DIY Workout-A Project For Health and Home

 

Oh Yeah! We are ready to WORK IT!

  Our Do-It-Yourself exercise plan continues! Jeff has created an incredible workout routine for the whole family! Listen, if you like Hot Yoga, Step Aerobics and Dead Lifting, "Fuchs-ercise" is just the plan for you! It's a combo-workout that gets all your muscles moving and has the added bonus of creating a newly remodeled work environment. With any luck, this dynamic new fitness program will last through the rainy season, although I sincerely doubt it, as our rainy season in the Great Northwest lasts about 9 months and I know how eager Jeff is to get his home office/studio ready to go.

Healthy Living Through Home Improvement

  Jeff and I have been meaning to get back to our 10,000 steps-a-day walking goal, but we haven't actually managed to get back on track with it. Jeff has become busier than ever this month. He completed his Bachelor's degree in computer animation and is now onto a new course program. He is still working at Sabelhaus West Inc., and FOOTBALL SEASON has begun!!! Well, pre-season is here, but the regular season is upon us and Jeff must prepare his Fantasy Football Team, as well as devote his energy to ensuring his beloved Seattle Seahawks have a stellar season! I'm not exactly sure what part Jeff plays in the success or failure of the Seahawks, it's a spiritual thing that I don't have a complete grasp of yet. I think it involves victorious imagery, speaking in tongues loudly to the players on the screen and a complex system of Numerology. Regardless, I support him whole-heartedly. GO HAWKS!!!

You BET I'm a fan of the Legion of BOOM!!!

  Jeff is also trying to launch his new career (putting that degree to good use). Fuchs Media will have it's humble beginnings in our basement. Which means a lot of physical labor on our part. If you have met Jeff or any of the Bremerton-born Fuchs men, you know that they do not do anything halfway. Jeff, his brother Jason and his dad Denny are all very talented craftsmen in some form or another. Woodworking, mechanics, electronics, technology, flooring, and countless other skills and manly kind of stuff. And if your project is going to have the Fuchs name on it, it is going to be done well. So we can't just shuffle some couches around, set up the computer and be ready to go. No way! We are going to put in countless hours of exhausting manual labor (womanual labor?) so that Fuchs Media is housed in the BEST basement possible. 

Uncle Gary, Denny, Jason and Jeff. A skulk of foxes! ( I googled it)

  Jeff did not ask me to help him. He very excitedly detailed his plans for all the work that he plans to get done and what he wants to get accomplished within his (ambitious but unrealistic) timeline. I could've left him to his work and gone shoe shopping or had my nails done. But I did not. I offered my services, such as they are. We spent a good five hours yesterday cleaning up the shop side of the basement. Jeff moved all manner of heavy items while I donned my oh-so-fashionable rubber gloves and scrubbed the walls, swept, vacuumed and sucked up at least 100 spiders of no less than 10 different species and all of their webs and egg sacs with the shop-vac. If there are any interested arachnologists out there, I have a shop-vac FULL of your little buddies, a little spider-utopia, just waiting for you to collect and study them. Please. Before they figure out how to escape. 

Good Heavens, that's terrifying!!!

  We had to stop working at about 4:00 so that we could watch the Seahawks in their second pre-season game. Side note-if you are someone who is not a HUGE football fan, but you live with one DO NOT EVER say "It's only pre-season. It doesn't really count". Apparently, that is a false statement and will NOT result in a sigh of relief on your Super-Fan's part. You will, however, be the recipient of a Gaze of Confusion or possibly the Glare of Horror. Just don't go there.

