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.