Polyphasic Sleep and Better Thinking

I put my picture on wearethe99percent.tumblr.com … because I feel like a refugee from a pocket third-world country in the US, created by the 1% and the government's insane/corrupt need to please them.  And I'm very aware, every day, what a lucky one of the 99% I am.  The luck is nice, but it's incredibly tough to be lucky when everyone you left at home isn't.

But you probably care more about all those updates I haven't been getting around to…I'm sorry; this week has just been horrendous, really.  And it isn't really slowing down, so this will be in the form of bullet-points for now…my hope/plan is to slow down this weekend and do some real substantive writing, here and elsewhere.  ::hope hope hope::

• Sleep goes well.  This week has been ridiculous so I've missed some naps, but overall I dropped right back into my Everyman Mixed (? Can I call it that?) schedule, where my goal is 3×3, but if I get shorted on naps I do 2×4.5 or 1×6.  As long as I get some 3×3 days every week, this seems to work without issue, but I've definitely noticed that if I get stuck in 2×4.5 / 1×6 for too long, I start to get tired.  (Specifically, a week of 2×4.5, or more than a few days of 1×6, will make me tired and I'll need catch-up sleep, after which I can go back to polyphase.)  I think this is evidence that 3×3 is the most stable one overall — which has been my long-term experience — and that, more generally, the more naps you get, the more stable and restful your polyphasic schedule.  But it remains nice that missing naps doesn't have to knock me completely off-schedule; as long as I keep trying for them, I'm OK even during the most insane weeks of work / practice / errands / etc.
   
• Exercise goes well too.  I'm sorry I didn't get to update as I made this transition, but what I did is try out Insanity and P90 as possible alternatives to P90X (which I did for 3.5 weeks — but it was too long and too intensive and thus making my sleep schedule impossible).  P90 won.  One of the things I really liked about P90X was the focus on form — as a martial artist and someone who picked up fitness as an adult, I care a lot about economy of motion and avoiding injuries — both short- and long-term.  Insanity is definitely named correctly, because it seems to me that unless you're already capable of doing the whole thing by muscle-memory, doing it at that speed is dangerous.  P90, on the other hand, is a nicely shorter version of P90X, keeping most of what I liked about the program without killing me to the point where I need to sleep for years.  ;)  It's still challenging:  Though I've been surprised at how I can "just do" most of it without petering out, and I finish all the workouts which I couldn't always do with X, I'm still out of breath and sweaty and feeling it in the right muscles, but I can take naps and my core and still have enough energy, including for things like taiji and hockey.  I'm nearing the end of week 1 of P90, and so far I like it a lot.  (Note:  It's just as cheesy as P90X, but I'm coming to the realization that all such programs are cheesy.  I can deal.  And it won't take me as long to memorize these so I can just tune them out and listen to music, either!)
   
• My new exercise clothes are AWESOME.  Icebreakers are expensive, but if you work out regularly and hate doing piles and piles of laundry, they're completely worth it.
   
• There's other stuff, but as I keep getting distracted by work and stuff and risk not posting this at all if I don't do it now, I'm stopping here!  ;) 

Have a good Thursday the 13th**, everyone!

*Title note:  One of the most awesome songs ever!  One day I will make someone play it in karaoke or something so I can yell those amazing lyrics at the whole world…Go forth ad infinitum!

**For some reason Thursday the 13ths have always gone worse for me than Fridays.  Thursday the 12ths can be pretty brutal too.  And of course October is a mandatorily creepy month for either. 

Yes, yes, there are exercise (new plan, woot!) and sleep updates (still polyphasic, adjustment symptoms present but minimal) — but there's also something more important to talk about, so Imma do that for a minute first.

