The Delicate Art of Scheduling (Whole30, Day 22)

I'm glad to report I've kept up with the running, *and* was able to work out a training schedule that would allow me to finish the 5K to 10K program a couple of days before the Turkey Trot (10K), and the 13.1 program the week prior to the Fairy Tale Challenge in February (10K and Half Marathon).

It occurred to me today that while it's embarrassing to walk around my office in my dorky-looking running gear (I do this as little as possible; I change in the restroom, drop my stuff at my desk and FLEE out the door to go run, then return to my desk, grab my bag as quickly as possible, book it to the tiny shower room to wash and change), I am grateful to have midday runs as an option. To make it work with my hourly schedule for my fulltime day job, I bring my lunches to work (Whole30 batch cooking, yay) and eat at my desk, then during my lunch "break" I go for my runs on the trail behind the building. The benefit of having the trail, and a private shower, is a huge plus for me when there's no other time I could build this in.

Tonight my mom and younger brother return from a trip to Disneyland. They live in the house where I grew up, about 20 minutes from my apartment. While they were out of town, my mom had asked me to look after her four cats and bring in the mail...and when she asked me my blood pressure skyrocketed. Not because it was an out-of-line request (I've watched her animals dozens of times), but because when you have so little free time, a small task can eat up almost all of it.

To put this in perspective, my days this week have included:

• Checking on mom's house/ cats in the morning
• Work
• Running training
• More work
• Rehearsal

It doesn't sound like *too* much, unless you factor in the commute times. It's a 15-20 minute drive to my mom's house from mine in the morning, depending on traffic. Work is a half hour in the opposite direction, so I tacked more time onto my morning commute. Thank goodness I don't have to travel anywhere in order to get my exercise in. Commuting to rehearsal involves picking up my bf at the lightrail station (his car is out of commission at the moment) and then driving another half hour down to Gilroy for rehearsal. We typically get out of there about 9:30PM and it takes almost an hour to drive home (and that's if we don't have to stop anywhere on the way.)

It would be very, very easy for me to get overwhelmed, throw my hands in the air and say "fuck it" and cut the workout and Whole30 out of my plans for the day since they take up way too much additional time and are a pain in the ass to manage. But in this (increasingly) batshit crazy world I inhabit, my workouts and my eating are two of the (minute) few things I control. So I want to take control, and I want to take ownership, and I want to take care of myself. So I schedule.

I batch-cook my meals, which isn't glamorous and involves me eating almost all my meals out of 10-year-old plastic dishware that I think came with lunchmeat a lifetime ago. I pack my running bag, including shower essentials, the night before so I don't have the "I'm in a rush" excuse in the morning. Having the running training apps with the built-in calendars helps immensely, not only to see progress but to help plan for specific events like the Turkey Trot and Fairy Tale Challenge.

Today I got an email from my cousin (a friend and fellow theatre/ film enthusiast, with whom I'm working on a series of short films called Moments in Shakespeare). He was distributing information about an upcoming shoot we're doing, for a scene from Two Gentlemen of Verona, and thank goodness he was flexible with my schedule because I literally have at least one thing in my calendar, every day, from now until mid-November (and a pretty full slate after that, as well). It'll also be Day 1 of my next Whole25 (following the one-day break I'm taking after my current Whole30 - my friend's birthday celebration involves visiting several dairies a couple hours' north of us and I'll be damned if I'm visiting cows and buffalos and NOT sampling cheese).

I also nearly cried when I saw the preliminary schedule for The Laramie Project, which the stage manager sent us in the middle of last week. Rehearsals begin while Inspecting Carol is still in performances, which means I'll be going from Saturday evening shows in Gilroy to Sunday blocking rehearsals in Palo Alto (which can be 6-8 hours long!). I love rehearsal, and blocking, and all that theatre nerdy shit. I couldn't figure out why I was so anxious and frustrated and I believe it was because the scheduling didn't "work out" perfectly on its own. It needed finagling and work (from me). Sometimes I have conflicts. Sometimes I'm double-booked and have to cancel one thing over the other.

