Oh, Sexy American girlfriend!

OK, so maybe I’m not quite there, but I am back at it!

Back at what? Whit­tling away my waist­line. I’d like my girl­ish fig­ure back, thank you very much.

You say you’ve already gone on this road with me and what do I think makes this time dif­fer­ent? My road is ever bumpy and some­times lit­tered with obsta­cles that take me a bit of time to get over, but I never stop. Never give up. Never sur­ren­der, by Joe!

I like how I feel when I am doing well for my body. In turn, my spirit is more joy­ful. Those around me can dance and rejoice in that side effect of me eat­ing well and work­ing out regularly.

Any­who, today was day Four of Turbo Fire with Cha­lene John­son. It kicks my ass and turned me into a grody, sweaty mess. I pre­fer it that way. It makes me feel like some­thing was accomplished.

After today’s work­out I imme­di­ately recorded an account­abil­ity video. I won’t do that every­day, but here and there I will as I com­plete this 90 day pro­gram. Before start­ing, I took before pho­tos. EGADS! It was fright­en­ing how much I’d turned to mush in the past 6 months. Totally spew­tas­tic. Talk about intense moti­va­tion! You won’t be see­ing those for a long time. Sorry. Some van­ity needs to be spared in the face of account­abil­ity. When there is remark­able change, I will post a side by side like I did a cou­ple of years ago.

Until then, leave me a com­ment if you’re on a fitness/weight loss jour­ney. Let’s do this thing together, eh?

my hardest workout is trying not to look bored while you tell me about your workout Oh, Sexy American girlfriend!

    Five days off and what do you get?

    The title. As I was fin­ish­ing up mak­ing this week’s sched­ule a cou­ple of weeks ago, I handed it to my gen­eral man­ager with the phrase, “very soon I am going to require time off.” As the words crossed my lips I felt a welling of emo­tion and tears. While my boss is 20 years younger than I, her face became con­cerned and instantly asked if I needed to talk.

    I surely did.

    First let me just say how age is sim­ply a num­ber and that is the pur­pose of me point­ing out the gap between myself and my GM. Most cer­tainly younger, it is best not to assume the younger per­son won’t understand.

    With that expla­na­tion out of the way, we set forth to plan a few days off for the lab man­ager who has been run­ning on all cylin­ders and some I didn’t even know I had since mid-January. I was con­sid­er­ing time in May. She thought more imme­di­ate and, with my newly writ­ten sched­ule in hand, began alter­ing it to suit my appar­ent need for respite.

    Mirac­u­lously she made it hap­pen. As if a veil of bur­den being removed from my being, the weight came off my shoul­ders. For the first time in months the air felt clear enough to truly breathe. The shift in atti­tude was likely con­fus­ing for any­one who’d wit­nessed my near break downs when one thing or another didn’t go as planned or a piece of equip­ment sud­denly fails to operate.

    Let us flash for­ward. Today is Sun­day: Day two in five of free­dom. Per my request, no one has texted or called from work. Gloooooori­ous. Fri­day night I stayed up very late (past mid­night) catch­ing up via Face­book with some­one I knew in high school. Ah, the joys of social net­work­ing at its finest. Seri­ously. You make of it what you choose. After sip­ping a cou­ple low carb mar­gar­i­tas amidst the chat­ting, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I was tired. We bid our good­nights and zzzzzzzzzzzz. And Zzzzzzz some more. I didn’t awaken until after 8AM. Rare for me to sleep in even if I’ve remained awake longer than 10:30PM. I’m weird. Sun­light peeks through the win­dow and tells me to get my bum out of a cozy bed and get on with the day.

    And you know, on my days off I do not mind hav­ing extra time to spend relax­ing or what­ever my heart desires.

