Intervals are my favorite mood-altering drug

So I still haven't sorted things out vis-a-vis the trainer situation. After the last junior one, cannon-fodder staff at my gym, disappeared as they do, the manager assigned me to someone more qualified, but he turned out to be a crazy lunatic. And quit as well, like two weeks later. He had spent the whole session with me obsessing about how much he hated the manager guy and disagreed with his training methods, and once he left I'd just had enough of the psycho-drama and stopped going altogether. Also, he pushed me so extremely hard that I would reach "failure" on like the second repetition, rather than like the second-last one which is how you're supposed to do it. But then, I was getting results. All my clothes were too big, and I was certainly feeling stronger.

Then the work stuff blew up - I learned about the opportunity for my new position (see posts below) and was trying to lay groundwork for those projects, while still trying to do my current job, get financial stuff and performance review stuff done for end of year and planning stuff in place for next year, and live with everyone's angst about the uncertainty of our futures.

(As it turns out, I heard about my future on Friday of last week, and immediately everyone went on vacation for Thanksgiving week so I haven't had a chance to debrief about any of it with anyone. I did get the job I wanted, but for a whole different set of brands, in a different building, with all different brand managers. So it's like a whole new job for a different company, nearly, and I'm now thinking it will take me 12 months to get established to this degree again and keep working on the stuff I intended to do right away in the new gig.)

The first day of my vacation I sat very still and watched TV all day - slowed my metabolic system way down like a lizard in the freezer. The next day did not much more. Monday had to do a bunch of work stuff, and Tuesday finished work stuff in the morning and then took a huge nap. Was feeling somewhat unwell - achy everywhere, and stomach ache, and like I might be getting a cold. (And old. I keep trying to look in the mirror and smile or turn my head in a particular way, or think maybe I just need to rest more or eat better, but actually the lush youthful look I'm trying to recreate in the mirror is probably not gonna ever come back. The skin is losing elasticity, the eyes have creases around them, the skin is getting that grey cast that I find so revolting when I notice it on men of a certain age, I'm just getting old, and there's nothing a girl can do about it. Rats.)

Anyway, also during this whole period I have been trying to work out what to do about the exercise stuff. I had too many options:

• Go back to the work gym, in the mornings
• Go to the work gym in the evening
• Find another trainer at the work gym
• Ask for another trainer at the other gym
• Go back to the other gym without a trainer, mornings
• Go back to the other gym without a trainer, evenings
• Just use the little gym at my apartment complex, morning or evening
• Try another gym, other trainers, another sport altogether
• Just run on the road or something

Every weekend I would vow that this week I would absolutely get up early on Monday and Wednesday, at least, and just do something, just some regular routine, just to be doing something, but it never worked.

And so this week, after my reptilian weekend of sitting very still and being achy all over, I was starting to feel truly bad from not exercising properly for so long. Because the last guy was sooo intense, too, it was like bingeing - from ultra-fit, ultra-pushing-myself, rapid-results, to puffed out, weak, sore discouraged sloth. Time for action.

Finally, today, Wednesday of my week off, I got myself to my old gym. There wasn't anyone there I recognized except the sales guy - tells you something, doesn't it, he's successful, it's just that what he's selling is completely unstable and imaginary - and I did a circuit of basic weight machines, but then I did the magic thing that has made everything okay again.

Intervals!

I get on the treadmill and set it to 80 seconds of 3mph and 80 seconds of 5mph (for which I have to run), for 20 minutes. I heard from one of those trainers along the way that this is the best way to burn calories, because you keep burning them for a while after you stop. I made it through my whole 20 minutes - red in the race, breathing hard on the last one, but legs felt strong and I felt really good that I was pushing through and accomplishing something challenging.

The feeling lasted all day when I was out shopping, and is still kind of with me now, although I did fade with tiredness at about 3pm and had to rest at a Starbucks, and now I'm still achy and still have creases and circles (I don't think there's enough resting in the world to rest from the work stuff that's been going on, so I will just have to run resting, for the next few months).

Aerobic exercise is one of the most powerful mood-altering drugs that there is. I hope the optimism that today's long-overdue trip to the gym has instilled will remind me to keep doing it, and get over the block I've had.

Non-sad tears

It's been an emotional few weeks, there's no doubt about it.

