It’s a Hard Knock Life (for me)

At some point last year, I decided to up my game when it comes to fitness. If you remember, I bought a stationary bike the first year of the pandemic. It’s been getting regular use. I’ve made it my goal to increase my time on the bike every month. 

Next, I determined that I wanted those Victorian Babe arms and bought some hand weights. Gradually I’ve been increasing repetitions and weight in my exercise regime. But the hand weights weren’t working fast enough in my opinion. So I bought a pull-down bar and had my husband install it in the new building project. 

The pull-down bar didn’t come with any weights. I figured I could get some at the Bodega. But my husband convinced me he could rig up a bucket that I could fill with gravel and use with the pulley set up. Ok then. I’ve been adding a shovelful of gravel every month and now I am up to being able to lift  ¾ of a 5-gallon bucket. 

To keep me motivated, I broke my daily exercise into 3 segments that coincided with the dog walks. I’ve been feeling pretty good about myself. I have lost enough weight that I only have 1 pair of jeans and 1 pair of pajama pants that stay up and have developed parenthesis wrinkles on my face (ok, so that didn’t make me as happy but it is what it is.) Anyway, that brings the story up to last week. 

Thursday afternoon, I headed over to the new lot to do another round of pull-downs. I started in all gung-ho and about mid-way all of a sudden the handle on the bucket snapped. I flew backward several feet, hit my head on the corner of the cement stairs hard, scraped my arms to shreds on the way down, and had a board not been covering the aljibe, I would have fallen in and probably drowned.

I sat there a few minutes dazed trying to figure out what had happened. I decided that was it for my exercise for the day and dragged my sorry butt back to the house. I told my husband and son what had happened and they should monitor me for signs of head trauma, which I looked up on Google. Google wasn’t reassuring because the top news item was the autopsy results on Bob Saget, who had NOT died peacefully in his sleep, but as a result of an accidental head injury. 

I then contacted my BFF who is a nurse and asked her what I needed to pay attention to. She said that any nausea, dizziness, double vision, headache (not at the impact site), and sleepiness is cause for concern. I relayed this to my caretakers (son and husband) and went to lay down awhile with my throbbing head.

Since I am now regaling you with this tale, I pulled through, none the worse for wear. My husband has redesigned the bucket pulley setup and this morning I started back on my pull-downs, but with less gravel and fewer repetitions. Those Victorian babe arms aren’t going to mold themselves!