    My first day off was spent goof­ing off and catch­ing up on favorite pro­grams On Demand with Man­cub. Then, the sense of ick began to take hold of me. The weather was quite dis­agree­able. Rain in the morn­ing with­out thun­der or light­ning. A lit­tle sprin­kle never killed any­one. With my new kicks on and lay­ers to ward off the chilly breeze, I set off with a newly down­loaded car­dio tracker and car­dio beats music app. An hour later I killed 400 calo­ries and walked 3.2 miles.

    Yeeeeeeeeee! It was amaz­ing and head clear­ing. With each calo­rie burned I expelled neg­a­tiv­ity that had built up over the course of a few months. It’s not com­pletely gone, but it is decreased. Mostly, my exer­cise comes in the form of work­out dvds. Focus is solely on chore­og­ra­phy and form. Walk­ing is sec­ond nature. Aside from speed and force in stride, it gives the brain time to unload.

    I want to go back to the music app for a moment. It’s sole pur­pose is pro­vid­ing BPM for walking/running. It allows choices from alter­na­tive rock to pop to open for­mat, which is what I used Sat­ur­day. Fitra­dio for Android must’ve known me. It played crazy mash up mixes with ‘80s tunes as the base with over lays of cur­rent music. There were some kooky blends. The tempo was ideal and inter­est­ing to keep push­ing me along.

    One thing became abun­dantly obvi­ous. I need to do it more often. With days get­ting longer and tem­per­a­ture warm­ing, there is no excuse.

    Here is a photo taken after the walk was com­plete. Using sepia and blindly shoot­ing from under the dan­de­lion, it gave a cool perspective.

    IMAG0460 300x179 Five days off and what do you get?

    Another shot, taken in a sim­i­lar fash­ion, was tweaked using another groovy app on my Droid.

    PicsArt 13344419597021 300x179 Five days off and what do you get?

    And a lit­tle more tweak­ing gives it a haunt­ing appear­ance.tmp 1334441267410 40 2012 04 14 17 08 45 328 300x179 Five days off and what do you get?

      Back to Basics

      Ear­lier today, after receiv­ing emails that com­ments were made on my blog only to see they were just spam jerk-offs, I checked out the posts attached to the emails. This action drove me to read entries dat­ing back to 2009.

      WOW! Is it pride or nar­cis­sism to say that I was impressed. At the moment of con­cep­tion aka putting thought down on dig­i­tal paper, one might ques­tion qual­ity.  Sure, I churned out some stinkers, but whilst play­ing blog roulette today, I found some gems buried amongst the gra­tu­itous “buy me! fol­low me!” sort of posts. As men­tioned in the post pre­vi­ous to this one, I got off track. Maris­sol­ogy became BUY BEACHBODY DAILY.

      Today’s ven­ture into blog entry’s past helped me tap into the girl who is Maris­sol­ogy. Some of those past posts serve as reminder that, while my pant size may have decreased, my social­iz­ing aka dat­ing life hasn’t improved one iota. That is my own fault. Ein­stein is cred­ited to say­ing that repeat­ing the same thing over and over and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results is the def­i­n­i­tion of INSANITY. It’s either time to suit up with the strait­jacket or make changes in how I go about alter­ing my rela­tion­ship sta­tus.
      Every­body tells me that it will hap­pen when I least expect it because that is how it hap­pened to them. Between you and me, I don’t believe that bull malarky for one sec­ond. It makes for a good tale, though.

      A song just popped into my head and I must share it. Then, I will resume my banter.

      For what it’s worth, I do not con­sider myself des­per­ate, seriously.

       

      One of the blog posts that enticed me to pat myself on the back was in regards to the moniker sin­gle women my age are often sad­dled with thanks to mis­un­der­stand­ing: Cougars.  Ick. You should go read it.

      There have been times when I dream and have the abil­ity to recall what occurred when awak­ened. If I don’t write about it quickly then the details are lost. Cre­ative license can be assumed, but that wouldn’t be gen­uine, now would it? Another “ooh I think I just pulled a mus­cle reach­ing to pat my back” blog entry involved just a moment when a dream was shared. What’s funny is that the dream involved a man I know online, but now I can’t remem­ber who! Mem­ory is such a ter­ri­ble thing to lose. So, if you’re so inclined to be amused by my noc­tur­nal dal­lience, here’s the link a dink a do.

