Progress Report

I'm here to give a summary of the stuff I've been working on.

I said over a month ago that I would be sending at least one hand-written letter per week to some unsuspecting soul. I've done even more than that. For example, I mailed out 3 Shanonymous notes  last week. All the other weeks I've sent 1 or 2. It does the soul some good.

Let's see ... what else did I publicly agree to do?

Oh yes. Start a new personal journal. I've written about 4 entries so far. Sometimes it's tricky knowing where to start, but it's definitely faster than anything I share with others since I'm not sitting there fretting about what to say. It takes me FOREVER to write anything on my blog because I painstakingly pick and choose each word. Unless I'm feeling lazy. I'm just much more relaxed with my dear old diary. It feels more like a free-write, so I guess I lied in my last post when I said I was comfiest talking to my blog. At lease when I write a journal entry I'm not wondering who's going to read it and not leave a comment. =) That's a huge bonus right there.

The other reason I find it easier to fill a journal -- I don't think anybody's going to read it until I croak, and by then I probably (hopefully!) won't care what people think about what I had to say for my busy little existence. The way I write in it is truer to the way I really talk, so it'll be a more accurate account to let my descendants sort through when I'm a goner. Bottom line, I like to sit alone and jot my thoughts as they come without fear of judgment. It's good therapy. So I think I'll keep on keeping a journal.

I thought I'd give an update on my gym-going. Now that I have a membership I feel sort of obligated to go. The good news is, I like it. It makes me feel accomplished. Biggest accomplishment so far: I haven't tripped up the stairs on my way to a class. Yet.
That BODYPUMP (weights) class I mentioned in my aspiration post is now my go-to for a healthy helping of pain. I've attended it at least 10 times. One of the instructors says "2" like this: "teeeew!" Gotta love it.
I'm already starting to resemble Arnold Swarzenegger. Just kidding -- people have long mistaken me for him. Well, until they look at my legs. They still look like chalk sticks, in both color and dimension. I seriously have the whitest legs out of everyone in any of the classes I've attempted. I wanna beef up muh chicken legs one way or another. Of course that won't fix the skin tone issue, but I pretty much refuse to go the way of artificial tanning, so I may resort to slathering brown gravy on my lower legs before class. Not only will it add a pop of color to my pasty skin, I'll have a tasty, warm snack ready for after class. Wouldn't want to waste any of that good gravy.

I tried a cycling class last week. It was pretty tough, but I think it will help in the leg muscle dept., so I'm going to add it to the rotation. I'm aiming to do Bodypump at least 2 times a week and the cycling class whenever it's convenient.
I tried a step class a couple of weeks ago that I will never be stepping foot into again. It was a whole lotta complicated, too-fast maneuvers that really brought out the klutz in me. I spent most of the hour staring at the instructor's crazy feet (trying my best to make sense of her willy-nilly moves) fumbling around the step and cursing under my breath. I felt like I was in a math class.

My neighbor said she heard that success in fitness is 80% what you eat, 20% exercise. Well, that's a piece of cake since I already eat 80% of the food I see. ;)  Seriously, though, I don't know if I believe that. Some health nut must have calculated that.

Last thing for now. I previously mentioned that my late dad's wife had all the family pedigree charts stored in her attic. I emailed my uncle last month to see if he could possibly retrieve those records and make copies of them for us. He said that he now has them all, but hadn't opened the box yet to see what it contained. I was so glad to hear that he has them! That's one step closer to us (theoretically). We'll see how long it takes him to open the box and share the info with me... Maybe another email will give him the nudge he needs.