twist: my sweetie and I decided to meld households, so he and his cat - the formerly feral and fearlessly orange Mademoiselle Zoey - have moved in with me and the graceful grey but no-longer genial Oliver. I think it's going to be pretty smooth sailing once all the boxes are gone and the cats have decided their hierarchy. Although, right now, I would lay odds we will find a place in this small house for all 265 of S's coats before the fur stops flying. I know that animals have ways of figuring these things out, I just don't know if an 18 year-old deaf cat who's had the run of this house and a 1 year-old high energy cat who has only lived indoors for seven months are playing by the same set of rules.

But this I do know (and it's something I never doubted): having S here is a really good thing. It has to be said: I am a handy woman to have around. In the four years since buying this house I have taught myself to change electrical switches and outlets, installed a sink and a toilet, learned to love nail guns and miter saws, dug up and moved nearly a ton of sand (seriously!) one wheelbarrow at a time, designed and built a walk-in closet, and painted nearly every room in the house. Still, he moves in and within a week - bada bing!

The lawn is mowed (something that has always waited until everything else was done).

The garage is cleaned and organized for the first time since I moved in.

The garden bed near the garage that I have been fighting with for four years is cleaned out of all the miserable rose roots and daylily roots I couldn't conquer.

Even better: I get to see the face I love the most in the world every day (and cute as it is, I'm not talking about the one above!).

It Was All Worth It

There are some things - laws of nature, if you will - we know to be true even if we can't prove them. Little ones like: if you carry an umbrella with you, it won't rain. Or: a watched pot won't boil. And big ones like: the only wasted love is the love that we keep to ourselves. Certainly I don't apply that last law willy-nilly but to me, giving from the heart just never feels wrong, whether it takes the form of a somehow-still-new love for my sweetie, the tried-and-true love of being an involved sister, friend and daughter, or the necessarily constrained love proferred while coaching. The corollary I accept going in is that love is to be given without guarantee that it will be reciprocated the way I want or any way at all. Nearly always I'm paid back a thousandfold, sometimes not, but it rarely seems a bad investment anyway.

The very hardest thing about coaching at the college where I work was that most of the students who populate the program are either undisciplined athletes or non-athletes. Great kids, to be sure, but by and large not athletes. I worked so hard not only at teaching them how to row but also at imparting the joy that can be found in training our bodies, how to think about sport, and the thrill of competing to win. And while I know I taught them how to row, I've never believed I got much farther than that.

After I resigned as their coach, I emailed my athletes hoping they would respect my decision and not hold against me the fact that I quit in the middle of the year, but not much more than that. What happened was so unexpected and so gratifying, it took my breath away: more than one of my rowers (and one former rower) has emailed me to tell me I taught them "what it means to be an athlete"(emphasis mine).

Learning this from them has absolutely blown me away. I can think of no higher compliment nor any greater return on the love that flowed from me to them all these years.

Monogamy is overrated

An old love has come back into my life and, frankly, it's got me re-thinking my whole approach. It's volleyball. It's bad volleyball and I have to run the games while I play the one night we get together at my local Y (which means I kind of have to hold back that killer instinct), but it's still volleyball - the great sport love of my life that came along after my great love for tennis but before my great love for rowing. Basically, I'm a serial monogamist.

Okay, I've lectured and been lectured to about the value of adding other activities to the mix but have I listened? Um...sort of. I always lift weights no matter what sport I'm playing, so that is technically cross-training but in spirit only, because I can go years - years! - alternating between weightlifting and the one sport I am in love with at the time. And this last year, because life intruded, I've been limited pretty much to fitness classes. Actually the same class, three times a week, the same three days of the week. It's too repetitive and I think my body has finally rebelled (as in I now have bursitis and a couple other chronic aches and pains).

I've wanted to add another activity for the last couple of years but yoga (the only other thing I can find regularly) just doesn't hold my attention for long. And I did, in fact, dabble with cycling briefly and then had a technical glitch (about which see my entry on 9/27), but other opportunities have been limited in my area until now. Anyway - and to the point of the title above - doing something else with my body in addition to the same old-same old feels good. It seems to have the lasting effect of actually make me feel, well, bouncier. So here's my new plan: committed polygamy (aka cross training!).

Sometimes you've got to change the rules

Well, I have completely changed the rules by which I will be playing at life...for now anyway: I've quit my coaching job at school. It really was time. Regardless of whether or not I had given it my best effort (and I did), the fact, is my heart was no longer in it. And, for me at least, if you cannot coach (or compete) with heart, you shouldn't be doing it. Come to think of it, that probably applies to pretty much everything in life. I'm not ruling out doing some freelance coaching here and there, so the coach moniker stays in my profile, but the regular gig is done. Free at last, free at last...!

At any rate, the plan is to use the gobs of time that have now opened up in my year to get back in racing shape (and race!), blog more and garden my heart out.

Me

Okay, well obviously not me, but what she looks like is how I am feeling after closing in on five straight days of actually managing to get to the gym and work out hard. And this after having a pretty damn good week last week too (workout-wise, that is). What's coolest? I feel good. I mean, normally after two weeks like this, my back hurts, my hip hurts and my neck hurts. But not this time. I cannot figure out what I am doing right or how to keep it going but I am not backing off until I have to.

Play: Builds Strong Bones...and Brains.

Life is not all play. As adults we know and accept this, even while we recognize its importance in balancing out our stressful lives. I'm having a good time (when I'm not flat out exhausted from working, coaching, trying to stay fit and trying to be a good sister and friend) reading the book "Play" by Stuart Brown and will comment on it at some point. But, in the meantime, I'm intrigued that yet another article appeared in the New York Times regarding play and its important role in child development. Find the article here.