Just the Flax Ma’am

Once again, I’m writing about those healthy habits I’m trying to incorporate in my latest War of the Weight. By the way, so far I have conquered five pounds, thanks I’m sure to the Nike + Workouts. I am now on Week 4 and am no longer vehemently talking back to Alex after every set. Yay me!

Today’s topic is flaxseed. I have to give credit where credit is due One of my friends posted an article on Facebook on how to get rid of belly fat. Personally, my answer for him was to give up the beer, but a man has to have some vices, doesn’t he? But anyway, I took the time to read his article post from my phone, and one of the suggestions was to incorporate flax seed into your diet. I’d vaguely heard this somewhere before (probably Dr. Oz), but after I read the article, the suggestion to use flaxseed started popping up everywhere, and I actually started noticing this fibrous grain.

Admittedly, when I started this entry, I didn’t know very much about the stuff, so I had to take a brief break and hit the Wikipedia page for some quick knowledge. Turns out flax is one of the oldest grains out there, and its fibers are used in making linen. In addition to being an edible grain, it is also used in wood finishing products and some paints. With its various uses, no wonder it is useful as an industrial sweeper of your colon.

I also read up on its shelf life—which is a good thing since I found out it can go rancid. This is a pretty crucial piece of information to know, especially since you are almost forced to buy this stuff in bulk in 20-ounce containers at the health food stores. No, sadly, flaxseed does not come in small spice-sized containers where you can sprinkle it across your food like a salt shaker. The reason for this could be that the recommended dosage for the product is 1-3 teaspoons per day. And at $10 per container, you want to make sure that it hasn’t gone bad. The problem is that I wouldn’t have any clue how to visually tell this.

As I’ve noted in a previous blog, (“Funny Bunches of Oats” on 2/25/2013) some flaxseed resembles little black bugs. This is what I’m assuming is referred to as brown flaxseed. There is also a yellow type, and there’s really not much differentiation about which one may be healthier. And there are actually a few ways you can ingest flaxseed: either whole (the little black bugs or the yellow ones which resemble sesame), ground (which resembles a kind of coarse corn meal), or oil (drops or pills). I went with the ground, as I am not found of seeds or nuts.

The best equivalent for flaxseed is probably comparing it to Metamucil, without the benefit of the orange or lemonade flavor. The truth is flaxseed does not have any flavor to it at all. As such, it is relatively easy to hide in foods. And that is exactly what I’ve been doing. Ever since I purchased it, I’ve been subtly using it in the foods my family consumes. And so far they are none the wiser (my husband has yet to subscribe to my blog so it will remain a well-kept secret for a little while). I started gingerly by just adding a teaspoon to Cream of Wheat, but eventually I got bolder and more creative, adding the full dosage in dips, sauces, as breading for my chicken parmesan, and as a binder for my cheese mix in my lasagna. And I’ve not only fed it to my family, but to friends as well. So in essence, I am surreptitiously getting everyone a little healthier. My evil master plan is to next year make the grand announcement that I’m going to be adding flaxseed to all our meals and listen to the grown folks complain that they don’t want any of that stuff in their meals. Then BAM! I’ll spring on the fact that I’ve been doing it for a year and watch their faces drop to the ground.

Week of Weird

By all accounts, the past few days have been odd and unusual to say the least. Unfortunately, this series of odd, unusual, and unrelated events is culminating into a ridiculously odd manic Monday for me, in which I feel like I’m doing a whole lot, and not accomplishing much of anything. I suppose if I really wanted to be accurate, the strange events began a couple of Wednesdays ago, when the Washington Metropolitan area was shut down by snow. I use the term snow loosely in this instance because while I was assaulted with big ugly flakes at my home, my job received rain. I pinpoint this particular Wednesday because the school’s closing kept my students from turning in their rough drafts (apparently it kept them from doing them too, but I digress). Since this was an accelerated class that was due to end the following Wednesday, the weather screwed up all the deadlines. And since it was an accelerated class, there was NO wiggle room. So my students ended up having to turn in two essays and take a final exam on the same night. To their credit, they accepted their fate without too much grumbling.

