Yellow Mustard Blog

There I was on the treadmill. I was envisioning a giant piece of cheese floating just out of my reach, urging me to run on and on, faster and faster, on my little unending strip of track. No matter how fast or long I ran that track didn't stop appearing below my feet, nor did the cheese get any closer to my grasp. I feel haunted by the need to run, run on this never-ending track, not knowing how or why I got there, only knowing that I have to run, run, run and maybe someday, I'll catch up to that cheese.
I will never catch up with that damn cheese.
(When I'm at the gym, I like to put myself into the mind of a laboratory mouse trapped in a mousewheel...because really, there is no other way to endure being on the treadmill. What a hateful, sadistic invention. )

So anywho, I'm on the 'mill when I notice the t-shirt of the man on the bike in front of me. (The exercise bike is another twisted gym invention: Pedal, pedal, pedal!!! You're Lance Armstrong!! You're winning the Tour de France! No, you're pedaling your ass off in the basement gym at the Cleveland YMCA and you're not going anywhere. Ever.)

The man's shirt said: "Pain is just weakness leaving the body."
Upon reading this, I almost came to a screeching halt on my treadmill. But thank God I didn't. (Another maniacal element of the treadmill...unlike ordinary ground, which stays put once you stop running on it, the treadmill actually launches you BACKWARDS at 7mph and usually into some pointy Stairmaster machine.)

I just couldn't grasp the t-shirt's statement. Pain is not weakness leaving the body. The only stuff that usually leaves the body when you're at the gym is sweat, blood, tears or internal organ goo, and those aren't pain, they're called bodily fluids.

Let me tell you about pain. Pain is having your sock somehow bunch up in your shoe while you're running, cause your toes to curl and eventually gnarl your entire foot in a cramp. And then stop running and you're shot off the treadmill like a stuntman in a circus cannon.

Pain is having your one shoe lace tied tighter than the other, which somehow throws off your entire running stride and injures your knee. You see, the one foot is jealous of how tightly your other foot is tied into your Adidas crosstrainer. To spite you, the loose foot tries to slide out of the shoe while you're running. Of course, you try to bend down and adjust it while running, lose your balance and get hurled off the treadmill into a row of spinning bikes.

And pain doesn't have to be purely physical. Pain can be running next to the girl that is clutching the precious remote for the TVs and puts on As the World Turns. It would be ok because there's another TV next to it...but it's playing baseball...minor league baseball. No worries though, even if you wanted to watch it, you can't. Every time you turn your head towards that TV, you're sprayed with a good amount sweat from the enormous man next to you. He weighs about 300lbs, is covered in a thick layer of winter fur, and has decided to run 9mph at an 8% incline...while throwing punches. You cower to the furthest corner of your treadmill to avoid Shamu's soak zone. Just when you think it can't get any worse, sandwiched between soap operas and sweaty bears, you trip on your shoelace and get launched off the treadmill and into a pack of ravenous anorexic girls. They haven't eaten in weeks, and you smell like Slimfast.

Yes. THAT is pain. It doesn't leave the body...it SURROUNDS you at the gym. You are inundated with physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and botanical pain every time you step foot in one. So do yourself a favor and don't go to the gym. I wish I could do the same, but until I can get to that piece of cheese at the end of my treadmill...I'm going to have to endure.

you know what I don't like? No, besides bluegrass music and professional baseball.
I don't like when I tell someone that I hate my nose, and they say "But it fits your face!"
What?!
What are you saying, that the rest of my face is an enormous, disproportionate EYESORE?
So if my nose is like a hulking, dormant nose-shaped volcano ... how does that fit my face? Oh, I know...it must be that the rest of my head is a craggy, bumpy mountainous blob of flesh. Thanks.

Yes thats right! Twenty three years ago TODAY I came into the world; a wrinkly little bundle with a head of unruly, corn-colored hair, enormous cheeks and a dazed expression on my face.
Wait, nothing about me has changed at all.