• I passed my one-year mark in Appleton, and as if by magic suddenly felt more grounded and on top of the basics and ready to start building on my solid foundation. Something about experiences passing around the second time - pumpkins, the first snow, the lake freezing, the end-of-year financial forecast meeting, multi-raters being due - it makes you feel more committed to and in control of everything.
• Barack Obama was actually elected president.
• I was confronted by the prospect of a new job with a great deal more responsibility, at a more senior level.
• My guitar playing is getting better. In conjunction with:
• I went to a gig by my guitar teacher's band and suddenly had the experience of being a scholar rather than a fan, which is a transformative experience in my relationship with rock and roll generally, and feels like another kind of ascension.
• This morning I watched my DVD of The Devil Wears Prada, which I still find a completely inspirational coming-of-age story about a woman at work.
• And I've been watching too much What Not To Wear and Say Yes To The Dress (about wedding-dress shopping) on the TLC channel on cable.
  

All of these events are associated with a particular kind of crying.

For so many years all my crying was about the shock of abandonment and grief and loss. I just got used to the fact that all tears that might come up in times of relaxing defenses and emotional vulnerability were those tears. And even during Year 1 year, all guard-letting-down tears were from the grief and culture shock of leaving Sydney.

But these are different. You saw them, on the coverage of the people in Grant Park on election night, immediately bursting forth the second the polls closed in California and CNN flashed on a giant screen, "CNN Projection: Barack Obama elected president," and then flowing on and on as he gave his calm and majestic acceptance speech. He was fine, he had been visualizing this moment for years, and also he knew deep inside that it was only the beginning of the very hard work of leading the nation and turning history around to get back on the path of right. But all of us, we just cried.

They're very particular tears - tears of being moved, tears of happiness and joy but something more. Tears of - I don't believe this amazing and good thing is actually happening. Tears of relief and hope? Tears of being moved by beauty? Beauty of the soul, the experience, the grand human sweep of existence that can have such deep meaningfulishness and love and whatever. How to describe it? I've been trying to work out how to really describe the thing that leads to this kind of tears.

For me, they are coming up most from guitar stuff. I was at the gig, it was the second set, I was bopping along with the crowd, lots of good-time Wisconsin girls out at a bar on a Friday night getting in the groove with a great and competent band. It was no problem I was there by myself - I was there with my teacher but also there with the whole industry and discipline and art form of rock and roll. I was there as a scholar. (It wasn't my first gig as a scholar, I also went to Octoberfest in downtown Appleton and was similarly examining all the guitars and how everyone's hands were moving, but I was so new at it then that it wasn't quite the same.) In the peaceful place I found in the midst of all that dark and noise and movement, I was working through a bunch of things in my mind. I felt a new committment and a new, more mature relationship with rock and roll, after all these many years of having strong and exciting other relationships with it - fan, collector, college radio dj, rock journalist. My mind thought, where is this going to take me? And my mind answered back, I don't know.

And that one thought brought on Obama-election-night type of emotions in me, and I nearly stood and wept with tears running down my smiling face. I was moved by the show. "Moved" is the only word I can think of for that weird emotion of pain but relief and hope and beauty and whatever.

I'm glad I have next week off - I can just sit around at home watching movies and listening to guitar songs that I want to learn how to play and make myself cry.

p.s. on the crushee

Remember last week when I was wondering if I should send a Facebook friend request to someone I had an embarassing crush on in college?

I decided to do the grown-up thing and just sent the friend request. But he never accepted.

So. Thanks for the advice though.

post-party blues

Last night was so outstandingly fun that today couldn't help but be a letdown, but I'm still carrying the golden glow of the gig with me inside. And I didn't need to have too much fun today because tomorrow I'm going to my first Green Bay Packers game, with a group of people from work. It will have the advantage that, unlike at the rock show, I won't be watching all the performers and wishing I could be where they were, doing what they are doing. And should be fun hanging out of the work folks outside of work.

Today, all inspired, I decided to practice guitar, and all the things I used to be able to do were awkward and hard and not coming out right. It made me feel like a two-year-old probably feels - I have all these things inside me that I want to express, but I'm not fluent enough in the language to be able to get them out. Wish there was a baby-sign-language equivalent for playing a Fender. Actually, there probably is - I think it's called "Guitar Hero III".

