Getting trapped on the rowing machine ruins the pirate fantasy! (And also, 2016 Resolution!)

Good afternoon and Happy New Year to all!

I kicked off the New Year like everyone else in the world:  I fell asleep on the couch  at 11:30 and woke up 90 minutes later, and then every 90 minutes after that because since my cortisone shot wore off two weeks ago the pain in my right hand from my advanced carpel tunnel syndrome (You thought I was going to say arthritis...well, I found something that kicks arthritis pain right out of my brain...carpel tunnel pain.OH YEAH!) that's how I spend my nights. At first I'd get up and

My hand...except add one more finger in the red and then
use actual flames.

wander around and eat something until the lightening bolt/vise-tightening crush of pain passed, but I've gotten smarter.  Now I get up, do a household chore, climb a couple flights of stairs...and eat something.  My Fit Bit stats look great and my kitchen looks better than it has in a decade.  Of course, eating four times in the middle of the night...not so good for the weight battle.

Which brings to me something that happened at Xperience Fitness this week. See, Hubby and I have made it a point since the week before Thanksgiving to get to the gym every weekday morning.  And we've done it, with the exception of Christmas Eve Day.  So we're pretty proud. I typically like to do a little weight resistance training (I'm trying to out lift the 80 year guy with the yellow head phones..the one who never wipes down his machine and always bangs the weights together.  So far, he still out-lifts me, but I'm getting close!) along with some time on the elliptical, a stationary bike, and the treadmill. I even tried this glider thing that looks like an elliptical without handles.  I'm not saying that machine beat me. I'm just saying it might be awhile before I can get over almost doing the splits on the thing because the stride was so wide and I had very little to hold on to.

Hubby, on the other hand, has had fun trying out a lot of different machines and changes up his workout almost every day.  A few days ago, he came upstairs to where I was riding my "Princess Bike..."

Wait, you don't know what a "Princess Bike" is?  I should explain:  See, there's an upstairs level to Xperience where there's a room full of bikes for spinning classes. Outside this room there is a collection of fairly random exercise machines, and by fairly random I mean there are two bikes, a couple rowing machines, three or four things I haven''t clue what they are, but they look like small stools you kneel on and then pull these seat belt cords back and forth and whip yourself in a sort of semi circle back and forth.  A bit much for my sense of adventure at 6 AM.  BUT, I really like the stationary bikes up there because they overlook the rest of the exercise floor and I can pretend I'm a princess on a horse (I've pretended that since the day I learned to ride a two wheeler.) and I'm riding on a mountain high above my subjects. Hey, don't mock me.  You try sleeping four hours a night and then see what motivates you to get out in the cold and go to the gym.

Anyway, I was on the "Princess Bike" and Hubby came up and sat down on one of the rowing machines.  He looked like he was having fun...so I got off my noble stead.. I mean I got of the bike and sat down on the rowing machine.  This was one of those where you have to strap your feet to the footrests with a canvass strap that's held in place not with a buckle but with one of those buckle looking things that actually have grippy teeth.  Then you sit back on the seat, grab the handles and pull and pull and pull.  Hubby suggested it was like being on the River Thames or on whatever river those Harvard and Yale guys are on when they row crew.

I had a different vision. I was the captain of a pirate ship, rowing to the island where I kept all my lovely gold and rubies and what not piles of treasure. And I would have made it, too, if it weren't for my stupid right hand.  It's hard and by hard I mean really painful, to grip anything early in the morning.  After a night of sleeping in broken 90 minute intervals, my fingers are stiff, swollen, and trying to bend them is awful.  So after two minutes of my pirate fantasy, my right hand felt like it was on fire and the joints and bones in my fingers felt about ready to explode.

Two minutes..that's all that took. Still, it was two minutes and hey, the next time it'll be three and then four. Baby steps. I wasn't upset, but I did need to get off the rowing machine.  I let the handle snap back into its brackets and then I reached down to unbuckle my feet.  However, given  my inability to bend the fingers on my right hand without horrible pain, I was unable to loose the straps on my feet. No matter, I told myself, I'll slip my feet out of the footrests. Nope.  The footrests had a bit of a lip on the bottom, keeping my feet firmly in place.  I was, for all intents and purposes, trapped by the feet on the rowing machine.

I had to wait a couple minutes for the flash of pain to subsided in my hand before I was final able to loose the straps and free myself from the Venus flytrap of exercise equipment.  Getting up I felt more like a rower on a Viking ship rather than a wealthy pirate, although I'm sure the way I smelled wasn't too far off from either.  


Two minutes. Two minutes on the machine and I managed to have two fantasies, get trapped, and smell like a filthy sailor who's been below decks for six months.

So sexy.  Can't wait to see if that two minutes on the rowing machine does anything for my abs. Because if it did, pain in the hand or not, you know I'm getting back on that thing.

So it's New Year's Day and I have my resolutions!

If you recall, last year I resolved to NOT eat at Burger King, McDonald's, Wendy's, or Arby's.  I thought it would change my life and my weight. Turns out, I managed to succeed in this resolution mostly because now that I'm working at home, I don't even drive near one of those places.  But the FRIDGE is always near and it's always open.  Sigh.


Anyway, here are my resolutions for 2016:

1)  I resolve to watch less TV and write more words in my newest novel.

2) I resolve to cook more fish, make more salads, and actually eat both instead of looking at what I've made and then ordering double cheese pizza.

3)  I resolve to stop making fun of female sideline reporters at NFL games.  It's not their fault the weather conditions have turned them into sopping wet, flat haired, red nosed harpies with runny make up. That's not how they started their work day, probably, and I should be more charitable.

4)  I resolve  to continue going to the gym every weekday, to walk more steps outside the gym, and to drink at least 75 ounces of water every day.

5) I resolve to getting my carpal tunnel fixed this year...even though that means learning to do things with my left hand that involve more flexibility than I have.  (I'm currently working on what I call "toilet yoga.")

6)  I resolve to GO to more movies instead of spending whole evenings scanning movies on Netflix and then just bingewatching "Scrubs" for a couple hours.  Going outside the house is good.

7)  I resolve to clean my kitchen floor more than...well more than I did in 2015.  You don't need to know some things about my life.  (Oh sure, she share "Toilet yoga" but she won't tell us how few times she cleaned her kitchen floor.)

8)  I resolve not to buy anymore new clothes until I either drop a size or pay off my Amazon Visa. Whichever comes first.

There you go...2016 is off and running!  Happy New Year to all!