I
wish I could say that I am in a much better place this week than I
was last week but alas, that would be untrue. I am still dealing with
all of the same stuff, along with working long hours in an
environment in which people grow more and more on edge each day. I’m
not sleeping very well despite being tired most of the time, and I’m
still fighting off creeping depression. We have locked down our
hospital and are screening every single person who comes through the
two remaining open entrances. After getting home from work on
Saturday, I was on my last nerve and I ranted to Mr. Typist that no
one should be coming to the hospitals right now, we need the
space and resources for sick people, not the worried well, what the
hell are people thinking? “Well what if someone has
testicular cancer?” he asked. “It can wait,” I snapped.
“Testicular cancer is very slow-growing.” That is what working at
a hospital during an outbreak is doing to my mind. I don’t know if
I’m going to have a shred of sanity left by the end of this. (By
the way, I don’t actually know if testicular cancer is slow-growing
or not, so if you think you have it, you should probably go to the
doctor. You have my permission.)
I
have switched my gaming escapism from House Flipper to Stranded Deep,
an old desert-island fave that I dust off every now and then. They
updated it since I last played it and now you can play on “Creative
Mode,” which means you don’t require hardly any food or water and
you’re immune to sunburn and poison. This takes the stressy
survival element out of it and frees one to basically just loaf
around, look at the gorgeous scenery, and tread on jellyfish with
impunity. I’m taking full advantage. It’s quite a beautiful game
what with all of the ocean sounds and tropical fish and gentle rains
that fall at random times. My only ambition at the moment is to build
a little hut so I can sit in it and gaze out at the ocean while the
world burns.
My
cadre of YouTube fitness experts are super-serving their audiences
lately. I’ve been heartened to find that almost all of them have
cranked out home-workout videos in response to the
quarantine. Athlean X (aka Jeff Cavaliar), always the over-achiever,
put out no less than three in the last week alone.
That man is determined. I haven’t watched his
latest one yet, but it’s nine minutes long and is
entitled
“29 Home Exercise Hacks (TOTAL BODY!)” See?
Over-achiever. Nonetheless, I went so far as to leave a thank-you
comment on his channel, because he explained that you can do
Face-Pulls from home if you have a pull-up bar and an exercise
band—which I do! This was very exciting for me, because I missed
the Face-Pulls. They are a great exercise for the triceps and upper
back, which I’m having a hard time figuring out how work
effectively with dumbbells. I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me
that I could just loop the band around the pull-up bar and do pretty
much the same move I did at the gym, just without the weights and
pulley. Oh, also, I don’t call it the Face Pull. “Face Pull”
sounds like a violent wrestling move. I call it the “Forehead
Kiss.” That’s so much more genteel.
Speaking of genteel, I found online an English lady with a high
ponytail who has a 20-minute routine I want to try. I was going to do
it today, but I’ve already cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom
and I’m going to call that my workout for the day. Screw it. I’ll
try High-Ponytail English lady’s routine tomorrow if I don’t end
up checking myself into my own hospital’s psyche ward before then.
I posted this video about two years ago, but I think it’s worth a
re-visit. Nice song, pretty scenery. Enjoy! And take care of
yourselves out there. I’m thinking of all of you and wishing you the
best.
--Kristen McHenry
1 comment:
Excellent post, Kristen, and I find it inspiring, too. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. This is you!
Patrick
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