Mamacita says:  Women who had difficult labors probably hate me already right now, but I’ll go ahead and make it worse: I loved being pregnant. I felt GREAT.

Even when I was sitting still, doing nothing, I was still doing something wonderfully productive.  I was euphoric.  I felt very off-balance, but I’m so inclined that way anyway it wasn’t too bad.  But mostly, I just felt good.  The concept that after I had the baby, I would actually HAVE the baby, hadn’t sunken in yet.

I was scared of my babies. I knew I was too ignorant to deserve them, and I felt it was just a matter of time until my supreme ignorance caused me to do something with or to a baby that would toss me in the state pen for life, and deservedly so.  I could hear the sentence in my head:  YOU ARE FAR TOO STUPID TO GET TO HAVE BABIES!”

Somehow, I managed.  WE managed.  My kids are fantastic today, so maybe they didn’t suffer TOO much.  Sigh.

But, between panic attacks, I had fun with my babies, too. I made zillions of mistakes and did tons of stupid things, but I had fun. I hope they did, too.

I know I was half-asleep through a lot of it, esp. anything that happened in the early morning hours, and I know I was an odd mommy, and I hated having to leave them and go to work but I had no choice, and I know I packed some really bizarre lunches for them to take to school, and I know it’s probably my fault that both of them are night owls like me, and I know I embarrassed them a lot (that was my job, after all) but I also know that the good things far outweighed the bad, even if I could remember all the bad, which I don’t, which is probably best for the perpetuation of mankind.

After all, they’re alive, and they’re still speaking to me. I call that a good sign. And, they’re curious about everything and they love to go to see live shows.  They also both love music and enjoy living outside of the box.    They’re both sensitive and tenderhearted and like to help people, and they enjoy being odd on purpose to make other people mad.  I’m sure I have no idea where they learned THAT.

This ramble probably makes no sense, but I’m sitting here with a soul-splitting migraine, wishing I were tired enough to just get up and go to bed, and knowing that if I did I’d just lie there for hours and hours, feeling guilty because lately I’ve been wishing for my children’s childhoods back so I could do a better job this time, and knowing that with some things, well, even the gods can’t unscramble eggs. . . .

I also wish I could solve all the problems of the world with a wave of my hand, and knowing I can’t, and wishing I could, anyway, and wondering why some people have to be so cruel, and wondering how some people can be so upbeat in the face of unspeakable horror, and wishing I were thinner, and nicer, and more fun, and knowing I probably could be if only I weren’t also so lazy, well, I’ve got a massive migraine and these thoughts aren’t my fault.  They’re not, they’re not, they’re not!

Maybe I should go to bed and get up early.  I almost wish I had a pile of quizzes to grade.  Life has all kinds of quizzes, doesn’t it.  The quizzes in my briefcase usually have  easy answers.

P.S. It would be lovely if there were a prize for the person who counts all the run-on sentences and comments with the number, but there isn’t one.  Do it anyway if you’re the O/C type, and I’ll thank you, but that’s all you get.

Before I really calmed all the way down from last year’s BlogHer, it’s almost time for this year’s BlogHer.  My adrenaline level is pumping harder and higher by the moment, and the thought of seeing all those AWESOME PEOPLE again makes me smile even when there’s not much here to smile about, what with cleaning out my mother-in-law’s house, grading midterm exams, and trying not to scratch all the massive chigger bites I got from picking blackberries today.

Think, though, of all the coolness factors:  I’ll see people I already love, I’ll meet people I know I’ll love, I’ll learn things, I’ll laugh a lot, I won’t get much sleep because I’ll be busy meeting people, my chigger bites will be gone by then, and I have blackbeerries.

Mmmm, blackberries.  The best ones still have a reddish tinge.  My husband likes them best when they’re soft and very ripe, but I, ever the sour lemon-sucking woman that I am, like my blackberries reddish, not completely black.  Ideally, I’ll pop a red one and a ripe in in my mouth at once.

Nothing better.

Well, duh, obviously there ARE some things that are better, but this isn’t that kind of blog.  (Ask me in person.)

I’ll be taking the train to BlogHer this year.  I priced an airline ticket, but the ticket was astronomical to the point of absurdity.  The train, on the other hand, was way less than a hundred bucks, round trip.  For TWO people.  (not times two people:  FOR two people)  (prepositions are important!)  My daughter is riding to Chicago with me; she’ll go visit friends in Chicago while I go visit friends at BlogHer. Yay, Amtrak!

