I have to say that yesterday’s dancing has led to an interesting… series of events.
First, it’s been awhile since I have gone bananas like that.
I can say that if you want an experience in torture, start a Plank workout. I did this last week. Well before the dancing. I thought, 3 minutes a day? Cool. I can do this. There’s no jumping so I won’t put any vertebrae out like when I started Tae-Bo. It’s not quite yoga, which I needed a break from. It’s not belly-dancing. Which I do find fun. No. I was looking for something I could just do for a few minutes, like jumping on the stationary bike, but would be for the whole body.
I read through the reviews. I read that half the time, you wind up resting. I thought- how hard can this be?
Ha.
I have decided that I will at least attempt 1 plank workout a day. The rest will be the remainder of a routine I had started a long time ago and wound up having to leave behind for work because it took too long.
In the middle of the first workout, I was shaking. Hard. Breathing. Hard. Actually panting as though I had been on a treadmill for several minutes.
You would think that, after this being so fresh in my mind, as I went, in three days, from 2 completed and 1 attempted, to one attempted Plank a day, that I would have remembered that level of pain. I did not.
I woke in the middle of the night, with my feet crying out- WHAT DID YOU DO? And that was the least of it.
I was still exhausted when I woke this morning. I won’t explain to what, as any pet owner would understand. But it became *perfectly* clear that I needed to wash every ounce of bedding I have.
This would be an all day project. Which will be a topic on another Smashed Potatoes.
I did feel good, though. Inside. I decided to play with the cookbooks I got out of the library in between shoving things out of the washer and dryer.
I’ve talked and told stories about this for years. That Mom, when I was little, would pick a country out of the atlas and we would make a recipe from that country. I have attempted to do this on my own over the course of my adult life.
(Feel free to roll your eyes here.)
I wound up having to give that up, for the most part, because my ex could eat chicken and green beans three times a day for a month. He did not like “alternate foods.” Just as our relationship ended, after 17 years, he decided to start getting into exploring. I can’t tell you how bitter I am with the comments he made, after all the fighting and feeling oppressed I went through.
It’s been five years since then. I have tried, many, many times, to get back to that happiness I used to feel. “Just start,” I used to tell myself. Each time, I would have a day of happiness and then… blah.
Today, it took. I decided to make something. Just… make… something. Even though my body was basically giving me the finger.
Oh, what a disaster! LOL. I have been laughing all afternoon. I decided to make rye pasta. My first attempt at making pasta. Without a pasta maker. And something that isn’t even the “norm.” But this is me. In with both feet. No clue. No safety net.
What came out was not pasta. It cooked. But I can’t call that pasta. Nor a dumpling. I had the best time. I didn’t have the right flour, so I substituted buckwheat instead of all-purpose, on top of the rye. My rolling pin has disappeared completely. I think I had to throw it out and forgot that I did and needed a new one. I wound up using a thick glass jar. The dough was too dry. But that’s okay.
My sister had come over. She was so happy to hear the enthusiasm in my voice, that I finally felt the urge to DO, not just weep about what I had lost and given up. We chewed through what she said looked like dried out strips of liver (which she would never eat) covered in pesto and hamburger crumbles. She would eat it again. Maybe not in her top 100 to repeat, but she’d eat it again. If the pasta was rolled thinner.
In the process of this, we played a word game. She could not remember the word “badminton,” and was thwapping her hand around in the air, as though hitting a shuttlecock.
We wound up giggling very hard. All because of the fake pasta.
I love this. This is the gift my Mom gave me. Us. My sister and I. A sense of adventure and fun.
My feet hurt and my gut feels like it’s full of rocks. But it’s a sparkly day, after all.