As I sat across the breakfast table at the café this morning looking at my two friends, Laurie and Kathleen, I realized 40-something life can sometimes be like agonizing pain. While they looked quite refreshed and like they had slept for 10 hours straight and hadn’t had a drink for more than a week – which by the way is the complete opposite of what they did do; I was dying with lack of sleep, a pillow scar across my face and feeling like my body had been hit by a car!!!! I remember the days when I could survive on 4 hours of sleep, and drinking a little too much could be cured by eggs and bacon. These days I need 8-10 hours of sleep and anything more than 2 glasses of wine is met with me moaning and groaning and complaining to my friends who are 10+ years younger than me. I envy the young. I am going to have to find some older friends!
As you may have guessed, I overdid things a little bit yesterday. I am in a teeny tiny bit of pain right now. Okay, I am in a bit more than a tiny teeny bit of pain. In fact, I can hardly lift my arms up. I woke up this morning like I had slept on both of my arms all night – complete dead arms. And, I obviously slept with my face in my pillow from the fabulous scar it left across my eye and cheek that took about 3 hours to flesh back out again!
It wasn’t all of the going out that caused my suffering. As I am doing my best to get back on track to keeping fit, although I keep failing, I decided to go for a run around Castle Island yesterday… slow, 3 mile run in the chilly November air – good for the soul. I then came home and did an hour of weights… and there lies my arm problems. What was I thinking doing an hour of weights!
In the evening a group of us decided to go for dinner at Eastern Standard. Dinner was super fun. I do like Eastern Standard a lot – it has a great atmosphere and the food is always quite good. After dinner we stopped by a friend’s brother’s 40th birthday party at the Fenway Cantina. There we played a game called “Baggo“, again using my poor worn out arms.
After that we decided to go to the Citizens Public House & Oyster Bar, a very cool bar and restaurant near Fenway that specializes in whiskey from all over the world. I refrained from drinking whiskey and sensibly stuck to wine and then water – lots and lots of water. I think I was hoping that would help negate the pain I knew I was going to feel the next morning. I didn’t even think about the fact that these days I need lots of sleep as well. I should have gone home after the Cantina!
Not realizing the time we eventually left the bar close to 2am and I was still trying to fall asleep at gone 3am. I don’t like those nights. It doesn’t help when you wake up very early the next morning and can’t get back to sleep. It makes me very sad :(.
So, today despite my pain and weariness, I am pushing through and about to go for another run. I used to be able to do this and now I am going to try again. If I can’t run the whole time, I will walk some, but I am still going to make myself do it. I am determined to getting back to working out four times a week – at least.
Sometimes, like today I really do wish I was 30 again!
