Dreaming in a Foreign Language

KS once told me that weight loss got easier once she stopped thinking of exercise as a chore and started thinking of it as "me time."

About a week before my surgery, the weather finally started to catch up with the calendar, and spring came to Wausau. With temperatures soaring into the 40s and the 50s, I started getting the urge to open all the windows and air out our stale house. I'd sit here on the couch between projects, and I'd watch Ben listlessly playing with his cars and his choo-choos. Guilt would start picking at the edges of my consciousness.

So one afternoon, about ten minutes before Chris was scheduled to head home from work on his bike, I got the kids bundled up into the double stroller (there was also an incident involving Anna falling face down off the dining room table/we needed some air) and we headed down the sidewalk to meet Chris.

It was a brisk 5-minute walk before I had to scream across the street at Chris to get him to notice us. Dang headphones. Once we were back home, I felt invigorated and refreshed. During the next few days, we went out for walks each day. Sometimes for only 20 minutes, sometimes for a whole hour. It was lovely. My body felt good to me. I had energy and vim and vigor.

Then I let the surgery happen. Then I had to S.T.O.P. and breathe deeply and stop moving around. I had to stop moving this new body of mine and start resting and healing. It's driving me nuts.

A few days after the V-Jay Massacre, I woke up from a night of fitful dreams and multitude Anna wakings. I stayed in bed, thinking over all the dreams I had. It dawned on me: every dream that I remembered involved exercising.

One segment of the dream was just me listening to my workout CD while kicking my ass on the elliptical at the Y for 45 minutes (which is nuts because I never stay on the thing longer than 25 minutes). Another dream had me pushing the 50-pound stroller up every single hill in my neighborhood, walking the circuit to the local tech college, down another mile or two to the park, and then back home. Then there was the one where I woke at 5:15, tied on my sneakers and went jogging before dawn and before Chris woke up.

My body misses movement. I'm craving it. I'm totally jonesing for the sweet ache of my lungs when my heart rate gets too high. I'm missing the gross sweat that starts to drip down my neck from under the thick pile of hair during a good cardio burst.

It's taken me many years to finally kick my ass and do a 180 with my health and my body. Since the beginning of January, I've taught myself a new language, totally foreign to my old way of living. I know about calories and omega-3s and carbs and good proteins and fiber and intervals and heart rates and pride and the glory of success. I taught my body a new language as well, and now I'm dreaming in that language because I'm not able to speak it right now.


Where else am I this week? Well, A Box Of Chocolates is having a neat discourse on the Mommy Wars with contest-y love, and I've been loading my blog reader with almost a dozen more blogs, and I'm feeling a bit burned out from getting to know all these new, wonderful ladies. Oh. And I'm healing and enjoying Anna's beautiful giggle and Ben's hilarious roar and chuckle.