      Often when I write in the man­ner from those posts, I need to be fired up or be com­pletely clear of thought. What starts out as a blog about noth­ing turns into some­thing, I feel, wor­thy of oth­ers enjoy­ment. With the instances where I am plain old pissed off, I attempt to tame my anger with hyper­bole and humor. The word­ing is tweaked to be col­or­ful. Because I find when I vent with a vengeance, it comes back to haunt me. At least if I’m fum­ing while chan­nel­ing a sit-comesque char­ac­ter, we can all laugh about it later. Mostly.

      Let us raise a glass to the re-christening of Maris­sol­ogy in her purest form. Here’s to get­ting back to basics and blog­ging as it was intended. Screw you SEO. This girl is in it for the therapy.

        When Do You Know and Other Meandering Thoughts

        For­give me read­ers for I have been slacker. It’s been God only knows how long ago since my last blog post. What started out in 2007 as ther­apy became more of a plat­form for me to make money, but that wasn’t really what Maris­sol­ogy aka Wild­hair aka Men­tal Origami was cre­ated for, you see. Just so you know, I did NOT make money and become the newest Jenn­syl­va­nia — Jen Lan­caster. Again, most likely to be blamed on the fact that every-freakin-body has a blog and, undoubt­edly, because I am a slacker. Exhausted help­ing the world see one hour at a time. There are days that I feel quite accom­plished. Then, a machine breaks down and sense of defeat creeps in. I’m not a flip­pin’ idiot, but if it involves wires and elec­tric­ity I am NOT in my wheel house of comfort.

        Any­who, I did roman­ti­cize that my life of trial and error in rais­ing a teenage son with­out sup­port from his jack­ass dad would some how have broad appeal and mag­i­cally I’d be rewarded with prizes and mon­e­tary ado­ra­tion. Hey, I even toss in the freak show known as my dat­ing life and search for a bra that will prop­erly lift and sup­port the gazon­gas. Yeah yeah, it goes back to being lost in a sea of blogs and lack of exper­tise (lazi­ness) in mak­ing this blog pop out on search engines.

        ::insert laugh track::

        The sole intent of this post is to vent and whine. The rules of this blog remain the same: My blog; my rules.

        While I can­not declare that I hate every aspect of my job, after six­teen years, it feels as if the shelf life has expired. But what should come next? I’m 46 years old. Oh, of course every job has ups and downs. Some­times it feels more downs than ups. It’s called work instead of fun for a rea­son. Then again, all over the web peo­ple are shout­ing out how they love what they do and blah blah ‘secret’ yada yada. I’ve been try­ing to pre­tend I loooooooove my job and know where I am is where I belong. Pop­py­cock! When instinct tells you to walk in and just flip off the place as a whole whilst declar­ing a big f*ck you! one might want to reassess the def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness.
        That is not to sug­gest I dis­like every one who works with me nor does it say that busi­ness is a giant vor­tex of suck. It isn’t. This is NOT about the cor­po­ra­tion or peo­ple. It’s about me MEMEMEMEMEMEME!

        Maybe all I need is a period of respite. You know, that lit­tle doo hicky some peo­ple take for a week or two. Uh, what’s the word? The Brits call it hol­i­day. We ‘Mer­i­cans call it a V A C A T I O N! The prob­lem is that in spite of my efforts to pull a team together that can man­age with­out me for a week, it seems futile. Do I just go and let them fend for them­selves? Force them to step up and han­dle what­ever comes their way? That’s how I learned, after all. Damn the tor­pe­does? If they can’t pull their shit together then it’s tough nuggets? The down­side to that the­ory is that if they fail, it will be my fail­ure. I’ll get the “how could you take time off and not have suit­able cov­er­age?” Right? Blah. Rock and hard place, meet Marissa.

        Now, on to the next vent of the morn­ing. I pride myself on being some­what emo­tion­ally sta­ble in my world of sin­gle­dom. How­e­vah! I miss com­pan­ion­ship. I for­get what it’s like to have some­one look at me as if I’d hung the moon and vice versa. Sure, that dreamy crap may fade, but how ter­rific is it while it lasts? That’s a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. I need to have my moment of lala­land romance. Peo­ple on Face­book are con­stantly bitch­ing about their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers who don’t live up to their promises etc… Not every­one expresses such dis­en­chant­ment, mind you. Some peo­ple actu­ally LIKE the per­son they mar­ried or date. It’s pos­si­ble that one day I could be one of those peo­ple. Oh, and while I’m on this sub­ject, please don’t patron­ize me with the “when it is meant to be, it will be” m’kay? There are times when that advice is appro­pri­ate, but not when I’m on a rant-a-roni. With my cur­rent state of mind I may threaten to punch you in the face. Hey, it isn’t personal.

        Did I men­tion that I am 46 and all that you have just read will later be blamed on jacked up hor­monal bal­ance? I won’t be able to deny it as once it is on the inter­net it NEVER leaves. This has all been quite ther­a­peu­tic for me. Get­ting it all out helps. Admit­ting that I am merely human is quite cathar­tic. The abil­ity to always rise above does not come eas­ily every time.

        The life I lead may look sim­ple and easy for those of you on the out­side. It ain’t easy to be me, but there’s no other way I know to be.

        553451 10150706189749508 788529507 8921899 1091639458 n 226x300 When Do You Know and Other Meandering Thoughts How I look

         

        Photo on 2012 01 25 at 19.43 300x225 When Do You Know and Other Meandering Thoughts The way I feel

          I am Woman Hear Me Roar

          Good gig­gily goo! I’ve been absent from my own blog for so long that I almost for­got it existed. Major changes occurred at work which basi­cally made it impos­si­ble for me to have much free time. Over time pay, which is usu­ally unheard of, was granted given the sit­u­a­tion. Today, Sun­day March 4, is my first day off since Feb­ru­ary 20. Insan­ity, right? Who ever said that which does not kill you makes you stronger may have been a tad off the mark. It didn’t kill me nor can it be declared that this girl is exhausted, but not stronger. It did, how­ever, prove that I am either a) an idiot or b) ded­i­cated to my work­place and asso­ciates. Maybe it is a com­bi­na­tion of both.

          The week behind me brought in a total of 54 hours worked. That is includ­ing an all day meet­ing, but not the amount of hours on the road to get to that meet­ing. Four and a half hours in the car round trip if you’re wondering.

          Any­who, I am not whin­ing. The $$ will be nice (hoping).

          All those hours leads to a tired as hell mom which is why there’s been a lack of writ­ing. My brain drains the sec­ond my key goes into the igni­tion of my car. It would’ve been tremen­dously embar­rass­ing if there had been unex­pected drop by guests. My house is a dis­as­ter. Being that today is my only day off of the week I con­sid­ered doing noth­ing more than slob­bing it in my paja­mas, sip­ping one form of liq­uid elixir or another while bask­ing in cheesy movies on Net­flix stream­ing. Inter­pret that as my own Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000 marathon.

          Instead, my stu­pid body and mind are stuck in over drive and I cleared out the spare bed­room of the piles of bags I’d pre­pared over a year ago to take to Good­will. Seri­ously, I was afraid I would find a car­cass of a way­ward mouse. It looked like a mini hoard­ers episode wait­ing to hap­pen. With Man­cub hav­ing loaded the car with the five bags of dona­tions, we set out with me sans make up. One glance at myself in the rear view mir­ror and it became abun­dantly appar­ent that I slept late com­ple­ments of Benadryl. Scary!

