Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Try, try again

A Grumble About Exercising at Midlife

I don't know why I've felt unwilling to the point of feeling almost unable to get back to exercising…
I've been a little low this winter, so that's part of it. Also, at midlife, I feel like I should get to stop now.

(I've also thought, How many more times must I brush my teeth before I am rid of this troublesome task?)

But, of course, at midlife, now movement matters more.

I never liked exercise for its own sake, but if I don't do it, I don't do it for any other sake either, and I've more than amply proved to myself that continually not exercising gets results. 
Those unfortunate results help motivate me to try, try again to get back to the gym.
At any rate, I'm going this morning, whether I want to or not. 

I don't want to. I'd rather stay home with my pile of fandom books:


But, another movitation:
I'm going up to Duluth next week, and I was horrified to realize that I feel a little uncertain about hiking the 5 miles trail near the place I'll be staying.

Will my old knees hurt? 
Will I run out of steam?
Five measly miles! 

(Five miles hiking in the woods isn't exactly measly; 
but I never would have worried like this before.)

Also, I turn fifty-five in a couple weeks.

Last week, I went to see Lady in the Van (it's overdone in the way you'd expect of a slight, subtle play turned into a movie, but it's OK), and there's a great and true line in it:
neighbors are hoping the crazy old lady (Maggie Smith) who is living, seemingly permanently, in their street in her filthy hovel of a van will die off quickly.

And someone says, "That's not how it works; going downhill is an uphill battle."

Grumble, grumble.
Too true. If I could descend downhill gracefully, in a genteel manner, that might be OK... 


But no. 
Aging... it's more like... more like Columbo falling down a hill---here at 1:05--"It's the quickest way down":

Mz has been watching Columbo, to my relief, because I couldn't watch one more episode of Starsky & Hutch, it is so disgustingly sexist. And yet watching and discussing old TV shows together is a pleasure. 
So I'm glad she's moved on to one I enjoy. 

I do love Starsky and Hutch and their "partnership"--its unusual closeness noted even at the time:

but the show was giving me near–PTSD flashbacks of being a teenage girl in the 1970s---it was awful!
The women in the show are so stupid, they seem brain damaged (really), and they're so physically feeble and helpless, murderers (men) just walk up to them and snap their necks. 
Maybe they only have the strength to scream and flop over because they're all so matchstick thin, they obviously don't eat. 
I'd forgotten how culturally normal this all was, feminism notwithstanding.

I told bink about it, and she recommended Walking Dead for strong, fearless women. I watched several episodes---(it's research into fandom, too). 

The show's too much of a soap opera for me, with not enough post-apocalyptic social/political discourse---but, hm---maybe it did help inspire me too. 

The best story arc belongs to the character Carol:
she starts out at a depressed, passive, battered wife and morphs into a real bad-ass.

 
Carol (Melissa McBride), right, with another great character, Daryl (Norman Reedus).

Look! Gray hair!

Gotta keep those muscles strong to ride out our "extinction event", 
as a scientist in the show calls the zombie apocalypse.

9 comments:

Zhoen said...

Peter Falk, hidden athlete.

So hard to keep moving, when moving has so often resulted in injury and therefore less movement. Tricky, that.

gz said...

just be careful what goes on your feet, start short and build up interest and fitness. go for a wander and look what other people are doing with their gardens....

ArtSparker said...

Take water with you. At least the full moon is past (re apocalypse - I'm enjoying the French series The Returned" in which there is little ass kicking, it needs a Buffy.)

Re watching old TV series, it is pretty funny too watch the resolute almost feminism of the era (We trust a woman to answer the phone! Reyna deserves to choose her male protector herself because she is freeeee!) against the apparent necessity to provide James T. with adoring and passive new females for each episode.

Fresca said...

ZHOEN: I have been surprised to see Columbo run---but I guess Falk was only about 40? And the character is always pretending to be more feeble in every way, by far, than he really is. (As I assume you know.)

As for me, it's not fear of injury that stops me, it's pure and simple laziness (or inertia, to put it kindly.)

GZ: Hi! Thanks for your supportive comment.
Yes, indeed---it's all about the feet.
The things with gardens, though, is here in the northland, we are still frozen solid for a couple more months! But a wander, yes, that sounds lovely.

ARTSPARKER: You know what? I stupidly didn't take water with me last time I went hiking in Duluth---so that's a good point---maybe why that hike seemed harder than it should have been. Ditto, snacks.

You know, Star Trek is uneven, but it is waaaay more feminist than later shows such as the execrable characters on Starsky & Hutch.
There's a great scene, for instance, when a visitor from Earth's past ("Tomorrow Is Yesterday") notes with surprise a woman working on the Enterprise:
"A woman?"

And Kirk responds [in that smirky way of his], "A crew member."

ArtSparker said...

Okay, will continue not watching Starsky and Hutch per your advice.

Als Peter Falk ist eigentich einen Engel, er kann Alles tun. Schau Mal "Die Himmel über Berlin"!

Frex said...

ARTSPARKER: LOL. "continue not watching"

Wings of Desire blew me away when I saw it on the big screen when it came out --haven't seen it since.

Marz said...

I must correct this.
Kirk doesn't say "a crew member"; he says "a crewman". Pretty radical for the 60s. (And I object to the characterization of "smirky", but that's my personal opinion.)

Frex said...

MARZ: Thankss for the correction
"Crewman" not "crew member".
YOU were the one who pointed that out to me.

At that time, "man" truly would have read as "generic reference to a human"--that's how I grew up hearing it, as in,
"one giant step for mankind".

What don't you like about "smirk"? I think Kirk can be rather smirky, don't you? Smirky flirty!

"Smirk: a smile that expresses satisfaction or pleasure about having done something or knowing…"

bink said...

I agree Kirk is aways smirky when it come to women--even when it's the flirt with your grandmother type smirk.