The look you get when someone says "It's only Pre-Season. It doesn't Count"

  Last night I agreed to get up early and get right to work with my sweetheart. How could I say no? He was so happy to have my help. He looked at me with so much love in his eyes and told me how much he appreciated our partnership. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. This morning, I was awakened to breakfast in bed at 7:00 a.m. and the handsomest smile. And then, far too soon, the clock struck 8 and it was time to get to WORK!!! I finished scrubbing the walls, swept and vacuumed the floor again. Jeff's dad arrived with his truck. I helped them load up the trash to take to the dump and got to work on painting the walls with primer. To be clear, I am not a Fuchs (right now I'm just in the pledge program. I'm hoping my application gets processed in the next couple of years. Fingers crossed!). I do not have the skills of a Fuchs, nor do I possess the attention to detail of their people. I wish I was that meticulous, but alas, I am more of the school of "good-enough". And I work at a fairly slow pace, as I am unsure of my skills. And rightly so! I do try, but I get frustrated easily and after my first smudgey mistake, I give in to my desire to just Get It Done Already. But my rates are very reasonable (breakfast in bed) and you only get what you pay for...

Good enough! It's quitting time!!!

  Jeff and Denny returned from the dump and got to work on installing 18 "can" lights and taking out the existing shop lights and nest of various electrical wires while I continued to do a remarkably sloppy job of applying two coats of primer to the cement walls. I was trying to fill in all the little holes with paint and becoming really frustrated. And sore. And cranky. By about 5:30, I could do no more. Jeff was somewhat distressed with the fact that I was giving up and the job was unfinished. How un-Fuchs-like of me. Uh-oh! I may have blown my shot at joining the tribe! But I had reached the point of becoming resentful, which is not healthy for our relationship. I was so sore and tired. Jeff and Denny completed the entire re-lighting project. And it looks amazing and works perfectly. I don't know when we will have time to get the painting finished. Tomorrow is Jeff's Fantasy Football League Summit and Draft Picks. The earth will stop spinning until that is all taken care of. Serious business folks!
  So Jeff and I haven't been for a walk, but I think we have been getting in a good amount of physical activity and we have a lot more work to do. I need to get my Jawbone Up charged and on my wrist again so I can get credit for all the moving around. And I hope on weigh-in day that this hard work pays off!

Week 29-Vacation Recovery

  Summertime has completely thrown everything off track for us. Not only our diets, but nearly all of our routines. We took a vacation at the end of July that has completely derailed our efforts to be healthy. And almost brought an end to our relationship (No worries, my friends. All is well and Jeff and I are very much still a couple). Let me explain...
  Every year for the past 15 or so, Jeff and his brother and a group of their friends have taken a trip to the Oregon Coast to ride quads in the sand dunes near Coos Bay. It is about a seven-hour drive from where we live (no, I don't know the distance. I am a girl. We know minutes, not miles!). This annual outing is Jeff's favorite thing in the whole world, along with his True Love-the Seattle Seahawks, and all things Hi-Tech and Sci-Fi. I suppose I might be lucky enough to make the top 5 of his list. But only when I wear the Sea-Gals uniform or the Princess Leia Gold Bikini. But I digress...

Pretty sure I could pull off the one on the far right...

  Last year I was unable to accompany Jeff on this trip and he sulked and pouted and made me promise to attend the festivities this year. He promised that it would be the MOST FUN I'VE EVER HAD. Jeff DID divulge certain circumstances that led me to believe that this may not be the truest statement he had ever uttered. I will not share those reasons here, because I fully intend to marry this man someday. I would like it on record that I did express to Jeff that MAYBE this was not the year for me to go with him. But he sulked and pouted some more and I promised I would go with him. And we brought Katie and her best friend Rilee, too. 

Katie (in Jeff's old riding gear) and her best friend, Rilee. 

