I think a lot. All the time, actually. Not only do I think I plan. I plot. I scheme. I think of all the places I want to do when we win the lottery. I plan the footprint of the eco-house Wolf and I will build someday. I plot a coup pertaining to the current Supreme Court. I scheme how I will be the first President of the United States (two terms, thank you) to appoint herself to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (I think of myself as an enlightened despot). Of course my ideas are really grandiose and will never actually happen so I plan, plot, and scheme on smaller scales too.

On my drawing board for a few years (YEARS!) has been to get some of this weight off my body. You’ve seen me talk about it before. But I haven’t gotten motivated. I ran for a couple days at the beginning of the summer but the bugs were bad (that was my lame excuse) then Wolf and I walked fast another day but the bugs were worse (his lame excuse). I don’t like the idea of running on the road for a couple reasons. First, the cars. The speed limit is 50 around here and people do 60+ and cars at that speed while I’m running make me afraid. Second, I don’t want to be breathing in all the CO and other toxins in the air from the cars. The point is to get healthy not give myself some weird lung cancer.

Lara talked about her friends nagging her to sign up for her first 5K race. I kinda need that cyber-friends. I’m asking you to start nagging me to run everyday (or at least three times a week) so I can lose 30 pounds (I weigh about 170, I’d like to weigh 140). I’m asking you since my “real life” friends have taken a leave of absence from my life of late, with one exception (waving to Silverwolf).

Kathie at Two Frog Home has this new challenge out. For those of you who read Howling Hill regularly you’ll know I don’t participate in challenges often. Well, ever. I’m not one who responds well to competition and I feel a challenge is competition. Competition has run it’s course now that there’s plenty of mates, food, and housing available to us lowly primates but that’s another post. Since, however, all I do is think about running — or rather, think about what I will look like once all the weight come off. I don’t actually think about running because I don’t like running.* You know, I think about “the end result not the process” as Saffy would say.– I figure I should actually do it. Like Nike says: Just do it.** Kathie’s challenge is appropriately named “Doing Not Thinking”.

She writes

This is a challenge for all of us who make plans but don’t accomplish for whatever reason. It’s for those of us who spend a lot of time thinking and not enough acting and doing. It’s not a competition to see who can accomplish their goals in the shortest amount of time, or about the size of the goal, but rather a network of dreamers joined together to offer support and encouragement. We may find that as we put our dreams into action that some are just not reasonable at this point in time and that’s ok - its the going after it that’s important for this challenge. This will be a longish term challenge, we won’t post the final update until December 15, 2008. This doesn’t mean that you must be finished with your dream / goal by December 15th, it just gives us a time frame to work with in, some dreams may take years to fully accomplish. This challenge isn’t specifically about accomplishment, its more about taking action towards realizing your dreams.

Now the first thing you have to understand is I thought about doing this challenge she she posted it last week. I thought and thought and thought. I considered, mulled, rolled it around with my tongue. I chewed on it for a while. And then the flash floods happened and I was up with the Fire Department for hours, got a little sleep, then was up helping with the clean up for a bunch more hours. It was then I realized if I really want to do this EMS thing again I need to do something about the state of my body and her stamina. EMS is a very, very physical job. Long hours, heavy lifting, standing on your feet for hours, lots of adrenaline. It also has lots of down time with hours — sometimes days and weeks — of nothingness. So I have to be in better condition to handle the peaks and valleys of the job.

This all came to my consciousness this morning when I had a dream. Right now my role on the fire department is as CPR Instructor and Photographer. I wasn’t going on medical calls because my skills weren’t needed. Now that I’ve indicated I’m going to EMT school in the fall, Chief asked me to go on medical calls as a way to get my gears cranking again. I quite like it this way because I like to ease into things.

Anyways, this morning I had a dream that I was at the Olympics. I was in a building which led out onto the ocean. I looked out the front of the building and all I could see was ocean. I asked someone how deep the water was and they said “really deep” or something akin to that. I walked back to the information booth and they said to me “you’re here for the medical challenge. This is what you have to do. You have to get into the water and stay afloat while holding onto a dummy. You must make the dummy breathe and save its life.” I looked out the doors again and saw waves, big huge rolling waves coming toward me. I said to them “I’m really the photographer you know. I’m not actually an EMT yet.” They said it didn’t matter but the terror in me of being in that deep blue water, with wave rolling over me and no bottom to put my feet on just overwhelmed me so I walked back to the locker room and tried to put my camera together but I didn’t have the right film, batteries, or any of the equipment I need.

Yea, so that’s what really cemented the idea I should participate in this challenge (thinking about the dream is making me nervous!). While running won’t help me with the knowledge I need to perform my duties well it’ll help by preparing my body for the physicalness of the job.

I figure the best way to start this challenge is to come up with short term goal, medium term, and long term goals since I’m a pretty goal oriented person. So here’s my list.

Short Term Goal: Stretch then walk to get the mail everyday.
Stretching is key according to everyone when it comes to exercise. Wolf and I did this for about a week and we felt great but then we fell off the wagon. The stretching energized us and made us WANT to get our blood pumping.

It’s not that far from my house to the post office. When Jaxsun was alive I walked passed it everyday on our morning walk but since he’s passed on I haven’t been walking much at all. I haven’t been doing much of anything at all to be honest.

Medium Term Goal: Get up and go.
I have to change my morning routine. Right now I get up between 7 and 7:30, go to the bathroom, chit chat with Wolf for a few minutes on the phone, then sit on my computer checking email, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, then write here. Around 9a I start getting really, really hungry and want to eat my breakfast (two pieces of turkey bacon, 1-2 eggs, and french fries, water, and a cup of tea). By the time breakfast is done it’s 10 and that’s when the mail is in.

This means I have to change my eating schedule to when I first get up then do all my computer stuff. Usually I’m not hungry at 7am but I’ll have to get over it because I want to shrink. Kelly says it takes 21 days of consistency to make something become routine so 21 days of eating at 8am should do it, right? This gives my body some time to digest before I stretch and walk.

Long Term Goal: Run, run, run!
My BIG HUGE GOAL is to run everyday but that may be a little atmospheric so I’m thinking three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) is a good start. I’d like to be able to run down to Old Hill without having to stop to catch my breath. I don’t know how far Old Hill is from here, 1/2 mile maybe, so once I get there I’ll have to come up with a new goal. I figure I’ll be running around the village at first. I’ll adjust later and not now because I’ll talk myself out of it again.

So ladies and the two guys who read Howling Hill (Wolf and Glenn), that’s my Doing Not Thinking challenge. I’m late to the game because I was thinking about doing the challenge. Now I actually have to do it because not only is it said out loud (to Wolf last night) it’s now written.

I start tomorrow by the way. And I reserve the right to refuse to run when it’s pouring cats and dogs. I hate being in the rain.

*Why am I planning on running if I don’t like it? It’s cheap and easy. I don’t have to join a gym or buy tons of expensive equipment (say, hiking or rock climbing). It’s something even po’ folk like me can do.

**I always thought they meant drugs. So I complied for much of my teens and twenties.