A game of clue, and Santa.

I think we all know by now and have come to accept the fact that my mind doesn't work like a normal humans. I mean hell, I almost pepper sprayed a duck on my last run. That's not normal. 

With that said, I haven't been to the gym this week because of my hip. Which is STILL killing me. I see my orthopedist again Monday. Ugh. I've spent a lot of time in my bed with my heating pad and creeping Instagram. And I've had time to think and make observations. Some may be rude. Let's take our shocked faces off. 

Here's my main thing. I completely understand not everyone needs/wants/works with a trainer/coach as long as I have. I get it. But when your retention rate as a fitness professional is terrible enough for me to notice, you have a problem. There are two (maybe three) who shall remain nameless that seem to have THE WORST TIME keeping clients. And let's examine the reasons why, shall we? Now lets be clear. We all know I'm obviously no fitness expert but I'm also not stupid. I got lucky finding Darin so quickly and for him to be so knowledgeable. But exhibit a; if you have more than 300 clients. HOW THE HELL are you doing anything for them?! You literally can't even spend an hour a week working on their plan because there aren't that many hours in a week. Also, if I'm paying you a seriously ungodly amount of money, you damn well better know my name. I also am not eating tuna and mustard 4 meals a day when I hate tuna. Let's also be clear. Ice cream is a treat. A banana and peanut butter is not. Someone is obviously knitting with one needle. Also, there will be no 2-3 times PER DAY of cardio on a 1100 calorie a day diet. You have lost your effin  mind. Then on top of this, when people figure out that, gasp, this trainer isn't sending out personalized meal plans and workouts they get angry. WHAT DID YOU THINK THEY WERE DOING?! In my humble opinion it's like getting trampled on Black Friday. It's your own fault. 

Exhibit B. We have this other trainer/coach that, in my investigating their credentials, still has on an ankle bracelet. Not as a fashion statement, oh no my friends. It's a TRACKING bracelet because our friend has been in the clink. They offer training specials ridiculous cheap because I don't know of anyone who wants to do bicep curls with water jugs in bright orange shorts. Also stemming from my investigation, I find that our exhibit B is offering access 24/7 to them as our coach. God is good. What?! What happens when we violate our probation and go back to the concrete jungle? Is there a refund procedure in case of emergency? Risky business plan my friend. But seeing as you've already been to the slammer, our definitions of risky are likely very different. 

Exhibit C. I'm mostly just angry because I really follow this person because I don't like them. I'm a hater. Surprise. First of all they're rude. Don't market yourself as a trainer and then tell people to google stuff. Yeah. I get it, you're not nearly as smart as the google but I feel like telling people to get their information from a search engine then WRITING POSTS ABOUT HOW STUPID PEOPLE ARE is ass backwards. Help them, and don't be rude about it. Explaining the difference in simple and complex carbs isn't going to bankrupt you and make you lose all 3 of your clients. I get people don't want to answer stupid questions over and over but being a dick gets you nowhere with karma cat or with me. second of all, don't complain about being sick to your stomach when you eat bowls of shit all the time. Legit. Taking a sweet potato and mashing up like coconut yougurt and almond milk and snackimals (wtf is that even?! like baby food?!) and eggs and arctic zero ice cream. I can tell you why you have rot gut, idiot. Because you're mixing together all garbage all the time in the kitchen and being like "this is so good", uh pardon me for not buying what you're selling. Then getting annoyed when people ask you what that is/why you do it. I personally would like to know why you do it as well. As a member of the "my food doesn't touch" club, I cannot fathom eating that. Ever. 

I tried to not even use gender revealing pronouns in the above because I don't want to influence anyone else's opinion. I would be interested to hear y'all's guesses on who these people are though. Like a somewhat passive agressive game of clue! Ha. I had a lot of time on my hands this week. 