          Since we were out and about we headed to the gro­cery store. I did remem­ber to get dressed. No pjs or slip­per socks were worn. Still, I am grate­ful we didn’t run into any­one I knew. If any such known peo­ple saw me it is likely I wasn’t rec­og­niz­able. Yes, with­out make up I look that dif­fer­ent.

          Once home with a trunk load of gro­ceries, it became crys­tal clear the fridge hadn’t been cleaned out since the autumn leaves began falling to the ground. Yes, I am dis­gust­ing and lazy when it comes to cer­tain chores. What was most sur­pris­ing is noth­ing had grown moldy. The sur­prise entrees were nasty, all the same. My fridge is cleared of sci­ence projects. Plus, it isn’t trick­ing us into believ­ing there is some­thing worth eat­ing in there.

          I’d say that for my only day off in a cou­ple of weeks, I didn’t take it too easy. Now I’m going to take it easy. Din­ner can wait a lit­tle longer.

          Soooo there you have it in a nut­shell why this blog has been inactive.

          I’m not the only sin­gle mom in the world who works non-stop at times. There are plenty of us hard work­ing gals out there. Even in 2012 it seems not every­one can appre­ci­ate what role we play in rais­ing the human race. Sad.

          You know who you are and I ded­i­cate these songs to you!

            I am … Super Woman

            GIRL POWER!

            Yes­ter­day pre­sented a seri­ous chal­lenge for me as a lab man­ager. When pro­moted, I told them, prior to accept­ing the posi­tion, that I was NOT a mechanic. You see, short of com­plete rebuilds, we do our own main­te­nance and repairs on the equip­ment used in the lab. In our employ was a gen­tle­man who could fix just about any­thing. He retired leav­ing me with my own resources.

            Ugh.

            Since he left the com­pany in late Decem­ber, noth­ing ter­ri­bly chal­leng­ing has pre­sented itself. Light bulb replace­ment; cal­i­bra­tions; fluid refills. Noth­ing major. That is until a vital piece of equip­ment was dis­play­ing signs that a com­plete break­down was immi­nent. With­out this machine we are ren­dered use­less and a lot of cus­tomers would be tremen­dously upset that we couldn’t deliver the prod­uct in a timely manner.

            I admit that the part was ordered two weeks ago and that I had been pro­cras­ti­nat­ing. But the noise given off from the machine was deafening.

            Wear­ing my son’s cargo pants and a shirt I cared lit­tle about get­ting greasy, I reported to work two hours early after see­ing the den­tist (that’s for another post). Hav­ing spo­ken with a tech­ni­cian at our diag­nos­tics office, I felt less than con­fi­dent in pulling this repair off. How­ever, noth­ing ven­tured; noth­ing gained!

            Ugh.

            I knew 3 mas­sive bolts had to be loos­ened. The first one broke loose eas­ily. Hooray! The sec­ond one not so much. WD-40 to the res­cue. While that was seep­ing into the crevices and doing what­ever the hell it does, I replaced a rub­ber col­lar that had a split in it. Of course, out of 16 hex-screws, the last one would NOT budge. Bloody hell!! With a lit­tle inge­nu­ity, I made the part fit. Neener neener, stu­pid hex-screw!

            Twenty min­utes later I returned to the bolts I doused with WD-40. The sec­ond one budged with a lit­tle elbow grease.  The third one was in a spot that didn’t allow me to cre­ate enough torque with the hex wrench and pry bar. Dou­ble ewww tee EFF!!! The flip­ping hex wrench kept fly­ing off and drop­ping to the floor. Already posi­tioned in a tight spot between the ginor­mous machine and the wall, I bashed my skull into the cor­ner of our safety unit that holds the Health and Safety Man­ual and MSDS binders. Ironic, don’t ya think? With a win­dow nearby that gives cus­tomers access to see­ing and hear­ing what is going on in the lab, I attempted *cough* to be aware and not shout exple­tives. I may have failed mis­er­ably. At one point I saw stars and thought there would be a trickle of blood on my fore­head. Yes, I nailed my nog­gin that hard. I was too angry to cry.