Fast forward to the following Wednesday. Almost everyone took the exam, and most people turned in papers. Usually on exam night, I stay until the bitter end to give students the last possible minute to turn in their papers. On this particular night, I neglected to do so, and as Murphy’s Law would have it, this is the night a student slipped a paper under the classroom door. Thursday, I go to the OB/GYN for my checkup (which is a blog in and of itself), return home and just take a nap until it was time to go get my son. Friday, I end up talking to my sister-in-law for the better part of TWO HOURS during the course of the day, but other than preparing to visit my niece in Atlanta and helping her with her senior class trip, nothing else adventurous happened.

Then comes Saturday. It’s starts off normally enough; I drag my tired tail out of bed to get ready for my Saturday morning class. Strangely enough, I had all my materials ready. The elevator was out, so I had to truck it up the stairs to the third floor (which is actually six flights of twelve stairs). Luckily, I had time to catch my breath before anyone arrived. Everything’s goes fine in class, in spite of the fact that there is no internet connectivity for my class, which usually happens at least once a semester. I even manage to get a lot of grading done for the lit. class. I finish my office hours, gather my stuff, and go downstairs. I’m getting in my car when I realize that I do not have my purse, so I end up climbing three flights again to go back into my part-time office to retrieve it.

Having settled in my car again, I make three calls, all to besties. I find that it's easier to converse with people on the commute home. My third call to my youngest godson’s mother went something like this:
Her: You still going? You want to meet at my house at 3?
Me: Huh? I was just calling to see how you were.
Her: We’re supposed to be meeting for a play date today. You know--going to the Children's Museum. Only we’re not going there anymore. We’re going to the National Aquarium and everyone’s meeting at my house.
Me: Oh, okay. For real, I had forgotten that we were supposed to do anything. I’ll try to get there by 3. [It was 1:50 at this point.]
Her: Okay, my cousins and one of my cousin’s friends are coming and [our other friend] is coming too. So we have a larger play date.
Me: So what’s the address to the museum?
Her: Oh, I don’t know where it is, but you can just follow us when you get here.

I get home and my son is taking a nap. In defense of his father, since I didn’t know we were going anywhere, he didn’t know we were going anywhere, so our son didn’t have his hair cut, nor was he bathed our dressed to go out. I ended up leaving my home at 3:10 and naturally, no one waited for me. Luckily, I did get a text with the address and made it there on my own. For those of you who don’t have a clue, parking is a nightmare downtown. Whenever I go on excursions like this, I prefer the Metro Park ‘n’ Ride. While I got there in record time, using Google Maps GPS because I have this phobia and habit of getting lost in DC, I spent at least a half an hour looking for a parking spot because I refused to pay the $13-15 for the parking garages. My perseverance and block stalking paid off because I ended up getting a parking space right in front of the Federal Triangle Metro station, which admittedly was two blocks away, but there is a shortcut by walking through the Ronald Reagan Building (if you don’t mind going through a security checkpoint).

The entire time I talked to first one, then the other of my two girlfriends, both of whom I met at Olive Garden. We often go to karaoke together as well. One was doing the same thing as me, and stalking around for a parking space, while the other (whose idea it was in the first place) was lost…with a GPS! She ended up in northeast DC instead of northwest and had to backtrack. I had gotten out of my car and was walking DC with my young son, making our way to the Aquarium. It was overcast, and of course plop! Down comes a fat raindrop, followed by another, and another, so that by the time we see the Aquarium sign, there is a small steady rain falling. When we’re about 20 yards away, I get another phone call: “The museum is closing.” Wow, so no one managed to actually get the museum’s hours before making the plan? As I’m on the phone now debating on how quickly we can get inside, I see my friend’s cousins and think that I am joining a class field trip. I see three adults, and 7? 8? 12? kids in tow. They had arrived first to the disappointing news, and had the same idea as me to head into the Reagan building. Mind you, none of us had umbrellas. As we’re cramming our way in to get dry, my girlfriends suggest we drive to Applebees on the other side of DC to go eat with what I’m gathering is a small army of people under twelve. By this time, I and the major herd had made it into the lobby and we were all in full protest mode about driving to Applebees when DC offered so much variety. But in the interest of saving money and not wasting food, I suggested we at least venture to somewhere nicer in Alexandria where we could have a nice dine-in option. Hops was the followed suggestion and we made our way over there.