  The drive down was nice-we stopped and visited some of my relatives, the girls slept a lot. We blew a tire on the trailer on the highway (Was that a sign we should TURN BACK NOW?), but luckily we were near a Les Schwab ("Doing the right thing since 1952") and they fixed us up right there on the side of the road in less than 45 minutes. We got to the campsite around 8:00 that night, set up camp and settled in.
  The next day, I was sick. Not deathly ill, just fatigued and nauseated. When I was a kid, I used to get car-sick all the time. Mom would dope me up with Dramamine ("The Perfect Travel Companion") before those long car rides. Not the pills, mind you, the liquid, which is wretched-tasting stuff that made me sleep on the ride but left me queasy and tired when we arrived at our destination. I haven't had the problem of motion-sickness in decades, but it seems to have reared it's ugly head once again. Super.
  So on our first day, I tried to rest and Jeff took the girls out to teach them how to ride quads in the dunes. Both of the girls had a great time. They rode every day and they loved it. Jeff had borrowed a couple of quads from friends, so we had three quads for the four of us to share. The girls started out taking turns on the 400 with the push-button start, with one driving and one riding on the back. On their second day of riding, the girls took a spill and Katie decided she wanted to ride the bigger quad with the kick-start so she wouldn't have to ride doubles anymore. I'm so glad she did! When the three of them came back from that ride, Jeff told me he was glad I had not been there to see it. Watching the girls sail over this hill and tumble down the other side, all he could think was "How am I going to tell my girlfriend I killed her daughter?" Thankfully, nobody was injured and nobody had another fall after that.

Katie and Rilee riding on the beach. 

  My first ride happened on the second day (BEFORE the girls tried to "Thelma and Louise" it over the dunes). First of all, you should know that I am not mechanically inclined. My experience with vehicles that are not fully enclosed is minimal at best. I have ridden on the back of street motorcycles since I was a kid, which is a very different experience from riding through sand dunes on a quad. I took a motorcycle safety course 25 years ago where I drove a little 250 around a parking lot for a few weeks. I never owned my own bike. I have not driven a car with manual transmission since I was about 20. There is no chance that I could ever be mistaken for the late, great Evil Knievel. (Kids, if you're not old enough to know who that is, Google him for heaven's sake! You're on the Internet anyway. It's not like you have to walk to the library. Sheesh!) 

Yeah, this is a little more my speed...

  The sand dunes in Oregon are beautiful. The hills are enormous and steep. You can look at photos or have it described to you, but you really cannot fully comprehend the awe-inspiring magnificence until you see it with your own eyes. For someone like me, with a healthy respect for Mother Nature and a desire to not injure myself, the prospect of careening over these mountains of golden sand was more than a little intimidating. In my younger days I was more adventurous, less fearful of heights and speed and the unknown. I am older now, well aware of my mortality and I have so much to live for-kids, granddaughter, Jeff. I prefer to keep all of my body parts connected and in good working order. Jeff has busted himself up pretty good on these trips in the past-separated his shoulder, broken his leg and hip. I have never broken any bones. That is not something that is on my "to-do" list. I'm good with keeping everything in it's proper place and good working order.  

Jeff in his happy place. 

  I wanted so much to enjoy this adventure and to be good at riding and to make Jeff happy. Listen, there are a lot of things I'm good at. I bake an excellent strawberry-rhubarb pie. I have a decent singing voice. I am really good at Trivial Pursuit. I am great at organizing things and I'm a spelling-bee champ. NONE of those things require me to be mechanical. None of those skills are particularly useful either, but I am what I am.  
  Jeff has been riding for a long time. He loves it. He was so excited to get out and have me ride with him that he didn't give me much of a chance to really get the hang of it, get comfortable with riding. I'm the kind of person who needs to read how to do something, maybe have someone show me how it works after that. I need diagrams to refer back to and steps laid out for me. "First you do this, then you do that." I'm not that kinetic kind of learner that can just go in and "play". One of the many helpful features on cars and street bikes is this super-cool gauge that tells you when you need to shift. "Excuse me, Ma'am, but you need to take it out of first gear. You are currently shredding your transmission and it is about to eject itself right out from under you". Quads are not equipped with this feature (at least not the ones we had) and you have to know when to shift by the sound the quad makes. Have I mentioned I also have nerve damage in my left ear and my hearing is not so great? Jeff would try to give me some instructions, but I couldn't understand what he was saying over the roar of the motors. I kept having to have him repeat what he was saying. More than once he would repeat something three or four times and I still couldn't hear him. So I gave up asking and pretended I had heard what he said. So, you can imagine that I was not getting the hang of this. He kept asking me what I wanted to do or try, as if I had ANY clue what he was talking about. I tried, but I just wasn't getting it. 