            I kept lament­ing loudly, “I AM STARTING TO FEEL DEFEATED!” toward my co-lab tech. While she couldn’t help me phys­i­cally, she did cheer me on with words of encouragement.

            Var­i­ous posi­tions were attempted to break the bolt free from the hous­ing. This included stand­ing ON TOP of the machine, back on the floor but prop­ping my left foot against the swing arm while, with all my strength, yanked on the makeshift lever. FAIL!

            I must not go fur­ther with­out point­ing out that I am right handed and my right arm has reduced strength due to ten­donitis or some other sort of itis that induces pain and the inabil­ity to fully unbend the arm.

            Finally, with a ham­mer in hand and the hex wrench in place, I used the claw and an edge of the bracket to pry it as if it was a nail in the wall. It worked.

             

            lunapic 132935005546642 12 219x300 I am ... Super Woman

            I swear to you at that moment a choir of angels sang. Just the removal of the bolts took me about an hour and a half. That’s about how long I had hoped the entire process would take. Remain­ing was dis­man­tling, replace­ment and reassem­bling. THEN, calibrating.

            It was all down­hill once the 27 pound part was pounded out with a rub­ber mal­let and a lot of grunt­ing, pri­mal yelling etc… It was VERY therapeutic.

            By 1:20 PM, the deed was done. My body was drained, but my con­fi­dence was soar­ing. While I do NOT ever want to have to do this again, the action of doing it leaves me feel­ing extremely empow­ered. It also puts a feather in my cap as a sin­gle woman. I’ve been the home car­pen­ter, mover, spi­der killer, mouse trap­per all while putting on make up, get­ting pedi­cures and wear­ing pink glit­ter lip gloss.

            I DID IT! In fact, an email was sent to my regional man­ager express­ing just that. “I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF!!!”

            427669 10150607147679508 788529507 8601884 876054648 n I am ... Super Woman

            The beast above is what gave me such trou­ble. It’s a about a foot long and heavy as hell.  Above it is the mal­let which allowed me to make that cylin­der my bitch.

            And now, a musi­cal ded­i­ca­tion to my inner Super Woman. I’m stand­ing on my own two feet!  They say behind every great man is a great woman. Well, I stand with myself and my sis­ters who are doin’ for themselves!!

              30 Things Hath Meme-tember

              HAPPY 2O12!!!! Here’s hop­ing the Mayans just had a kooky sense of humor rather than a fore­bod­ing knack for know­ing the world’s end, eh?

              2012 joke 240x300 30 Things Hath Meme tember

              This new year was started with me sleep­ing in. A rare thing. It could be due to stay­ing up long enough to usher in 2012 watch­ing the movie PAUL with my son. It was quite a feat since this week kicked my tuchus all over the place at work. BUSY barely describes it. You would’ve sworn we were giv­ing away the store with the num­ber of peo­ple crowd­ing in our doors. Seri­ously, do NOT wait until the final week of the year to take advan­tage of your vision care ben­e­fits. Why do peo­ple do that? Do y’all sud­denly get tweaked vision after Christ­mas? Just some food for thought from an exhausted lab manager.

              My 17 year old is still snooz­ing and it’s nearly 10. Oh wait, that’s not unusual over Christ­mas break.

              So, here comes the real rea­son I logged onto Maris­sol­ogy to present you with a new blog post. It’s a meme. In blogger’s terms, this is also known as a cop out, writer’s block jog­ger or sim­ply an easy way to get a post up for read­ers to “enjoy.”

              Thirty Ques­tions

              Thirty ques­tions that require a sin­gle word answer. It’s tempt­ing to prat­tle on and on — so unlike me — K.I.S.S. it no mat­ter how tempting.