The only cure for lack of experience is more experience. So I'm going to try some more blues patterns, and get the songs under my fingers more effectively, and have a quiet night in, in anticipation of the football game tomorrow.

Going to a show with somebody

Some of the best evenings I had during my last few years in Sydney where when my dear neighbors would score some free tickets to the Woodfire Pizza Restaurant in Double Bay. It was a strange hole-in-the-wall joint with pizza out front, but then a curtained off area with a little stage where they would hold shows that were usually really good. And we never ate pizza, the back side of the menu was a full, page-long, densely typed in small font list of outstanding Hungarian food. I always got the goulash that was a little spicier, with dumplings (nearly unmistakable from gnocchi) and a cucumber and sour cream salad on the side.

We saw some great shows. The first one was Monica Trappaga, who is better known for being a children's TV host, but on this night she was launching her new album of 1930's swing numbers and torch songs. Another really good one was Simon Tedeschi, reknowned classical pianist and the subject of an Archibald-Prize-winning portrait that made the most of his youthful face and intense blue eyes, but on this night he was sitting in with some well-known jazz players and realizing his second passion of playing jazz piano.

The meals were great, the shows were great, and I love my neighbors who used to invite me, but every time, especially at the point I got most transported by the music, I wished I had someone there with me. My heart would go out to whoever I had a crush on at the time and I'd imagine them there with me, being similarly moved by the music and the experience. I never imagined my ex there because this tradition started after he left me, so I didn't miss having him with me, only some new person. It became sort of a mental litmus test - any new boyfriend who was going to hang around with me - to get to the point where we were a social unit - would have to love these nights as much as I did.

Fast forward to Appleton. Last night I went to see my guitar teacher's band play at a big barn-like place called the Rodeo Bar, out Country Road II in the middle of nowhere. I had emailed a work colleague who I once went to another concert with to see if he wanted to come along, but never heard back from him, so this gave the convenient cover that I was waiting for a friend to join me and not that I was some pathetic groupie there by myself. But I wasn't there by myself - I am now not just a music fan, I am a guitar student. I talked to my teacher before the show, after the show, and in the break when he took me up on stage and showed me all their gear and his effects pedals (explained to me the history of all the effects pedals - he's pretty encyclopedic really). During the show I stayed up front, not right at the stage but about two or three bodies back (most of the bodies were Wisconsin girls who are not afraid to dance in public, or a guy Eric whose birthday it was, who was drunk enough that he wasn't afraid either). But I was transfixed on the guitars. I tried to watch their hands as much as I could, to catch them doing things that I know how to do. And there was hardly a favorite song of mine that wasn't in their set list.

I stayed for two sets, until 1:00 in the morning. I was transported by the music in the same way I used to be at the Woodfire Pizza place - more so, because I could dance and so lose myself in the songs more, and have the experience of being part of a crowd having a good time at the front of a stage. I was there with my guitar teacher. And sort of also with my whole history of my relationship to rock and roll - fan, collector, college radio DJ, amateur rock journalist. My new realationship to rock and roll is apprentice. And my future relationship to rock and roll is I hope as a craftswoman. I didn't feel any of that incompleteness or longing that I used to at the Woodfire Pizza place. I was at a show with somebody.

Facebook secrets

You know how on the Facebook homepage it suggests people you might know and might want to become Facebook Friends with? Someone from my past just showed up there - someone I had a crush on in college and pretty much made a fool of myself over. He was in Honors English with me, and was very charming, and had cool friends, and so I starting making invitations. There was a group that year who called themselves The Steering Committee and would hold formal parties that were for all of us Independents, who weren't associated with a fraternity. The frats had semi-formals all the time, so it was great that we had a chance to as well, with all the cool Honors people who we liked to hang out with.

