The Christmas holidays are here, and my parents have arrived with it. Naturally, I’m eating more and exercising less, and it’s not good for me. I’ve already got a massive headache that I think is related to drinking too much caffeine (my mom loves to go to Starbucks and my dad loves coffee and hot cocoa). And my stomach doesn’t feel so hot, because of all the high fat food I’ve ingested in the last couple days.

Obviously, I need to cut back. Doing so will be a bit of a challenge. The good news is, I did manage to get in a workout yesterday – Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout on the Wii, followed by a ten minute yoga podcast I bought from iTunes as a way of squeezing in a little extra stretching and toning over the week. But I’m going to have to step it up a bit more, and I don’t know how I’ll do that yet.

Maybe I’ll make it out for a bike ride this week. Or maybe I’ll do more Wii games and sweat it out. I dunno. But I do know I need to lay off the coffee and the fruit cake, ’cause my head and gut are killing me!

To quote Pepe Le Pew, “Le sigh!” I’ve gotten back to playing my fitness games on the Wii now that the weather’s turned cold, and I’ve come to a sad realization. One of my favorite games, Walk It Out, has no follow up game to play. And I’m really kind of bummed about that.

Walk It Out, if you haven’t seen it, is probably one of the simplest Wii fitness games out there. Using either a DDR mat, the Wii balance board, or the Wii nunchuk tucked in your pocket, you walk along to music while exploring a virtual island. That’s it, period. Well, you do accrue points as you walk, which you use to unlock various items on the island, like trees, buildings, a cafe, farmland, and even a giant airship, but basically, you just walk around the island. And I really love that.

I’m the kind of person who loves being immersed in video game settings, but doesn’t particularly care to hack and slash or shoot my way through a scene. Rune Factory is one of my favorite video games, even though I rarely play it, because I can spend an hour or two just running around talking to people and digging up farm crops and such. Of course, Rune Factory doesn’t require me to get my butt off the couch, but Walk It Out does, and that’s part of where my love for the game comes from.

I’m about 75% of the way through Walk It Out at this point, and will probably finish it soon. When that happens, I don’t know quite what I’ll do next. Konami, who released Walk It Out, apparently have no plans for a second game, even though I’ve seen rumors that the company who developed Walk It Out would love to do another one. I would love a chance to explore another virtual environment, and had hoped a new version of Walk It Out would include more exotic settings, either from around the world or straight from imagination. Can you imagine how cool it would be just to walk around on a space station on Mars? Or explore a steampunk city in Victorian England?

But it appears this is not to be. So what will I do when I’ve completed Walk It Out? Play it again from the start, most likely. That’s what a lot of fans seem to be doing. Just starting the game all over again from scratch. But I will keep my eyes out for a new game. After all, I do get bored, and I like to be entertained with new things.

I wish Konami realized that.

I am very thankful for my Wii this week. Between the flu and the holidays, I didn’t get to do much of my usual exercise routine. I **did** exercise over the Thanksgiving break, but it was in the comfort of my in-laws’ living room, where Hubster set up our Wii. I did an hour of Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout (the boxing game I love so much) and another hour of Just Dance with Hubster and the kids. I’m sure my brother-in-law just loved watching the four of us bounce around the living room while he was trying to write his latest novel

Once we returned, home, when the flu didn’t have me flat on my back, I did some Walk-It-Out with Pixie and more boxing. I did manage to get to the Y once, on Friday, and then took my first bike ride in a couple weeks yesterday. Both activities went well, which makes me feel good. It means that my Wii workouts let me keep up my endurance in spite of my break from the usual routine.

In fact, I think with the weather turning colder, the Wii will become part of the usual routine again. During the summer, it was easier to get out during the week to bike. Even though I promised myself I would not hibernate inside all winter, I still can’t seem to get myself outdoors to exercise. And with Girl Scout cookie season coming up, it may only get more difficult as things go. So I’m certain I’ll be relying on the Wii to keep my butt as jiggle-free as I possibly can. I may even look into getting a new fitness game, like Wii Zumba, just to mix things up.

Anyway that’s the fitness news for today! If you have any Wii workout games you’d recommend, let me know.

Speaking of news…

Cynical Woman has a Steampunk section in the Zazzle store!!!!!

Huzzah! I finally finished the steampunk themed artwork I’ve been slaving over all month and posted it in the Zazzle store. It was so good, I made it into Christmas cards, prints, stamps, a t-shirt and more! Plus all the other stuff is there too, including my Zombie Santa card! So pop on over and take a look. Zazzle offers sale codes on a regular basis, just look at the top of the page and you’ll see what the current special is. Support your local Cynical Woman and help her conquer the world of merchandising! Yay!

Welcome back from the holiday! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Are your stomachs bulging from all that turkey you ate? Mine would be, but I managed to sneak in some exercise. Yep, that’s right! Yours truly managed to work up a sweat, in spite of being out of town and it being a holiday involving lots of food.

I can thank my sister-in-law for this. We were up her and my brother-in-law for the holidays, and she had signed up to do SOME’s Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day. I managed to get Hubster, the kids and myself signed up as well, so very early on Thanksgiving morning, we all went out to walk/jog the Tiny Turkey Trot (one mile) and then we did the full 5K Turkey Trot. And I learned something very important during these events, and that is…

No matter what you think you’ll be doing, always dress to run!

I expected the girls to walk just the 5K. Instead, they opted to do both events and they took off running right at the start, then continued to alternate between running and walking the entire distance of both courses. I was dressed in jeans and loafers. This was not an ideal running outfit. Now I know better for next year. I will wear running shoes and sweats, no matter what!

In addition to SOME’s Turkey Trot, Hubster decided to bring along the Wii and set it up at his parents place where we horrified/amused one of his brothers with bouts of Just Dance and Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout. Even though we were in a very cramped space, Hubster and the kids and I all managed to shake our groove thang without falling over any furniture. Though one time I did get a low-hanging wind chime tangled in my hair.

And there was the usual walking about. Unlike in my hometown, you can actually get to a number of places in DC just by walking, so we walked to the park and to the zoo. And since the Zoo was doing a night-time “Zoo Lights!” display, we walked all through that as well. Lots and lots of walking.

All in all, I got plenty of exercise in, and I managed not to eat too much turkey so I feel pretty good about myself. And in summary I would like to say that this Thanksgiving I was very thankful that I did not look like I did in the photos we found in my in-laws’ house where I was three weeks post-partum and I looked like Tippy the Whale.

I told myself I would get out and bike no matter what, at least twice a week, but that isn’t happening at the moment. I’m slowing down, taking it easy, being a bit lazy, devoting myself more to work than exercise right now. It’s partly due to the cold weather and partly due to my work and personal schedules. I really do need to spend more time working at my desk, so I’m stealing time from every other activity I’m involved in to make that happen, including working out. And it hasn’t helped that last week the Hubster was out of town, so I had my hands full taking care of the girls on my own. Our trip to the emergency room on Tuesday night just killed any chance I had of exercising on Wednesday. I did manage to make it to karate on Thursday though, and I made it to water aerobics on Friday, even though I got there late. But I haven’t put in nearly the same amount of time or effort exercising this week as I normally would.

We’ll see if I can turn that around, or at least stop my slide into sloth and indifference during the holidays. I told my sister-in-law we’d sign up for a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. She’s going to run the 5K course, while Hubster, the kids and I walk it (my running days are over, thanks to my bum knees). It’ll be good to get out and walk in the brisk morning air then go home and eat all that food afterwards. And since we will be away in DC all the rest of this week, Hubster has mentioned taking the Wii with us so we can work out as a family at my in-laws house. That’s a good idea I think.

Hopefully, I’ll get back into my groove again soon. We’ll see.

My family and I are in DC most of this week. If I was very good on Friday, I got all my blog posts for this week done in advance, so there won’t be any missed posts. If not, you know what happened! I hope you all Happy Turkey Day, folks.

My schedule’s been driving me crazy lately so I’ve had to make some decisions about what I can and can’t do any more, especially in the area of exercise. I’ve been taking karate classes for years, and I still enjoy it, but with my freelance picking up this past year and with two kids in school, I no longer have the time to spend two days a week in the dojo. When I go, it’s a 3-hour deal – half an hour to get dressed and get over there, two hours of class, and another half hour to come home and change again. I only get 6 hours during the day to work and one of those goes to things like lunch, showering, making phone calls, etc., so going to class for 3 hours pretty much kills my work day. And I’ve had the same problem with taking long bike rides and other physical activities – anything longer than an hour eats into my precious work time.

But I still need to exercise, so what to do?

Exercise at a time when I’m not supposed to be working, of course. But that means exercising when the kids are around, so anything I do will have to include them.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t given up exercising on my own. I still go to karate once a week, I still bike a couple hours a week, I still go to water aerobics twice a week. But I need extra work out time, so if I want it, I’m going to have to do it with the kids. To that end, I’ve started doing things like playing outside with them, or gardening in the yard while they ride their bikes and scooters in front of our house. And on Fridays, I take them to the pool at the Y.

This has to be the best part of the whole deal. I’ve been dying to get Pixie into swim lessons. Problem is, she hates taking the lessons. However, if I go in the pool with her, she’s happy as a lark. So rather than fight her over formal lessons, we just go to the pool together and use the open rec area. She’s actually taught herself how to doggy paddle, and I get to bounce around and tread water while she swims from the wall to me and back again. It’s a win-win scenario.

And Princess loves this too. She loves taking swimming lessons, but since she can swim pretty well, she’s not going to complain if we go to the pool just to go to the pool.

I’m still looking at other things we can do together that everyone will enjoy. I do have to be careful about my knees, so things like running races with the kids isn’t an option. But we can garden together, or I can do yardwork and they can play. And we can go on walks together and do other things together. And we can even do some Wii Fit together.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on in the wonderful world of exercise at la casa de Madden. Drop me a line if you can think of anything I could do with the family that I haven’t thought of yet!

I’m blogging on the fly today, so forgive any typos. It’s been a busy autumn so far, and the temperature around here has started to drop. I’ve had enough chilly days to make me invest some money in new biking gear – cold weather tights, gloves, and neoprene booties to slip over my Vibram shoes. I hate being cold, so I’m doing my best to stay warm, but I’m also fighting the urge to stay indoors, and that’s very hard.

I like to hibernate when the weather turns chilly. I like to curl up on the couch with a hot cup of tea and look out the window knowing I don’t have to be out there unless I want to be. However, this isn’t the healthiest attitude to have, so I’m going to force myself this fall and winter to get out at least once each week, twice or more preferably. Once my biking gear comes in, I should be okay to ride. I’ll still have to ride against the wind every time I go out, but at least I should be warm. And maybe if I can find the time, I’ll get outside a couple afternoons each week and work on the yard. I don’t have to spend hours outside, just 30 minutes or so will do the trick.

But it’s going to be hard. Believe it or not, I’ve got a lazy streak a mile wide and it’s most likely to rear its ugly head when the days turn cold and dreary. We’ll see how well I fight against it this year.

Anyone else have plans to get outside this fall and winter? Let me know how you do it!

Hubster picked up a copy of Just Dance 3 for us last week and I’ve had a few chances to play with it. I love it, just like I loved the two previous incarnations, but there are a few imperfections with this game, as with previous incarnations.

The plusses first. The game is fun, as always. I didn’t recognize a lot of the song titles but I’ve been through 2/3rds of the playlist so far and enjoyed just about all the songs. It’s dance music, for Pete’s sake! How could I not enjoy that? Also, the graphics are as colorful and kookie as always. I’ve noticed a couple songs seem to play up a steampunk theme in the animated backgrounds, especially Gwen Stefani’s “Tick Tock.” But there are plenty of other styles of graphics as well, and the music is very diverse.

The Just Sweat mode had been modified a bit, though I haven’t fully explored that yet, and there are more group dance modes that I haven’t fully gotten into either. I mostly play by myself for a work out, but I can dance to any song that comes up regardless of the mode.

As for the annoyances, they’ve been few. My two chief complaints are that the Just Sweat mode still only calculates how many “droplets” you’ve burned, but not how many calories, and there’s no indication of how to equate droplets to calories, so that bothers me. Also, anytime I play the non-stop shuffle mode, I have a problem getting it to stop. In theory, I should only have to push the plus button on the Wii-mote to get the menu to let me stop. In practice, I’ve had to hit every button on the Wii-mote multiple times before getting a response from the game. Maybe it’s my Wii-mote that’s the problem, but I can’t be sure.

I’ll talk more about Just Dance 3 in future posts, as I get more time to play the game with more people than just myself. But for now, it’s a fun game and a great workout! ‘Nuff said.

Today’s topic is about exercising during menstruation, and if the subject icks you out, my apologies, but I’m a woman, I menstruate, and I exercise, so it seems like an appropriate subject for me to write about today. Especially since I spent a good part of last week completely laid out by a visit from Aunt Flo.

I have never had an easy time with my period, even when I was young. It was always painful and messy and it made me miserable for a bout 5 days or so out of every month. I got some relief during college when I started on the pill, but when I went off the pill to get pregnant, the misery came back with a vengeance. And then of course, I spent four years dealing with hormone therapy so I could finally get pregnant, and then did more hormone therapy to have child number two, and then went back for another few rounds of hormone therapy in an attempt to have child number three that did not succeed, so you know my hormones are all screwed up. Add to that the fact that I had a bit of a scare last year when I had a pap smear come back with abnormal results that led me to briefly think I might have cervical cancer. Fortunately, it turned out I didn’t have cancer, but I do have hyperplasia, which means the lining of my uterus is rather a mess and that’s why one week out of every month I feel like my girl parts are doing their damnedest to turn themselves inside out and kill me in the process.

Are you icked out yet, or are you still with me? Good! Let’s continue.

So anyway, one week out of every month is rather unpleasant due to bleeding and intense cramping. But I’ve learned to live with it. Every now and then though, I get a really bad period, and by bad I mean BAAAAAAAAD! It starts a few days before the actual bleeding begins. My knees start to hurt to the point where I have problems getting up and down the stairs. I get a bad case of insomnia. My stress level seems to go through the roof. I get paranoid and can’t seem to pull myself out of a really crappy mood. And then the actual period hits like a sledge hammer. I end up crippled by cramps to the point where I can’t stay on my feet for any length of time. And my energy level just plummets. This is what happened to me last week, and damn was it miserable. To top it off, the kids were home from school on Thursday and Friday and the Hubster and I had a two-hour black belt review on Saturday. I had to drag myself through everything, from getting out of bed to wake up the kids to making meals and getting dressed. I’m still not sure how I made it through the black-belt review. My knees hurt so badly they were affecting my stances and balance.

How is a gal supposed to cope with periods like that? I got through it by spending most of Thursday in bed with a heating pad drapped over my abdomen and a double dose of Alieve in my system. I spent a lot of Friday the same way. I did get up and move around on Saturday, obviously, but I paid for it on Sunday by being completely wiped out. Then I spent most of last night tossing and turning whilst wrestling with insomnia before finally drifting off into some really weird and intense dreams that still have me gasping for breath even now at noon today.

The good news is, I finally seem to be free of the worst of the symptoms. I’ve got some energy back and my knees feel much better. Also, those dreams from the wee hours of dawn this morning have been typed down into the form of a rough outline for a story, so some good did come out of all that tossing and turning last night. The bad news is, this will all probably happen again at some point. Maybe not the next period or the one after that, but it will eventually hit me, and I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do about it.

The last time I discussed this with my doctor, he recommended burning out the lining of my uterus, a suggestion that sent me climbing up the walls of the examing room like a cat on acid visiting the vet. No way was I going to let someone burn out the lining of one my girl parts! But now, after having gone through a couple of really miserable periods this year, I’m starting to wonder if it might not be such a bad idea. I’ll need to ask the doc about the insomnia and knee pain and see what side effects I may be looking at, but if it will somehow help with all of that as well as eliminate the painful cramping, I may tell him to do it right then and there.

We’ll see. The fact is, I’m a busy gal on the go these days, and I have no desire to be slowed down by gawd-awful periods. I certainly don’t want to be laid out flat again like that. I lost three days of work and two days of exercise to my goddam period, and that’s not something that makes me happy. I’m willing to consider my options now and see what I can do to prevent this from happening again.

So, anyone else have any thoughts? Suggestions? Or are you so totally icked out that you’ll never come back to this blog again? No? Good! Come back for next week’s Move It Mama Monday and I promise we’ll discuss something far less gruesome, like the slug I found crawling in my frying pan last night. Or not.