If It Didn't Suck....

Well once again summer vacation is over. I know all you non teachers are saying who gives a....because you were working all the while, but i ask you this. Who of you can take off a whole summer then go back? It gets harder each year. As of now I have 18 and 1/2 years to go before retirement, and while that will go by fast, (I have been doing it for 13 years) the daily grind is hard. This year I go into the breach getting a divorce, having to move within a few months and at the beginnings of a new diet and two month old exercise and health regimen. What more perfect thing can I do then to go back to work? LOL anyway, something really distracting and unnerving happened recently. Mr ABD (previously mentioned in this blog) said that he had never seen me in better health or in a better mood. Damn if that is true I may have to change the name of the blog. But with going back to work and the with what the situation of Education in America is like, and the Mindless skidmark sanity of the bureaucracy is, I am sure there will not be a dearth of things to gripe about.

At least there is a three day weekend coming up.

Peace
C

Well I made it through the first week. It actually does get easier as you go, which is something I didn't believe at first. I wound up losing around 8-9 lbs during the first week. I will see how well it goes into the second week. I do not know how long I can go beyond that, though as far as my diabetes is concerned, I do not know why dietitians don't recommending limiting carbs , not as much as Atkins but somewhere in between. My fasting blood sugar has been around 120, w/o meds and not gone higher than 138 after meals. So even if I cannot stay on Atkins...well I can try though if I ever go to L&B all bets are off.

On the road, when I went to DC was a little tough because I couldn't go to the Italian restaurant I wanted to and Fudruckers was really interesting getting a pound burger smothered with cheese on a plate. Bare. But I managed. Though I missed Bertucci's something awful.

Well I did take a few days off while I am trying to go into Keytosis, Adam calls me CK but he can be a knob. I am trying to work something out where I buy out another clients sessions cause she doesnt want to go to the gym anymore...could it be Adam? Nahhhhh

Anyway, Sat and Sun I binged on carbs beautiful carbs. Pasta, fries, breads, cake, some sugar, it was awesome. LOL Detrimental no doubt but good tasteing. I went to Carrabas (spelling ?) and the waitress was nice, Dawn Marie at the Bensalem franchise. Very nice, knowledgeable and kinda cute. Left her a nice tip but I realized that it doesnt matter cause I wont be back unless I give up on Atkins and dive into a bowl of pasta.

Getting back to that, net carbs are a bit easier to live with than total carbs. Some bars I thought I couldnt have anymore actually advertise the net carbs, and my favorite ones, the low sugar Detour bars have only 5 net carbs. So when I am off of induction I will have those again.

3 net carbs in a serving of salad. I can drink the whole F-in bottle of no carb dressing but only a cup of salad. Go figure..and I HATE salad. LOL

Monday was bad. Day one. By noon I was fiendin for bread, pizza and anything I couldnt have. So I had another protein shake. One scoop (2 net carbs) tbs heavy cream (> 1 net carb) water and ice and blended it in this really cool one serving blender I picked up from Walmart, because god forbid I used the regular blender...but that is another story.

Anyway Monday was bad, shopped for food, and was so pissed that everything i wanted had so many carbs, but persevered and found some items.

Tuesday was almost as bad as Monday. But later reread Atkins Essentials and found out I could eat Atkins products EXCEPT the one I had, the Indulge bar. Oh well my bad but I didn't get upset about it, Tomorrow is another day and that's today.

Today was good so far. Had a protein shake and breakfast bar for breakfast. (first day off of eggs in ages) which was 5 net carbs. After my workout I had the double protein shake (5 net carbs)
and snacked on another breakfast bar (2 carbs) and lunch had under 2 net carbs, so I am sitting pretty for the rest of the day with 6 - 7 net carbs to go and 600 calories to go.

It is a long and miserably twisted road I must travel. What helped today was not to go to my usual breakfast place. Its a bagel store. I went Monday and Tuesday and the smell of those freshly baked bastards just tore at my soul. LOL Then again if it didn't suck.....

Damn I heard of chips and salsa at a Mexican Restaurant. I heard of bread at an Italian Restaurant. Coleslaw and pickels and bread at diner, even popcorn at this place called 99 (with 99 I was disappointed to find out that it wasnt because the menu items were 99 cents which would have been really cool) But at Red Robin, home of the bottomless steak fries with any burger you get what else, steak fries. Needless to say I did partake in an appetizer of free fries as well as with my burger and a refill while nursing the burger. Anyway I decided of fast food, or rather not so fast food places such as Red Robin, Cheeburger Cheeburger, applebees, TGIFridays Ruy Tuesdays...etc....etc...etc...that Red Robin is the best because they have steakfries that are not so greasy and you can have as many as you want. Which of course is not necessarily a good thing....