I think I've found a major piece of the difference between being a Good vs a Bad person.  Now, quick, two caveats:

• I'm totally using the words "Good" and "Bad" as shorthand — I'm referring, not to moral judgment or societal normative values, but to a subjective value of positiveness that we can all (objectively) agree with:  "Good" people have few regrets, and can sleep with the ones they have, and go through their days feeling generally light-hearted and prone to kindness.  "Bad" people are bitter, chewed by old regrets and more concerned with their own daily unhappiness than much else.  Sure there's a continuum, but most people at least perceive themselves (and others) as falling more on one side of the scale than the other. 
• There's nearly a whole branch of Philosophy devoted to what it means "to be" any kind of "person".  The common vernacular is to take it as a statement of identity — of am-ness — but I would caution against that, tempting as it is.  It almost always results in moral judgments and illogic.  Consider this construction, of "being a Good/Bad person" to be a major shorthand as well — shorthand for a complex emotional and psychological dynamic state of being that comprises a great part of our self-perceived degree of happiness, and is, if not the same thing as "me", a really major part of what it means to live "my" life.  That one is preferable goes without saying, and it's inarguable from a valid first-person perspective which abides.  That's really all we need from it for this topic.

It goes without saying that being "Good" makes it easier to continue being Good and being "Bad" makes propagation of that state more likely too.  Those who are Bad and want to be happy have to make a serious effort to change their thinking, or something must change it for them:  anger and pain create more of the same.

The reigning theory, as presented to me by my world anyway, is that Good people have been dealt less shit in this world.  Having been mistreated, victimized, and made to suffer is considered the thing that "causes" Badness.  (Or else it's considered just a choice by judgmental people, but I'm not even entertaining that view for now.  I feel I could shoot it down easily if needed.)  People in that state of Badness, even, often claim that they're responding in the only or natural way to some victimization(s) they have suffered.

I submit that I have seen no evidence that suffering causes Badness, though certainly the more of it one has, the more opportunity for Badness is present*.  It's easier to not be bitter, regretful and to lash out at others with your pain when you're in very little pain**, sure.  But correlation, as we Americans really ought to all have tattooed on our pseudoscientific foreheads, is not causation.

*However, so is more opportunity for Goodness.  I'm not going to stop to explain why, as I think it's obvious with a little pondering, but it is cool to note that, if the below is true, people who haven't eaten shit sandwiches are neither Good nor Bad.
**I would argue that no living human being is in no pain.  It's not possible.  Loss and hurt are integral parts of our existence from day one.  And anyone who says otherwise is selling something.  ;)

But I think that, recently, I did identify something that seems the cause and root of Badness in people.  It's tough to find a perfect name for, but we could call it any of the following:  resistance; denial; unwillingness to grant the inevitability of what is; arrogance concerning reality; failure to accept the is-ness of the present; harboring a constant internal "NO".

I've talked about this thing before — as have many — but today I saw in it a core-ness that I don't think I'd recognized previously.  I don't think Acceptance (to pick a word) is a/the key to happiness anymore…I think it may be the single difference; the sufficient condition; the jumper-switch itself, the thing that means there will be Goodness or Badness in a person (and in direct proportion to their level/concentration of Acceptance).

Sadly, I learned this by watching a largely-Good person go startlingly (and hopefully temporarily) Bad* as a result of lack of Acceptance in the face of a nasty loss.  I had the opportunity (though nothing was pleasant about it) to watch as failure to accept, refusal to live with, and insistence on the wrongness of reality literally ate someone's heart alive.  I watched all the selflessness and kindness and compassion and strength (and there was so, so much of that) in someone turn to endless complaining, blaming, hatred and even greed.  Someone whose biggest flaw previously was probably a tendency to offer too much to people and give everyone the benefit of the doubt even when it was stupid became, in no more than a year, someone who grasped at everything perceived as "theirs"; someone who spewed bile and demanded that everyone take sides, and who lashed out at even people who tried to help.  Even after most of the people involved had put the unfortunate situation behind them, this person would bitterly bring it up, would nastily spread gossip, drop comments and toss out insults, at every opportunity.  And here's the thing:  This is a person who's been dealt mad shit before, who's been victimized on levels I could not imagine myself, but through honest appraisal of that reality had cultivated the aforementioned kindness and selflessness, turning victimhood into compassion and depth of understanding. 