I understand, and am very thankful, that I lucked out finding Darin so easily. He's got the patience of a saint, and he's not stupid. But even at the beginning of this journey when I decided I needed a trainer, I feel like I could have figured out in talking to any of the above "trainers" that it wasn't a good idea. As I've stated before OBVIOUSLY I am not a fitness profesh (my mean girls slang for professional. Clever, I know) but I'm not an idiot (all the time) either. I'm a big fan of whatever works for you, and if the above "works for you", wonderful. Keep on keepin on. But I just know for me it would be a terrible, terrible choice. 

Speaking of. I miss the gym but I was warned that if I go back too soon, I can cause permenant damage and now I'm anxious about hurting/irritating that hip again. I can't tell you how freakin bad my hip hurts and how much I don't want another cortisone shot. I'm hoping a weekend of mostly bed rest will help. I've been really tired lately and maybe this was the universes way of telling me to chill out because I was super stressed out about getting everything back together. I say that like I ever had it together. 

Anyways. If anyone needs me, I'll be in bed with my heating pad, medicine, remote and a stuffed wrestler my brother had as a child. Good night(day) to all and to all a good night(day). 

Also if anyone is interested, google "Santas around the world" and I believe there is one in Belgium who is a huge black man who has 3 helpers who beat children who are bad with sticks. LEGIT. google it. Thank God I live in America where Santa brings gifts and not ass whoopins. 

Scream.

every day is a struggle right now. and every day is a different struggle. Sometimes it's food and getting to the gym, sometimes it's random memories of Zach, some days it's all of the above. My friend Lindsay (over at traininglindsay.blogspot.com) said it best when she said, "you will pick up the pieces one. day. at. a. time.", which I think I've been trying to scoop them all up at once. I've used a quote on one of my many instagram posts that says "you can't get much done if you only work on the days you feel good", which is true. I'm shooting for getting anything done on the days I feel halfway human. If you've never lost anyone close to you, you can't begin to imagine the hurt when you start realizing little things. Like you never showed your brother a youtube video you know he would have loved, you aren't ever going to hear his voice again, or you aren't ever going to get another night sitting down at your grandparents house discussing how people from high school turned out. One day at a time. Sometimes that turns in to one hour at a time, even one minute at a time. And that's okay. It has to be.

 

this week, like the last few, has been a mess. I've went from not being hungry to ravenous, to not wanting to do anything to wanting to run a half marathon again. All while trying to work and dealing with my family. Darin has been exceptionally helpful, per his usual. No lie/sarcasm. legit. While at times I question his reading comprehension skills, when I say "i hate planks" and he replies "glad you're loving the planks :)"...I just have my doubts. ha. He's always been willing to change things and he's also willing to meet me in the middle. He also hasn't been bitching at me to do things I don't want to do. I guess he's smarter than the average bear and realizes that being like "i said do it!" isn't going to make me want to/actually do it.  

 

I've had some ups and downs this week. Like, usually I get somewhat social anxiety-y when there are a lot of people around, especially muscley boys in the free weights at the rush. But on Tuesday when I got there for my back/tricep workout, there weren't many people at all, so I went to town on basically every kind of row you can think of. Then by the time I was winding down, I noticed there were approximately way more people than I had previously imagined around. So then I went and swam for my cardio which was kind of my jam. I say swim like I'm Michael Phelps. More like Helen Keller. I can't actually swim, I just did whatever it took to get to one of the pool to the other. It was more fun than the treadmill, so I win.

 

Leg day is always hit or miss for me and I think Thursday was a miss. I couldn't focus on what I was doing for the life of me. I had 59205 other things on my mind and I had to stop a couple times and call myself back. Like that sounds weird but "be here now" is what I repeat to myself a lot. For me it means be here, in this moment, not in yesterday, not in tomorrow, in THIS moment and do your best. I cranked everything out, was it what I was capable of? I'm gonna say no. but I am a completely crazy induvidual and I put a lot of high expectations on myself because I know what I want to do and I know that I can do it, but I think sometimes I don't know when to back off and let things go for a minute because like Darin said, there are perfectly acceptable and legit reasons for WHY things aren't going how I want them to at the moment.