I am going on Atkins again on Monday. So I was told by my trainer Adam (see a few entries down) and his boss, that it might be a good match. So I was told that the next few days I should eat as many carbs (not derived from sugar) as I want, so I went to the Macaroni Grill, and Red Robin and will go to Bertuccis tomorrow, then its goodbye to carbs for as long as I have to will power to stay away. Bye Carbs...it was nice, too nice, i mean really freakin nice knowin ya!

peace
c

The perennial question about a tree falling....if no one is there to hear it does it make a sound? Same thing is often wondered about a blog. If it exists in the authors mind and heart and soul and is published for anyone to see, does it exist if it is ignored or unread? Hmmm interesting question. Anyway I will be back, I refuse to be a blog slacker so can ya do me a favor and read the darn thing? :OP

Adam is my current personal trainer, and while this isn't Brooklyn nor has he ever been, he seems like anyone of the guys I grew up with. First of all he seems to like to emulate the black guys that work with him, he is always on their shit, talking about how cool they are and asking them to lunch, which they usually don't go to with him. He talks about the hotties and other stuff and tries to rap pieces of songs that he probably knows nothing about. Aside from this he is forgetful and likes to say the same things over and over...

Im here to help ya not hurt ya, Im not here to hurt ya that's not my job

or when his pants ripped...

Hey these pants are OUTTTA HERE!!!!

When referring to my diet...I want those Carbs OUTTA HERE!!!

and so on, also every time I tell him I have torn cartilage in my knee he forgets and tries to have me do something where I am putting pressure on my knee.

Oh yeah I forgot...Come with me... And we proceed to try something else that I cannot do. Oh yeah...I forgot...Come with me and so on and so on every leg day

Aside from that, he is a decent guy and tries to do his job by means of motivating me and amending my diet to maximize results so all in all I would say my other trainers are OUTTA HERE!!!

I do think h would benefit from visiting Brooklyn to know how the person he thinks he is really is, like when he bounced in one morning talking about the "phat new rims on his car"

Damn these wiggers..........

Adam. You're AIIGHT Son.

I have had about three (four if you count the fact I had two sessions by a steroid head after I wanted to beat down my second pain in the ass-poor excuse-for a) personal trainers in my lifetime, one was Bruno from Gold's Gym. He was ok, though most of the time he seemed to phone it in. Never really challenged me, and didn't seem to give a shit either way. I had only a few sessions with him when I signed up and some sessions with the nutritionist. While that was more helpful, my ability to stay at it was even more important. I let my dues lapse and couldn't afford to keep going. I had lost some weight by then and gained some muscle mass.

While muscle NEVER turns to fat, it does atrophy, and that's what happened by the time I decided to work out again and get a bit healthy. This new trainer, don't remember his name, but he was a geeky bastard that would talk non stop and tell me about his massages he would get and how his wife was mad at him. He would want to stretch me out and hang, he annoyed me so much I stopped going until another trainer there took over. Adrian was a muscle head and no doubt, a steroid abuser. He was prone to fits of rage and tried to kill my other trainer by lobbing a fifty pound dumb bell at him. Both men were fired. I continued to work out for a short while and got lazy....What a shock.

Before my divorce, I was feeling week, and drained of energy. I was not at my highest weight but my diabetes (type 2) had gotten a bit worse, and I wanted to do something more proactive about it. I wished I did not let my gym membership lapse, and was upset that I had a Premiere Gold Bally's Membership that only required $99 for the year and I could use any Bally's at any time any where I wanted ever. Around that time I was considering being proactive I got a mysterious ad to renew...I did. And in came Adam.

Adam is my current trainer though my sessions are almost over, I signed up for 24 sessions, get about 4 free, and I have been going all summer. 3 times a week, though I need to do more cardio work, I am doing well. That is with working out and building muscle and feeling stronger. I lost about 20 pounds since I started July 3rd with the whole program. It happened rapidly, and now nothing. Same weight. So Adam, and thankfully, another trainer or two at the Bally's in Franklyn Mills have decided I should try Atkins.

We spoke about it, pros and cons and I shared concerns about the last time I was on it, and I agreed it was worth a try. A plus with the diet is that exercise should be regular, admittedly the last time I was on Atkins I was mostly sedentary. I like being sedentary but well it has been very detrimental to my health and well being.