I look forward to seeing y’all up there in Chicago weekend after next.  Please find me and hug me.  I’m needy that way.

I’ll be the large chick – the one that looks a lot like your mother -  running around with the microphone.

Ooh-de-lally, can’t wait.

“had apple for lunch”    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHa, can’t stand it.  AWESOME!

1.  It didn’t rain today, and all the plants, animals, and people are in shock.  I mean to say, we don’t know what to do with ourselves.  We’re peeking out of the ark and seeing sunlight.  I guess one of us should send a dove out to scope for land.

2.  All the plants in the WalMart nursery are marked down to quarters and fitty-cent pieces, so I bought a few Gerbera daisies, black-eyed Susans,  and coleus to fill in the dead spots where what I planted before was washed away or dissolved like the Wicked Witch of the West.

3.  4-gig flash drives are on sale at Big Lots for ten bucks.  I thought that was a pretty good deal.  I’m a sucker for a good electronics bargain.

4.  I wish I could get my hair cut before BlogHer.  I also wish I could lose a hundred pounds before BlogHer, but neither one is going to happen.  Not unless I figure out how to win the lottery and conquer the space/time continuum in the next few days.  Don’t hold your breath.

5.  I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow at 2:30, and I have a creepy feeling that he’s going to take one look at my bloodwork and say the words “daily injection,” whereupon I will not freak out, exactly, but I might have to go to the gym and run on the treadmill until it makes like a cartoon treadmill and falls apart, revealing all kinds of gears and sproingy springs and whirly things underneath, all run by a frantically sprinting hamster in one of those little Ferris wheel-like cage-wheels.  I guess some might call that freaking out, but I don’t.  When I freak out, you’ll know it.

6.  I’m sure I don’t know why I haven’t lost any more weight lately.  My recent late-night ham sandwich swimming in Miracle Whip obsession can’t have anything to do with it.

7.  I have a lovely stone planter full of blooming rosebushes, but nobody can see it because while I mowed around it just the other day, nobody here has trimmed around it yet this summer and the grass  is over two feet tall, totally obliterating both the roses and anybody’s chance of seeing them until something is done.  Again, don’t hold your breath.  It’s a kind of test I’m giving.

8.  We had Grecco’s pizza for supper.  It had been a while, and it was really good.  Porking down in the restaurant did not, however, prevent me from my current ham sandwich swimming in Miracle Whip fetish a few minutes ago.

9.  Just can’t seem to lose any more weight.  It’s a mystery.  I must have hit a plateau; I’ve read about them and my situation matches.

10.  Fat chicks are really, really good at rationalizing their own stupid behaviors.

First of all, I enjoyed being pregnant. Heck, I LOVED it! When else can a woman just sit and read, and know she’s accomplishing something wonderful at the same time? I felt wonderful, pregnant. I felt exhilarated, when I wasn’t tired, and I felt justified in EATING, and I didn’t have to constantly suck in my gut – because my gut was not merely a gut; it was a PERSON – I got gusts and boost of incredible energy during which I would clean and dust and wash and tidy until the cows came home. I was even happier during my second pregnancy, because I knew for a fact by then that all the little twinges, etc, were completely natural and only to be expected, and I feared nothing. NOTHING. I didn’t read a single pregnancy book during my second pregnancy; not because I felt there was nothing more to be learned, but more because I felt that a lot of what is in such books is there to frighten naive women into buying unnecessary things, or to frighten women, period,  when there is really nothing to be frighted OF. None of these opinions apply, mind you, to women who are having genuinely serious problem pregnancies.

Bear in mind, also, that it’s been a long time since I’ve been pregnant, and while the many means of GETTING pregnant have not changed (smirk), the options for delivery have become many, and I can’t help but think that some of them are downright silly. Not as silly as many of the restrictions and rules that used to apply, but still, well, silly. I mean, for my first delivery, I wasn’t even allowed to get up and use the bathroom! I made damn sure it was written down in red ink in my records, for my second. It would be a mighty stupid woman who would give birth in a toilet and not realize it, although I also realize that the world is full of women who are, yes, just that stupid. I, however, was NOT one of THEM, and I wanted to use the toilet when I wanted to use the toilet, and that second time, I wandered all over the place in the few tiny little minutes allotted to that particular delivery.

