Looking back through my January posts over the years, I have talked ad naseum about my loathing of January, so I will just say, a mid-Michigan January for someone dealing with depression is like throwing a drowning man a dead carp. Sure, it might be funny for a second, but the dude drowns, and you’re out your best dead carp.
Why I keep this blog going is anyone’s guess. Back in the Google Blogger days, it documented my sub-par attempts at training for and racing endurance cycling events, however with age, medical issues, a complicated relationship with my bike, and a raging case of depression-inspired slack, it has degraded into I don’t know what.
Blogging Times once referred to The Soiled Chamois as “unintelligible sophomoric word salad dotted with the occasional photo that doesn’t completely suck, written by a careerless, unlikeable misanthropic middle-class white guy.”
All I’ll say about that is that if Blogging Times was a real thing, and I didn’t completely make their disparaging comments up, they would not be wrong. Yet here we are.
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.
Anybody that has hung around this blog for more than a few seconds knows that I don’t have the sort of personality that celebrates a New Year. Or anything else for that matter, at least not without one eye looking at the half-empty glass about to fall onto the floor and break. And this year was my best year yet of non-celebrating: a few beers, some TV watchin’, food eatin’, and in bed by nine while Wifey fumed and mentally cursed me and my worsening attitude in the living room below.
On Monday, Jake The Dog’s veterinarian had a conversation with me in which she encouraged me to start thinking about Jake’s “current quality of life.” I’m pretty sure that almost every pet owner knows exactly what that means.
Given Jake’s hind leg issues, it’s a conversation that I have been expecting for some time now, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
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!”
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.
The last time I posted here, I was bitching and moaning about the head cold I picked up. Well, that non-COVID-related illness turned into more than just a head cold, and three four days later, I am just now getting a bit of my mental and physical mojo back. Who would have thought that a bout of COVID would be easier to kick than whatever the hell this is?
Ah, the weekend. So many plans, so much to get out and do. Um, not so much.
The weekend started off with B going to visit a friend and coming home with a head cold, which led to me getting a head cold, which in turn led Wifey to get a head cold, and led all of us (OK, just me) to say “fuck it” and not do anything all weekend.
Somewhere between miles 1 and 434 of my drive home from Pennsylvania last week, I made the executive decision to start writing and posting here more frequently. And I did!
Then I didn’t.
