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7:27 p.m. 2010-07-10
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Remember when? It happened again.
One of the things that I say about myself is that I have a wide range of comfortable. Hot or cold, humid or dry, quiet or loud, bright or dark. The sun can get a long way down before I turn on the reading light. The skinny girls are freezing or melting before I start thinking about doing something with a second layer. It just doesn�t enter my mind that the space is one way or anther until the pendulum has really swung.
Normally, I like this about myself. The world is a much nicer place when its vagaries don�t bother you. I still notice and appreciate when something is great. I�m dropping some of the worst and keeping the best. Good deal for me.
But right now it may have killed me. Probably not, but man, I am making up a lot of uncomfortable ground right now.
One summer I lived in a 3rd floor apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Summer in Ann Arbor can get hot. Not quite Lagos hot, hot. And sticky. And this third floor apartment didn�t have air conditioning. It had fans, but not AC. I got in the habit of eating frozen grapes as a temperature regulating treat. And that summer, I got my rowing machine. I would set the machine up in front of the TV over the weekend, program in a work out, crank up the volume and go to town.
I think I nearly killed myself a couple of times in that apartment, jacking my body temp to the roof in a room that held all the hot air in the building. But I wouldn�t notice that it was insanely hot when I made my decision to start rowing, it was still in my comfort range. I wouldn�t notice until I was about 7 min into the 25 min work out, and then it would be my stubborn will to finish what I started vs. my fast fatiguing muscle and overloading sweat glands. I would finish, but not that well.
All this came back to me today. You see, today I live in a place that is constantly summer. Today I again live in a (much nicer) third floor apartment. Today I also moved the rowing machine into the TV room for an afternoon workout. Yesterday I noticed that my A/C was on the fritz. Today, about 7 minutes into the work out I realized what that meant. And right now a post work out cold shower isn�t getting my body temp back into my comfort zone.
It is easy to sneak up on somebody who is feeling fine. A badword moving trend that is gaining momentum in the comfort zone will be a problem shortly. It is easy to say �fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice�� but making the same mistake is one of the easiest ruts in the world to fall into. I set up the same situation and fell into the same selfbaking trap 10 years ago, except this time I don�t have any frozen grapes.
I�ve come a long way over that time, but that doesn�t mean I�ve stopped making the same mistakes. Or, at least some of the same mistakes.
However, if I have to repeat problems the ones that can be traced back to not enough frozen fruit in my fridge can still fit in my comfort zone.
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