Ow, My Body

It’s hard to move from a Lesbian suburb of a huge city to Smalltown Heteronormativity (SH). Both PartnerPenguin and I have been having a hard time. On my end, I’ve enjoyed going to work, meeting tons of new people, and finding out what kind of science they do. This is great, and it’s exactly what I want.

However, I did not completely plan for something. I’ve been working for Big American University for 2 years. When I went to the HR rep in mid-March to ask her about my final paycheck, she was very kind and told me it would arrive on April 7.  But she wasn’t paying that much attention to our conversation. So to my surprise, April 7 comes and goes without a paycheck. The long of the short of it is that I was down to $17 dollars for nearly a week last week until I finally got the blasted thing on April 22 (over a month after my last work day).

So I was a little on edge.

PartnerPenguin has been having a different but more difficult culture shock. In the City, you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a brogrammer in jeans and a graphic tee on his (rarely her) merry way to making thrice median income.  Here, in SH, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a PhD. They make better targets because they tend to be less agile.

PartnerPenguin does not have a PhD. The type of programming he’s good at is not relevant to physics simulations on supercomputers. His clients are in the Netherlands, Bangkok and New York. Believe it or not, we do not have Internet at home, yet. So he goes to the library that has decently fast interwebs and does his work remotely. Except for the occasional old dude protesting the injustices incurred by an imaginary slight over library fines, PartnerPenguin doesn’t really have the opportunity to interact with anyone at the library.

So he was feeling very lonely.

On Tuesday night, I found a secret stash of money I’d pulled out for the trip in the event of emergencies. Both of us were pretty sad and grumpy and we had enough food on our plates so I proposed we join the Y with it. BEST. IDEA. EVER.

We joined and immediately started climbing on the rock wall. Fun fact about PartnerPenguin and me, neither of us has the upper body strength sufficient to climb a rock wall! There were two auto-belay lines that are rigged for intermediate paths so we used those. The other occupants of the room were: the staff dude who played the same Bob Marley song 4 times and a clique of Polish climbers who seemed very professional and intimidating. We gave up after about a half an hour and played a Calvinball version of racquetball for the rest of the evening.

The next day, we tried again: this time in the afternoon. The atmosphere was a lot friendlier and encouraging, the room surprisingly populated by mostly high schoolers. A random (qualified) person in the room offered to belay us on the easiest route. When he got bored, the staff person took over so we could both have a go. I say “easiest” but I really mean, “climbs like a ladder until all of a sudden there’s a jut-ty out-ty part which requires all arms and made me want to die.” Then we did those stationary bike things for a while so we got some cardio.

The next day, I biked to work. Actually, that was probably the easiest physically activity I did this week. One of the dudes at work who was helping us move things had a Crossfit shirt so I joked that I was surprised this town was large enough to support such an activity. He replied that he owned the gym with his wife and would my supervisor and I like to come and check it out some time.

So of course on Friday, I check out Crossfit. Compared to the climbing and other stuff I’d done this week, it was actually the most constructive and least painful. The owner of the gym (the guy from work) was one of the best trainers I’ve ever met. He was careful to check my form at every step and talk with me about how to avoid injury/aggravating old injuries.

Well, Saturday I’m sore as a mofo so I go to yoga. Thankfully, a yin-yoga instructor taught it and she was chill as the snow fallin’ outside my window right now. I felt loads better after the class, but then all the exhaustion caught up with me. I think I’ve slept…20 hours out of the past 48? I’m getting better finally. I think learning to balance how much activity I do compared to my current strength, endurance and overall fitness levels is my immediate goal for the next week.

The view from my balcony today.

This is our snow gollum.