Tag teenagers

Gym Update: By Now, You Probably Know I Love The Guys at Apex Training

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

So, I’m in the midst of what feels like an incredibly long, never ending journey. I’ve posted frequently about fitness, health and disability.

And I’m getting to the point where I’ve accepted that I will never be done.

It’s probably a long shot that my body will ever be athletic or even dependable, but at least I can commit myself to doing as much as I can to be as functional as I can.

I have hemiplegic cerebral palsy, which means it only effects my lower limbs. On good days, in the right circumstances, with the right concentration, you might not even notice. But those days feel fewer and far between as I age.

I started strength training in college— and if you’ve read some of my previous posts this might be repetition for you— as one of my gym electives. My liberal arts education included gym.

I returned to it on and off, mostly for stress management and then health after The Teenager was born. That’s when I met some very awesome vegan gym owners. (I was still in my vegetarian days. I keep trying to get more into a plant-based diet again.)

I worked out at home for several years while regaining strength after broken bones. And— as I’ve shared before— I got very lean and cut.

Now I have no desire to be than thin again and no discipline left to be that lean. But I am working toward regaining my strength and muscle. Those pictures are from when I was 40. Well, I’m going to be 47 in a few months and progress is slow. I’m still at an all-time high in my weight. I have days where my hips don’t want to work. And my spine hurts most of the time.

My eating habits also don’t match my goals— but my emotional state has to improve for me to fix that.

But I keep working on all these things.

As my marriage ended, I joined Planet Fitness and that kept some of my health demons at bay. The pandemic ended that, and that’s where my weight gain exploded, too.

And I also realized my desire and discipline had faded in direct proportion to my pain and physical difficulties. If I’m going to be crippled away, why bother?

But this summer, I saw a Facebook post by Apex Training here in my neighborhood. So I reached out and Greg got in touch almost immediately. I told him my story— and this meant a lot of vulnerability for me— and he immediately recommended Dan without missing a beat.

Now I was very very intimidated. I had walked by their gym 1,000 times but usually found small gyms and local trainers pushy and unwelcoming. Like a private club.

But I hit it off with Dan and found myself impressed with his knowledge and his creativity. He’d be a gifted physical therapist.

My strength has returned but my body still doesn’t always cooperate but Dan always knows how I’m feeling just my how I’m moving.

This gym is amazing. I see a lot of guys who come together to lift, a lot of women who want to lose weight, and married couples who work out together. And the environment is very family friendly— you’ll often see Greg’s dog Gotti or the babies, Dan and Greg both have toddler sons.

The Teenager has started lifting. She has a love of pushing around heavy weights so Dan has started teaching her barbell sports. Around the same time she started accompanying me to the gym, Andrew joined the team and he has a background in powerlifting.

The Teenager squatting with Dan

Well now it’s too late to make a long story short, but I’ve been feeling better and Dan has made some creative adjustments to my sessions to try and improve my range of motion.

Dan had to cancel this morning’s session so he suggested reaching out to Andrew, but Andrew was running on fumes. We weren’t able to schedule a workout but we had a great conversation about the prospect of getting The Teenager into her own sessions with Andrew and I can continue my work with Dan.

Andrew said she has potential and that he’s impressed with the lifts he’s seen. She now squats 155 I think and deadlifts 195. But here’s what I didn’t expect… “Your work ethic,” Andrew said to me, “is inspiring to watch.”

My world has been upside down for the last three to six months. So to hear that is just a reminder of how you never know who’s watching and how you may impact others.

And while I am still searching for the right doctors as I age, I know that strength training serves as a great boon to my future mobility and health. I see the orthopedic physiatrist this week and scheduled a visit with the neuromuscular physiatrist at the end of May.

I’m hoping these doctors can teach me how my body works so I can give this information to the team at Apex and maybe I could have a future in strength sports. Or maybe I can finally jog a 5K.