<–That’s my son. He’s 27 years old, but whenever I think of him, this is one of the images my mind instantly focuses on. He was born with a full head of bright red hair; his hair was so bright, I could hear people in the hospital nursery hallway commenting about it. “Didja see that one kid with the red hair?” “Will you look at the redhead over there?” I lay in my bed and smiled. Not only had I seen the redheaded baby, I was going to take him home with me and keep him forever.

I’d had Zappa in only twenty minutes;  I woke up in labor, my water broke as I walked the few feet to the bathroom, and we were in the car and bookin’ to town.  We almost got stopped by a train, but a little push on the gas pedal took care of that.  We pulled up in front of my mother’s house, threw Belle out the window into Mom’s waiting arms, and dashed off to the hospital.  Hub dropped me off at the emergency room door and I had the baby while my husband was parking the car. When he came running back inside, he found me and the doctor standing in the hallway admiring the baby through the window. Total time:  20 minutes.  I highly recommend this method.

This was before the days when new mothers had got to spend every waking moment with their new baby. Sometimes I think it was better that way; it was like having training wheels for a day or two before we were expected to ride that new adult-sized bike all by ourselves, with the occasional “Look Ma, no hands” stints that we all love so much as parents. Our babies were brought to us every couple of hours, and were then taken back to the nursery so we could get some genuine rest. Did we “bond?” Of course we did. We just didn’t need to “bond” in front of everybody, and a woman would have to be nuts not to take advantage of the naptime. OUR naptime, that is. Once we had the baby home, we weren’t going to be doing much of ANY kind of sleeping for a long, long, long, long, long time. As in. . . YEARS.

Having babies isn’t what I’d call a “comfy, pain-free hobby,” but it’s also not the horror a lot of older women paint it to be, and usually in front of a young pregnant woman. (Why do they DO THAT? How insensitive!) I had no trouble spittin’ them out – did I mention the 20 minutes? – and while I know most women aren’t that lucky, I do wonder at the low tolerance for pain some people demonstrate in public.

My hospital roommate for Zappa’s birth was a woman I still refer to as “The Big Sissy.” She wept and screamed and required the company of her husband, her mother, her sisters, her bestest friends, and countless numbers of churchy acquaintances throughout her entire labor. This meant, back then, that while SHE had company, I couldn’t. Them was da rules. And when they finally did take her away to another room to have her baby – thank Heaven – she practically had a camera crew in there with her to record her every scream, groan, spasm, fart, poop, and vaginal tear for all posterity. After her baby finally came, she then needed her husband to stay with her every second to COMFORT her and be WITH her, and her mother to remind her that she’d been through a terrible experience and needed rest and a lot of babying herself, which meant I couldn’t have MY baby in the room with me.

I hated that Big Sissy then and I hate her now, 27 years later.

I made do, though. I spent most of my time in the hallway looking at his beauty: my son, the redheaded one in the corner crib, the pretty one, the baby who made all the other newborns look like either Winston Churchill or the wrong end of a cow.

The Big Sissy’s baby, for example, looked like the love child of Mr. Potato Head and Linda Tripp. In fact, The Big Sissy looked a lot like Linda Tripp. I hated her. I also hated her horrible mother and her ugly husband and the parade of dowdy women who were kneeling all over the floor giving God advice about how He should look after The Big Sissy and her baby.  Wahh wahh wahh, pray pray, sob sob, boo hoo, oh, craponthemall.

Where was their consideration for The Big Sissy’s roommate? There wasn’t any.  Women such as these color my perception of Christians still today.  (I AM one; I’m just not like these pathetic specimens.)  (I hope I die before I become like them.)  (I suppose it’s not nice to judge them, but I do it mostly from the joy it gives me.)  (It’s kind of like pointing to hardened criminals on the post office wall and being glad you’re not there, and knowing full well you never will be.)

Hub could not get off work to take us home from the hospital;  this did NOT make me cry nor did it traumatize either of us in any way. Stuff happens, and we deal with it. Sheesh.

