My bus never showed up last night after work, and yesterday of course was the first day this year that hit over 100 degrees.  It didn’t take long to go from rainy days to the brink of humidity, that’s for sure.

I had gotten myself all pumped for getting my writing done that night, and then my bus doesn’t come at all.  My parents were in the vicinity, and they offered to pick me up so I didn’t have to wait in the heat.  My Mom was on her way to a happy hour for a colleague, so I wound up having to tag along on that since she was already late.

I didn’t get any writing done yesterday, which means that now I’m 3 pages behind.  However, I did get to the gym today and close out my week, which feels really good after missing a few days to start the week.  It’s been a hectic week this week, so I’m looking forward to just relaxing this weekend with some good food on Saturday and getting solid writing done before going to sleep on Sunday.  I hope everyone else has as productive and enjoyable of a weekend as I intend to have.

I have been noticing that there have been independent trainers training people at my gym in the morning when I’m there.  When my gym first started offering personal training sessions, they were very strict about no outside trainers.  Their program seems to have taken a little bit of a nosedive as of late.  Maybe that’s why they have seemingly become more lax about independent trainers training people at the gym.

With everything else I’m squeezing into my life right now, maybe I should start advertising for personal training sessions.  I could just extend the time I normally spend at the gym for an hour or two, fitting in a bunch of clients each week and make some extra money on the side.  It’s a thought, but there are a lot of possibilities out there for me right now.  I’m still assessing, but hopefully I’ll have this all narrowed down by the end of this month.  Busy, busy!

They say that it’s good to take a week off from the gym every now and then.  I start feeling sluggish and groggy if I miss anything longer than 3 days.  As of this morning, I hadn’t been to the gym in 4 days.  I wasn’t feeling weaker, but I wasn’t feeling stronger either.  As I said yesterday, life happens and I’m learning to deal with the fact that I cannot maintain my rigorous gym schedule.  The reason I started such a rigorous schedule was exactly for the reason that I intended to get myself to a point where I did not have to go every day without the fear of losing strength or succumbing to my disability.

I got back to my routine today though.  Lifting on the shoulder fly was hard, but I love the feeling when it’s difficult.  I was even successful for a complete set on the lat pulldown machine, and that is the test of strength with my disability.  I guess a few days off every now and then is good for the body, more so than a hindrance.  While I’m not going to allow myself to get lax and make this more of a routine, it’s comforting to know that my strength is sustained if I miss part of my routine.  Tomorrow is leg day though, and that is the ultimate test of my retained strength.  A few days off feels good, but getting stronger in the gym is still the best feeling I can give to myself every morning.

The Olney Theater is having an opening performance of their new play, Opus, tonight at 7:30 on the mainstage.  This is my girlfriend’s first performance, outside of rehearsals, as the 1st Assistant Stage Manager.  Kristiana has sounded so excited about this play.  She’s told me that working on this production has shown her why she loves theatre.  As happy as this show has made her, I want to do whatever I can to support her.

Just hearing about the work that has gone into making the performance happen, and knowing a couple of the plot twists that occur across the play, it sounds like it will be a great play to watch.  I was out late last night bringing Kristiana food because she was babysitting last night and couldn’t get dinner.  I’ve missed the gym every day this week.  I need to go tomorrow and the rest of the week to get each of my three workouts in, but I still want to go see this play tonight.

Things are more important than my workouts after all.  One of the beautiful things about how far I have rehabilitated myself is that I can actually miss workouts and not fear about losing strength.  People look at me and they see a strong, fit person foremost.   They don’t see my disability.  Working out may, literally, make life worth living for me, but there is more to life than living by my workouts.  Actually being in the position where this is the case is the best gift I could imagine.  Perhaps I should reward myself by going to see Kristiana work her magic behind the scenes at Opus.

I still owe everyone a recap of my anniversary, and it will come.  I decided to take the day away from writing on the 2nd and enjoy my anniversary by just resting.  It’s funny, but my Dad completely forgot about the day.  He doesn’t like thinking about it, but then he said something interesting.  He said that he’s sorry that he doesn’t see me as disabled anymore.  Trust me, for me and my family, that is the best lapse of memory any of us can hope for.

I caught up with my writing this weekend, and even wrote this morning.  I’m on pace again at 68 pages, and the writing is coming along very smoothly.  Not only that, but I am really enjoying writing this book.  It’s making me happy and, just from putting things on paper, I can understand not only why I was such a happy kid, but how much I think others will enjoy reading everything good and bad I have been through.

I saw my friends in their final weekend production of a play called Farragut North at the Olney Theater, and they were amazing in it.  Wandered around DC on Sunday after catching up with my writing and enjoyed this beautiful weather.  It’s supposed to get humid again soon, so I bet my recap of the anniversary will come this week.  Again sorry for the delay, but you gotta live life when it is given to you, and there was no way anyone could turn down the beautiful Spring weather we have finally gotten in Maryland.