In spite of the fact that we actually didn’t do anything but go out to eat with a bunch of kids (all total, we sat at a table for 22), we did have a good time. Hops has great food for kids and adults at a very reasonable price, so everyone walked away satisfied.

And that was Saturday. On Sunday, my mother-in-law called me to borrow some Vanilla. This was a good thing because I wanted her to come over and watch Ayden later that evening so that I could go dry some clothes. Our dryer is on the fritz and manages to toss clothes around without actually drying them. We’ve called and gotten it serviced once at the cost of $100 and we weren’t trying to continue to invest in making another service call just yet. Since my husband is finishing his last class for his Masters’, he had gone to work, so he couldn’t watch Ayden. Turns out that just yet turned into ever because my husband called and said we’re buying a washer dryer today. I did convince him that we only needed the dryer right away and that the washing machine was fine for right now. I’d been investigating dryers the week before and already had one saved, so online I went and placed the order. It’s going to be delivered Tuesday. In the meantime, my hubby came home around 7pm and took two bags for himself and one for me, just to get us through the week.

Also that day, I attempted to finish grading my papers for the lit. class and just turn in the grades. The problem with that is that I had students who had missing work. Besides that one student with the missing research paper, I had at least four others who had missing assignments. Two I had to fail because on top of missing papers, they missed a good portion of the course by either not showing up or showing up extremely late or leaving extremely early, so they were missing participation and quiz grades. The other two attended every class and really put effort in, even though they knew the workload was more than expected. One had taken literature the prior semester. The other had taken me for two prior semesters. I find that I am incredibly sympathetic toward those I feel are trying, perhaps even to my detriment. Because here I am today, patiently waiting for three students to send me what I need not to fail them. One student was at work and called me back; one student has her phone going straight to voicemail and didn’t respond to my message yesterday; and the student who slipped her paper under my door has yet to respond. As to not hold the other students up, I went ahead and put their grades in, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to hear from both my department secretary and Admissions and Records about my missing grades because technically, I only have a 48-hour window before I have to turn in final grades.

Other events of that day: I decided to cook lasagna for dinner, and I spilled a quarter of a bowl of cheese on the floor, to which my son said mess, and helped me clean up by eating leftover shreds from the kitchen floor. I guess it was a good thing I’d spilled the cheese because as I was blending it—a mix of cheddar, Parmesan, mozzarella and romano—I was wondering what I was going to do with the leftover. Moot point once I spilled it.

But by far, the most interesting incident happened at around 5am this morning. I managed to get locked in my own bathroom! Okay, lemme explain, before (or while) you’re cracking up into gales of laughter. When we bought our house two years ago, the inspector put in the report that the door sticks because of a hinge. When we moved in, for security reasons, we changed all the locks, and for aesthetic reasons, most of the knobs. Somewhere along the line, we forgot to account for the laundry room door, the master bedroom closet door, and the master bathroom doorknob. And we just left them as is. A few months ago, my husband and I noticed that the knob was sticking. And we acknowledged to one another that we were going to have to fix it before it became truly problematic. As you can tell, we did nothing more than repeatedly make that comment, even as the sticking became more frequent. Our solution: not to close the door all the way. This morning at five, our son woke up and in turn, made sure we both knew he was up. So I go to the bathroom, and wisely do not close it all the way. Don’t ask me how I managed to do this, but on my exit of the bathroom, I manage to go back in and somehow close the door completely. Grabbing the knob, I twist once, twice, thrice, seven times to no avail. Lamely, I have to knock on the door and wait for my husband to do the same twists, again to no avail. He then has to go to the hall closet for a screwdriver and disengage the knob. Yet the straight piece that bends in when you close the door (I just Googled it and found out that piece is called a deadlatch) was still stuck. Apparently, the little brass round knobs are not terrible expensive because the deadlatch is constructed mostly of plastic, which my husband had to break in several pieces before he could remove the entire knob. We now have a nice gaping hole in our bathroom door, which will hopefully soon see the proper knob as replacement.