My mother picked us up and even stopped at the grocery store on the way home so I could run in and buy some things.  People in the store looked at my hospital bracelet and my only slightly flatter stomach and almost backed away in horror.  Why was I OUT?  I should be in BED!  RESTING!  I felt like some kind of freak for being fine and hearty.

I shrugged and went home to my two-children family:  we felt so lucky!  So blessed!  That is because, we were.  (Check out the patches on the sofa!  Those were to keep the snakes from popping up through the worn places.)

With Belle, two years earlier, I’d been so afraid of this pain I’d heard about from so many “helpful” women and read about in so many “helpful” books that I agreed to a spinal; this, of course, since I have never been a person who took orders well, knocked me flat on my back for about a week, which meant that other people gave my baby her first bath, her first burpie, her first. . . well, lots of things. I listened too much and I read too much and I believed everything and everyone, and when the advice was contradictory, I sometimes did BOTH. I was afraid of everything. Most of all, I was afraid of myself; what if I, in my ignorance, somehow did something wrong and the baby would cry? Or. . . die? Seriously, I was that stupid.  Her labor only lasted just under five hours, but in five hours, a naive young thing can fall for a lot of hooey.  Tomorrow is Belle’s birthday, in fact.  Happy Birthday, my Princess.  Look, everyone, at how beautiful she is!  How beautiful she’s always been!

The second time, I was smarter. Also, there wasn’t time for anything anyway, so I just had the baby and made fun of The Big Sissy and dealt with life as it came my way. It was a far superior way than the first.

So, what’s the moral of this story? Do I have to have one? I’ll drag a few in by the hind legs and say that it might be “Embrace life – don’t hide from it. FEEL things. Laugh at yourself and others; to hell with self esteem. Pity the Big Sissies, but don’t make excuses for them, and for God’s sake don’t be one of them. Be aware of people and don’t let any whiny selfishness intrude upon the rights of someone else. Be an adult. Buck up and show some spunk. Don’t let others make an invalid of you. Get up. Let others watch the baby once in a while so you can get some sleep. Motherhood is full of pain; get used to it and don’t whine and cry your way through it. Motherhood is full of joy; focus on that part. And did I mention “grow up?”

It is a terrible thing not to become a woman when one ceases to be a girl.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

1.  I’ve never used an ATM machine.  That’s always good for some “oh really” expressions.

2.  I have never watched a survivor reality show, and have no desire to.  Maybe if there was a real reality show, where people had to SURVIVE with only the skills they already knew, I’d be interested, but most of the survivor-type reality shows are more like frat inductions and freshman hazings than anything to do with actual survival.  If people honestly wanted a true survivor saga, drop some businesspeople down in a public middle school for a few weeks. THAT’S survival, my friends.

3.  I still haven’t ever watched Oprah.  Still not interested, either.

4.  Still haven’t lost that last fifty pounds.  My penchant for popsicles on these muggy days isn’t helping.

5.  Summer session starts Monday, and I still haven’t gathered all my syllabi and tests together.

6.  After years of searching, I finally found the Wonderworks version of A Little Princess in DVD format, but I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.  It’s the only version of A Little Princess that’s faithful to the book, and when a movie is NOT faithful to the book, I have no use for it.  But the Wonderworks version is absolutely wonderful in every way.  Besides, Professor Sprout is in it, so you KNOW it’s going to be good.  I love this book so much, I named my daughter after the main character.  And that’s why there is no “h” at the end of her name.  Don’t waste your time or money on any of the more recent remakes of this book, or on the equally bad really old versions.  The Wonderworks version is the best one.  In fact, Wonderworks versions of everything are the best ones.

7.  I’m going to WordCamp in Chicago this weekend, and I haven’t done any laundry since getting home from Idaho the other day.  Conclusion:  Unless I intend to be either naked or smelly in Chicago, I’d better throw a few loads in before I go to bed tonight.

8.  I priced a commuter flight from Indianapolis to Chicago and it was over two hundred dollars.  In fact, it cost more than my ticket to San Francisco last summer!  Ridiculous.  So, I looked up Amtrak prices, and for less than fifty bucks, I’m taking the train, round-trip, to Chicago on Friday!  I’ve never taken a real train anywhere.  I can’t wait!

9.  I am covered from head to toe and everywhere in between with mosquito bites.  I have never itched so badly in my life.  Plus, I look like I’ve been in a paintball fight.