Honey, I'm gonna need a little more than that...

  Other factors were making this trip less than relaxing. Lots of little things and not so little things-stuff I'm not going to bore you with here. And I didn't want to complain. I didn't want to ruin anyone else's good time. So I bottled it all up. For 4 days. On Tuesday night I had a bad case of insomnia. By 2:00 in the morning I was an emotional disaster. I was convinced that Jeff and I would have to break up. I had nothing in common with my thrill-seeking boyfriend. This trip, that he loves so much, was the absolute worst vacation I've ever had. I couldn't wait to go home, and I certainly never wanted to do this again. My body ached, I was sun-burnt, I hadn't slept well, we had been eating junk food non-stop and we had not had any time to be alone together. So many things were stressing me out-too much to list here. And I hadn't told Jeff about any of it to spare him from my misery. It was really important to me that he have a good vacation and be able to relax and have fun. 
  I had a full-blown meltdown. Jeff woke up, we went for a walk and I told him about EVERYTHING I had been holding in. Which made me feel rotten for dumping on him like that. But he loves me and he made everything ok again. We finally got to sleep around 4:30 that morning. 

Day 6 and he still loves me. Lucky me!

  The next couple of days were better. The four of us went for a ride and I started to get the hang of it (not really, but I had more fun trying). Then we went for a long ride with a larger group the next day. It was a good day, except that I ended up riding on the back of Jeff's quad with him. I had been doing more of that than driving one myself, because I wanted the girls to have a good vacation and I knew they preferred driving their own instead of having to share. And I didn't want to be the person everyone would have to slow down for. I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of Jeff's friends. I didn't want to embarrass him, either.

  So along with the big hills, there are these sections of the dunes that are really bumpy. Riding doubles is against the rules (I'm a rebel!) and for the one on the back, riding through these parts can be very painful. Going over the "whups" is an exercise in spine-crushing bounces. I tried standing up, which, when I was riding on my own made all the difference. But that was impossible riding doubles, I had to keep my arms around Jeff because he is not equipped with handlebars for me to grab onto, and the waymy legs were positioned as I sat behind him made it difficult to keep my balance standing up while holding on. So I bounced along for miles. By the end of that ride, I could barely sit down anymore. I had whiplash, my thighs ached, my backside was bruised and my spine resembled a Jenga tower right before the fall. I am going to have to learn to ride better so I don't have to double up ever again! 
  At the end of our vacation, Jeff came down with a cold (which he passed on to me) and it took my body four days to recover from all the abuse I put it through. 
  The beach was beautiful, Jeff's friends are really fun people and Katie and her BFF had a terrific time. Maybe we'll do this again someday and plan things out a little better next time. But it's more likely that Jeff will take this trip without me in the future. 

Me and my sweetie-right after he tried to throw me in the ocean!

  As far as our weight-loss plan, Jeff had assured me we would be riding and sweating so much that we would lose weight on this adventure, even though we completely abandoned our eating plan. Jeff is a liar and cannot be trusted. I gained SIX POUNDS in the 7 days we were in Oregon! I am quite certain this is due to the lack of physical activity and processed foods that were quick and easy. Katie and Jeff have not been weighing in, so I don't know where they are as far as losses or gains. We have had a difficult time getting back to our low-carb lifestyle since our return. Katie has been at her dad's house since August 5th for his portion of the summer with her. She tells me she has been playing a lot of Call of Duty: Black Ops on the XBox. That's ok, it's her summer vacation and swim team practice starts next week. 
  Wednesday is Jeff's 44th birthday. We are going to have one last splurge of pizza and peanut butter pie at his favorite pizza place and then we are getting back in the swing of this weight-loss plan. No more cheating, we will find a way to make time for walking and, when Katie comes home from her dad's on the 24th, we will resume regular weigh-ins again. 

If you wish to send me a comment or question, email me at sprout624@gmail.com