Insipid navel gazing in 2d

Making a gym tag, why? I can't remember...I started this post 3 days ago and never wrote it. I was excited about the gym at the time.

Today was fun in the gym - I could overhead press 135 for 3, zippity do dah. I did 145 for 2, so it seems I'm either back to able to do 155 or close to it. However I had to bail on benching as I'm having a lot of shoulder pain. I'm spending a ton of time old-man-yoga-shitting my legs "(you're doing it wrong)" but not much on my upper body which is a mess. I don't dust my house, or stretch my upper body - this needs to change.

I was actually going to take this week as a down week but so far...maybe next week. My stupid butt (non-surgery side) is still hurting so Mike may be right that I should go to the doc. It's not getting worse but that's not enough. It's not holding me back, but that shouldn't be the standard.

Exciting is my squat. It's weaker, sure, but I've done a butt...a bunch of research on butt wink. I think I've been hideous, and with all this research (thanks Brett Butteras) I think I've found some things I was doing wrong - combined with yogashit I may have fixed some serious form problems. Or I'm deluded only to face an ugly reality when I'm back to real weight again. I found I was leaning back too far, and for my great depth I was really just curving the spine at the bottom (and as my video showed, craptastic ankle roll. Squatting without weight while I try to regain my original flexibility in the surgery joint has me re-flattening the feet and really fighting to keep the arch in my back...I might only squat to parallel, but better that than cheat to get lower. Who knows what this will mean on squats...could be fun!

At the same time I'm...considering what I do. How strong do I have to be? With so many people at and beyond my level it's less inspiring to go for pure strength - plus I'm getting fat. I don't mean not a fucking washboard dance on the box in town fat, I mean having to buy new pants fat. Nothing anyone seems to mind, but pants!? No way. Also, I realized in rehab I suck at cardio - bad, and I think it would help strength training to up my ability to work out longer without being winded. If not, and if it takes away from strength a little, I could always cut off at 3 10-minute miles and be happy with that - and I can't even do that. However, I can pick up a treadmill...

And now the pain

The reno change order came in - 60k, and that's not all of it. I hope to nudge it a bit lower as the guy seems to be billing me $5100 for the parking pad that he previously said he would do for free to make up a bit for the delays in the permitting. The bill for the flooring came up as the billing was only to refinish the floor - and we gave up and bought a new-used one which required subfloor and lots more labor. Also, I was not billed for installing the master bath...we agreed to it, but it wasn't in the original bid of 178k. So the bill shows at about 240k now. This doesn't include 2 kitchens' granite counters (maybe it's formica time) or all the appliances.

Going over my private non-retirement stocks? I'm largely broke. I have to keep reminding myself that when this is done I'll be getting 4-7k income monthly from the 2 places - more if there is rent in the main place, but I a) am out of room for add-ons, and b) going to be broke for a while.

For the first time in years I won't have the freedom to fuckoff my job - I can't get fired and survive until I recover from this. Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose flood/fire/fuckers destroy my place? I could lose my life savings outside retirement.