10.  Speaking of reality shows, I am so not interested in Jon and Kate or any of their 8.  The intensity of my non-interest is so great that when people invariably try to talk to me about that sad dysfunctional family, I have to turn and walk away lest I say something dreadful, such as the fact that I consider them a sad, dysfunctional family.  What they say or do is none of my business, nor is it any of yours, and perhaps my distaste would be made clearer in the words of my idol,  Dr. Perry Cox, who would perhaps put my feelings about Jon and Kate and all of their 8 in words something like these:

Except, of course, that I think Hugh Jackman is hot beyond all existing words.

I read everything I could get my hands on.  I read Gone with the Wind when I was in the third grade.  My favorite book in fifth grade was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and that one is still one of my all-time favorites.  I somehow skipped over the condescending large-print novella-type baby books and went right from The Little White House in first grade to Heidi, the unabridged version.  My second grade teacher borrowed Heidi from me and attempted to read it aloud to our class, but she gave up after two days because so many kids just simply couldn’t comprehend some of the vocabulary, and apparently they weren’t able to put two and two together via CONTEXT CLUES, either.  (Be careful if you want to get Heidi for your kids; there are tons of bad, bad translations out there.  A good indication of a bad version is when Klara’s name is spelled “Clara,” when Fraulein Rottenmeier becomes Miss Rottenmeier, and when the goats are named Little Swan and Little Bear.  I mean, the story takes place in SWITZERLAND and GERMANY, for crying out loud.  Dear Lord, I hate bad translations and condescending vocabulary that assumes our kids are idiots.)  As for shortened versions of books, well, whoever thought THAT up should be dragged out into the streets and shot.  Abridgements are the devil, and, yes, I do mean THAT devil.

(I scoff in the general direction of abridgements.  I sneer at them.  I loathe them.  They cheapen our literature and encourage our children to believe that reading isn’t fun.  Please, I beg of you all, do NOT buy the abridged version of ANYTHING!  Abridgements are the ultimate literary condescension.)

Besides my literary snobbery when it comes to children’s and YA books, I am also amazed that the BEST kids’ books are still about kids who get up off their asses, go outside, and do things.  Then again, a book about a typical modern kid’s life – sitting around, watching television, playing video games, and carefully riding a bicycle up and down the sidewalk in front of the house whilst wearing kneepads, a helmet, and being watched by anxious parents – would be boring beyond belief.

We used to call THOSE poor kids “sissies.”  That’s because they weren’t allowed to go anywhere or do anything without their parents right there, holding their hands, fighting their battles, and making darn sure they didn’t FALL DOWN and GET HURT.

The sight of a little kid like me, bruised from head to toe and covered with bandaids,  hanging upside down from an apple tree or calling out, “Look Ma, no hands!” on my bike would have sent some of these modern mothers into hysteria.  Then again, I belong to an era when mothers didn’t faint and then sue when their kids came home from the playground with a broken arm or a gash.  That’s just what happened when kids played.

It still is, but a lot of parents these days just can’t deal with such awful things.  Some of them can’t even deal with dirt.  Poor kids.

Here’s an excerpt from A New and Different Summer, by Lenora Mattingly Weber, who is one of my favorite authors.  Her books were written long before “my time,” but it doesn’t matter, because a good book is a good book.

In this excerpt, Katie Rose is babysitting for a spoiled little boy she refers to as “The Prince,” because he must be catered to in every way.  Her little brother Brian has ridden his bicycle to The Prince’s house to deliver a message to her:

What a noticeable contrast between the slim, tanned, hard-muscled Brian and the overweight, flabby, pampered Charles!

. . . the prince couldn’t bear not to be noticed.  He pushed up to Brian.  “Is that awful old bike yours?  I’ve got a brand-new one.  I ride it up and down the sidewalk while Mother watches from the porch.”

Brian gave him an unbelieving look.  “Why does she watch you from the porch?”

“Because there are real mean boys in this block, and they ram their bicycles into me.”

“You ought’nt to let them,” Brian said almost gently.  “When you see them making for you, you ram them first.  Nobody rams us.”  He gave Katie Rose a look of both puzzlement and pity, swung onto his hard worn bicycle and rode off.

These days, sissy Charles would be more common than independent Brian.  Sad.

