Strength training

Back in 2023, I kept seeing things about strength training or resistance training being especially important for women over 40 to help maintain bone density.  Someone on one of the menopause forums I was lurking on recommended Strong Women Stay Young by Miriam E. Nelson, so I borrowed it from the public library.  The first half of the book is devoted to convincing women that strength training will be beneficial for them and won't make them bulk up, which I didn't care about, because I already knew I wanted to start doing some strength training.  So I skimmed ahead to the actual how-to.

The book covers several basic exercises one can do with free weights or ankle weights to help with maintaining strength and balance, and I found them easy to get into.  The only thing I found difficult was finding sufficient ankle weights that were both comfortable and able to scale up enough as I progressed; it's been almost 30 years since the book was originally published, and the equipment brands she recommends aren't still readily available.  At this point I've given up on the ankle weights and substituted other exercises for leg work.

At the moment, I'm doing:

• Biceps curls
• Triceps... I don't know what it's called, but I lift my arms overhead and then bend at the elbow to dip the weight behind me
• Upward rows
• Floor press
• Glute bridges
• Goblet squats
• Romanian deadlifts
• Kneeling wood chop
• Single-arm rows

I'm mostly using 8-lb. weights for everything at this point (including, as of last week, triceps, which had been plateaued at 5 lb. for over a year).  I like this routine because it's something I can do at home with not a lot of equipment that doesn't take up a lot of space.  At the time I was pricing out dumbbells, it was cheaper to buy each weight individually than to buy the set that lets you adjust the weight on a single pair of handles.  I've got 3, 5, 8, 10, and 12 lb. weights right now.

In November 2023, I got tendonitis in my right shoulder, and I thought it was because I'd gone up in weight too fast on the upward rows.  Spoiler: it was not.  Anyway, it took four months for my shoulder to get better.  Then in November 2024, it started up again!  That was when I figured it out: apparently putting a 2nd blanket on the bed for the winter made the blanket too heavy to pull up regularly when it would inevitably start sliding off the bed, probably partly because I have a woven cotton blanket as the bottom layer, and it created too much friction.  (Physics!)

So I've been doing my weights routine since then, twice a week, and this summer I got the first real payoff: I moved the bulk of our print serials at work, and nothing hurt.  I shifted or moved 1,250 linear feet of materials, over the course of about two weeks, and while it was gross and sweaty because our air conditioning wasn't on yet for a lot of it, I came out of it with nothing sore.  This means that none of the muscles I needed to do the work were getting neglected in my weights routine, and even though I'm only using 8-lb. dumbbells, that's enough.

If you're looking to get started, Strong Women Stay Young is a great introduction, and once you get comfortable with that, it's easy to change up some of the exercises either to keep things interesting or to find alternate ways to work muscle groups that you like better. 

Saving Throws

I've written before about what happens when I fail Reflex saving throws.  Yeah, this time it was a Fortitude save:

I didn't see what bit me, since it's in the middle of my back, but the doctor said it was probably a spider.  (Just in case, I'm supposed to get a Lyme test in a couple weeks.)  The fortitude save wasn't for the actual bite; no, the fortitude would have been save vs. disease, because it's infected (skin antibiotics now), and it itches.

Oh, how it itches.

I don't know if it itches because of the spider part of it, or the infection part of it, but I'm trying really hard not to scratch it, since it's irritated enough as it is.

Anywho, I got to do a ton of laundry this weekend (she recommended washing the sheets in case it was lurking in the bed), and I'm supposed to let it air out when possible.

Did I mention that it itches?

Exercise (or, What I did on my Friday off)

I haven't had regular exercise since high school.  Well, college, if you count all the walking to and from class.  It wasn't till after I graduated from library school that I started gaining weight, really, but that also coincided with the magical metabolic shift that tends to happen in the mid-20s, so causality isn't entirely certain.

Anywho, the past several years of trying to find exercise options have boiled down to if we can't do it at home, we're not going to do it regularly enough to matter.  So our Christmas present to us this year:

My husband found it on Craigslist for about 1/8 of the list price; we just had to get it home.  Our friend Geoff, who has a truck, provided the vehicle, as well as help getting it into the truck, securing it, and then off the truck onto the front porch.  (Thanks again, Geoff!)  It was late and we were tired, and it was kinda wet from the rain, so we left it on the porch overnight to dry off.

So my project today:  Get elliptical machine off front porch and into living room.

The elliptical is 6 feet tall, 6.5 feet long, 27 inches wide, and weighs about 250 pounds.

First thing I learned:  The elliptical wouldn't fit through the front door the way we'd seated it (back end first).  So I took some more stuff off the porch (which is being used for temporary storage) so I had enough room to turn it around.

Great!  I turned it around.  I can't get the wheels up over the 2 inch lip of the door sill.  Those two blocks of wood on the table in the picture were my solution; I tilted it enough to get each under the front end, which let me just push the front piece over the sill.

Second thing I learned:  The elliptical wouldn't fit through the front door this way, either.  With the handles and the end pieces on, I just didn't have enough room to maneuver it around the corner of the front bedroom.  This turn:

That front piece with the wheels, though?  It's just bolted on with two bolts.  Ratchet to the rescue!  So I put a rag under the front end not to scratch up the floor, unbolted the front end, and basically just pushed the now-narrower elliptical in.  Great!

I can't lift it enough to put the front piece back on.  Ahem.

So obviously I needed to lever the front end up enough to do so.  Blocks of wood again!  One block to hold up the back end to put a block under the front was not entirely stable; I only knocked it off once, which took a little paint off the trim and slightly bent one of the metal tracks for the glides.  It still works, and no holes in the wall, so it's all good.

But one block of wood wasn't thick enough to lift the front enough to reattach the front piece, and I didn't have any thicker wood.  I wasn't sure going out and getting more blocks of wood would be stable enough to be safe; enter the 1918 Encyclopedia Americana.  Three volumes was enough to reattach the front piece, and then it was just a matter of wheeling it into place and putting back all the stuff I'd moved off the porch to maneuver it.

Voila!  Now how did I manage to spend more or less two hours manhandling the thing without throwing out my back?  I have no idea.

Flu Shots

I've been getting flu shots every year since about 8th grade. Not having a primary care doctor right now (I should; I just don't), I'm generally reliant on flu clinics for them.

So if you're wondering where you can find a flu clinic near you, you can check out Find a Flu Shot - the company that does a lot of them, Maxim, runs it. Hopefully we'll get our seasonal flu shots this weekend, and then hopefully find an H1N1 clinic when that's available.

I don't think I've had the flu since I started getting the vaccinations, and I remember having it once as a kid, in I think kindergarten. It was icky.