Max Riffner

The Parlor

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Winter Urgency

As a new homeowner, I now understand the instinctual urges of impending winter, and frankly, it sucks. It seems like every action lately is taken in preparation for winter.

I helped clean out my grandfather’s gutters yesterday with my brother, and moved his patio furniture (including the heaviest goddamn birdbath in creation, filled with rancid water) inside. My gutters are in need of some TLC also, but I have been slow to purchase a ladder. Thankfully, my grandfather just gave me an adjustable one he never uses for my work yesterday. It’s one of those that you can snap into different configurations. Good enough for me. Now, to not fall off the roof. Those who know my track record of cat-like reflexes know how truly precarious this will be, having fallen of many things at various heights before. It isn’t really a question of “if” but “when,” so let’s hope I’m on the front of the house with a mere 10 feet to fall.

My freaking Winterizer treatment for the lawn has caused it to keep growing a bit more, and I still have a tree with green leaves on it, so I’m still mowing. I need to get a trimmer anyway, having finally decided on the Grass Hog to get those hard-to-mow places.

My car got its 78,000 mile checkup, and it needed new brakes and fluids, plus tires, which I have to get before the snow flies. I am also ready to start parking my car in my freaking garage after scraping frost off of it, but there are still boxes in the way that need to get dumped.

Finally, I need to pick up my old weight bench from my folks’ house. My dad and I got it when I was in high school, and I used it quite a bit until I went to college. He never uses it anymore, so I just have to go get it. The only problem is that it is Olympic size; we got the real deal. You can do dips, squats, leg extensions, leg curls, bench and incline bench on this sucker; it is solid as a rock. This will be great for two reasons: I hate lifting at the gym because it takes forever since you are either waiting for someone or you have to go really late or really early to avoid the crowd. As such, I haven’t lifted consistently since high school. The injuries I have received from running are directly attributable to not enough strength training, and now that I’m past twenty-five, my muscle mass will continue to decrease without work, which of course will lead to so many problems later in life.

Which leads me to my next problem: no aerobic exercise since March has really hit me hard. I get winded going up the stairs. It blows. Here I am, ready and willing to run a marathon, if only my damn tendon would heal so I’d be able to. I’m over the depression of not running after getting to my first 5 mile goal during my training last spring, but I’m wondering if my body can even handle the stress that running causes. Is running for me? Would I be better suited for cycling? Can I get over the price tag associated with cycling (that’s the real issue; I’m a tight wad)?

I don’t know, but I’m going to have to find out sooner or later, because soon I’ll be 45 lbs. overweight in a few years wondering what happened.

Maybe I could pass it off as winter weight?

(PS: Passed 10,000 words for NaNoWriMo this past Saturday.)

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