 

I got my tattoo saturday night :) it says "we only part to meet again" and has the inifinity symbol with 3 dots above it. There were parts of it I honestly couldn't even feel Brian tattooing, and there were parts that made me cuss, especially right under my collar bone. owww. It's still rather sore, but not as bad as the bows on my legs were. I needed to get a piece of that filled in but I'm always READY to be done by the time my tattoo is done, so I never do haha.

 

Also. Sorry this is so long but I'm updating a week and some change worth of events. Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time this morning I had to go see my orthopedist. My hip started hurting Friday morning and I assume it was the aftermath of leg day. Nope. It hurt all stinking weekend and worse last night. I go see my ortho this morning to find out I have bursitis in my right hip and degenerative changes in my left. How do we treat bursitis you may ask? We shove a needle the size if my head into the joint capsule and inject cortisone in it. It. Hurt. I cussed. AND he said he was gonna stick me on the count of three, I stopped him twice on two to ask if it was gonna hurt and he finally wised up and went on two. Also he advised me running, at all, ever, would be a bad choice. The high impact and the damage it would do to my already broken body wouldn't be worth it. Honestly, if I wasn't in so much pain I would be at the gym. He said no gym for 5-7 days and no leg days for 10. 

Usually I would be pissed and go anyway and be stubborn but this is legit pain. 

Also driving the sketchiest route to his office on the foggiest morning my shuffle decides to play "scream" by a7x on the way there. Well played shuffle. WELL PLAYED. because I'm basically ready to scream. Ugh. 

Still not -100. Maybe next week. My sassy pants feel like they've been lost for good. But I'll leave you with a picture of my new ink. 

It says "we only part to meet again" and has 3 dots above the infinity symbol. Even though my brother isn't here, he will always, always be my brosef. 

Back at it.

time for another installment of wow this is getting ridiculous.

 

you know what's weird?  other than me asking rhetorical questions because obviously none of you can answer this as I type it. nothing still feels real, or normal. I don't know why I expected things to go right back to normal. my brother died, not my pet slug. Well, I say nothing feels normal except for one thing. my legs being sore as hell. I woke up Friday morning and felt a little bit of relief that even though in a moment, everything in my life changed, that didn't. I feel like the days drag by, but it's already been 11 days. It still hurts, a lot. I honestly never thought I could feel like this. I feel like a piece of me is missing. I'll just start crying at random times, like Friday morning I was driving to get gas and I just thought about the fact that my brother won't be here when I get married and have kids. My kids won't have a crazy uncle Zach, and vice versa, any kids he may have had won't have a crazy aunt Nessie. every Christmas my nanny tries to go and buy me a gift (even though I explain I want cash money as a gift) and this year there will be no one to stop her from buying me popcorn scented lotion from JC Penny, like she always wants to. I guess I'll get to smell like a movie theater for a while. I feel like this has to get easier eventually. I'm really, really tired these days and I'm trying to get "back to normal" as quickly as possible but that's hard too. I'm living on the struggle bus. It's turning in to the struggle mobile home. 

 

