Posts Tagged → family stuff

Holiday Week Mush Brain Spew

This is a long one, people. No reason, really; I just found myself wasting time every so often this week and writing down random shit.

6:05 AM on Christmas Morning, and I was up as usual. 

No, I wasn’t waiting to gleefully rip through a giant pile of presents (although there was one with my name on that I had my eye on); I was up waiting for the freaking sun to start thinking about rising so I could squeeze in a few miles before we did the version of Christmas Morning you do when it’s just a couple and their 19-year-old son who is now thankfully way more into sleep than opening holiday presents.

Sadly, the sun wouldn’t be fully up until after 8, so that meant I had nothing to do but tend to the dogs, drink coffee, and look at the ever-declining interwebs until I had enough light for woodsy lumbering without a headlamp.

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Chicken Fingers & Hot Snakes

After hitting my weekly 30-mile goal last Friday, I held true to my promise to “not do a damn thing” over the weekend. And by not do a damn thing, I mean no hiking, for there are always more leaves to bag, foods to cook, groceries to get, poop to scoop, dogs to tend to, beers to drink, music to listen to, sexy time to have, and absolute shit International football to watch (Gahdamn, I hate International Breaks!).

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Lockdown Pickups

Sometimes life comes at you fast. One minute you’re hiking along cussing a trail packed with ice that refuses to melt despite the 40˚ daytime temps, and 12 hours later, you get word your kid needs to hunker down in his dorm room with the lights off because there is an active shooter at large on campus.

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Finding Traction

Yet another unneeded brief message from the President and CEO of thesoiledchamois.net, and Soiled Chamois Enterprises, Inc.™

Dear Reader,

The following lengthy post deals with my ongoing search for inner peace and self-love (not code for masturbation). There is talk of mental health and depression. I am CLEARLY not a doctor, just a putz with a blog and 50 years and counting of personal experiences dealing with some depression-type shit. 

I’ve waffled back and forth on whether it’s in my best interest to post something like this or not, but given the stuff I’ve already written about myself and/or my hatred of the orange buffoon that had been in the White House for four years, I think I’ll be alright. If a potential employer sees this and is offended, you’re not the sort I would want to be associated with anyway.

And if the Google machine somehow pointed you here because you were looking for immediate help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

— Management

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One-Two Funk Punch

The week after the Christmas holiday, I was back on the Dreadmill in the Not So Stankment, pounding out daily 3-mile lumbers and intervals. After what seemed like months of being ill in one form or another, it felt great to get my heart rate up and to sweat again without a 101˚ fever.

So, after 21+ miles of lumbering nowhere slow, I was stoked to get back on the magic Zwift machine last Monday and get my legs back to doing what they do best. Or at least do better than running.

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Ghosts of Christmas Past

We all have fond holiday memories, at least that’s what marketing departments around the world tell us, so it must be true.

Here are a few of mine; whether they are fond memories is up to you. At this point in my life, I just laugh, shake my head, and mutter some 21st century swear words I find more fitting than Ebenezer’s “Bah Humbug!”

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Noise-Bursts & Freight Trains

Today is hopefully the last in a shit show series of posts that went on way too long dedicated to me being ill in one form or another. — Management

Saturday brought Day 7 of Crud 2021 to me and Day 5 to Wifey. I would include B, but he’s 17, and his immune system got rid of his Crud roughly two days after he got it; if he had it at all, he still maintains that he was never actually sick, and it was an allergic reaction to a friend’s cat. Discrepancies on who was Cruded first and for how long aside, it’s been a long week/few months, and I’m happy to see the end of it. 

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A Nil-Nil Draw

I’ve spent the last few weeks months grappling with a level of holiday-induced anxiety that I’ve not experienced in some time, mostly because this was the first holiday since I-don’t-know-when that I wasn’t on some form of antidepressant. All that anxiety finally came to its anti-climactic conclusion on Thanksgiving (Thursday to the rest of the world) when I unveiled the newer, fatter, older, even more, unsuccessful version of myself to my family for the first time since Christmas Eve 2019.

Imagine playing a Hindenburg disaster-level shit show over and over again in your head for months, only to have the reality be a flaccid leftover birthday balloon found behind the couch. That, my friends, is my anxiety in a nutshell.

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