*I want to reiterate here that this is not about moral judgment. Bad in this context != wrong or deserving of punishment; in fact it is the punishment, albeit self-inflicted.

It was the difference that really rocked me.  Being served Plate of Shit #1 and working to accept it — not to condone or celebrate it, but to fully admit that it was, independent of judgments — created (after a long healing process no doubt; I wasn't there for it) a person whose Goodness–whose happiness in adverse circumstances, and willingness to love people and enjoy life–often left me speechless.  But later in life, being served Plate of Shit #2 (which was inarguably less shitty than Plate #1, too) and absolutely refusing to accept it created a person who, while far from entirely or purely Bad, drove away many with constant accusations and bitter ill-wishing, and suffered months and months of stewing in unpleasantness.

There's a lesson here — a big one.

Plates #1 and #2 both involved being betrayed by trusted people, hurt badly in the process, and then left to recover from it largely on one's own.  It's the kind of shit sandwich that we're all, I think, served up sometimes; and we all, or certainly most of us, go through a period of F U, of being stung and unable to deal with humanity for a while.  But then, the question is, do you eventually accept it, acknowledge that it's real and in essence, moral-less?  Do you come to that place (I remember well, about 4 months after my divorce, when I came to it) of saying "Well, that sucked, but life is life and there's no sense hating all over everything just because this happened; things can be ok anyway"? 

Now you may well say, "Well yes, but obviously more time, more healing, is needed" — and I completely agree.  But what is that healing?  What makes healing possible; how does it progress for some and stall for others?  I argue that the healing process, while it certainly must take different lengths of time* for different people eating different shit sandwiches, is inseparable from Acceptance.

*Though by my theory, in a person capable of "perfect" Acceptance, this period would be very very short.

I can't do anything (that I'm aware of) about what happened in the case that has provided such an education for me.  But I can take that lesson to heart, because it's also inarguable that I carry some bitterness and non-Acceptance with me, specifically about a shit sandwich the Universe served up for me last year.  I'm past the worst of it, but it still causes me a regular, pretty horrible kind of pain, and when it does I feel myself pulled back towards anger and railing against the unfairness of it all, plus hatred of the numerous people who did me wrong during that time.  And that absolutely affects how I act towards everyone, including myself.  I'm grateful for the clarity with which I can now see that those emotions and lack of Acceptance are, in fact, the same thing; and I'm grateful to be able to feel (i.e. know more than intellectually) the correlation between those things and Badness in me.  Lack of Acceptance makes me draw in, curl up, and snarl; makes me turn away from others, tending to offer nothing more than a middle finger no matter what their needs.  Even when I want to be kind and understanding, the pull inside me is towards coldness, avoidance, and if confronted, lashing out.

Bad people* have not, by and large, decided to be Bad*.  I bet that most of them strive daily to be Good.  But many don't understand — and it's not like this is advertised on billboards — that being Good is easy when the pull inside you is for it; and that pull is directly resultant from the level of Acceptance of What Is that you've cultivated.  (For a more detailed understanding of Acceptance of What Is, see all of Eastern philosophy…or as a shortcut see the definitions of hexagram #17, SUI  / FOLLOWING.)

*time to reiterate that caveat again…

No matter how bad what's happened is, by accepting it fully, we can keep it from making we ourselves Bad.

Wow, I apologize for the wording there…this stuff just makes julienned fries out of pronouns.  I hope the point survives, and if not, let me know; I'm happy to keep trying.  It's, well, what I do.  ;)

Day two:  Will there be an adjustment period?  After a month off?  I have no idea!

