•9:13 AM
I had this great boyfriend named Paul my entire senior year of high school. He played on the water polo team and was a fantastic swimmer; at one time he ranked ninth in the entire nation in the butterfly stroke for his age group. I'm reasonably confident that you'll be reading more about Paul on Soap Opera Sunday, when I give you the highly entertaining and dramatic details of Prom Night 1983.
I had never been particularly athletic myself (outside of dance), so I learned much from Paul about training for competitive sports. One concept he introduced to me was that of tapering down.
When preparing for a big competition, athletes will train intensively for a period of time, then follow a very light regime in the days or weeks immediately preceding the event. This allows the body to recover fully from the hard training it has done, ensuring that it will be capable of peak performance during the competition.
"Why the nostalgic lecture?" I hear you ask in a gentle yet quizzical tone. I answer: merely to explain my recent bloggy reticence. I'm training for both NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo, demanding events that occur simultaneously during the month of November. I have to gather my strength and summon my creative (eagle) powers; Heaven knows, I need to conserve what little I have in both respects.
It is because I am tapering down that I have lately chosen not to inflict upon you posts on such scintillating topics as:
1) The fact that the three black hairs growing from my chin have become my own personal hydra;
2) How amazingly neat and clean our basement is after my tornadic frenzy last weekend;
3) What a better yarn Malabrigo is than Manos del Uruguay;
4) Hilarious things Daniel has said in days past (one tidbit "Red Zeppelin");
5) The success of our story basket in the den;
6) The manner in which my novel-in-eternal-progress, ZF-360, is morphing yet again;
7) My consternation over the as-yet-unripe African jelly melons in a large basket in our kitchen;
8) The current dearth of appealing movies at our local theaters;
9) How excited I am that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize; and
10) My rant about the evil ninja deer and the havoc they are wreaking in our yard.
See? Don't you feel better about how quiet it's been around here? Brace yourselves; November is right around the corner.
And to answer the question of a cre8buzzer who asked whether we'll be celebrating Novembrance (i.e. me) all month long once Halloween is over:
Yes. Absolutely. Bring on the party, my friends.
Until then, I must focus on my training. Yeah, yeah; that's the ticket.
I had never been particularly athletic myself (outside of dance), so I learned much from Paul about training for competitive sports. One concept he introduced to me was that of tapering down.
When preparing for a big competition, athletes will train intensively for a period of time, then follow a very light regime in the days or weeks immediately preceding the event. This allows the body to recover fully from the hard training it has done, ensuring that it will be capable of peak performance during the competition.
"Why the nostalgic lecture?" I hear you ask in a gentle yet quizzical tone. I answer: merely to explain my recent bloggy reticence. I'm training for both NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo, demanding events that occur simultaneously during the month of November. I have to gather my strength and summon my creative (eagle) powers; Heaven knows, I need to conserve what little I have in both respects.
It is because I am tapering down that I have lately chosen not to inflict upon you posts on such scintillating topics as:
1) The fact that the three black hairs growing from my chin have become my own personal hydra;
2) How amazingly neat and clean our basement is after my tornadic frenzy last weekend;
3) What a better yarn Malabrigo is than Manos del Uruguay;
4) Hilarious things Daniel has said in days past (one tidbit "Red Zeppelin");
5) The success of our story basket in the den;
6) The manner in which my novel-in-eternal-progress, ZF-360, is morphing yet again;
7) My consternation over the as-yet-unripe African jelly melons in a large basket in our kitchen;
8) The current dearth of appealing movies at our local theaters;
9) How excited I am that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize; and
10) My rant about the evil ninja deer and the havoc they are wreaking in our yard.
See? Don't you feel better about how quiet it's been around here? Brace yourselves; November is right around the corner.
And to answer the question of a cre8buzzer who asked whether we'll be celebrating Novembrance (i.e. me) all month long once Halloween is over:
Yes. Absolutely. Bring on the party, my friends.
Until then, I must focus on my training. Yeah, yeah; that's the ticket.
11 comments:
i am scared for november, and I'm not even participating in those!
I was wondering where you were! I have tapered many a time in my life--they key to it is not to get overexcited/overconfident as you regain energy from the reduced training regime...go, sister, go!
What a brilliant analogy! I'm stealing it!
Ah, that explains it.
Come November, you'll be a blur.
Your month is coming up now isn't it? My pears didn't ripen if that makes you feel better. The pears on my counter.
We have evil ninja deer, too - they keep taking big bites out of our poblano peppers - it's the weirdest thing!
Also, Red Zeppelin... when DS was 4, and listening with me to my fave rock station, he kept singing along with Moby like this, "I'm gonna phrase you like a shoe!" (I don't know if you remember this, but it's "praise you like I do") LOL... it's great when kids make those kind of mistakes!
Oh, no... you're making me nervous. Perhaps I'm being too prolific for my own good, and I'm going to hit the wall in November!
Please tell us about the story basket.
i, too, am getting really nervous.
have you done nanowrimo before? and stayed sane? i'm going to have to start capitalizing, i just know it.
here goes:
Hi! How are you today?
must rest now.
Yes you must be in top form if you plan to participate in both those events.
I bet Sirdar Yarn is better than Malabrigo Yarn :-)
I am looking forward to NaBloPoMo. My first one.
hey girl:
i will celebrate novembrance. you are awesome. i have really been enjoying your blog and buzz in these recent days. and your post and list today amused me. you silly girl.
i want to tell you about something cool. i am having another challenge and give-away on my
blog. theme is "gift." this is just in time for Christmas if you want to use the prize as a beautiful gift to give away.
if you commit to the challenge, just leave a comment in my challenge post (i just
posted it today), and you are entered for a chance to win the cool prize.
hope today is groovy for you. thanks for making me laugh this morning, kathleen :)
I am pretty much panicking at NaPoBloMo and I have yet to sign up. I have been training hard for the last couple weeks posting almost daily. So what you are suggesting is I take a week off of posting and do then dive into November. I may do that, but I am signed up for Fun Monday, and I have a continuation of field trips for Thursday Thirteen (almost done though so I could do it in advance. Hmmm... you got me thinking.