The whole Saturday playdate and this morning’s lock-in incident of course meant that I forgot one very crucial item I needed for tonight, and that is my flash drive that contains my syllabus. The good news is that on Friday, I had photocopied almost all the first day materials I needed for tonight, so the only thing that was missing is my syllabus. Of course, I had not placed an alternate copy on Blackboard and had no backup copy available (note to self: copy some materials to hard drive at work). But again luck was with me as I remembered I had sent a PDF copy of this semester’s Saturday class syllabus to one of our department secretaries for copying. Of course, I couldn’t remember which of the five secretaries I had sent it to, but I was able to sort it by attachment and search the approximate January date. I opened the PDF file, copied the syllabus into a Word file, reformatted for some consistency, and had to leave off the calendar (whew, that sounded like a lot of work!) but in the end, desired result achieved, and I at least have something they can read along with as I lecture. Not a bad recovery if I do say so myself.

Now if only those students would hurry up and get their things in!

The Originally Re-Duplicated Blog “Toxic Shock Syndrome”

Apparently, I liked this blog so much, it had been reincarnated a few times, so bear with me if you’ve read it before. Read it again if you like because in order to make it available, I had to copy it from a Note Pad file and then remove all the line break quotation marks and old HTML formatting script. But really, it was no trouble. I’ve also included a few new notations [in brackets like this]. I also did some minor tweaking of the original to satisfy my English students who might complain about my habit of switching to second person, something I constantly tell them NOT to do.

Originally Re-posted on 1/7/2010 with the title “Retro Thursdays: Favorite Blogs”

There are some of you that may think that this blogging/writing thing is new, but in fact the only thing that’s new is the fact that I’m posting it on FB for a little added exposure. So for those of you new to reading my material, and for those of you who just plain missed it, today I’m going to institute a new feature to my blog, and that is sharing some of my older material, which will include reposting some older blogs. Don’t worry—I won’t torture you with recycled material every day, just on Thursdays for now, and this probably won’t be indefinite, but we’ll see. My reason for doing this is twofold: one, it gives me a chance to walk down memory lane, and two it means I don’t have to drag you with me. This new blog site makes it difficult to pick and choose which blogs you wish to read and since I’ve been doing this blogging thing a long time (around 6 years from my closest estimate). For the sake of clarity, we’ll just call these blogs Retro Thursdays; the majority of them have come from my Yahoo! Blog site, but there are others that have been scattered here and there throughout the cyber universe.

But enough talk, here’s my first repost and apparently it’s one of my favorites because I actually reposted part of it in the past. [I am nothing if not consistent.]

For those of you who don’t know by now, I have a strange fascination with writing either on the subject of menstruation (and all the symptoms associated with it), or the bathroom. When I say the bathroom, I don’t mean the standard run-of-the-mill-doing-what-you’re-supposed-to-be in there, but the social etiquette deviants. As an example, let me include for you one of my pieces that I submitted for syndication (of course I have not yet been picked up yet, but keep hope alive people!). [Seriously, still…keep hope alive.]

For your reading pleasure:

Toxic Shock Syndrome ([originally composed] Summer 2007) [It’s hard to believe this building has undergone a renovation and a separate bathroom renovation, and I can still manage to have the same set of issues.]

No, I’m not referring to that small print that’s included on Tampon boxes (I offer my automatic apology to any guys reading this since I know that any reference to that “woman thing” makes you turn away in disgust. But here’s a hint: we do too [even when we are handling our own woman thing]!)

What I am instead referring specifically to is my reaction to people who insist on using their cell phone in a public restroom. The other day, I happened to be casually handling my business, when in the next stall, I heard the telltale sign of someone checking their voicemail. The worst part of it was that she had the voicemail on speaker. While I understand that we all have busy lives, couldn’t she have found a more appropriate time to check her messages? Perhaps after she washed her hands and got out of the bathroom?

The voicemail girl isn’t the only potty faux pas I’ve come across; there was the woman who decided to have a full-fledged conversation in the adjoining stall, and then there’s the person who decided to skip the waiting period and eat while in the stall (that’s a completely separate issue that I refuse to further address [especially in light of how disgusting I told you our bathroom can be]).