So that's exciting.  ;)

Today I feel fine.  Didn't want to get up at 4am, but it's chilly and raining, and I was more "enjoying snuggling and listening to a thunderstorm" than sleepy…felt fine once I was up.  I also definitely wanted my morning nap, and slept awesome for it, though I do have that lingering "hmm could I go for a few hours of unconsciousness" feeling.  No other symptoms of sleep-dep though.

Maybe tomorrow, or tonight, things get really hard and I have to go through the whole gamut of adjustment funhouseness over again!  Or maybe nothing happens and I get to just sail through, just happily being on my old schedule again.  (I do feel mentally about a thousand times better…and it's hilarious how many people grabbed me yesterday to say THANK GOD YOU LOOK *SO* MUCH BETTER DON'T EVER TRY THAT MONO CRAP AGAIN!)  And man, once again, 4am was wonderful.  Writing (new story submitted!) and new Chen Taiji exercises, plus time to do an entire ground-up config on my main machine, which had to be rebuilt yesterday and is now in prime fully-installed condition in time for work.  Woot!

As to adaptation, whether or not there'll be one this time, I can only wait to find out…and let's face it, I don't really care.  It could be a full-on Uberman zombiefest and you'd find me sitting here humming like a happy kid.  (In fact my only regret remains that I can't do Uberman…but I've got my eye on you, full-time job, and the second you slip, watch out!)

Hope everyone's Tuesday is even half as awesome as mine!  I'm going to go spend a ton of it at work now, but hey, I had 4h of "playtime" before that, and I'll have nearly 4h of not-working afterwards too…so I can't argue with that.  ;)

Peace and Polyphase!
PD

Not writing this in the WordPress editor like a smart person…yes, yes, we can imitate smart people well…good for us…

So, speaking of smart people, WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING?

You all need to do me a favor, seriously. The next time I make some silly remark about how I'm going to go monophasic for some reason or another, come to my house and slap me. Remind me that I've hated every day I've been monophasic since the year 2000! If needed, force me to read all my old blog posts that unequivocally prove this, and then make me do forms or drink tea or something until my semblance of sanity returns. An extra slap or two, or some forced administration of coffee, may be needed. Don't be shy.

In other words, ::face.palm::.

So I had the weekend to plan, to figure out what to do with the month of exercise that ate my every morning, and the pile of writing I wasn't getting done instead. And the answer was pretty freaking obvious: I need my sleep-schedule back. I love a regular workout and yes, as this experiment proved, a high-intensity one is great and I enjoy that, but if it can't fit into my schedule then I don't need it that badly, period. (Especially not when I'm already fit and look and feel fine; I just want more endurance and possibly some abs to show off. This is not grounds for losing hours (1.5 – 3hrs at night + 2h in the morning for extra sleep, and then 1.5 in the a.m. to work out) per day. I guess I can see how I made the decision to try it, but wow did I underestimate what those hours were worth to me.

So, this weekend was actually rather hectic, in its way, and in the end I realized that this is the one change I need to make, and the rest will have to be ironed out afterwards, once I have time to cogitate, read some more, and make better plans. I got a loaner copy of "Insanity", the recommended lesser/shorter version of P90X, to check out; and I'm also reading The 4-Hour Body finally. My new exercise routine will probably come from one of those (and possibly some P90X too…I did like that, as a workout) and I imagine that it'll take me just a few days, now that I have my 19-hour days back, to figure out which and how. I've set aside 6am daily as my exercise time. That's when I was getting up, before – 6am, so that I could roll out of bed, work out, hit the shower and run to work, with barely time for a cup of coffee. Now at 6am I'll be coming off about 1.5 hours of writing, and not feel like my whole morning vanished in a puff of gasping and sweat. Much. Better.

So, after a month of sleeping 10p – 6a like a good little standard human critter, I'm writing this at 4a.m.

And god it feels good.