Sometimes I don't get the day off I want, to lounge around in my underwear and drink Tejava and read comic books with my cats. Sometimes those days are filled with rehearsals or extra work. Sometimes I have to spend those days buying groceries, and cooking a week's worth of chicken and vegetables.

It'll be in flux for a while (and with the holidays approaching I recognize that my anxiety's going to be more kinetic than usual.) After The Laramie Project closes, I'll have a week off, then several days in Florida including the 10K and half marathon, then the literal day after the half (and my mom's birthday!) is our projected start date for rehearsals for Distracted.

Oh, I may have forgotten to mention Distracted. I'm excited and seriously stunned to have landed the role of Mama, and at a company where I haven't worked before to boot. I imagine it'll be especially challenging going from one deep dark emotional place with Laramie to a completely different (but still heartbreaking) one with Distracted. That runs through the beginning of May.

Lots and lots and lots of things. Scheduling (and having one calendar to which I refer) helps me immensely.

The Strapless Bra Conundrum (Whole30, Day 19)

I am feeling a little better today. My lunchtime run was 35 minutes, which felt too long for comfort but I was able to run (read: jog, and/ or fall forward swiftly) for the whole time, and I survived.

I wore the same offending running pants from my last post, but this time I wore simple solid-color underwear so as not to attract too much attention to my butt, which was already ...erm... conspicuous in the too-snug pants. But hey, I can't afford more pairs of running pants so I have to make do with what I have.

Today's lunch is this amazing Cajun chicken recipe, but with Brussels sprouts instead of potatoes. I've made it with potatoes before and it's super yummy, but my friend Jennifer recommended trying it with sprouts instead of starch and she was bang on - it's an awesome complementary veggie without the extra carbohydrates, and hopefully it'll serve me better in the weight-loss game.

Speaking of which, I've been pondering a post-weight loss issue and wondering if other ladies have experienced the same thing. I tend to lose weight much more easily from my top half than from my bottom half, so one of the first places I notice visible size changes is my chest/ boob area (while my thighs, butt, and lower belly are stubbornly slow to change). For this reason, I've gone from a 40G down to a 34D in the last few years. It's typically not a problem to find regular bras that fit (Wachoal is my favorite; super comfy and supportive and durable) but strapless bras? Forget it. I had to buy one this weekend for a dress I wore to an event on Sunday (and I'm wearing it again today under an off-the-shoulder shirt I've loved since college), and finding one that fit properly and felt like it was going to stay on, was a PROJECT. I think a big part of this is that my breasts aren't as "full" as they used to be. :-( Now they're still big, just...empty? Is that the word? They have no lift to them at all. They're...like...long. :-/ A strapless bra has to do ten times as much work just to keep them "afloat" without over-the-shoulder straps. I have grown accustomed to the idea that I have the stomach of a thousand-year-old crone, what with all the extra skin and wrinkles and stretch marks, but I was really hoping I could have age-appropriate boobs for most of my 30s. I'm 33, I shouldn't look like The Pale Man from El Laberinto when I get undressed.

...sorry if the above was TMI. Heh. But not really.

(Barely) Better than Nothing (Whole30, Day 16)

I feel unhinged, unglued, and undone. Anxiety and stress have been very high with me, yesterday and today, and last night I had a pretty bad attack that left me feeling pretty much dead (and looking like a sick frog) this morning.

Then again, it's Friday the 13th. Which could also explain the ridiculously bad run I had today. I had to slow to a walk at several "jog" intervals, which ...I can't even remember the last time I've had to do that. Plus my water bottle messed up my tube belt, which rode up uncomfortably, and (the coup de grâce): my running capris were pretty much translucent, so the pattern of my underwear was clearly visible on my ass. So naturally, of fucking course, there were more people fucking wandering the trail than I have ever seen in my life before. Including one massive beefy dude who rode by me on a motorized bike (not quite a moped...no idea what it's called. The point is, he did not exist until today when my underwear was visible).