While I am not thinner, I feel stronger and healthier, in a better mood, and feeling a bit better about myself. I guess this time I found the good combination the most important being my motivation. Hopefully that will be the one mainstay of my present situation. I will keep you updated.

I only lived alone twice in my life before, one was for a period of 10 months while my mother was in the hospital when I was 16. I lived on my own through the changes of the seasons and the holidays visiting her daily, but when I went home I was alone, though it didn't seem like it at the time. I didn't think much of it either, it was just what it was, something that I had to deal with. I did, and eventually my mother got better and came home. (this is the subject of some of my memoirs which are excerpted throughout my blog)

The second time I lived alone was following my mothers death on Feb 17th 2001. This time it was a bit longer, over a year, roughly 16 months. This time it was once again something I had no choice in dealing with and getting used to and for short while it did take getting used too. Just knowing that the person you had spend your whole life to that point would never be coming home again was a sad and hollow thing, but it had to be dealt with, and I gotten past the feeling of loneliness or at least I thought I had. A month prior to the solitary streak I had met my ex wife, and she had fallen upon bad times or so it seemed and I invited her to live with me on or around June 15th of 2002. We were married the following year and I was no longer living alone.

Both times I must admit I had gotten really used to living alone really fast. Then again I am the type of person, while my presence is always known, I could also feel alone in a crowded room, so I guess its no big surprise that I had gotten used to the me time, the living alone time.

This time now, I look toward November with the eagerness of a child descending the stairs on Christmas day, and with the most mild twinge of trepidation. This time my leaving and my being alone, or on my own is a self imposed liberation. I am getting out of a bad marriage that actually ran its course before even the rings were put on our respective fingers, and I am moving again, not back to where I came from, but to a new place, new start new life.

While I think it would be nice to meet someone, I am in no rush. I feel that it will be a one of a kind opportunity to get to know myself all over again. One thing I have always held onto is that if you cannot enjoy your own company, no one else will, so here I go getting to prove the theory once more.

Peace C

Bumper cars are cool. Aside from that I find it interesting that when I lived in Brooklyn, I never went around the neighborhood save for that annual event. My aunt used to live there, so probably I had that bad memory in my head, or it was that I was into this chick who lived near there with like a dozen brothers and sisters or it was just the fact that like everything else, I took it for granted. It is always gonna be there, so I dont have to rush. This year Freddie and George came and Freddie had never ridden the Cyclone (http://www.joyrides.com/coney_island/cyclone1.htm) nor had they ever joined us on our Coney Island day. Freddie felt that well while I am here let me ride the cyclone, I may not get the chance again. Which is how we should look at life in general, instead of taking things for granted.

Peace

When I think back the latest it could have started was in 2000. I remember that vaguely only because when we stopped back at my apartment after that first time , before it was the annual operatic event it has now become, we brought my mother back some food from Nathans Famous. My mother passed away Feb 17th 2001. So thinking back, our annual Coney Island Day began at least in 2000 so that would make the one that just occured yesterday, the 7th annual outing.

It started out small and not as a Coney Island Day. It was a regular hang with Maurice, Dandy Greengirl and yours truly. We ate at Lai Yuens, were we revisited for our most recent excursion, then went to a movie, I am assuming it was Bring It On, if not I will ammend that, I do know we saw that movie during that summer and it came out toward the end of the summer as what started the tradition.

After the movie, I had a choice before me, end the evening or extend it? I asked, all feedback I recieved was..I dont know, I dont care. So instead of making a right turn I turned left and wound up on stillwell avenue and thus a tradition was born.

Interesingly enough our core four looked forward to this event each year and we added on to the amount who would attend but the itinerary is usually strictly enforced, by me, in order to maximize out day, lunch, movie, nathans and coney including boardwalk and rides and games, followed by desserts and coffee at El Greco.

Not very inventive, nor very exciting, but it is fun and like I said it is looked forward to by all each year, perhaps I will toss out an option next year that we substitue the movie with some bowling. This year's choiced sucked. Pulse was the film, if you can call it that, we saw and it was vile. Not that it was scary but vile that we had to pay ten bucks for crap.

Traditions are nice, even if they start quite by accident.

In some ways since I served my wife with papers, or actually since it was revealed of my intentions to file on her things have been more civil than they have in many many months. While we still don't talk, or have sex, or eat meals together, we are not at each others throats, which is a plus. I am not saying that if things were as they are now I would have hung in there, the last day before I told her was really hard. She had read my blog that day. I know big deal right? But I like to write. Everyone who knows me knows that, and since I met her she refused to ever read anything I had ever written. I know what you are thinking...It was a sign. I guess, but I ignored that sign and many others. So when she read my blog I was shocked, and she hugged me, and held me, and pulled me close. More than she had done in many many many months.

