Training Breakthrough, Petological Clock, Justified Mistrust

After many, many months of doing glut strengthening exercises with a vague sense of existential hopelessness, I finally had a breakthrough in my weight training last week. Drum roll, please...I can now do an unassisted squat! I know that probably sounds ridiculous to most people who have baseline levels of physical conditioning, but for me, it’s huge. I’ve tried the unassisted squat several times before, but my knees would collapse or I would fall forward or otherwise flop around like a marionette. My trainer told me my gluts were weak and showed me how to do glut bridges and clamshells to strengthen them. And I’ve been dutifully glut bridging and clamshelling away for months, all the time wondering if it was doing any good whatsoever. It is! At my session last week, my trainer showed me the unassisted squat again and was super-excited when was able to actually do it this time. Then, as he is wont to do, he waxed poetic about the benefits of squats and how this opens up a whole new realm of possibility for me. He added that as a wrestler, a big part of his training is doing numerous squats and that he went to a Japanese wrestling school once and they had to do five hundred squats...as a warm-up, and that the instructor walked around with a big stick and thwacked you with it if you stopped. I stared at him in horror, then narrowed my eyes. “Do not get any ideas,” I told him. He grinned. “Oh, I won’t. I just want you to know how good you have it.” Smartass.

Ever since seeing that video segment last week with wildlife biologist Forrest Galante, I’ve been feeling mopey about not having any pets. I am still devastated about Buddy and miss him every day, but the truth is that we just can’t have cats in this city any more. All of our cats have been wild, unruly little escape artists and despite our best efforts, they manage to get out, and it’s too dangerous now. There is too much traffic and too many people and too many hazards, and even a very street-smart cat is in peril. After the debacle with the Fire-bellied toads from a few years ago, I don’t think I’m up for any more amphibians, but maybe I could get a goldfish or something. My petological clock is ticking, and I’m going have to do something about it soon. 

I’m sad to say that due to circumstances beyond my control, I am unable to see my boyfriend Jocko Willink at the Moore Theater on Monday after all. But the tickets went to a good home and I’m sure Jocko will make it back to Seattle again one of these days. It is ironic though that the one time I go out on a limb to get tickets to an event and prepare to leave the house for something other than work, my plans get thwarted. One time years ago, I told a therapist that I didn’t buy magazine subscriptions, and he thought that denoted a fundamental lack of trust in the universe. He was right. And there is a reason for that fundamental lack of trust, as proven by the fact that I don’t get to go see a handsome ex-Navy Seal talk about leadership. One day though...one day.

Here’s a little bit of what I’ll be missing at the Moore. Enjoy!

--Kristen McHenry