As for adjustment, I took, but didn't really sleep for either of my naps yesterday – to be expected – so I went to bed at 23:30 figuring it made sense to start with E4.5, and I popped up easy as you like at 04:00. (I have appointments several evenings this week, including tonight, that will keep me from getting my evening nap, so Everyman 4.5 seemed to make more sense to adjust to. I suspect turning the dial to E3 once there's a free-ish block of time to do it in will be easy, at least for me.) The hard part will be making sure I get my afternoon naps at work, which were plenty challenging before I got myself and the rest of the office used to just plowing through that period. I shall have to be strict about it.

My mornings (I could sing that phrase! ;) look like this now:

4am – Wake up
4:30 – 6am – No-effing-around writing time
6am – Workout time; workouts should be short enough to get me out of the shower by 7:30
8am – Head to work; except on Mondays when early taiji means I have to leave by 7:30

Woot! That's more like it.

The evenings…well, I've always struggled with making my evenings productive; I run out of mental steam during the day and often spend the evenings reading, surfing, making chainmail and watching TV, or playing video games…not my best uses of time, there. But even if that stays the same for now, I will feel much less stressed having until 23:30 or 01:00 to stay awake and "relax" than I did having to turn in by ten p.m.

OK, I have other writing to do this morning too so I'd better hustle…but YAY for Everyman and seriously, don't ever let me do that Monophasic crap again! (My husband agrees, by the way…the look of relief on his face when he saw me up at 4a.m. was epic. ;)

This, I think, falls under "Blogging nobody wants to read" — Sometimes I wake up and I'm not sure what to think, what to do, and then I sit down and write for a while and EUREKA, I HAVE IT!.  That's what happened today, and though I'm sure no-one probably cares about the process, I can't just throw that writing away…that would be like painstakingly determining your exact favorite color and then forgetting the whole process so you could go back to wearing read.  (BLACK, my favorite color has been black since I first could recognize the shades of it, and my favorite shade of it is the one I can stare at a moment and lose all sense of surface; it's a color that conveys depth, that makes it seem as though everything you paint it with can dissolve into infinity at a moment's notice.  What's yours?)

Anyway, overt honesty below the cut.  Perhaps if you need some of your own, mine will rub off?  Or perhaps you'll waste ten minutes reading about someone else's insecurities and life-pathness.  Time will tell!  ;)

[Read more →]

And just like that, P90X is on the chopping block.

Sure, I can be a revolvatory sort, but then again, sometimes the Universe speaks just as suddenly as people do.  Anyway, here's where I'm at:

1. Something in the last few days/workouts hurt my knee *significantly*.  It wasn't anything I did (i.e. I didn't feel it get hurt), but yesterday I was sore and this morning I can barely walk.  That means I missed Monday taiji!  NOT GOOD!  The point of the extra workouts is so that I can do MORE taiji, not less.  I think I got spoiled by Chen Taiji being so incredibly difficult legs-wise, but never hurting my knees, because it does so much building and strengthening of the supportive musculature too.  Figures that the X Men don't have that magic formula.  ;)
2. My attempt to substitute today's suggested workout with Stretch "X" failed due to a corruption in one of the files I created from the DVDs so I could play them on my media player.  Not it's fault, but still annoying, and will make it so that I either have to workout tonight or miss today entirely (whch might have happened anyway; I was going to try the Stretching workout, but it may or may not have been OK by my knee.)
3. I like the Lots of Workout, but having done a little more looking, I know for a fact that I can get it in less time, for less calories and with less sleep.  Today I'm really feeling the cost in time of all this, and really tempted to switch to a (say) 20-minute every-morning workout that will help keep me in great shape and let me have my sleep schedule back!
4. Looking at my activities, this is also feeling like too MUCH workout…I'm having trouble doing this AND Taiji, this AND underwater hockey, etc.  I'm used to normally having a store of energy I can burn for certain high-octane activities, but since P90X has me burning it every day, I find myself cancelling (or not cancelling, and then sleeping a ton) way more often than I'd like.  I don't want to miss the fun stuff just so I can do my daily shuffle, yo.
5. Plus, let's be honest, it's not like I'm *enjoying* the XTREEEM rhetoric or constant exhortations by pumped-up white males to "Bring it".  ::wince::

I need to think on it more.  What it comes down to is the usual conundrum:  I'd like to keep the Pros and kill the Cons.  Hm, how about a shorter list to look at later, then?