So I invited this boy to one of the dances, and he accepted which amazed me. I wrote home and had my sister mail me a fancy black cocktail dress, I think it was actually hers and she loaned it to me for the evening. The boy came by my room to pick me up, and we went to the VI for a drink first. Then we went to the dance and all the girls who were sort of more in his inner circle were being a bit proprietary, fixing his tie and that kind of thing. I was nervous, and I think it was champagne we were drinking, and you know, I was only like 20, 21, and so I didn't really have a fine virtuosic handle on how much I could drink. I overdid. And back then when I overdid I would usually cry, hysterically and for prolonged periods. Many a poor boy had to deal with the weeping mess of me at the ends of nights like this, and this night I really didn't want that to happen. Drunk and reeling a bit, starting to lose my visual focus, I detached myself from my charming date and his closer friends, went to the periphery and found what I thought was someone safe. Another philosophy major, in my Wittgenstein seminar, a year behind me, and I knew for a fact he intended to become a Catholic priest after graduation. Nice boy. I kind of leaned on him, and averted a messy scene in front of my date, but what happened was I ended up leaving with the safe, kindly Catholic one, and went back to my room, where lo, the kindly Catholic future priest philosophy major professed his own deep lust for me. So, you know, I think I sort of kissed him or whatever, but dear me, the next day I realized what I had done.

Took a while to get rid of the Catholic one and convince him I just wanted to be friends, but I never did get a second chance with the poor jilted charming boy who was my date. I invited him to lunch, I invited him to dinner, I asked him to movies that were showing on campus. I did embarassing, humiliating things like slip notes under his dorm room door saying, "This coupon: GOOD FOR ONE dinner with Ellen!" Oh, my god, I cringe to think of it now. He was very polite. "No thank you," was always the answer. But that incident left me with my first big Regret, and I will carry it to my grave. They say you should live your life without regrets, but I deeply regret ditching J. at the dance and going home with Catholic boy (whose name I have repressed).

But, in the way of Facebook, guess who showed up as someone I might know, just tonight? Charming J. So, do I friend him? Or should I take the hint, from way back 20-some years ago, and just leave him alone?

***

p.s. I actually wrote to another crush who's also a FB friend (and who I know is reading this) and asked his advice, and that made me wonder just how many ghosts from my past are actually on there. (friend might want to stop reading at this point). Among my 114 friends are 12 boys I had crushes on, the one girl ever had a crush on, my First Kiss, my Second Kiss, my Prom Date (who is also my First Kiss), but only one guy I ever actually slept with. Facebook is very strange the way these people come back into your life, but I can't say I mind it, exactly. And I wonder if any among them are boys that ever had a crush on me?

Pre-winter

Most of the leaves are off the trees now, so where there was orange and red and glowing yellow there are the grey stands of the bare branches that are with us for most of the year.

When I leave work in the morning, if the day going to be nice, the sky is all baby blues and pinks. The field across the road is still arranged in lovely stripes, but now they are soft and muted colors, and very early in the morning they're frosted in white. (frosted in...frost. What a poet I can be sometimes, hey?).

Except this morning it was raining, and so it stayed dark all day. Out that window that you can always see out of on my floor, the guy next to Craig who works in some different department so I don't know his name who keeps his door open so you can see out through his office, the sky was dark grey and the trees were black against it and at noon it didn't even look like daytime. Outside the rain was falling in drops but leaving a surround of mist, and the streets were black and slick as running oil, and I kept pulling out in front of people too fast when I was driving, forgetting that everything is different now it's cold, and Wisconsin people should turn overnight from aggressive, reckless hoons to sensible precise and human bearers of responsibility.

***

The other night I dreamt I had a baby girl. She was lovely, pink skin and a little round face and quite a bit of hair, although not long, and just my color. I held her on my hip. I was going around, maybe it was work or shopping? I showed her to people and bragged that she was only born yesterday, and look. She held a book in her hands, and she could talk and say fairly big words. She was very still, and she was very good. I think I even told people that, "She's a very good baby." My heart overflowed with love and pride. I named her - it occurred to me that it was strange that I'd forgotten to name her until her second day, but the name just came to me and I knew it was hers - Emma. She had a pink dress on. She sat very still and concentrated, and was very beautiful and good and just fit on my hip while I went around. Another woman was there - someone I know at work who's a single Mom and regales me with endless stories about her daughter. I felt a real connection - I had a daughter now too. I think I was hoping she would help me. Then we were about to leave, to go someplace, we were getting coats on and getting ready to get in the car. And Emma was suddenly hungry. She was moving, she was agitated. I think she might have grabbed for the breast of my friend, the way babies can do, primitive and not knowing. I thought, "Well, baby, no, you do what we do, and we're not eating now, we're going - you can eat later when we're there." I had her in my arms, but she thrashed her body over away from me, and I marvelled at her strength, and thought, oh, maybe this won't be so easy after all.

It was one of those dreams where the feeling stayed with me all day.