But more people need to understand—

Physical therapy is a blessing for specific injury. But as we age, most of us will gain a disability if we don’t already struggle with congenital issues. Just as I look for the doctor that can help me understand my whole body and its movement, the right personal trainer can help me strengthen my whole body.

I really wish I could be with the guys at Apex Training five days a week.

And I hope anyone with a disability who wants to improve their physical condition will consider committing to work with a personal trainer.

The experiment: chiro followed by personal trainer

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

This is another post mostly about my journey into learning more about my body and cerebral palsy.

First off, before I jump into my update, let me give a huge shout out to “the teenager” who solved an issue in my kitchen that had been a thorn in my dad’s side for more than a decade.

I once had him over for a dinner party in the early days of owning this house and during said dinner party, I set a candle on fire in the kitchen. It burned a hole in the countertop. My dad thought he’d buy a replacement as a Christmas present as the counter is probably three feet long.

Problem was it’s an unusual chunk in the corner and needed to be custom cut.

Somehow the teenager got the idea of applying special contact paper designed for counters.

It looks pretty damn cool— my dad would be very proud.

I’ll have to dig up a before photo.

In other news, my boxes of Not an Able-Bodied White Man with Money arrived. (Purchase on Amazon here.) I have an official unboxing planned and a blog entry for Parisian Phoenix but my body is having a minor revolt so the debut will be postponed until tomorrow. AND my credit card reader came.

I do love what Gayle did with the cover.

And now on to my experiment… The background… On Sunday, I performed at 99% preparing packages in Freestyle— pretty impressive considering we had computer problems and a work shortage. And we worked all 10 hours. Yesterday I worked eight hours in my home department and did 131 fixes, which I believe was 101%.

I knew I had a chiropractor appointment at 5 p.m. Monday so I asked Dan, my physical trainer at Apex Training if he would be around for a workout. I knew it might be light, after a workday in the warehouse, but wondered if my body would move differently after visiting Nicole Jensen of Back in Line Chiropractic and Wellness Center.

Nicole made sure everything was stretched and aligned and off I went.

And Dan led me in what would be a light leg workout for most— a lot of squats and floor exercises. He was impressed and honestly I didn’t have to concentrate as much as I usually do.

I woke up this morning in no real pain, and through most of my days doing women’s returns processing, my aches and pains were muscular and not skeletal.

But then, I took a small walk around the neighborhood and things started feeling off. My phone later revealed that my walk was indeed asymmetrical.

So I took a shower and plan to go to bed early as my body is stiff and achy. We’ll see how I feel in the morning.

For more on this topic, click here.

Marvel review: Ant-Man & the Wasp and the final two Avengers movies

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

The latest three in our series of Marvel movies— Ant Man and The Wasp and Avengers Infinity War and Avengers End Game— brought some fun moments into my experience of the Marvel Comics Universe.

The teenager brought home generic takis from the Dollar Tree and I had some of those and Cabot Cottage cheese for supper.

I still think the length of the Avengers movies is unnecessarily long— fight scenes and excessive fancy CGI does not attract me. The contrast between Infinity War and Endgame is strong. The former clearly is conflict driven while the later seeks resolution to the past as its plot. So whereas Infinity War offers the fighting of villains vs heroes, Endgame offers a chance to solve a puzzle.

Ant-Man, as in his previous film, blends pure silliness with the everyday experience of the Everyman and the Ant-Man & The Wasp storyline puts Scott slang, as the Everyman, in a unique position to miss the events of the Infinity War and have a worldview that gives him the strange understanding of quantum physics that he doesn’t really “get” but has lived. He has the knowledge potentially to revive the world.

I love the dynamic paths of Hawkeye— I’m drawing a blank on Clint’s full name— and Tony Stark. And Thor’s deterioration from a god to an overweight alcoholic is a beautiful tribute to the toll trauma takes on any hero.

