Fitness Boot Camp: Day One

I got in from my first hour long session of “fitness boot camp” a couple of hours ago. Rather, what would have been an hour long if I didn’t get nauseous and start losing my vision half way in to the class. Apparently that kind of thing happens when you try to go from zero exercise ever to crazy intense hour long workouts in one go. Live and learn. To summarize my first efforts: Embarrassing, but that is to be expected.

I made the decision to go with a friend, which did help in some aspects, but just heightened the embarrassment when I had to quit because I was going blind.

Anyway, I don’t yet wish I was dead. I’ve only been resting for a couple of hours, so my muscles are still in that noodle-like stage where they just stop functioning if I ask too much of them. (Down the stairs? Those leg muscles might just abruptly stop catching you when you hit that next step.) BUT; they are not yet sore. I am actually feeling like I may not have to force myself to go to the next one. It is good for me, after all. (My mantra during this ordeal is “this is good for me.” We’ll see if it sticks.) If you asked me right now how I feel about going to another 11 of these sessions, I would say pretty good. I have a sneaking suspicion that if you ask me the same question tomorrow, I will break down and weep unreservedly.

Chronicles of Camping (In Which I Kick Sand in the Face of Danger)

This year, I found myself thinking that I hadn’t been camping in a very long time, and that I might like to go. Tragically, I had this thought some time in the middle of August, and drastically underestimated the amount of people that enjoy reserving camp sites in the middle of September. I say ‘reserving camp sites’ rather than ‘camping’ because I can only assume, based on the number of reserved sites in the month of September (many) compared to the amount of actual live people at the campground (none), that people are getting their kicks from sitting at home on their computers and making campground reservations for the sheer thrill. As a result, Bryan and I got pigeon-holed into camping at the end of September. (This conveniently coincided with the week of his birthday so that I can pretend that we went camping for his birthday and not feel bad for not doing anything special even though he doesn’t really like camping.)

That is not to say that the camping trip was bad. It wasn’t. It was a great trip and, considering that it took place in the middle of the fall, could hardly have gone better. We were largely prepared for the cold weather, which surprised us by being balmy and beautiful (for September), and we didn’t expect to be able to swim or tan or anything like that, so we weren’t disappointed. The thing that I didn’t take into account was the fact that the last time I was camping I was literally responsible for absolutely nothing. I had no say in, nor responsibility for any of the organizational aspects of the trips. My parents ran the whole show, and I was pretty much completely oblivious as to all the finer details of camping. After hitting this realization like an electric fence, I asked my wonderful mom for some helpful advice. She proceeded to tell me things that I am sure seasoned campers will take for granted as common sense that I had not even begun to think of. For example, freeze things before you go. Don’t just put kind of chilled food in a cooler and expect it to keep. Keep your cooler under the bench of a picnic table so that animals can’t get into it. (That one I found to be particularly ingenious.)

Speaking of animals, since the park that we were able to scrounge up a reservation at was located on a tiny, sandy peninsula in lake Erie, one side of it was nothing but a great big beach, and the other side was nothing but a giant squishy marsh, with a bit of solid land in the middle to set up tents on. (Our campsite was on the beachy side, so the ground cover on the whole site was sand.) As a result there is a distinct lack of wildlife at this park aside from snakes, toads and seagulls, which we saw in abundance. Other than that we encountered approximately two animals. (Approximately.) One was a very tiny black turtle that I rescued from the middle of the deserted road and didn’t think to take a picture of. The other was a furry mammal of some kind that thought it would like whatever was in our garbage bag. (This goes back to another piece of what I suspect is camping common sense: Take out your trash every night. Or at least put it in the trunk.) Bryan and I were sitting around the fire on our second (or maybe third - I really don’t recall) night there, and there was a snuffling sound around the picnic table. I got up to investigate, forgetting that the animals of a provincial park are so acclimatized to humans that just walking near them is not enough to make them go away. I walked over to the picnic table, mostly blind as I didn’t think to bring a light, and thought to myself “What did I think I was going to do about this? I walked over here like I had some kind of purpose, and since my mere presence isn’t enough to scare it away, I guess I have to do something.” Except this whole thought process took place in about 0.4 seconds, so really it was something like “Oh-gawd-it’s-not-leaving-and-I-can’t-see-whatdoIdo?” KICK. My reflexive reaction was to kick sand at the beastie in hopes that it would go away. Immediately following this decision I realized that it was pretty stupid, thinking that it could be an angry porcupine at worst, or a particularly brave raccoon at best. To my great relief, rather than shooting quills at me or jumping on my face and maiming me, the animal trundled off and hid under the car for the next several hours. As it waddled away, I was still almost entirely blind, so I took the opportunity to check the animal out a little. All I could tell was that it was very light in colour, and I didn’t really think anything of it until I reached forward to pick up the garbage bag that it had been rooting through. Then I noticed the smell. I then ran away and hid behind the tent, babbling a little bit. Bryan was suitably confused, and I had to explain to him that “I just kicked sand in a skunk’s face.” He laughed at me and I came out from behind the tent and disposed of the garbage (armed with a lantern this time) and then we sat by the fire some more. So, like most of my stories, the end is a bit anticlimactic: “And then it ran away.” I didn’t get sprayed, and it didn’t come back, and I didn’t chase it down with a stick or anything, but it is the most interesting of my non-mushy camping stories, so there you have it. I kicked sand at a skunk and lived.

