Smoke gets in your eyes

So I go to the gym yesterday, and I'm mad. I came in angry just because. Stein, my ever-tormenting mentor and physical trainer, sets me up for lunges and hands me two 15 pound weights to haul around on this arduous task. I ask him, "Why the hell did I just lost 30 pounds if you're gonna add it back on every time I do a exercise?" He laughs and I scowl, knowing that I'm being asked to do something more taxing, since it has become so much easier. So we get to the lunges, one and one, two and two, three and three, etc. etc. That's why I pay this man. He burns my ass and pisses me off, and works me. That's the point, you see.

The air quality is bad here in Bay Area or in California in general, in case anyone cares. We're literally burning down. Here in the cozy East Bay, we aren't burning. Yet. But we are living under a cloud of noxious particulates and smoke that hangs over like a shroud of death. There are several hundred small and large fires all over Northern CA, many of which are burning out of control. The smoke has to blow somewhere, and right now, it's blowing right into our nooks and crannies. Not fun. It causes me anxiety, the not being able to see the blue sky thing, and every time I take deep breaths -- like when doing those lunges -- and my chest clutches up and I feel like I can't breathe. Focus, I say to myself. Just focus. I tell Stein I'm having trouble breathing, and I can tell he lets up on me a little bit, just a little bit. He's waiting to see if I pass out, clutching my chest like a horror-film victim. I get the feeling he thinks I'm just complaining, but honest, I'm not. I can not fucking breath here, folks, but I'm going to do this entire hour of circuit training today because giving up is not in my vocabulary. The not giving up thing is the only viable reason I'm even here at all.

But this is circuit training, which means 3 rounds of 3 exercises with minimal rest. Then you do cardio, and another three rounds of three exercises. More cardio. Three more rounds, three more exercises. Finally, after a final round of cross-fit intensive exercises, I'm done. I'm glad and as always, proud of myself for doing it.

Here's a little story, courtesy of my own schadenfreude: I was at the gym one day a couple weeks ago, working out by myself, and there's this large woman who comes in and only does the weight machines. No cardio, no free weights, just machines. She keeps giving me the hairy eyeball, like somehow I stole her boyfriend back in high school 30 years ago. I'm seeing this out of the corner of my eye. I know she's seeing this middle aged, overweight woman doing things she'd probably never thought about (that's okay, neither did I until the last six months), and she's thinking that I'm just a show-off. My second circuit, I decide to isolate on the leg press machine, so I get on there and put on 175 pounds of resistance weight (I have done up to 210) and proceed on my 15 reps. Then I get up and go back to doing some Swiss ball crunches, and out of the corner of my eye I see the fat lady kind of sneer at me and settle herself on the leg press. She doesn't change the weight, I notice, and think "Shit! She's actually going to try it!" And by Golly Miss Molly, that dumbass really did. I watched her push as hard as she could and that weight wasn't moving anywhere. She stressed and strained, and I'm sitting there on my 20th crunch going, "Oh my god lady, you're gonna kill yourself". But thank God, she finally decided that she wasn't going to make it after all and moved the weights down. She stopped glaring at me after that. Perhaps she learned her lesson:

Don't ever think that what you see is what it appears. Just ask the fat the lady singing on the leg press machine.

By the way, I wasn't pissed off anymore yesterday, it just got kind of beaten out of me. And the sunset is wildfire orange-red, just as it should be with a huge cloud of smothering, noxious burn-off.