The cereal wars

Lia and I went to a local gym today to check it out, and we're seriously thinking about joining. In general I hate one-year contract places--I've heard of so many people who join something like that and then never go. I mean, I'm one of those people myself. A few years ago on a whim I joined a Curves gym that was close to work. It took me about three days to get completely sick of going around in a circle watching other women smiling inanely at me and not being able to change the machine weights to suit me. Also I was at any given time the youngest person there by about twenty years, and that was disconcerting. But I was stuck with a year contract and I don't even want to think how much money I wasted on that place.

I've always said I'm not much of a Gym person anyway. When I run or walk I prefer to do it while actually moving. I get bored solid by trying to watch TV when I work out, and I hate waiting on machines and all that stuff. But the place we looked at was really nice--two nice warm and cool pools and workout rooms, not to mention free classes. You can see it here: www.baptistmilestone.com One of the best things they offer are warm-water classes for people with arthritis. Lia has lupus, and along with that comes rheumatoid arthritis that flares at times so those would be great. Best of all it seemed really uncrowded around noon today, and since L. and I both work from home we have the opportunity to work out at non-peak times, so we'd have the place more or less to ourselves.

As for eating, I've been just trying to be really sensible in the past few days. I'm eating a lot more vegetables and fruits (though I try not to eat too much fruit--it can make my blood sugar crash a bit) and that seems to be helping. But I have total PMS tonight and L. and I were puttering around the drugstore this evening waiting for my allergy prescription to finish being filled and she suggested we 'splurge' on a box of cereal. Oddly, cereal is one of those foods neither of us can have in the house for long. She's more of a boredom eater than I am (I'm a secret binger *g*) but between the two of us we can completely decimate a box of cereal in a day. Probably less time, if I'm honest. So we got a box and I immediately put half of it into a Ziplock baggie so I could stretch it out over the next few days. It's not even a sugared cereal--Cheerios, actually--and I don't put any sugar on mine, but I can still usually mindlessly eat it. But this week I've decided to have that for breakfast with some fruit and see if I can't get the cereal demon off my back.

Lord, this is such a mind game, isn't it?

In other news, I do have a goal coming up to train/work for. There's Christmas, of course, followed shortly after by my 32nd birthday (shocking). But later in the month Lia will be giving a poetry reading to a HUGE crowd at a national convention. Like, they're expecting 10,000 at the AWP this year. Only about 300 will show up for the reading, but it's still an enormous honor and she's petrified and I'm proud as punch and want to look like a partner to be proud of. I'm not bad looking in general, so if I could get 30 pounds off I think I'd be really happy with that.

Also, I've decided to slow down my 5k plan a little and aim for being able to run that by later this year. There's a group training club for beginning runners that begins early in January for people who want to run the Kentucky Derby half marathon, and I want to train for that.

It feels good to have a plan again.

And hey, sometime during all of this I have to finish my collection of short stories and send them to my editor.

:::panic face:::