Sweet Home Chicago

I miss Chicago. Pout.

It’s not my favorite people that I miss most. You’ve all been so great about keeping in touch that I’m not too homesick.

And it’s not our favorite restaurants. We’ve found a few new ones down here already and have more we want to try. Besides, between Dan’s cooking and my diet we don’t go out much anyway.

And I’m slowly figuring out those crucial things like: where to get a haircut or a cool birthday card or a gift for a friend and where to take the car for maintenance and how to get to the grocery store and back. So it’s not that.

Of course I miss all the fun stuff there is to do in Chicago over the summer but I spent the 4th at a super cool festival with great music and food and art and fun nature oriented activities. It was exactly my idea of a great festival: http://www.enoriver.org/festival/ So I’m not so sad to miss Taste of Chicago and Northalsted Market Days.

No… Way down deep, in the most dark and petty recesses of my heart, the thing I miss the most is…

Watching TV at the gym.

My old gym had TV screens at each and every treadmill and I Loved it. I found that watching Law and Order or back-to-back episodes of Scrubs or The Daily Show, or even reality trash like America’s Next Top Model, I was able to work out for unprecedented periods of time.

With a distracting plot and some eye candy I could do the elliptical trainer for an hour and a half! I could jog, with hills, for forty-five minutes. There were a few crazy Saturdays when I jogged an hour and a half! I was strong. I was fit. I imagined myself quite the runner.

And then the move came and I fell out of shape what with all the late nights at work and all the packing and painting and travel… and all the eating… But I was determined to get back in shape once I got here. Dan and I even went down to the YMCA soon after I arrived and got memberships.

Unfortunately I discovered too late that although they do have TVs at the Y they only show ESPN, a soap opera, CNN and Fox News. None of these things distract me enough to run! Dan has changed the music in my MP3 player to be a more engaging and upbeat running mix and that hasn’t helped. I can barely force myself to try thirty minutes on the treadmill and it’s so boring and painful that I have a terrible time talking myself into going to the gym more than a couple of times a week.

Sigh. I guess what I Really miss is the illusion that I am a fit and physically capable person, the belief that by working hard I might one day enjoy running, may even be able to keep up with Dan. Ha! I now see that this premise is fundamentally flawed and untrue. I miss that smug confidence and self-righteousness that comes from being able to casually say: “I went running today. Yeah, did five miles. No biggie.”

And yet, in my darkest hour I have discovered that I can Read on the elliptical trainer! I’ve never been able to read and work out before because of the bouncing. Much to my delight, young adult books with their reasonably easy to follow plots and large font texts are not distorted too much by the bouncing, panting and pain. They even have pictures! And if I only let myself read these books at the gym I find myself compelled to work out just so I can find out the exciting conclusion to the mystery in Chasing Vermeer or what lies at the end of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

Today I did an Hour on the crossramp elliptical. AND I increased my resistance. Everyone knows that runners are just tearing up their knees anyway...

Smug? Who me?