"Prettier without your glasses"

Recently I dropped my glasses and scratched up my lenses. No big deal, I've had them for 6ish years now and I have plenty of contacts. Contacts can be sort of annoying when I'm in a hurry to leave the house, which is why I rarely wear them, even though I much prefer them.

I had no idea what a big deal it would be to abandon my glasses. First it was fine. Coffee guy commented in a very factual way, and asked if I like them better than my glasses. No problem there. Four or five people at work walked straight past me without noticing me at all. First I felt like Clark Kent, then I felt like maybe I'm a jerk and they're using this to avoid me. Sigh.

Then a guy who calls me 'lolly legs' when I wear coloured tights said 'HELLO GORGEOUS!' when he saw me. He just blurted it out and stared. Now, I must stress that he's not creepy. He's a non-creepy older dude. He never leers and he doesn't make me feel uncomfortable. So really, when a person you like calls you gorgeous, you take it as a compliment. Then the next day I got an email saying:

I would just like to apologise for my slip up in terms of political correctness yesterday. I hope you didn't take it to seriously because there was nothing meant by it .

I was horrified, and assured him that I was not in any way offended.

What did offend me was the idiot that told me "You look prettier without your glasses."

Mr G thinks he was just trying to compliment me. :-/ I think that I look my best when I'm happy, glasses or no glasses.

500 workout

So that I don't forget, I'm going to start posting some of my sessions with Sam.

When he first said "we're doing the 500 today" I laughed to myself and thought "poor thing means the 300". But no, he meant exactly what he said.

Lunges x 50
Squats x 50
Pushups x 50
Hurdle jumps x 50
Bicep curls x 50
Rows x 50
Shuttle runs x 50
Bridges (one leg) x 25 each leg
Burpees x 50
Tricep dips x 50

There was NO way I could do this as it's written. Sam kindly gave me permission to mix it up a bit if I couldn't do a straight 50. Lunges and squats were easy. Pushups were tough. Got to 20 and fell down. Swapped between hurdle jumps, bicep curls and pushups for the next 130. Rows and shuttle runs were swapped (25, 25, 25, 25), then the bridges were done in one go. The burpees and tricep dips were swapped as well (25, 25, 25, 25).

Brutal but damn effective. I probably wouldn't be busting this out again in a hurry - the soreness today is pretty bad. Why the hell does my ribcage hurt???

Today is a rest day, and tomorrow I'm going to try one of the NF workouts.

How to survive glandular fever

I'd like to publicly announce that I've officially flipped the bird to glandular. Life will go on exactly as before, but I'll cut things out in a very selective way. If I have less energy, then I need to make sure I'm not wasting it doing things I don't want to do.

Yesterday morning Sam came over and we did a 500 workout. That's 50 reps of 10 different exercises. It destroyed me, but in a normal kind of way.Yes, I'm tired all the time. Yes, I'd like to spend my weekend snoozing on the couch. Yes, it took a monumental amount of willpower to get up this morning. But I know the difference between not wanting to do something and not being able to. I'm perfectly able. When I'm not, THEN I'll stay in bed.

Sam peered at me yesterday, frowned and told me that I've lost weight. Not eating will do that to you. I am trying really hard to eat more, but I just don't feel like it. I need some structure to get through this properly.

So here's the plan:

Eating:
I've started measuring out my food in cups so that I don't just pick at my meals. I have to make a real effort to finish the entire plate. It's not a huge amount of food, much less than usual, but it's enough that I wont become a stick figure. You can't possibly get better if you don't fuel your body, and you can't train if you don't have any energy. I've also started thinking about easy-eating food. Stuff you can eat with a spoon or spear with a fork rather than having to carve with a knife. Soups, roast vegetables, salads and fruit.

Exercise:
I'm not giving this up. I'll just have to be really careful.
Yesterday was far too much. I am wiped out. It's going to be a long slog of testing out what is and isn't reasonable. I don't want to slack off and use glandular as an excuse, but at the same time I want to ensure I get better. That means listening to my body when it says 'too tired'. The short 20 minute body weight workouts should be fine. I'd like to keep up with the interval training, and I am really determined to start boxing again. When I exercise it feels like I'm moving through mud. But getting healthy is pretty much my number one priority, and I know that sleep and mood and energy are all tied to how often I work out.

Prioritise:
Thesis, short course, working out, food, family, house renovations, friends, hobbies, drama-makers and work. That's normal life for me. I figure that my energy is cut in half (at best), so I can either do things at half pace or I can cull. I'm not keen on doing a crap job on things, because how can I take pride in what I do if I don't do things well?

• I've dropped out of the short course. It's a blow because I was enjoying it, but realistically, it was unnecessary. I'm going to keep pottering away at the thesis, but I'm going to do a very small word-target every night at home rather than at work.
  
• Drama-makers were the next thing to go. I put up with a lot of people who are passive aggressive and/or refuse to take responsibility for their own lives (work is full of them). I quite like some of these people but I think I need to stop caring. So I'm going to flat out ignore the dreadful ones, and simply say 'no' to the others.
  
• Friends are an easy one. They are like my thesis, non-negotiable. They crack me up and if I'm too tired to hang out I can say so. Besides, even if they tire you out, if you remove the nice things, you're left with glandular and a crap life.

Determined to be better in three months or less. Here's to December.