              1. Where is your cell phone? Console

              2. Describe your boyfriend/girlfriend? Nonexistent

              3. Your hair? Espresso

              4. Your mother? Gone

              5. Your father? Passed

              6. Your favourite item? Droid

              7. Your dream last night? Void

              8. Your favourite drink? water

              9. Your dream car? Free

              10. The room you are in? Living

              11. Your ex? Assclown

              12. Your fear? Abandonment

              13. What do you want to be in 10 years? Living

              14. Who did you hang out with last night? Mancub

              15. What you’re not? Fakel

              16. The last thing you did? Wrote

              17. What are you wear­ing? Clothes

              18. Your favourite book? Que?

              19. The last thing you ate? Biscuit

              20. Your life? Adventure

              21. Your mood? Mellow

              22. Your friends? Faboo

              23. What are you think­ing about right now? Future

              24. Your car? Saturn

              25. What are you doing at the moment? blogging

              26. Your sum­mer? Working

              27. What is on your TV? Candle

              28. When is the last time you laughed? Often

              29. Last time you cried? Thursday

              30. School? Finito!

              If you’re into it, blog your own!

                The end is near!

                The End Is Near!!!

                The end of 2011, that is. With that in mind, I felt it com­pletely appro­pri­ate to pre­pare and get a head start on the num­ber one res­o­lu­tion year after year after year: Get fit. Oh, you might call it los­ing weight, but I pre­fer to look at it from a long term per­spec­tive. After all, what’s the point in chang­ing your eat­ing and exer­cise habits if you’re not going to keep at it?

                The photo below is posted as full dis­clo­sure. I’m 5’10″ and even after a 32 pound weight loss (orig­i­nal loss was 40, but seden­tary lifestyle due to injury, I gained back 8), I sill look bot­tom heavy and, as many may call it, quite fluffy. As a side note, on this day I was feel­ing quite fetch­ing and thin. I look bet­ter from the side, as demon­strated in the sec­ond photo.

                326940 10150301027059508 788529507 7436984 5989248 o The end is near!

                333531 10150301028939508 788529507 7437014 2399621 o 282x300 The end is near!

                P90X is my weapon of choice this time around.Yes, I have attempted it before, but then Tur­boFire came into my life and I got hooked on that. How­ever, if you recall, danc­ing like a maniac at my niece’s wed­ding in Sep­tem­ber did quite a num­ber on my left knee. After more than a month of lay­ing off stren­u­ous exer­cise, it became appar­ent that my body relied upon work­ing out to keep the weight off. I gained a few pounds back as I hadn’t changed my eat­ing sans exer­cise. EEP!  It’s such a devil to lose, but in the blink of an eye it returns.

                Egads!

                Tur­boFire proved to be too much with all the twists and turns even though I’d been mod­i­fy­ing. Scratch­ing my head on what to do, I won­dered if strength­en­ing the knee would be the ticket. After a week of doing the P90X Lean plan, I am happy to report my knee feels incred­i­bly bet­ter. No longer stiff and pained in the morn­ing after a night of sleeping.

                How excited am I? Ridicu­lously, I say! Plus, I feel stronger after just a week. It is a very empow­er­ing work­out. When you see the informer­cials, I hope it isn’t a deter­rent due to the obvi­ous inten­sity of the pro­gram. It is. I won’t lie, but trainer Hor­ton insists you mod­ify and pause. “Do YOUR best and for­get the rest” is his repeated mantra. That doesn’t mean slack off. Push it to the brink of fail­ure. It’s a great feel­ing when you do more than you think pos­si­ble in your mind. Instead of “I can’t do a push-up” I say, “I will try to do a push-up and tomor­row I will be stronger.” I focus on form instead of how many reps I can do.

                To get me over the hump I imag­ine myself on video telling my story of suc­cess. Until that day when it is pro­duced, I give you another suc­cess story of a mom who thought she was stuck with the body she’d been dealt after hav­ing three children.