As for the conversations, isn’t there a point where a person has to consider this a severe breach of both bathroom and cell phone etiquette? This applies not only to the person on the other end of the phone, who has to endure multiple toilet flushes, but for that unsuspecting person in the next stall who knows there’s someone else in the bathroom besides the person that has similar business.

I don’t know about you, but personally, I am by no means a fan of public facilities anyway. The presence of another person in what’s supposed to be a place of sanctuary often subjects me to all kinds of restroom paranoia. Without getting into too many details, I will say that how much time I spend in the stall, as well as what kind of noises can be heard from my stall are thoughts that occur to me when other people are in the restroom. I also take no pleasure in anyone else’s auditory performances, which for some odd reason also seem to echo in bathrooms. The logical part of me knows that the other person is not in the adjoining stall with a stopwatch, or even worried about my business when she is tending to her own. It, however, does not prevent me from attempting to rush through my necessary roughness as splash free as plausible.

After all, it is rude to interrupt someone on the phone.

Waterlogged

Probably one of my most ambivalent habits that I have adopted over the years is the habit of increasing my water intake. When I first moved from my rural environment to the city, drinking water was difficult because I was used to true spring water, literally from underground springs, not the treated stuff I was subjected to here. But I made an adjustment by switching to bottled water and investing in a filtered water pitcher at home. Once again, my water drinking was back on, although not to the capacity it is now.

Of course, I’ve always know the benefits of water. My 100-year-old grandma is a living testament to the power of water; she frequently told us growing up that she always starts her day with it. I’ve always found over the years that the more I drink water, the less shiny my face becomes during the day, and the less likely I am to get any acne issue. In addition, sufficient water keeps your muscles and joints lubricated in a sense, where you aren’t as sore after working out. Of course, it’s also good for your kidneys and your bladder, and the more colorless your urine is, the more likely all those internal organs are functioning properly. In fact, I’ve found that if don’t drink the proper amount of water, my sides where my kidneys are located will start to ache.

Last year, I even found out from listening to The Yolanda Adams Morning Show that the more water you drink, the more it increases weight loss by eventually flushing out the fat cells, making them in effect skinnier. So in an effort test that theory, I started drinking copious amounts of water. With the increased intake of water, I also feel the increased output. On a proper hydration day, my bladder is better than a cuckoo clock, and I find myself going to the restroom almost every hour to the minute. This is where my use of the word ambivalent comes in, not because I have an ambivalent relationship with water—I happen to like drinking it cold, room temperature, or hot—but because I feel ambivalent about the immediate after-effects of water, and that is the need to go to the bathroom more frequently.

When I am at work, I would love to have the physical attributes of a camel—able to drink large amounts of water without going to the bathroom. Do I have that ever present phobia of public restrooms that claims others? Not especially. In fact, I think there’s something rather comforting in the anonymity of a public restroom.

I do, however, have a very specific problem with our public restroom here at my job. For those of you who don’t know, I work at a public community college. I’ve come to the foregone conclusion that we have some of the nastiest female creatures here. Or at the very least, some of the nastiest creatures of the female species inhabit our restrooms.

I understand that women frequently don’t sit on the toilet in public restrooms because of some phobia that our butt cheeks will touch the place where some unknown person’s butt cheeks have been. I get that. And some clever inventor also understood that phobia and invented the disposable toilet seat cover. Why, oh why then is it that I can go to a restroom for women and find all manner of misfiring? I would love to assume that this misfiring comes from standing over the toilet in straddle position and aiming long distance into the bowl. To me, this seems to create more problems with the whole idea of backsplash ricocheting onto our clothing and ourselves. Women are not anatomically built like men, who can aim their pee away from them.

The whole misfire phenomenon is bad enough with number 1, but the day I saw number 2 splattered on the wall was the tipping point. I’ve even suggested that we be allowed to put some additional signage, complete with illustrations—a stick figure with boobs and an anatomically correct toilet would suffice—and arrows that lead to use of the preposition IN, not ON, or AROUND. So far, the facilities management folks have only laughed at my proposal.