PROS:

• Awesome workout overall; definitely working all the muscles
• I like the workout-first-thing-in-the-am thing
• Doing P90X has a Cool Factor socially
• The "programness" of it helps keep one doing it

CONS:

• Takes too much time
• Requires too much sleep (at least so far), and an annoying (but not awful) amount of calories
• DVDs are annoying, both in content and format
• Something about it is too hard on my knees, not sure what
• Heavy use of Yoga
• Forums and such are useless; I find most of the people who do this stuff irritating ;)
   

Just stumbled on Andrew Moore's excellent photos of Detroit…these are a great example of how photos of real places in crisis can be artistic without being exploitative.  Kudos to Andrew for finding the beauty here without covering up the grotesque, and for facing the grotesque without letting it tell the whole story. 

Or maybe I just like them because they're well-done and so many of them are familiar.  (The moss-covered floor, one of my favorites, is apparently Model T HQ.  There, I have not been.)

I thought this made for a nice quick "Oh!  Huh" kind of moment — not that the points below can't be argued (haha what fun are things that can't be argued, right?) but it is fun to think about in that light.  (Here's the full pdf, which I found on Google in a moment of undirected curiosity.)  And if you're really fascinated, the Google and Wikipedia searches on related topics are fun too.  Happy Saturday!

Today's a day for titles pulled out of random things the TV is saying in the background.  Underneath that information-rich skin, though, it's just the three-week P90X update — sorry if that's disappointing.  ;)

So.  When I lost weight using the 6x 200-calorie meals / day "Polyphasic Diet", it took about 5 weeks to really start showing.  It was pretty easy to maintain by that point, but whew, I remember about three weeks in thinking, "This is just impossible."

And tomorrow will be the last day of week 3 of P90X.  Next week I'll be 1/3 through, but the chunks go [(3 identical weeks + 1 different week) x 3], so it does feel like the end of this week is accomplishing something. 

But of course, it's still week three.  I don't really see much difference*, and man, I'm missing the time and effort this is all costing.

Fortunately, many things have taught me not to quit at week three, probably most of all polyphasic sleep itself, which is really easy to quit at about week 3 if you're not careful…The early exhaustion can be gotten through with guts alone, but the following couple weeks of time and effort to work it into one's lifestyle fully are, I would argue, sometimes even more exhausting than zombie-mode.

*It's not that I see no difference — actually my arms and stomach are minimally, but noticeably, tighter, and my shoulders and legs are definitely on the muscliest side of normal for me.  But it's not really a motivating difference.

I had prepared a bit for this, though that preparation came in the form of just plugging along, in a sense.  But I've made sure to let my days of success (which has been all but a few of them) accumulate weight that lends more legitimacy to my fitness as an ongoing enterprise, deserving of effort and investment**.  As such, my awesome workout clothes (all sale items, thank goodness) should be here any day, and my giant box of awesome Builder's Bars got here yesterday.  I'm also perfecting chocolate milk — improvements include a few trials of protein powder and an upgrade (definitely upgrade) to soymilk.  These little advances function not just for making things easier as they go forward, but also as gifts — achievement rewards, to the MMO-acquainted — to help motivate me forward.

**I would like to make it less of an effort and investment than it is now, don't get me wrong.  But changing takes a lot of effort itself, and once you've gotten past that part, you can work on making things more efficient.  I'm still holding out hope that I can try getting my polyphasic schedule back during the remaining 9 weeks of P90X, but if not, I'll focus on finding a maintenance workout to follow P90X with that takes less time and isn't so intense that I can't go back to Everyman.  (Yeah, going back to Everyman is not optional; I miss it crazy bad.)