To celebrate my day of birth, I am not going to write anything in my blog. I don't think a couple of incoherent paragraphs with questionable spelling and non-existent humor is the best way to commemorate today. Or actually, maybe its the PERFECT way.

I decided instead to leave you with a few wise gems by one of my personal heroes:

"I had a stick of Carefree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality"

" I like buying snacks from a vending machine because food is better when it falls. Sometimes at the grocery, I'll drop a candy bar so that it will achieve its maximum flavor potential."

"I love blackjack. But I'm not addicted to gambling. I'm addicted to sitting in a semi circle."

"A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer."

RIP Mitch Hedberg

Well, I'm reaching the end of Week 2 of my triathlon training, and let me tell you...its been underwhelming. I guess I should have seen this coming, really. When I arrived in PA, I already knew that I wouldn't have a pool at my disposal (or a frickin car, for that matter).
But I do have my old trusty 10 speed, sitting there in my parent's garage, looking as if it had been waiting patiently all this time for me to come back and ride it poorly (as I had for so many years). Actually, it looked pretty dusty and very "early 90s"...you know, the whole turquoise and purple paint splatter thing. But anyway, I hopped on and I swear, my knees were up to my ears -- I've clearly had some sort of growth spurt. The seat and handlebars needed adjusted, and being the handy dandy gal I am, I dug around until I found a big crescent wrench (or monkey wrench? the point is that it was a WRENCH of either the baked good or primate kind)

At first I tried to loosen the seat and bars by bashing them with wrench over and over. Eventually I tossed the wrench and starting using my teeth. But then my jaw locked up and I knew I had to stop. So I took five to regroup and pop a Mentos. Suddenly, I had a brilliant idea: use the wrench head to twist off the bolts!! Of course!

So I went to it, (Remembering of course, lefty loosey, righty tighty) toiling over the bolts for several minutes only to discovery my turquoise-laquered handle bars were completely immobile. The only thing I could adjust was my seat, which could go from slightly above my handlebars to towering above them. I know I know, real bike riders have their seats and bars at practically the same height. But guess what? I'm not Lance Armstrong. I'm Penny Prissypants and I need to have my bike seat BELOW my handlebars. And the handlebars have to have streamers. And a bell, possibly.

Sooo, where was I? I've completely derailed my train of thought here. I'm starting to think scotch is not my friend, it's seriously messing with my attention span. I think what I'm driving at here is that I'm a complete wuss and also a total non-athlete, and this training is going to kick my sorry cracker ass. I can't bike, I can't swim....and lately even my running has been piss poor.

Here in PA, during the summer, if you don't get up and running before 7:30AM, you will die of heat stroke. However, if you wait until about 8-9PM when the sun sets and it finally cools off...it immediately begins to rain. And if your lucky it will also hail like it did today. PLUS if you're a moron like me, you'll go running at 8PM, after you've had 6 meals, 2 diet pepsi's and laid on your stomach for an hour right after dinner while playing Scrabble. Five minutes into your run you will get a side-stitch and just as you begin to wonder WHY this keeps happening, the skies open a second time and you are drenched. Once again, God's wacky sense of humor has foiled you.

So anyway, triathlon training is all about LEARNING (and pain...and painful learning...and learning painfully) and I think the lessons I've learned today are 1) Don't use your teeth on aluminum bike framing 2) Your mother can use the word "whores" when playing scrabble with your 9 year old brother, but YOU can't use the word "hobag" 3) Get your lazy ass out of bed and run in THE MORNING before you've eaten anything, dammit.

So today Adam complimented me on my blogging. He even said one part of it was "comic gold".
Being the love-starved, whore-for-attention that I am, I lapped that up like cream from a saucer.
But THEN he said he didn't like the parts where I "explained my humor too much". For those that don't know what he's talking about, allow me to quote my last blog post: