dancezwithkittehz drinks more water

[dancezwithkittehz]

18 minutes ago, PaulG said:

I hear this. I learned Dm originally with the middle finger, ignoring people who told me to play it with the pinky, and wound up having to retrain myself later. It’s one of those things that doesn’t make sense until way later. Aside from just needing a strong pinky to play guitar, eventually you’ll be using that chord shape when you do barre chords... and once you get there your ring finger is going to be needed elsewhere on the neck to do other crazy things.
 

 

Yeah I figure he must have a good reason for teaching it that way! And the suffering will be worth it and I need to get that finger stronger anyway for future guitar-ing!! But srsly. Oww. SO WEAK.

 

18 minutes ago, PaulG said:

I have never related more to a written sentence

 

🤣🤣

[WhiteGhost]

On 8/12/2020 at 12:48 AM, dancezwithkittehz said:

I also am starting to make myself practice strumming more during songs since I think at minimum I need to be able to do an actual strumming pattern instead of just hitting whole notes to like, not sound super dorky playing a song if I want to actually let people listen. I can do strumming patterns by themselves, but combining it with the chord switches and stuff at a quicker pace on my guitar-yoeke ish app is....hard.

I can strum OR I can get the chords OR I can sing.  Combining any two of those is something I hope someday to be able to achieve  

[dancezwithkittehz]

10 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I can strum OR I can get the chords OR I can sing.  Combining any two of those is something I hope someday to be able to achieve  

 

SAME friend. Same.  I'll get there with practice hopefully! 😂

[dancezwithkittehz]

Yesterday was a LONG DAMN DAY UGH and I did not get to a lot of things because I had a board meeting after work that went for 2 hours and I was DONE being useful (no guitar practice, did not get in much workout at all etc.) It never fails that if I have a day with 3 meetings of COURSE that will be the day I have super terrible insomnia. But heeyyyyyy finished a good chunk of a book while not sleeping, so a small win. 

 

Anywho:

 

Challenge Week 2, Day 4, Wednesday

Goal 1 - Hydration (drink 64oz daily) -✔️- Yep!

Goal 2 - Eat veggies with lunch and dinner -✔️ - Lunch? Yes ; Dinner? Yes. I DID actually do this! Woohoo.

Goal 3- Regular eating schedule, (Eat breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack) -✔️-  Yes? But inspite of mid afternoon snack I still ate too late because my meeting after work went until late and thus I ate late in general. So I did the thing but it did not fix the problem. Lol. Still trying to think of better ways to successfully stop eating late. At the very least I didn't have to like, stuff myself at 9pm, I just ate a normal dinner and did meet calories soooo I guess that's still technically an improvement.

Goal 4- Completed Daily Workout circuit? -❌- No. Board meeting. I did do some things that I squeezed in here and there but barely anything compared to my usual.

[Mike Wazowski]

Yuuuuuck, days packed with meetings are the worst (especially nowadays, when zoom meetings feel like they drag on even longer than normal meetings).

[dancezwithkittehz]

1 hour ago, Mike Wazowski said:

Yuuuuuck, days packed with meetings are the worst (especially nowadays, when zoom meetings feel like they drag on even longer than normal meetings).

 

TRUTH.  And honestly board meetings for the non-profit I volunteer for are always super stressful anyway because they cut into my me-time in the evenings. Normally we have like 6 weeks between those meetings or longer but this time we only did 3 weeks and it was like WHY ALREADY WHYYYYY?!

[dancezwithkittehz]

Challenge Week 2, Day 5, Thursday

Goal 1 - Hydration (drink 64oz daily) -✔️- Yep!

Goal 2 - Eat veggies with lunch and dinner -❌-- Lunch? No. ; Dinner? Half-sies. I forgot to eat a veggie at lunch. I did a quick grocery trip for all the things we didn't get with the big order pick up last week and I ate all the junk snacks we got for that instead. Woops. Haha. But MMMM crappy frozen pizza (I really do love kind of shitty frozen pizza sometimes. I don't know why.)

Goal 3- Regular eating schedule, (Eat breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack) -✔️-  Yes. I did end up having a beer kinda late but I don't count that. I wanted tasty beer nom noms because I was having a treat yo self kind of day.

Goal 4- Completed Daily Workout circuit? -✔️-
Yep.

 

I am realizing my "little workout circuit" is about an hour or maybe longer now and especially if I count the stuff I do while I watch TV at the end of the night it's not so short but heyyyyy. Especially now that I've added in more splits flexibility work, but it's fun so whatever! I like to use the back of my couch as a ballet barre and do a set of calf raises/relevees while I watch TV and sometimes balancy things or tendus etc (Or balancy tendu series like I did yesterday.) Developes are also good to do while watching TV things. DO ALL THE THINGS. 

 

I also can't wait for my X3 system to get here so I can get some band-y equivalents to powerlifting stuffs...It will be a new struggle again of where to fit that in plus all my other exercise stuff plus I think we will be getting back to dance next week...So basically my usual struggle of how to do all the things and still properly recover my muscles. 😂

 

Edit: OH HEY Look what I just got a shipping notification for!

[dancezwithkittehz]

Un challenge related, but I decided to bleach my hair a bit lighter and do a different shade of green and now I am in that I can't decide if I like how I look in any of my normal colors now that I have changed my hair mode....Like, the color looks good on me but I think I also do really well with high contrast my hair is dark but my skin is pale? This might likely just be an I AM NOT USED TO THIS COLOR AAAAH sort of response so I'm giving it time.  I dyed it kind of a mossy very yellow green.

 

I still need to re-bleach to even it out a bit since it uh...came out kind of splotchy in spaces? I guess unsurprisingly with Vol 30 bleach developed and trying to figure out how to bleach the parts around the already bleached contrast spot one side of my head got lighter way fast than I wanted. I'm downgrading to a vol 20 developer which should be slower to try and just even everything out a bit more.

 

I also have goals to try and figure out how to hell to blend an olive green shade properly....I had a weird experience with this blend that I kept adding more and more yellow but in the blend it still looked SUPER DARK and like the yellow was not cutting the dark green at all but then when I applied to my hair and after I rinsed it out it is actually way lighter and more yellow than it looked in the bowl? Guess this goes to show that what it looks like in the bowl isn't always what it looks like on your head (which I know, but like, usually it's fairly accurate with direct pigment dyes like manic panic etc that what you see is more or less what you get.)  I ordered a dark blood red which I am going to try mixing with bright green which I am hopefully gives me that perfect obnoxious dark olive green. I also have some dark greens I can throw in as well as some grey...but the grey one I got I feel is lighter than what I am looking for and black would actually be better. I also because I put way too much dark green in the bowl and kept adding to it ended up with WAY MORE than I needed for my head so I have the rest saved in a container for after I re-bleach next week.

 

ANyway, basically TLDR my new hair is kind of weird but kind of growing on me but also I plan to do more mad scientist-ing in a week or so (hair needs a break after you bleach before re-bleaching if you don't want to fuck up your hair. And yes this would be 100000 times easier if I could just have my stylist do it, but COVID and they aren't open + if they were my hair dying is a 3 hour process usually and I don't want to be near other non-people I live with humans indoors for that long! Also, it's really hard to explain to people that you want muted tones and not the stereotypical brights. I AM AN AUTUMN and jewel tones and I are not friends. NOT FRIENDS.) 

[dancezwithkittehz]

So I was a good adult and let the doctor remove a few moles they didn’t like and I am now not allowed to lift or hang from things for a week or so because they don’t want me to break open the stitches on my hand. Sadnessss! Guess it’s going to be LEG DAY EVERY DAY ALL THE LEGS. And uh, some core because I can do floor core stuff still.
 

Also, she had to do a double take and make sure I wasn’t joking when I asked if I was allowed to hang from things 😂

[PaulG]

On 8/14/2020 at 6:29 PM, dancezwithkittehz said:

So I was a good adult and let the doctor remove a few moles they didn’t like and I am now not allowed to lift or hang from things for a week or so because they don’t want me to break open the stitches on my hand. Sadnessss! Guess it’s going to be LEG DAY EVERY DAY ALL THE LEGS. And uh, some core because I can do floor core stuff still.
 

Also, she had to do a double take and make sure I wasn’t joking when I asked if I was allowed to hang from things 😂

I still have to have that doctor appointment-slash-dermatologist referral... long family history of skin cancer and I haven’t seen any kind of doctor since well before Covid. Funny that they were fazed by the hanging-from-things question, I always get the feeling dermatologists have literally seen it all. 😂

[dancezwithkittehz]

On 8/15/2020 at 9:55 PM, PaulG said:

I still have to have that doctor appointment-slash-dermatologist referral... long family history of skin cancer and I haven’t seen any kind of doctor since well before Covid. Funny that they were fazed by the hanging-from-things question, I always get the feeling dermatologists have literally seen it all. 😂

 

Well at first she was like hahah hanging from things and then...wait...what kind of exercise do you do? 😂

 

I figure as a pale person I was bound to eventually need to get some skin stuff hacked off. Pasty person problems! Hopefully they biopsy as not actually worrisome!

[raptron]

I also need to find a dermatologist at some point. PALE PEOPLEEEES.

 

Sorry you can't hang for a minute. 

[Manarelle]

Can you, idk, do one-handed hangs? There's the danger of getting lopsided, but it might be enough to scratch that itch for the week. Hope the biopsy comes back clean. Pale people problems indeed. I couldn't figure out why this summer didn't feel summer-y.... realized I haven't lost my winter pale from driving to & from work. The one time of the year I look slightly less ghosty, and... nope. Alas. 

 

Hopefully you're done with meeting days for a bit.... those are not fun. 

[dancezwithkittehz]

22 hours ago, Manarelle said:

Can you, idk, do one-handed hangs? There's the danger of getting lopsided, but it might be enough to scratch that itch for the week. Hope the biopsy comes back clean. Pale people problems indeed. I couldn't figure out why this summer didn't feel summer-y.... realized I haven't lost my winter pale from driving to & from work. The one time of the year I look slightly less ghosty, and... nope. Alas. 

 

I am still way too weak for one armed hanging just yet. I wish! My grip struggles enough with 2 hand gripping on the silks as is.  GOALS, but yeah no where near feasible yet.  At this point the stitches on that hand feel less tight at least so I think by the end of this week I will give it a go. She's not having me remove the stitches for a whole other week after that because of her schedule but in week 2 I should be more able to do whatever (just have to keep the stitches covered to keep them clean and stuff.) I did discover I can do kettle bell RDLs with no issue since the hand doesn't need to move much for that but definitely not going to try and do any swinging or more dynamic moves like bringing it up to a rack position and push pressing and stuff. That seems like a good way to strain the stitches lol.

 

Also can I mention I HATE BANDAGES. SO ITCHY UGH.  I think my skin is mildly sensitive to adhesive (which uh, I first learned when I needed pasties for a dance costume once. LOL.) I did manage to find some that aren't quite as itchy for me but it's still itchy often and sleeping when itchy is hard. UGH.

 

22 hours ago, Manarelle said:

Hopefully you're done with meeting days for a bit.... those are not fun. 

 

Ahhhahaha. Yeah....so I had like 4 meetings yesterday on maaaaybe 5 hours of sleep? Insomnia is kicking my ass lately and this heat wave is NOT HELPIIIIING ugh.

[dancezwithkittehz]

I am not going to attempt to remember what I did over the weekend since I am sleep deprived and barely remember yesterday's details.  In general I am pretty sure I hit all goals for the weekend but probably struggled with meal times assuming the weekend went like every other day for me 😂.

 

Making myself a specific "you must eat a veggie with lunch and dinner" has actually been working really well to get me to actually eat veggies vs an amorphous "eat at least one veggie sometime during the day" which was easier to forget. I am still not getting as much as would be the best I'm sure but BABY STEPS.  Also, I keep forgetting that my spinach artichoke dip is has veggies and keep scrambling like "aaaah need to eat a veggie....wait..."

 

Also, for anyone who is wondering, making veggie artichoke dip on stovetop does not come out nearly as delicious as in the oven (texture is weird and I think from having to cook it down on the stovetop some of the cheeses separated), but it's still OK.  I take the skinny taste artichoke dip recipe (uses fat free greek yogurt to add way more protein than you'd normally get in artichoke dip) and then I add green olives because I'm a BRINE FANATIC YAAAS . I also added some cream cheese since I had a package with like 2 TBSP ish left and I hoped it might help make it creamier in spite of the stovetop cooking but yeah...somehow with all of the things it came out kind of, grainy? The taste is still mostly OK and when you throw it on a chip or cracker it's OK! I've also been eating it on Wasa crackers since they have a lot of fiber and I suck at getting enough fiber and those things are really dry and powdery on their own so like, adding slightly grainy dip goes just fine to accompany 😂

 

 

Challenge Week 3, Day 2, Monday

Goal 1 - Hydration (drink 64oz daily) -✔️- Yep!

Goal 2 - Eat veggies with lunch and dinner -✔️- Lunch? Yes. ; Dinner? Yes.

Goal 3- Regular eating schedule, (Eat breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack) -✔️-  No clue but I did finish eating dinner by 8 sooo success-ish.

Goal 4- Completed Daily Workout circuit? -✔️-Yep. Modified and not much arm stuff but yeah. Going to see how push ups go and if it feels like they will knock off the hand bandage.

 

I have also discovered that although the stitches don't feel weird when there is a bandage over them, when they are uncovered I can really feel that they are there and slight tight pulling sensation there. I guess the pressure from the bandage usually makes it so I can't feel that. Weird! But yeah. It also feels less tender when I go to wash it now so that's good.

 

Next order of business is I need to start brainstorming what to get my momma for her birthday next week. I'm already planning fancy cupcakes but I"m thinking maybe I'll make her a tasty dinner or her choice (Or get some takeout she's been wanting could work too). I could also order a new microwave and surprise her since she's been wanting to get a new one. (The air fryer last year was her birthday gift as well so I could continue this trend of sneakily buying appliances with my $ before she can do it herself. This year will be even easier with online ordering and I won't have to like, dodge in front of her at checkout and pay before she can stop me like last year haha.)

[Manarelle]

17 hours ago, dancezwithkittehz said:

Also can I mention I HATE BANDAGES. SO ITCHY UGH.  I think my skin is mildly sensitive to adhesive (which uh, I first learned when I needed pasties for a dance costume once. LOL.) I did manage to find some that aren't quite as itchy for me but it's still itchy often and sleeping when itchy is hard. UGH.

 

That sounds like THE WORST WAY to discover you're allergic to adhesive. Would it work to wear a glove to sleeping with, to keep a bandage in place? 

 

15 hours ago, dancezwithkittehz said:

This year will be even easier with online ordering and I won't have to like, dodge in front of her at checkout and pay before she can stop me like last year haha.)

 

Haha, a benefit of online shopping for sure! Happy early birthday, kittehz momma!

[dancezwithkittehz]

3 hours ago, Manarelle said:

 

That sounds like THE WORST WAY to discover you're allergic to adhesive. Would it work to wear a glove to sleeping with, to keep a bandage in place? 

 

 

😂 It was not fun.

 

And yeah I suppose that could work. I'd worry it would be like, warmer? than just a bandage though and it is HOT this week which is also making my sleep suck. I also have stitches on my back (they removed two) so I'd have to innovate something for that. I think as much as I hate itchy bandages it's more survivable than a glove and a shirt when sleeping when it's this hot.

 

But I DID MANAGE TO ACTUALLY SLEEP OK LAST NIGHT WOOHOO!!

[dancezwithkittehz]

The X3 bar got here yesterday! NEW TOYYYY YAY.  I uh, need to work on finding some short people problem solutions (my ROM on a lot of things is limited by my tiny t-rex arms and one size length bands haha.)  In spite of smaller ROM from short people problems it still kicked my ass quite a bit and I'm actually sore and it was nice to get some proper strength training in. (Not that bodyweight isn't AWESOME but I miss the feel of lifty-ness! I like both!) Also I am definitely hungrier today than I have been recently which is usual for me if lifting sooo yay.

 

Challenge Week 3, Day 3, Tuesday

Goal 1 - Hydration (drink 64oz daily) -✔️- Yep!

Goal 2 - Eat veggies with lunch and dinner -✔️- Lunch? Yes. ; Dinner? Yes.

Goal 3- Regular eating schedule, (Eat breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack) -✔️-  Kind of. It was more really early dinner than afternoon snack but successfully managed to be done eating before 8!

Goal 4- Completed Daily Workout circuit? -✔️-Yep! Plus X3 band stuff. Still no hanging from things but I am managing to work everything OK-ish without, just not thrashing my shoulders back and core quite like hanging stuff from aerial but heyyy I'll take it.

[Manarelle]

19 hours ago, dancezwithkittehz said:

(my ROM on a lot of things is limited by my tiny t-rex arms and one size length bands haha.)

 

If you can't grip the bands further down, can you tie a knot in them? That'll take up some length. 

[dancezwithkittehz]

8 hours ago, Manarelle said:

 

If you can't grip the bands further down, can you tie a knot in them? That'll take up some length. 

 

I would worry actually tying it would mess with the band integrity. I've been double wrapping today and it give me the best ROM I've found so far. The guy who created the system and workout plan says that even with shorter ROM for short people you should still get as good of a workout and that you can go up a band size on things earlier to compensate for any issues and also said double wrapping is OK soooo we'll see! The only thing it seems I need to go up a band on for sure is the Deadlift. I got to 45 or something and could have kept going a bit and you are supposed to use bands that get you in the 20-40 range, but I'm not really surprised on that since DL is still a pretty strong movement for me anywho!

 

Also, I realized he switched around the exarcise plan and the first one I watched isn't the plan anymore and he has us doing tricep press from the same position from the chest press and I get a lot more ROM on that one for working the same muscles SO YAY. Also apparently he switched out the upright row for overhead press, which also has better ROM for me, sooo glad I double checked the most current version of the 12 week program!

 

 

[dancezwithkittehz]

Today's conundrum, how to not die from heat when their air quality is horrible from fires all over the state (none right next to us yet, but yeah.)  Also, I am super stressed anxiety panda this week because hormones are stupid soooo thus the minimal posting because I have no spoons to get a lot of things done this week. Well, ironically I actually HAVE been getting all of my goals done I just have low spoons for bothering to post about it. 😂

 

Oh oh. In other things, I decided to to jump to week 5 of the program for X3 because I'm already pretty fit and I don't think I need the first 4 weeks of less workouts. I figure I'll give myself extra rest days as needed. Also, next week we'll be back to dancing 3x a week and I don't know how I'm going to program everything together to not kill me. So far I'm not insanely fatigued from the X3 since it's just one brutal set of each exercise to failure...I'm thinking I could do it after dance on dance days possibly depending on how brutal the dance day is? Or do it at lunch on dance days to give myself some recovery time in the 5 hours or so between lunch and dance time. I may also go with not actually doing the sets of X3 stuff quite to failure to try and keep more gas in the tank so to speak. EXPERIMENT TIME. I suppose I could also go with EAT MORE to account for the additional activity as another thing I can try.

 

 

Challenge Week 3, Day 4, Wednesday

Goal 1 - Hydration (drink 64oz daily) -✔️- Yep!

Goal 2 - Eat veggies with lunch and dinner -✔️- Lunch? Yes. ; Dinner? Yes.

Goal 3- Regular eating schedule, (Eat breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack) -✔️-  Yep

Goal 4- Completed Daily Workout circuit? -✔️-Yep!

 

 

Challenge Week 3, Day 5, Thursday

Goal 1 - Hydration (drink 64oz daily) -✔️- Yep!

Goal 2 - Eat veggies with lunch and dinner -✔️- Lunch? Yes. ; Dinner? Yes.

Goal 3- Regular eating schedule, (Eat breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack) -✔️-  Yep

Goal 4- Completed Daily Workout circuit? -✔️-Yep!

 

 

As we can see, actually doing all the things so far this week! Yay!

[bigm141414]

8 minutes ago, dancezwithkittehz said:

Today's conundrum, how to not die from heat when their air quality is horrible from fires all over the state

 

If you figure it out, please share your knowledge as I am currently melting into a weirdly shaped puddle of goo.

 

Sincerely,

Your friendly south bay neighbor.

 

 

[dancezwithkittehz]

32 minutes ago, bigm141414 said:

 

If you figure it out, please share your knowledge as I am currently melting into a weirdly shaped puddle of goo.

 

Sincerely,

Your friendly south bay neighbor.

 

 

 

Oh jeez. You are right by all the bay area fires! Stay safe friend!!! ❤️

 

Construction style vented N95 in the house? I'm not sure how easy those are to buy....but really people should not be using them for COVID so I certainly hope there are some around for everyone in fire areas and for construction people etc.

 

I hate fire season!!!   AKA at this point actually most of the year technically but yeah (Thomas fire was in a DECEMBER. DECEMBER!! Yay for perpetual drought problems =/ )

 

[dancezwithkittehz]

Welll so far this morning I managed to send myself into a panic because I thought I somehow assigned the wrong person to a class from spring and spent an hour of detective work trying to figure out how I did that so I can try and fix it (but you can't really fix confidential information having been sent to the wrong person), sent a panicked email to our grad advisor also trying to see if he has any ideas and then finally remembered we do in fact have two grad students now with similar names and that that everything was correct and my last hour of panic was for nothing.

 

Also, in my panic-y panic and furiously writing emails I was slightly late to the only Zoom meeting i had this morning. I did not do my usual pre-meeting camera angle/lighting/making sure I don't look insane before I open a meeting. My hair of course was like:

 

 

 

Soooo yeah.

[Manarelle]

2 hours ago, dancezwithkittehz said:

Well, ironically I actually HAVE been getting all of my goals done I just have low spoons for bothering to post about it. 😂

 

Sounds like a productive week. We are happy to await spoon replenishment to hear about your escapades! 

 

3 minutes ago, dancezwithkittehz said:

 

😆 Sorry... that's a great gif.