As a result of wanting to avoid the restroom, I wait until almost the last possible moment before doing The River Dance. Sometimes this backfires when my favorite stall (the oversized handicapped) has some sort of filth. Then I’m forced to squeeze into the smaller ones. On the rarest of occasions, all three are foul. By then, it’s oftentimes too late to change my mind and go upstairs to the private staff restrooms, so I’m usually faced with the dilemma of having to foot flush, or worst case scenario, wipe up someone else’s pee (I refuse to even contemplate messing with anyone else’s number 2).

I even have other problems with public restrooms that far supersede this post. I’ll post that later as it was previous post from years past.

After all that, I take back my statement. I most definitely have a phobia. I don’t think I’ll drink my water until I get home this evening.

What I Really Need

Okay, so I missed yesterday’s deadline, but in my defense 1) I gave you two last week and 2) we had this REALLY huge March snowstorm that shut down the entire Washington Metropolitan area. Okay, okay, so the storm wasn’t HUGE in all areas. In fact, as one Facebook colleague noted, some areas only got rain or slush. For my area, there was snow coverage. Big fat wet flakes fell until about one o’clock where I live. And to be quite honest, it wasn’t an attractive snow. I wanted to take a picture of my back yard, but the snow fell so unevenly that the left half of the yard was covered in this pretty picturesque Robert Frost poem substance, while the right side seemed to fight back against the snow and show its craggy existence (who knew that I would get to use one of the words from a Scottish romance novel for my backyard). So the scene overall kept me from whipping out the camera-phone. Now that I laid bare my very good excuse for not posting yesterday, I’ll most on to today’s post. Back to talking more about my health and my weight loss quest. Currently, I am sitting here eating my oatmeal (the subject of my last complaint) with the knowledge that all the dieting in the world does me no good without the one thing I need. What I need can be summed up in one simple word: exercise. I know this for several reasons. Let’s just start with the most recent: the newly re-turned over leaf. I have spent months of scarfing down oatmeal and increasing my water intake, only to NOT GAIN any weight. The bad news is with just the food routine, I’m not losing any either. Four months ago, I decided to get moving again; while my summer two-evening a week boot camp had increased my flexibility, not being able to go anymore was no excuse for not re-incorporating any form of physical activity. Even though my mind decided four months ago, my body didn’t engage in the conversation until two weeks ago when I started working out to the Xbox 360’s Nike Fit Challenge Game. I had originally purchased the Xbox 360 Kinect for my husband as a Christmas present, and one of the purchase options came with the Nike Fit game. Great idea! I thought. Maybe this is something we can eventually do together! So I bought the system, game and all, and the game remained unopened until that fateful day two weeks ago. It was a Saturday, and I was uncommonly restless after coming home from teaching class. My son and I went down to the basement, and I started cleaning up to Usher’s videos. Then the cleaning became dancing, and the idea came to me that I needed to do some coordinated movement. And the forgotten game came to mind. On went the console and here’s where the real story begins. The Nike Fit game is designed to be completely interactive. Gamers, or fitness nuts, get their choice of either a female or male virtual trainer. After some ridiculous time spent Googling, I’ve managed to come up with some back story on the actual people these trainers are modeled on. The lady trainer is Marie Purvis and according to her Website “Not Your Mom’s Workout,” she’s a trainer extraordinaire who specializes in training overweight women (her words for real). The guy’s name is Alex Molden and he’s apparently a former NFL player. I chose Alex because I can much more readily accept a man barking orders at me over his feminine counterpart. He introduced himself to me, but since his virtual form has been torturing literal me, I had long since forgotten his name. And apparently, most gamers choose the trainer of the opposite sex (I read a few reviews too). One of the first problems I encountered with this was how to position the Kinect portion of the game so that I would have more room to jump around, or even be “seen” by the sensor. In the end, I had to put the Kinect sensor on the edge of the television screen. The entire time you’re playing the—dare I call it a game?