If you are looking for some great books for your children’s summer reading, I highly recommend anything by Elizabeth Enright.  Her characters leave the house -after chores – early in the morning, usually carrying their lunch with them, and don’t return home until the sun is going down.  They have adventures.  They talk to strangers.  They build things out of scraps and junk.  They befriend tramps and orphans and stray dogs.  They also go to the opera and the art museum, and know how to behave themselves in restaurants.

One of the trademarks of a good children’s or YA book is that it can be enjoyed by adults, too.  In fact, I think I’ll get out my stack of Elizabeth Enright’s books and get started.

Hello, Rush, and Mona, and Randy, and Oliver Melendy.  How ya doin’, Portia, Foster, and Julian?  How are you, Garnet?  What’s new, Mab?

These kids walked out of the house and did things.  Even if such things had been invented back then, they would have stared in horror at the very idea of staying home all day, sitting on the sofa watching tv or exercising nothing but their thumbs.  And their mothers had better things to do than stand around watching their kids breathe, gasping when they fell and insisting that 45 minutes was plenty long enough to mess around in the back yard.  Elizabeth Enright’s kids and their mothers would have laughed at a parent who came along when the kids played, or called another parent to arrange a playdate instead of just letting the kids out in the morning to play with whoever else was around.

Yes, bad things do happen to our children.

Some of those bad things are their lack of freedom, initiative, adventure, creativity, and self-made friends of all ages.  Another bad thing is the inability of so many of them to even READ about these kids.

Of course, reading for fun isn’t encouraged any more.  It’s reading for Satan carefully monitored grade-level standardized tests that’s important now.

A lot of modern kids don’t even know how to skate or ride a bike or climb a tree. I’m not putting down computer games – I like them myself. But such things should be done AFTER a normal day, not in place of.  I hate television, but most people like it, and most kids watch way too much of it.  A little is fine; a lot is not.

No wonder so many of our kids are fat and stupid. Sheesh. Some of them have never breathed fresh air in their lives – they go from hermetically sealed homes to hermetically sealed schools, with the occasional jaunt to air-conditioned WalMarts and malls.  I bet a lot of “allergies” are really just the body’s reaction to fresh air.  It’s the lungs gasping and saying, “What IS this stuff?”

Ah, American childhood.  Sofas, and gamepads, and chicken nuggets, and french fries, and macaroni & cheese, and carefully supervised & timed playdates, and DVD’s to occupy every spare moment, including riding-in-the-van-time, lest they have a moment to sit still, look around, notice things, and think.

Poor kids.

Mamacita says:  We’ve got to get out of this trap! Before this… decadence… saps our wills. I’ve got to be strong, und try to… hang on! Or else, my mind may well snap! Und my life… will be lived…  for ze thrills…

I’m listening to the soundtrack from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and it brings back memories of when my boyfriend and I would dress up like Riff Raff and Magenta the Domestic and go to the Saturday night midnight showing at least twice a month, carrying a bag of playing cards, rice, water guns, party hats, feather dusters, toilet paper, toast, and noisemakers. . . .

Yeah, yeah, that was fun.  What I’m actually thinking about is the fact that my domestic’s outfit was a size 5.  Sigh.

*Yes, I know those aren’t the real words.

Back in the middle school,  the 6th grade girls used to have backpacks that looked like dead animals with their front paws wrapped around the students’ necks.  Watching them walking up and down the halls,  animal backpacks clinging desperately to their backs, looked a lot like one of those weird science fiction stories wherein the human race was enslaved by equine aliens, and made to serve as packhorses.

I always loved to walk around the track when the weather was nice; I usually managed about five miles each time, so I’m not exactly anybody’s idea of athletic.  Now, though, we’ve joined a gym.  Tonight was the first time. My too-frequently-used excuse of “I can’t do it tonight; it’s too cold/rainy/crowded/dark/whatever” is no longer valid.  The gym is open 24/7/365.

I love it.

With a little luck, maybe I’ll get a few more pounds off my very poundful self.  Or at least firm that jello up a little.

Jello that isn’t firm is just, well, Kool-aid.

Jiggly-ball was funny on Scrubs, but in real life, it’s just butt-ugly.  Those sneakers still feel really, really huge and heavy.  And a gym that’s still open at 3 a.m. is an omen:  it was time.