speaking of. here's an attempt to get back to the regular programming of snark and sass. Like the fact that every 10 seconds at The Rush, there is a major accident waiting to happen. that is actually being facilitated by a "fitness coach"....which let's be clear, a couple of them need to hit up the skin care isle in walmart and find this miracle face wash called clearasil. Ya'll definitely aren't 17, you shouldn't have zits like that. There's also a couple girl "fit coaches" at The Rush that decided Nike pro's are wonderful attire for parading around the gym and cooking up crazy as shit exercises in. I saw one man pulling around a battle rope that had kettlebells tied to the end of it. He was pulling it around like kids drag around blankies. He wasn't running, he was taking a leisurely walk. Let's be clear, some of the stuff Darin cooked up, I questioned. like squats, but he never made me do anything outright retarded. some of it was incognito, but we were also in a private gym where there weren't 100+ people on cardio equipment staring. While we're talking stupidity, I don't know why the ONLY Jacob's ladder is literally infront of all the cardio stuff. So if you're the poor sap on the ladder, you have an audience of approximately 70 people who have no other choice but to watch you. The main problem I have with the rush, other than the obnoxious play doh smell, the fact it looks like a color blind 7th grader painted it and their employees, is how many people are there when I need to do my workouts. Tuesday was a MESS, as was Wednesday. I tried that back/tricep workout twice and it just didn't happen. I did half on each day but it seemed like every person on planet fitness (see what I did there?) needed every single thing I needed it, when I need it and then Darin threw in a hammer strength iso row thing that was "awesome" and I couldn't find it so I started crying again. I would have laughed at me if I had been watching. It's fine. I'm still a mess, and the rush is still new. There were also this group of massive boys and I say boys like they're 15. They're likely in their early 30s, but they're bro's and they will likely hurt themselves soon but they were legit standing around the cables and the close grip row machine talking, and I couldn't bring myself to even near that side of the gym. The leg workout could all be done in the "ladyz" room minus the leg press, which didn't get done because of that same reason. Every bro in asheville was leg pressing 9205892 pounds (my current weight) and the other leg press machine was out of order. Today is a brand new shoulder and bicep workout. Hopefully I can stay out of the basketball court long enough to knock that out. shoulders and biceps are my favorite exercises. Lateral raises and bicep curls. end of list. Darin really does have his work cut out for him.

 

Also. Darin reluctantly approved a can of mountain dew for post workout carbs. I was really pleased, especially because it gave me some motivation to at least attempt that leg workout. I gagged through a vanilla protein shake which btw I NEED a new flavor, and then I got a mountain dew, and gagged on the first sip. The vanilla protein stank taste was still in my mouth. I haven't had a Mountain Dew since. It may have ruined them forever and I'm gonna be pissssed if that's the case.

 

Anyways. I may go back to school in October. I've been saying that for like a year, but I neeeeeeeeed to at least take an online class but I suck at them. I'm a procrastinator...but I'm also social anxiety Susie and I dont want to take a night class because I also skip class a lot. have I mentioned how much of a mess I am? yeah. I think if you've followed this blog for any length of time, you already knew that. But, that's what I've got going on at the moment. My next blog will be when I actually hit the -100 mark, I'm still hanging out at 98lbs lost, or next Saturday. Whichever comes first....so, until then my friends. :) lets all cross our fingers it's the -100 pound blog. 

anything and everything.

this blog isn't about me today. well it is, but it's not about my workouts or how much I miss mountain dew. if you don't like what I have to blog about, I invite you to click the red X at the top right of your screen, and leave now and never come back. I feel like if you read my blog on a regular basis, you must know me in real life or give a shit about me in some way. This post, like most others, is to help me process and explain how I feel and what's happening. so here goes.

my brother passed away last Tuesday morning. He was 25.