—Nike fit, you are inundated by the typical video racing game music, nothing actually catchy like the Usher I was listening to earlier. Since this is a Kinect model, the screen “reads” your body image. As if mirrors or pictures weren’t bad enough, you get see yourself pixelated on the television as blue (or sometimes orange or white) blob—at least that’s how I saw myself. And for it to be a blob, it’s surprisingly accurate, while I couldn’t quite see any cellulite dimples, I could tell EXACTLY how round my midsection was (really, it was like looking in a virtual fun mirror). Then Alex took me through a rigorous workout that I was soon to find out was only the assessment of EXACTLY out of shape I was (and according to my virtual blob the shape was a very large oval). Alex then came up with a regimen and had me commit to three days (his virtual self is kind of cute so he talked me into it). This commitment was for three days a week: Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday for 19, 23, and 19 minutes respectively. And that Sunday he was referring to was the next day! But I figured sure I could commit to 19 minutes. This was, of course, a total setup. What Alex fails to mention is that those 19 minutes don’t actually include the warm up or the cool down. What he also fails to mention is that some the exercises aren’t merely time based but form based: if you don’t do the exercise correctly, you are literally stuck in his virtual workout until you complete something that resembles what he is demonstrating. Finally, one of dear ol’ Alex’s biggest omissions is that his workouts are kick-ass workouts. Granted, the Candi of five or six years ago would not have had as much trouble with the paces that were being set, but the Candi of TODAY has been talking back to virtual Alex about his grueling workout while flailing through at least half of them. He starts off by demonstrating the exercise in proper form. My virtual blob is only blue when I’m in the right position; until then, I turn some type of toxic orange. After I’ve adjusted, the drills begin: • High knee jumps: This is like jogging in place, only you have to pretend that you are a Clydesdale. I usually do well for about 15 of the 20 seconds until start feeling my entire body try to reach my knees: stomach, boobs, etc. • Jumping jacks: about the only exercise I can pull off for the entire time. The only problem is that my arms get cut off during the jump and Alex chastises me about my form. • Side hurdles: I have to jump sideways over two in the direction of the arrows. The major problem with this is that the left jumping space is occupied partially by my couch. The other problem is the jumping high enough with my feet together. I constantly hear the thump of not jumping high enough. In the end, Alex has adjusted me to one hurdle. • Leg confusion (not really called that but the result is the same): Apparently Alex does not yet realize that I do not have the required coordination for this exercise which is composed of lunges followed by squats, followed by jumping lunges and jumping squats, all in 20 seconds. • Bounce around on one leg in a square (again, (not really called that but by this time I’m just staring at Alex with slack-jawed disbelief): By the time I’ve balanced on one leg, the exercise is over. • Split decision: Virtual panes of glass are put up in different arrangements and your task is to avoid hitting them. I can barely manage to avoid bumping into walls in reality, so when I heard the first tell-tale glass shatter on screen, I knew I was in for it. • Dodgeball: Apparently, you do not know that I was traumatized by this sport in elementary, grade, and high school. So when I see a bunch of balls zooming at me on a screen, I tend to freeze up. It doesn’t matter that the red bull’s eye on the screen is supposed to help you find where the next ball is aimed; I apparently can only walk into them. • Mountain climbers: Really Alex? Getting into plank position is hard enough, and you expect me to actually MOVE after I get there? • Any drill that requires me to get on the floor: immediately sabotaged by my son who finds this is the perfect moment to play jungle gym with me in the lead role of gym. He has crawled under my plank, bounced on my leg lifts, and rolled over when I’m on my side. Screen blob me stays orange most of the time. These are only examples of a few, and to his credit, Alex tries to keep it interesting with occasional encouragements: “Way to adjust your form”; “You nailed that one”; and “You’ve reached your personal best.” The personal best is easy when I progress from zero to one. When I do something better in that Pavlovian way, my blob turns white. At the end of the drills, Alex even has the nerve to actually ask me to repeat some of his drills, and at this point, the screen prompts you to either say “Let’s Do It” or “I’m Done.” Usually, my screen choices usually stay up with that music looping over and over again as I catch my breath long enough to actually scream “I’m Done!” The one time I did “Let’s Do It,” I truly learned to appreciate that 48-hour interval in between workouts, because my knees let me know their true feelings the morning after the extra doing. Overall, I do see myself improving: I can now cross my legs and touch my toes without falling over (I seriously did one time), I managed to not get hit by three dodgeballs one time, and I hear less glass shattering during split decision. Best of all, I managed to lose five pounds.