Spinning for chicks.

I'm officially one of the people I used to make fun of.

I spin.

I spin for chicks.

No...not girls.

My chicks.

My bony skinny scrawny chicken legs.

I won't torture either of us with pictures so let's all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

I don't shame easily, but I keep 'em covered as much as possible because I'm tired of deflecting the questions about the physics of how it's possible for me to stand upright.

I was first made aware of spinning a few years back my friend Jack Q who said "I joined the spin class to lose weight but all I got were these ham-hocks instead" as he pointed to bulbous calves and redwood-thick thighs. He was already a pretty big guy and now his legs matched the rest of him. Even though I'm not a pretty big guy, there isn't a whole lot of my five-foot-eight-one-hundred-and-sixty-pound frame [ok...one-seventy...ok OK one-eighty now leave me alone!] proportioned to my legs. 

So since there's a plethora of spin classes at the YMCA we recently joined and I have a neighbor/friend who's quite zealous about spinning [especially before the sun wakes up...wha?!] I thought I'd put Jack Q's theory to the test. The first few classes were excruciating. I kept saying I would never go back. I told the people in class they were insane. They smiled patiently and kept pedalling to nowhere. They knew I would be back.

And I was. This week [I think my third...or fourth...can't remember because side-effects of blood rushing to the legs is decreased brain functionality] was a milestone. I finished a class without cheating. I cranked the dial when I was told to. I pedalled fast when I was told to. I stopped when I was told to and not a second earlier. I had gotten over the hump. I was in the zone. I even went without my zealous friend so I felt I deserved double points. No...triple points because it was the class with the nazi instructor who cranked up my dial because he thought I should be working harder: "Don't slow down!" he screamed. "Then don't touch my bike!!" I screamed back. It was a good class.

So here's hoping the chickens are getting fed and fat...well at least growing. If they plump up I'll be sure to post some pics because, yes, I'm egomanical enough to believe that after this post you all want to see some leg.

Cluck-cluck-whirrrrrrr......

A post on healthy eating...though it may not sound like it at first.

Whoa! It's been a week since my last post. Good thing I'm not doing this for a living. It's been another fairly uninteresting week. For someone who's blissfully unemployed with supposedly a lot of time on my hands I don't seem to be getting much done yet never seem to have enough time. It's another side effect of my post-post-holiday depression. At this point I'm pretty clear it's just plain ol' depression which sometimes pulls me down like a heavy anchor. So rather than swim alone I'm going to see a therapist to try help me make sense of it all.

So what does this have to do with healthy eating? Therapists make you bring up all that unresolved childhood muck that's supposed to be still causing all the trouble in our lives. While I was putting the finishing touches on dinner I recalled a traumatic issue that I vowed never to pass on to my child thus ending a cycle of horror no-one should have to endure: drinking Cod Liver Oil and Castor Oil. During some of my earliest years in Barbados while my parents were getting their business off the ground I was raised by aunts, great-aunts, grandmothers...took the whole village apparently [what kind of child must I have been?!]. And they each believed in power of indgesting slimy hurl-inducing oils; a tablespoon of cod-liver oil everyday, and castor oil once a week for good measure [torture]. I didn't have a say in the matter and was evidently scarred for life.

Thanks to modern ingenuity Omega-3 fatty acids [the reason I suffered as a child] are now found in many other yummy sources, like the blueberry salad dressing I drizzled lovingly over my romaine lettuce earlier tonight. They can also be found in eggs, and I make killer omeletes. I don't know how something that's found naturally in fish gets into eggs, and I probably don't want to know. What's important is that I, nor my child, no longer need suffer slimy sludge to keep our hearts healthy.

I think this post sets the record for connecting unrelated topics...it's a gift.