This week has been a blur, and it's been the longest week of my life. it's been 8 days, and I haven't seen my brother who will likely be referred to as "brosef" because that's what I called him, talked to him or even got a super annoying "what up" text. It's hard to believe that I won't ever get to see him again while I'm alive. My brother was one of the best people you could have ever hoped to meet, and I mean that in a non-traditional sense. He wasn't a gentle, soft spoken guy. He was a rough, vulgar like his sister, fighter. If my brosef liked you, he would do anything in his power to help you. He spent his years in the Madison county school system getting in fist fights, half of them protecting me because I was bullied a lot. I was in 6th grade, he was in 7th. I was being bullied in the cafeteria, this boy (to this day I couldn't tell you who it was) was picking off pieces of his food and throwing them at me, and I was sitting there crying, per my usual. It just so happened that this day, Zach saw it. Then he proceeded to walk over to this tiny middle school terrorist and hit him, repeatedly. Zach didn't ask him any questions, like was my sister the intended target, he didn't threaten him, he didn't say anything. My brosef broke his hand in 3 places during that fight, and that boy never looked at me again. Zach was an ass kicker first and question asker second. I believe with all my heart he was born without the fear gene. He never thought twice about anything and I know without a shadow of a doubt my brother would have fought hell with a squirt gun for me. Zach had has issues, like we all do, but sometimes his were more public. That didn't make him a bad person, it just made people look down their nose at him like he was a second class citizen. and to those people, he always threw up a middle finger. like I'm doing right now. If you knew Zach, you knew what a heart of gold he had. Yeah, he would fight at the drop of a hat but if you ever needed anything, you could call him. It didn't matter how many times I ignored his phone calls, when I called him he answered by the 3rd ring, no matter what. Seriously. One day a few months ago, I ignored his calls for a few days because I was busy and didn't feel like talking. I called him to see if he had anything to clean out my car with, and he answered on the second ring and then helped me clean out my car. My brosef was a hustler, and he was really smart. I miss him more than anything, and I'm sad that I didn't love him enough while he was here. I ignored countless phone calls and made excuses as to why I couldn't hang out with him, and I wish I could take that back. But I know that if he were here, he would say "dont' cry nessie, it's okay". It doesn't matter how old I am, he always called me "nessie" which is how that nickname got started, and he would always refer to me and rebecca as "the girls".

Zach was also referred to scarface later in life. He had a scar on the outside of his right eye because when we were little, we were playing cowboys and indians in the yard, and I threw a stick and caught him right in the corner of the eye. I got the beating of my life for that one. Then the first and only car wreck I was in, I was driving zach to get some dinner and we got hit, and he got a cut right across his forehead. Then the chainsaw incident about a year ago. He legit was scarface, but he didn't care. He had a confidence about him that he knew he was a great person. He was simple sometimes. We buried him in a blue plaid shirt that he always wore when he was going somewhere important, like TGI Fridays, dark blue jeans and boots. He always had a knife in his pocket, too. Zach could do more push ups than anyone I've ever seen. He always helped me win at call of duty when Noah, Rebecca, Zach and I had battle royals during the snowpocalypse of 2010. We would all trek down to nannys and play for hours/


it's the little things that are the hardest. Like knowing that I'll never hear his voice again, get a "what up" or "what u doin" text message from him, or him call and ask if I want him to cook dinner. His go to meal at all times was shake and bake bbq chicken, velveeta shells and cheese, instant mashed potatoes with sour cream and crescent rolls. and they were the most fucked up crescent rolls you ever cared to look at. and sometimes brownies and ice cream after that. that was his JAM. He won't be here to offer to cook that for my birthday. It's hard to be excited to turn 24 when your siblings just became singular.

I just try move on with my life with the knowledge that first of all, he wouldn't want me to sit around and cry all day. Where my brother is now, well, he's in paradise. His demons are conquered and the hurt of this world doesn't have a hold of him anymore. If I could say anything to him right now it would be that I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with you or appreciate you as much as I should have, but I love you and I'll miss you every single day until I see you again.

I'm gonna get a bitchin' tattoo soon in his honor. My brosef sent me letters from rehab, and I kept them. I'm getting the end of one of the letters tattooed in his handwriting, on my left wrist. "I'll see you soon. I love you, -Zach"...I can't decide if I feel like the "see you soon part" makes me seem suicidal, but I'll figure that out soon.

As far as I go, I'm tired as hell and I feel like I'm never going to feel "normal" again. I cried in the middle of my back/tricep workout at the rush yesterday. it wasn't even about zach, it was just about the fact that there was SO many people there and apparently EVERYONE wanted the machines I needed and I just wanted to go home. I've slept about 8 hours in the last 2 days and mountain dew can't even wake me up. I'm just ready for some peace and quiet, ya know?

anyways, sorry this isn't really what you guys like to read. it's not rude and snarky and completely ridiculous. but it's my blog and I do what I want. hopefully I can get my sassy pants back on soon...if I still fit in them :P