We still have an hour to go on Endgame, so perhaps my opinions will grow. But for now, here it is.

Jake not from State Farm and other fun chores

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

The last 48 hours have been chaotic and exciting. On Wednesday night, as I hobbled around like a Barbie doll with her leg half popped out, I received my LLC approval via email in a pdf called “Happy Letter.”

I brought this and my fictitious name registration and my EIN to my banker, Jake, who is not from State Farm.

Turns out I’ve gathered more paperwork than I need. And none of it matches. So in the future I may need an EIN for the LLC as the original EIN lists the business as a partnership and the LLC does not.

Jake not from State Farm enjoyed my enthusiasm for setting up my banking business and shared that his wife is working on a book about parenting autistic children. And how much he enjoys poached eggs.

I had had plans to have breakfast with Nancy, but those plans had to be delayed. I was supposed to pick her up at 9:30 but I told the teenager I would drop her off at school at 9 and I thought I would run to the bank and see if I could open business accounts.

I told Nan if I were on time it meant I had bad luck, and if I were late, it meant I had a business bank account.

So when I called her at 10:30, she was happy for me but it also meant we couldn’t get breakfast potatoes at Wendy’s. We opted for egg sandwiches from Dunkin instead and came back to my house to work.

I made Nan chai, we did her work, and I subscribed to Poets & Writers for the business. Then Nan and I went to Grocery Outlet.

We got some goodies for the upcoming ice storm— which for Nan meant cotton candy grapes, Cherry Coke Zero and cheddar quinoa crisps. I got the sea salt version of the crisps, some creamers, hot dog rolls, monster cereal, raspberries, dates, frozen cauliflower and whipped cream cheese.

Somewhere along the afternoon, Nancy and I laughed ridiculously hard about things I don’t remember. We picked up the teenager from school.

We went to pick up Nan’s laundry. The teenager helped her carry it up to her apartment and as Nan washed and started snacking on her grapes, the teenager and I went to the gym, Apex Training

The teenager achieved a new personal best for barbell squats— 175 pounds.

I managed my lower body workout, which wasn’t easy with my right hip and leg not acting as a team. I feel so weak and still feel out of shape, as if I’m wasting my money, but this morning I found it much smoother to move so maybe I am moving forward.

And then the teenager and I showered and met my stepmother for dinner. We ate at Thai Orchid in Stroudsburg and followed with ice cream at Jimmy’s.

I had a delightful, flavorful tofu in yellow curry and canned Bubble Tea that made the teenager get over her distaste of tapioca.

This morning I wrote a blog entry for Parisian Phoenix and spoke with Ludwig about merchant services. My credit card reader will arrive next week.

F. Bean Barker assisted in the “office.”

And now to share Parisian Phoenix’s post:

Two official big announcements from the Parisian Phoenix universe today: 1. Not an Able-Bodied White Man With Money, the nonfiction anthology of …

Jake not from State Farm

A trip “For the Girls”

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

Today was supposed to be the day I blogged about Black Panther and Doctor Strange, which I will do when I finish this and schedule it for tomorrow. Short version: Black Panther was amazing but made me think about how we represent African cultures, cultural appropriation and stereotypes AND how comic books in general have to start with some sort of basic cliché and try to improve from there. I loved how Doctor Strange blended an action hero with sorcery and in the process led to some great philosophizing about the nature of reality and the definition of good versus the definition of evil.

But I have to interrupt my planned schedule and tell you instead about my visit to FOR THE GIRLS EASTON. Visit their web site here. And I encourage you to digest their mission on their web page here.

The teenager has breasts, and as a teenager she has grown and needed new bras during the pandemic. I have wanted to take her to FOR THE GIRLS for two plus years now, and her boobs keep growing, because every woman needs bras that fit, especially if you have large breasts (like my daughter) or older breasts (like me in my forties over here).