The diet goes well too, though hitting the protein/carb balance they want for the first three weeks (50%/20%) is haaaarrrd, and there've definitely been days that I was off by a bit.  Having too many carbs vs. protein will make the "slimming down" part go slower (or possibly just not work I guess, though I should be/probably am losing fat just from burning extra calories and building muscle too — and I had minimal extra fat anyway), but that's not my biggest worry.  I like being on the thin side, sure, but I'm also old enough now to not care so much — I've shaken off the ad industry's insistence that thin is (and only is) beautiful, thank goodness.  I do find health beautiful, but I can feel totally gorgeous with a little plump on me, no problem.  (And personally speaking, I dig curvy women — I'm too small to be a proper one myself, but healthily plump hourglassy women are my favorites to look at for sure.)

Also, slipping in a totally unrelated thing at the end…I've written some new verses to an old song, and am considering the rather typical YouTubeing of myself singing a song.  Interesting idea?  Or just stupid?  Your opinions matter, Internet, even if only to this one lowly IP address!

Peaceful yet Interesting Times,

PD

So, if I haven't said so already, it's a hard, hard thing to ask yourself to slide right out of bed, exercise to the point of panting sweat-dripping exhaustion for 1 – 1.5 hours, leap in and out of the shower, guzzle a recovery drink and run to work, every single day (except the weekends when you can be slower about the shower). 

I'm actually amazed at how not-hard it can be, how automatic the habit becomes and how I can actually roll out of bed and be starting up the video before I've really had a chance to second-guess.

But that doesn't negate how hard it can be, either.  Especially when I think about my 4am mornings, with time for coffee and breakfast and writing and a nap and heck, if there was a clothing emergency I had time to do a whole load of laundry!  MAN I miss my 4ams.

But this is good, too.  Getting some good exercise first thing in the a.m. makes for a spectacular day in a lot of ways.  And it's working — I feel a bit stronger already!  But though I got through the first 2 weeks without missing a day, this week that hardness caught up with me some.

Some of it is other exercise.  I have kungfu on Monday mornings and it's pretty brutal.  The first two weeks, I did both workouts back-to-back, and I survived it, but was barely functional the rest of the day, really.  This week I skipped Monday's P90X workout to just do kungfu.  (For one thing, I was still significantly sore from the day before, and was a little worried about hurting myself!)

Part of it is the stupid being a girl thing.  OK, ok, I shouldn't deride Nature for her miraculous processes, but getting handed a whole week once a month when you get to feel sub-par, tired, achy and gross is hardly a gift from the recipient's end, miracle though it may be to an objective observer.  "Ugggh I feel tired, achy and gross" does not marry well with "Up! Run! Exercise! Then go fast fast fast to work!".  I missed half of yesterday to that, to feeling just too icky to pull it all off, so I did half of the scheduled morning workout and left a little more time for the shower.

And part of it is just life getting too uppity on you.  Today I still feel gross, and moreover I really wanted more sleep than I got — I hit snooze enough times without thinking about it that I would have had to really hustle to pull this morning off…but I was ready to.  Until I walked to my workout area and my foot went splish, and I realized that my entire workout space is literally festooned with cat vomit.  Cat vomit which is on a hard floor (thank goodness I put my mat away yesterday!), so I can either clean it up later when it's dried a bit, or slop through now, while it's soaking and stinky. 

Hmm.  Tired, achy, gross morning.  Even more short on time than usual.  And…cat vomit.  Lots and lots of cat vomit.

Nope!  Turns out that's my limit.  I'm making head-plans to get my workout tonight instead, but I have no idea if that'll work, so for the moment I'm figuring I'll have skipped a day.  Crap!