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Oct. 2nd, 2004 12:13 amGot my edit letter and edited manuscript back from Anne. Got a rejection from F&SF for "Perfection." I ought to be working on the changes to Freedom's Apprentice but I'm not. Instead, I'm posting to my LiveJournal instead. I'll be productive.......tomorrow.
I went in for the complimentary Fitness Assessment at the health club. Apparently I am thin, semi-weak, very inflexible, and in absolutely pathetic cardiovascular health. I think he may have screwed up the cardio test, though. Anyway, because the Personal Trainer didn't think I needed to stretch before the cardio fitness test ("it's just five minutes") I have pulled hamstring muscles in both my legs. I feel like an idiot, because I should have told him that I DID need to stretch (clearly, I should have stretched before the appointment, but since I don't know anything about how this stuff works, I didn't realize that, and in any case it took a while to drop off Kiera at the health club day care center because she threw a screaming fit) but he was supposed to be the expert, sooooo I figured that if he didn't think I needed to it would probably be okay. I'm also a little annoyed with him, because, well, he's supposed to be an expert on this sort of thing. I guess if I needed something to clue me in that the personal trainers don't necessarily know what they're talking about, and that I should trust my own instincts and knowledge of my body over what they say, pulled hamstring muscles are a relatively minor injury to drive that lesson home. It doesn't exactly sell me on the whole concept of having a personal trainer teach me how to do my workouts, though. At least not THIS personal trainer.
I read an article recently questioning the value of stretching before exercise to prevent injury, and I have to say, if I take the time to stretch properly before engaging in some sort of vigorous activity, I don't generally have pulled muscles the next day. If I don't stretch, I do have pulled muscles. This extends even to things like helping friends move. If I stretch before I start hauling boxes, I'm fine the next day. If I don't, I have horrible pulled muscles. (The whole idea that stretching actually works didn't click for me until I was in high school. I suffered through a lot of pulled muscles as a teenaged skier, for want of a stretching routine.)
Anyway, going to the health club has at least been a nice break from what I do at home right now. It feels like I do nothing all day but follow Kiera around keeping her from doing herself in. She climbed Ed's bike today while I was in another room. Molly calmly alerted me to this. We store Ed's bike (and my bike) in the living room (because the basement is inconvenient, the garage is insecure, and we have no mudroom), leaned up against a bookcase. Kiera had climbed up and was standing with one foot on the back tire and the other on the water bottle or something. She was not holding on to anything but was standing, perfectly balanced and entirely calm, taking things off the now-within-reach shelf and examining them. It is clear that (a) moving things out of her reach is a complete joke, unless we have actually locked them up, and (b) if we remove the things she's climbing, she'll just find something else to climb, so I am resigning myself to the idea of watching her like a hawk if she's awake. After I pulled her off the bike, she climbed into the jogger, stood in it, and started trying to tip it over. You know, in such a way that if she succeeded, she'd land face-first on the floor. I wound up just standing by the jogger so it wouldn't tip.
To be fair, Molly and I also baked pumpkin cookies today. So it wasn't just pulling Kiera off of bikes.
I went in for the complimentary Fitness Assessment at the health club. Apparently I am thin, semi-weak, very inflexible, and in absolutely pathetic cardiovascular health. I think he may have screwed up the cardio test, though. Anyway, because the Personal Trainer didn't think I needed to stretch before the cardio fitness test ("it's just five minutes") I have pulled hamstring muscles in both my legs. I feel like an idiot, because I should have told him that I DID need to stretch (clearly, I should have stretched before the appointment, but since I don't know anything about how this stuff works, I didn't realize that, and in any case it took a while to drop off Kiera at the health club day care center because she threw a screaming fit) but he was supposed to be the expert, sooooo I figured that if he didn't think I needed to it would probably be okay. I'm also a little annoyed with him, because, well, he's supposed to be an expert on this sort of thing. I guess if I needed something to clue me in that the personal trainers don't necessarily know what they're talking about, and that I should trust my own instincts and knowledge of my body over what they say, pulled hamstring muscles are a relatively minor injury to drive that lesson home. It doesn't exactly sell me on the whole concept of having a personal trainer teach me how to do my workouts, though. At least not THIS personal trainer.
I read an article recently questioning the value of stretching before exercise to prevent injury, and I have to say, if I take the time to stretch properly before engaging in some sort of vigorous activity, I don't generally have pulled muscles the next day. If I don't stretch, I do have pulled muscles. This extends even to things like helping friends move. If I stretch before I start hauling boxes, I'm fine the next day. If I don't, I have horrible pulled muscles. (The whole idea that stretching actually works didn't click for me until I was in high school. I suffered through a lot of pulled muscles as a teenaged skier, for want of a stretching routine.)
Anyway, going to the health club has at least been a nice break from what I do at home right now. It feels like I do nothing all day but follow Kiera around keeping her from doing herself in. She climbed Ed's bike today while I was in another room. Molly calmly alerted me to this. We store Ed's bike (and my bike) in the living room (because the basement is inconvenient, the garage is insecure, and we have no mudroom), leaned up against a bookcase. Kiera had climbed up and was standing with one foot on the back tire and the other on the water bottle or something. She was not holding on to anything but was standing, perfectly balanced and entirely calm, taking things off the now-within-reach shelf and examining them. It is clear that (a) moving things out of her reach is a complete joke, unless we have actually locked them up, and (b) if we remove the things she's climbing, she'll just find something else to climb, so I am resigning myself to the idea of watching her like a hawk if she's awake. After I pulled her off the bike, she climbed into the jogger, stood in it, and started trying to tip it over. You know, in such a way that if she succeeded, she'd land face-first on the floor. I wound up just standing by the jogger so it wouldn't tip.
To be fair, Molly and I also baked pumpkin cookies today. So it wasn't just pulling Kiera off of bikes.