She cried and told me things would be better. Things would go back to the way they were but she was tired of playing the bad guy, and tired of me being the victim. I was tired of those same things but alas when one is victimized....anyway it was really hard hearing things I wanted to hear in so long, being lulled back into my complacency, but I had to be strong. It was really hard. I told her about my lawyer. She told me to call my lawyer and stop everything. She cried more, held me more, I cried, didn't know what to do.....But I knew I couldn't fall back into the rut I had been in for so long. And if she was tired of me being a victim, I knew I had to stop being one.

So I told her it was going to be the way it was. I wanted a divorce. At that moment I knew I made the right decision. Immediately she pulled away, stopped crying, lit a cigarette and said, "ok, so what now?" as cold as I knew she could be. Cold enough to freeze vodka.

I laid out the plan, sign papers, 90 day waiting period, sign final papers and I told her I would pretty much give her everything. I just wanted out. We shall see how smooth it will be all. I do not expect anything to be easy, after all if it didn't suck.......

As I sit here blogging in the library I am listening to the Reggae Rabbi from brooklyn, Matisyahu. I recommend taking a listen on myspace of whereever. Its really good and interesting to say the least. I actually went to target to get the cd. I have not purchased one in a long time but when I heard some of the songs yesterday I really wanted to pick it up. Going in I new two songs, the cd has 13 and about 3 are excellent, and 5 others are really good. Oh well, talk about a shameless plug, to bad I aint getting a cut. LOL

I was in the library and picked up a comply of an Idiot’s Guide to Divorce. I took it off of the shelf and sat down, by the window. The huge bay windows of the Bristol Library look out over a river. It is an awesome view, and in cooler weather I would go out and sit on a bench and read by the water. Getting back to my selection, it was interesting, and I thumbed through it for a few moments and found that it would probably be a good book…for someone else.

One of the things I know about the untimely demise of my martial state was that it was in critical and held on for dear life for far too long. With that said, there should be a book called an Idiots Guide to Fixing or Fleeing a Toxic Marriage. Maybe I should write it, but do not really have anything new to say other than the fact that none of my friends liked her, she was a bit mean, and as soon as we were married the love, warmth, communication and sex dwindled down, the spigot rusted shut, and we lived as two strangers for nearly three years.
Complacency is the mother of all clusterfucks as was the case with my marriage DOA before the honeymoon. We never had sex on our marriage night. Nor did we on any holiday including our anniversary, now even couples who stop having sex have it on their anniversary. We would have relations once in a while. We would talk once in a while. We would even do something once in a while. We would argue regularly, be verbally abusive regularly and ignore one another without fail. I wanted to change many tings, like eating meals together. I wanted to, she didn’t. Going out. I wanted to she didn’t. Showing affection. I wanted to…well you get the idea. A few of her major complaints about me were that I was too sappy, too romantic and emotionally needy. All that I did to be accused of all of those things was to want my wife to be my wife, and my marriage to be just that; a marriage. It became easy not to argue. It became easy to be left alone, and just go with the white noise din of complacency.

The catharsis came on June 12th. Certain events led to a tumultuous crescendo of emotional abuse and manipulation on her part. She pushed me to the edge and I decided it was time to push back……

I enjoyed catching up with you and it had been so long, sorry I wasn't able to remember until I saw a pic, and like a fine wine you aged very well. Our encounter proved the fact that while I am upset with the on line world there is much to like about it, like catching up with old friends. For things like that, and chance encounters, and now free aol, I will always be a fixture in cyberspace.

Sorry it has been a while since I have posted. I have been going through many things one of which was a case involving something at work which was overblown and nonsensiscal at best, nevertheless I spent a year in the rubber room. More on that later. I also decided my marriage was over, and filed for divorce, which should be final soon. On top of that I am relocating, not back to my beloved Brooklyn, I have actually grown accustomed to suburbia. I am however aware that driving 150 miles a day round trip is sick, I am moving to a suburb of jersey which will cut my travel time in half and possibly I can save gas, and sanity with a shortened commute. Not to mention the fact that I am single again, which at first I thought would be a cruel blow, but I am actually excited about the prospect at having a second chance at what I didnt have the first time around. Anyway, I will update soon. Also You can visit me at www.myspace.com/cisthebigdog