I ran (sort of), anyway. I'm at the point where the one and only thing I can control is my own behavior, so even if I didn't run or jog the whole time, I had to finish the damn workout. Which I did. And I felt (and still feel) like garbage. But I think I feel better than I would have, had I quit and turned around or simply not gone out on the trail at all.

I wonder if anyone else finds themselves more superstitious (and semi-religious, even) when their anxiety goes this insane. I feel like I can't be the only one.

Fall is in Full Swing (Whole30, Day 12)

I've finally started running again. I feel like death tripping over LEGOs but I'm out and moving and whatever again, so yay me.

I've also rewritten my calendar in terms of WholeSomethings for the end of the year. More on that in a moment.

I found over the last few weeks that, even though I was sticking to the eating plan, I was regaining a lot of weight and pudge at what felt like an alarming rate. A few things should be noted:

• I was not exercising
• I was very likely going overboard on things like potatoes and more sugary fruits, which are not necessarily unwholesome but which tend to hang up my weight loss efforts
• I was extremely tired, stressed out, and depressed from a number of factors, not the least of which were work and money and the whole world dying in a dumpster fire of chaos

I tend to take comfort in things I can control. I hate feeling impotent or helpless. The serenity prayer has been recommended to me a hundred jillion times, and I can see the wisdom in it, although it doesn't help me much in that I am 1. a devout atheist and 2. very un-accepting of shitty things outside of my control. An old therapist of mine (I can't remember if I've blogged about this before) pointed out that I would go into full-on crying panic mode about things completely outside of my control, while ignoring things *within* my control, like my eating and exercise habits, my money, etc.

So these past couple of weeks I've tried to wrench a few things back into place, as much as my mind and heart (and especially my body) were reluctant to do so. 

I signed up for the Turkey Trot again (10K, same one as last year), which kind of forced me to get back into running training. I'm very behind on this but (as I've told myself many times in the last couple of days) at least I'm doing it now, and that's better than nothing. 

I planned more meals and batch-cooked again, this time focusing on vegetables other than potatoes and even sweet potatoes (I love both of these beautiful starches but I'm really hoping to lose a little of my puffiness at the moment...I feel like I'm allergic to something and my whole body is having a weird histamine reaction.) Today's lunch consisted of braised kale and carrots, and sausage and peppers (I roasted onions and peppers in the oven and ...why have I not been doing that for years, it's so freaking good). Dinner will be spaghetti squash with spicy sauce, on the way to rehearsal.

I restarted (in fits and spurts, but I started) my 5K to 10K running program. Lately my favorite running playlist has been a mix of different swing standards, and swing covers of contemporary songs. Swing Republic is awesome. It makes me wish I knew how to Charleston, and conjures images of awesome vintage costumes and makeup.

I've been better about making lists, particularly involving a morning and evening routine, and:

I rewrote my calendar for the last few months of the year to include shorter WholeSomethings and shorter periods off-plan, in the hopes of finding a better balance. For example, at the end of this Whole30 I will have one day off to celebrate my friend's birthday by touring a few dairies and sampling different gourmet cheeses, then it's back on for a Whole25.

A few cool things have happened in theatre news, as well: My lovely friend Jennifer and I went on our second semiannual trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and saw the remainder of their 11-show season. It was splendid and I can't wait for next year (I reupped, and upgraded, my membership to take advantage of their presale again). I was cast in another show for early 2018, which (if you include Inspecting Carol) books me from now through early May. More details on the new show to come soon. And we've started rehearsals for IC, which opens late this month and which I think will be really fun--if we can survive the rehearsal process with that many people in the tiny Gilroy Center for the Arts. :-)

I guess that's it for today. Still learning. Always learning.