Waits Family Annals

Whew! That was painful. The soreness in my arms has gone down, but my abs are still rebelling against my goals. I had Liz watch my form last night and she says I am dropping to a good depth, but I may need some unbiased feedback. My set today was not as invigorating as Wednesday’s. I did the minimum requirements: a set of 11, a set of 15, two sets of 9 and a “Do as many as you can do” set of 13. My abs are numb right now. I have been stretching every day to try and loosen my muscles, but right now I feel as though I have been suspended upside down by my toes and all the blood has rushed into my arms and hands. Hopefully next week gets a little easier.

So my second day of push ups has come. I’m going to be honest here. I did not want to do push ups today. At all. As I make my daily commute, every bump feels like some punching me. Hard. In the pecs, bi-ceps and abdomen. The cobblestone road is the worst. Anyway, I did a set of 12, a set of 10, a set of 3 (I collapsed, and started over), two sets of 8 and a do-all-you-can set of 21! That’s a total of 61. I’ll come clean here too; I think I need to drop lower in my push ups. It’s not looking exactly like the image here.

Well, I started. My arms don’t hurt so much as don’t have any feeling in them. I did a set of 10, a set of 12, two sets of 7 and a final “Do As Many As You Can Do” set of 12. I collapsed. But, hey, I did a total of 48 push-ups today! Granted, not all in one go (which is the ultimate goal), but that’s more push-ups than I think I have done in the previous 28 years of my life . Thank goodness tomorrow is a rest day.

Right off the bat, I want to be clear about something: that picture is not me. However, something strange has happened between my 27th and 28th birthdays. The metabolism which kept me at an emaciated 140 lbs growing up has decided it’s worked hard enough in my life and is taking a vacation. It has allowed this alien lifeform to attach itself to my midsection. Evidently this new globulous mass dislikes waistlines and comfort. In order to maintain itself, it requires vast ammounts of Southwestern Egg Rolls and Ranch Dressing. It also does not like me walking up hills or stairs. It hates stairs. For the past year I have been meaning to do something about it. Today marked me actually starting something.

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When I was but a sweet lad of six or seven, an idea entered my head that led to some pretty severe consequences. I plopped a quarter into a gallon of milk. I only wish I had insight into my child’s mind as to why I thought this was a good idea. Perhaps I thought to thank the milk for its creamy deliciousness with a tip (which at $2.28 a gallon in 1987 was a generous 11% gratuity). Another option was the thought that if milk made me grow, perhaps milk would turn make 25¢ grow into 50¢– Cramer would be so proud. Maybe I was just trying to clean the quarter.

My mother saw me drop the quarter into the gallon of milk. As a family, I believe we drank approximately 2.5 gallons of milk per day in 1987. That and boatloads of lentil soup. I can understand my mother’s reaction. Immediately, she reprimanded me. Harshly. I believe my father later gave me a overhead-projector based lecture about the dangers of putting currency in community and individual beverage containers. My mother desperately wanted to know why I had done this and destroyed this gallon of milk for the rest of the family, and why I had tossed a perfectly good quarter away. I was probably wondering the same thing, as there is no good reason.

I do clearly remember one thing. My punishment. My mother did not simply throw the gallon away and tell me to never do this again. No. That would be dismissing my actions– teaching me there were no consequences in this world. Instead, that gallon of milk became my personal gallon of milk. I was to drink and use no other gallon but the Quarter Gallon until it was gone. No one was to touch my Quarter Gallon. I had to drink the entire gallon by myself until the quarter came out. I was deathly afraid I would accidently drink the quarter, choke and die. Sometimes I wonder how close she was to making me chug the whole Quarter Gallon right then and there.

On the way to the Maroon 5 concert our car broke down.  It has been happening a lot.  The people told us they could give it a quick fix for 60 bucks, because the real fix would cost 600 and they told us very nicely that maybe we didnt want to put that much money into a car like that.  It has been acting up lately…..so of course we didnt have to think to hard when deciding what car we wanted to get.  I always have wanted (especially living here in pittsburgh) to have a compact car and also sit high up.  The other car did us well for three years.  Thank you Grandma Powell for the car, it helped out so much for us while Todd was in school!!  We love our new car.