My daughter, having a moment of smarts as she is quite prone to do, asked her father to buy her bras from FOR THE GIRLS for Christmas. He said yes, and she finally had the opportunity to request an appointment for this weekend.

I asked if I could come, in part because I was curious about the shop, and also because I wanted to see what kind of options were available for my ample daughter.

So as she was trying on bras in the backroom fitting area, her dad and I sat in the shop playing with this really sweet dog. And suddenly I realized: I’ve gained 20 pounds and have been wearing bras too small for two years. I keep thinking I’ll lose weight so I don’t want to invest in new bras, because I don’t like my bigger boobs and I certainly don’t want to keep them. But I’m falling out of my bras. Just falling right out.

It’s not nice. It’s not comfortable.

I asked, “Can I be fitted, too?”

And of course the answer was yes.

** I love small businesses. **

And when she saw my boobs spilling out of my bra, that poor proprietor said, “Oh no.”

Traditionally, when I am at a healthy weight, I’m a 34B. Overweight I typically come in at 36C.

My new bras are 32F.

And it feels great to not have them jostling everywhere.

Standard bra sizes really don’t match your torso size and your cup size correctly. It’s just like jeans that never fit right. Bra sizes that are in the big chain stores for cheap are based on sizes most women can wear, and that means if you’re a smaller girl with a large chest, you might be stuck wearing a larger band size and smaller cup size that you really need.

To continue the jeans analogy, think about how a certain size might fit in the waist but not in the thighs even though by the measurements and the size chart, it’s supposed to fit. If manufacturer’s can’t mass produce cheap jeans that fit, why should bras be any different?

I think a lot of women short change themselves because bras are not something we see or show on a regular basis, but the reality is, as demonstrated by the mission at FOR THE GIRLS, women have more confidence in a proper bra. And to me, more importantly, a bad bra fit just makes you uncomfortable all day long. Especially if you have a large chest, or if you move around a lot, or if you are aging and nature doesn’t hold up what it used to.

So thank you, FOR THE GIRLS.

And if you didn’t want to hear about my boobs or if I said too much about boobs– tough. I don’t care. It’s important.

Joy, pain and food

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

First some recent food:

From Hungryroot.

I have been saving these for a night when I needed a quick dinner. It’s been a challenging week at the Bizzy Hizzy. So I’m glad I had them. The teenager and I both enjoyed them. and this multigrain flat buns are one of my favorites.

Sunday I made this:

The teenager made the meatballs out of ground bison, also from Hungryroot. The tomato sauce was Classico Italian Sausage with peppers and onions and I sautéed everything with some fresh green peppers, Brussel sprouts and sliced green olives. It was amazing. Both served with small shells and also with melted cheese as a sandwich.

The other night, the teenager and I watched Black Panther, which will be discussed in a later post. I tried this popcorn that I got at Lidl for 79 cents.

Chesapeake Bay Style popcorn. Very highly seasoned and nasty. I threw the whole bag out after trying it.

And I never waste food.

But this week has been hard— my body has been hurting in ways I’m not accustomed to. And that’s hard physically and emotionally.

Sunday I worked a decent shift at work but we left early— at 2:15 p.m. instead of 5 p.m.!

But yesterday I was moved from my normal spot on line 5 to the spot behind the shipper/style carder on line 1. It was a poorly set up table that required moving three steps from the table to the line, and then one had to rearrange the boxes to make room.

And the person receiving the boxes rejected many for no good reason AND worked so slow the line was always jammed. Finished the day in pain and at 80% of metrics.

But I got to style card too and that was fun.

Today I was back on my line, but my computer was lagging. Finished the day at 80% again.

And in pain.

I cried myself to sleep last night. Hopefully tonight will be better.

My cat Fog

The Grateful Friday

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Yesterday I cleaned a lot of my downstairs and had a relatively good work out at Apex. I haven’t felt incredibly strong lately, but my IUD must be working because I’m not in pain.