The Work Day from Hell

(Note: I’ve decided to use fake names for my coworkers because I am not sure how they feel about me talking about them on the internet. Not that it will really help, but at least I can feel like I am providing some kind of anonymity.)
Today I ran the store for the first time. For eleven and a half hours. From opening, at 9:30, (after getting out at 12:40 AM on my close last night,) to a scheduled 8:00, which turned out to be 9:00 when I finally got out. I had Will there helping me out, but it was still largely my problem to deal with things that came up. It was a Thursday night, so needless to say, it was stupid busy. People like pizza on Thursdays. Something about it being pay day or something. Not only was it ridiculously busy, my first shift as manager, and my seventh shift ever, but I was saddled with the two worst drivers in the store.

The whole day was a bit of a fiasco, but the worst didn’t really start until the dinner rush. My drivers were alternating on boxing pizzas, which is always a bit dicey, because while one of them seems to be able to read the labels, the other just takes the first box and the first pizza and puts them together, regardless of what the label says. Needless to say, disaster ensued. At LEAST two pizzas were switched around and delivered to the wrong places. I only heard from two customers, at any rate. Who knows how many suffered in silence. I shouldn’t let the drivers box, but if they don’t do it we’ll be even slower. One set of people called back and were really good natured about it. We were swamped with deliveries, so they said that they would come out and pick it up, and all was well with that order. Another wronged delivery recipient called, and were much less friendly about the whole ordeal. (You can’t win ‘em all I guess.) At this point I had a lobby full of people, I was the only one on the phones and front counter, Will was buried in pizza orders, and my drivers were both out on unnecessarily long delivery runs. I am pretty sure I sounded like an absolute idiot on the phone with these people, as I had like ten people trying to talk to me at once and I was trying to get advice from Will on what to do for these people. In the end they opted to come pick up their order too, because god knows when my drivers were going to get back in. So they brought back their pizza and talked to Will about the order. I was too busy freaking out and being frazzled to talk to them, and Will seemed to have it under control. He took the old pizza, (though why that was necessary I am not sure,) gave them the fresh one, and all appeared to be well. After another little while of running around like an idiot because I didn’t know how to deal with it being as busy as it was, Will and I noticed that the pizza we had taken back had vanished. One driver had gone home and the other had no idea what happened to it. I just pray that it didn’t get brought out to a customer, but I am seriously worried that it might be the case. I suspect that I will hear about it later, and who knows what will happen, in that case. I know I would fire me, if I were the boss and that is what has happened.

The Most Interesting Part of My Day So Far*

Here I was, being all domestic and cutting up an onion in the kitchen, and this quiet sort of constant hum asserts itself on my awareness. I don’t really notice it for a while, cooking happily and blinking away onion-tears, but then I realize that it is getting louder. My directional hearing has never been very good, so I am not surprised that I can’t really identify where it is coming from. I assume it is a sound from outside somewhere and move on to crushing garlic in a damn poor excuse for a garlic crusher. As I listen to the ambient sounds of the house, I realize that this noise sounds something like a motor. In fact, it sounds remarkably like a small motor boat, skimming over water, complete with the pulsing rhythm as it skids over waves. For almost a whole second, my brain is satisfied with that answer. There must be someone boating. That’s fine.

Wait, what?

There is no body of water within miles of here that could support that kind of boating, never mind within earshot through closed doors. What the hell could it be? Then suddenly… It stops. I shrug and move on with my life, stirring spicy things into my pot of pungent mush. I go into the living room to check up in the internet, when all of a sudden: BANG! - from above me. What the hell was that? Is the woman upstairs throwing furniture? Then comes a terrible sound like the house is going to come crashing down on my head - Have I told my family that I love them lately? I’m about to be crushed by the two upper stories of my house. Should I try and make my peace with god? The bookshelves are shaking, the light fixtures are trembling, the whole building is about to come down, I’m sure. - Oh no, wait. That’s a vacuum cleaner.

          *Aside from my conversation with my most faithful reader, of course.