I had a good week at work, so cleaning, working on Parisian Phoenix projects and watching Cobra Kai suited me just fine yesterday.

I even found two of the dog’s Kong balls under the couch which made for a very happy dog.

Today, I was supposed to have my annual physical but my doctor’s office called yesterday and rescheduled for next week— which also means another week without answers from my CT scan and physiatrist referral. Neither the neurologist nor the physiatrist’s office has called me back.

And I need a doctor that can help me understand the motion and mechanics of my body, and not just its individual parts.

Today I scrubbed the exterior of the stove and did dishes. Then I went to help my blind friend Nan with some errands and grocery shopping.

We made plans to pick up some pizza at Little Caesars so Nan could try the Batman Calzony. No matter how I tried I couldn’t explain what it was to the blind lady. So we bought one.

But we had time to kill before the teenager got out of school even after we put groceries away. We grabbed the dog and got drinks and hash browns (for the dog) at Dunkin.

And then we surprised the teenager with the dog at school.

Then Joan stopper by to drop off some hand-me-down magazines and erotica, cupcakes and photos that Joan needed us to sort.

Now, I’m cuddling with Louise, watching Gotham Garage and enjoying kitten photos.

Rainy Icy Friday

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I don’t have many plans this weekend— defined by my work schedule as Thursday, Friday and Saturday— in part because my body has been unpredictable, the weather has been crazy and the teenager’s work schedule varies.

I went to the chiropractor at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, leaving work 30 minutes early to get the last appointment of the day. I wanted Dr. Jensen to see my body after four ten-hour shifts in Stitch Fix’s Bizzy Hizzy warehouse.

And, for the second or third week in a row, I could barely crawl home on Tuesday night but felt pretty good on Wednesday. So I feel like I’m not getting closer to solutions to my physical issues.

Yesterday I tried to do some work for Parisian Phoenix, did a lot of laundry, visited briefly with a friend I’ve missed and haven’t seen merely enough of, taught a high school student how to write a press release, watched several episodes of Cobra Kai, ran the dishwasher and went to the gym.

The teenager working on her squat form

The teenager did a lot of work on her squat form while I did some accessory work. I also weighed myself— 157 lbs. Sigh. Still 20 pounds overweight.

Then we had Taco Bell, including the new Cinnabon balls.

Today I worked on the index for the Parisian Phoenix nonfiction anthology on marginalized identities, Not an Able-Bodied White Man with Money, which I will be blogging about on the Parisian Phoenix web site later tonight. F. Bean Barker was my helper.

Indexing is only half complete and man does it allow me to interact with the text in new ways.

Louise has an appointment with a potential adopter tomorrow and today she was quite cuddly, video here. I don’t know how she’ll do in the backroom of PetSmart but all least we’ll be with her.

Nala and Louise

In the afternoon, I accompanied the teenager to her audiologist appointment for a tune-up on her hearing aids.

Then we went for shoes. The teenager needed some and I wanted to buy a warmer pair that fit more loosely — hoping that would ease the blistering and burning in my toes.

I didn’t buy these patent leather stilettos.
I didn’t buy these tie-dye Vans on clearance
I bought these.

The teenager got new black Vans and a new design, the orange blossom Vans.

We ran into Target just to use the bathroom and I told the pouty teenager we could get a drink at Sonic. But turns out Sonic is still drive through only, so if you can’t have drive-in service what’s the point of visiting Sonic?

So we went to Sheetz, and had appetizers. Which would have been fine if the teenager hadn’t suggested going to see her grandmother, my mother-in-law. And her aunt— who recently destroyed her elbow falling on the ice.

We’re finishing Captain America: Civil War right now. The ice is slowly building up outside as the cold rolls into town. And Peter Parker just made his debut in the series.

“Put me in coach”: A Work Story

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

If you stop by here often, you know that last Wednesday I spoke with some more people at work about my disability and that whole day I was given my preferred/easier for me fixes.

I achieved 96% for the day, folding what are called refixes, fixes that had problems that got rejected and needed to go back to be fixed. So the fix needs a fix.

When they return from the refix department, they are boxed in the box they were originally slated to ship in and they are on top of the cart instead of on the shelves.

I really struggle to reach shelves seven and eight so this is a huge help.

And since neither the physiatrist nor my neurologist have responded to my recent concerns about my mobility and my coordination, I have not asked for official work accommodations yet.

Yesterday was the first day of my work week— I did something like 89% in Freestyle, folding clothes and shipping packages for the first 8+ hours of my shift. At 3:30 p.m., I moved over to returns processing where I might have hit 75%.

Today was Monday, which means the warehouse was firing on all cylinders. I was in my home department, and I might have gotten 40 refixes today. So 3/4 of my work involved a lot of bending, crouching and twisting.

My back did okay, but my right quad and right foot burned most of the day and by 4 p.m., my hip hurt. It feels like it’s pointing directly behind me like a tail.

Despite this, I was in the neighborhood of 99%.

And at 4:25 p.m., my process lead asked me to go style card— calling me his “emergency style carder.” I would prefer the phrase “back-up.”

But it gave me a chance to move around and improve my hip functionality so I am grateful.

It made me feel like an athlete waiting on the bench, which then got the song “Centerfield” stuck in my head as I worked.

“Put me in coach, I’m ready to play…”

I would have made the reference to my process lead, but I think he’s too young to get the reference. But, the teenager tells me if he’s seen The Sandlot, he’ll know the song.

If you need to hear the song, here’s a YouTube link.

Marvel update: Two Guardians and Ulltron

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

The teenager and I are working our way through the Marvel Comics Universe, watching the film in what is reportedly the order of events.

It certainly gives me more depth to Tony Stark, as the Avenger movies seem to hinge a lot on him.

The teenager adores Hawkeye.

And we both enjoy Joss Whedon’s and James Gunn’s humor in the scripts.

But these three films, though completely occupying space as Marvel movies do, with crazy action scenes, internal bickering and often violence among the team, tenseness and humor, fell flat for me.

Why?

Because these movies are based on comic books— comic books from an age where the science fiction of it was wild and the world still had so much unknown. Many of these characters/heroes predate space travel.

Captain America eludes to that when he says he misses the days when he was the biggest monster science had made, or something like that.

So to believe that Hawkeye has a family hidden on a farm that no one knows about in the 21st century seems unbelievable to me, primarily because I have to ask where those kids go to school.

And the larger the cast, the bigger the threat has to be, and the more the story is less about people and more about danger. The solutions in many of these scripts make no sense and the amount of civilian destruction is insane.

And to me, a Generation Xer, Age of Ulltron recreates September 11 (specifically the scene where Tony Stark asks how quickly he can buy a building and throws the Hulk into it, causing its implosion and a giant plume of dust through a major though fictional city). Also, the very idea that Ulltron infiltrates the Internet and represents artificial intelligence gone rogue, is very pertinent for the time period but has lingering air of the late 1990s panic that the opposite would happen—computers/operating systems weren’t smart enough to survive the Y2K date change.

In the Guardians series, the plot just never develops in proportion to the characters. We have these quirky misfit characters that have flimsy plots, and themes that don’t really go beyond their two dimensional comic book origins.

And this business with the infinity stones better have a satisfying conclusion. The idea that these mysterious power sources may all have some sort of intelligence/life map coded within them is fascinating.

Does each stone have part of the blue print to create the next incarnation of the universe? Or do the stones if reunited serve as a self-destruct mechanism?

Anyway, Ant-Man is next.

And I’m intrigued. Can we really trust Vision merely because he can yield Thor’s hammer? Or can he hold the hammer because he was forged by the hammer?

Previous Marvel post

Iron Man 3

Remaining Marvel posts (start here?)