School Daze: Third Grade

I'm sure you can guess that by the time I arrived in third grade, I was fairly much over this whole school thing. I was jaded about it and, quite frankly, going through so much stuff at home that school was the last thing on my mind. And this, of course, was part of the problem.

My teacher was a middle aged woman with large round glasses and that short tightly curled do favored by many women of middle years with curly hair. On some of them, it looks exotic and carefree. Not on most. She was one of the most. I really can't tell you a lot about her because she made no effort to be important.

This was a year of major transitions for me. My grandparents had left the area where we lived and I felt abandoned and very alone because of this. Once they were gone, my stepfather's behavior grew worse and worse. I experienced things and witnessed things during this time that no child should have to go through. Most of the time, I just went through the motions of life. I was a zombie.

The only good thing about him getting worse is that he eventually got so bad that even my mother realized this was fucked up. See previous post about eating convenience store food on the morning she left him. Hmm. I might have even gotten my age wrong during that post. Stupid memory. Anyway . . .

Third grade was one of those times when my mother's fuckery and my school years overlapped. When she left the bastard, she didn't feel safe going back to our house so we moved in with my grandparents. As I have mentioned before, my grandparents lived in another state so clearly my going to school became an issue. My mother saw no reason to transfer me into the school where they were living, because she knew we wouldn't be here for very long (because she already had another husband lined up....and planzzzz).

This might have been a problem, but my grandparents came up with a solution. Our preacher's wife (who also lived in the same town) taught at my school. It was arranged that I would ride to and from school with her. I agreed to this because I just couldn't handle the thought of going to different school for less than a year before Mom moved us again. At first this was all I saw it as. Then I met Mr. Riley.

Mr. Riley lived in town too and commuted with the preacher's wife. He taught sixth grade and was the only male teacher in the elementary. You'll notice he's the first teacher I've mentioned by name. That's because he's the first one who I feel deserves one. In fact, even though I never had Mr. Riley actually AS my teacher, he is the first teacher who really, truly made a difference in my life.

He seemed tall to me, though I think he was about average height. He was slightly heavy and had gray hair and glasses. He also had a gentle demeanor and a kind smile. His voice was strong and gravely. It reminded me of the way coffee smells, warm, rich, and inviting.

On the first day he met me, he looked me in the eyes and smiled. He bent down and shook my hand and called me by my name as he said he was pleased to meet me.  I am pretty sure he had been given the details of my situation, because as I have grown older and been around people who who work with kids from screwed up situations, they handled the kids with the same gentleness.

Most of the time, as I rode in the back of the car, I was content to just be quiet and listen to the adults talk. I liked the lull of their voices. Both of them were pleasant and relaxed, not something I was used to. I remembered thinking how this was how sane adults should act. It's something I still hold onto even now.

The interesting thing was, I never felt left out. They didn't include me in every conversation, but I never felt ignored from them. They would tell me stories about their school years. They would recommend books to me. In fact, Mr. Riley even brought me books from time to time to read. I was always really careful with them and read the books as quickly as I could. The best days would be the days we would discuss the books as we drove home.

As far as I am concerned, between 8-3, I was just a kid at a desk. I wasn't being taught anything. I was just going through the motions of obeying the rules and doing the worksheets. However, in the hour or so on the way to school and the hour or so   on the way home from school, I WAS being taught. Perhaps for the first time since I started school, I was really being taught things.

And those hours were invaluable to me. I think that commute was the best thing that happened during my first several years of school. It is, truthfully, the ONLY purely happy experience I had during those years in an academic sense. And I believed it really saved me in terms of how I would view education and myself.

Mr. Riley wasn't someone who saw teaching as "just a job." I really believe that to him, it was a vocation. He seemed to understand that teaching was something that didn't just happen in his classroom and it didn't just happen because he had a degree and could tell little kids to open a book. He knew that teaching happened because he TAUGHT. He could develop a rapport with people, knew how to create a relaxed and pleasant environment, and how to engage students into really exploring the world around them.

It's really ironic that I only became a part of those commutes because of my mother's further-husband-plans. It was just the easiest thing for HER. However, it became the best thing for me and I am so grateful for that time. I wish I could have been in the area when I could have had Mr. Riley as my teacher and I was very sad when he passed away.

So yes, I will say my third grade year of school was good for me. Not because of anything that happened in my third grade class, but because of something that happened outside of it.

School Daze: Second Grade

My first impression of my second grade teacher had to do with her hair. Her hair was set . . . as in, she went to the salon once a week and they worked some kind of voodoo to make her hair not move and somehow not   stink for the whole week. Her specific set was something not quite wide enough to be a fro and not quite tall enough to be a beehive. It was somewhere kind of in the middle of both of them while failing at both of them.

In the beginning, I was somewhat hopeful that she would be better than the last two bitchfests. She was an older woman, close to retirement, and had a kind voice. You know it's kind of heartening that even despite the hell I had experienced by this age, I still had a nice little concept of naive optimism.

The woman wasn't as blatant about her cruelty as the last two, but she certainly possessed cruelty in abundance. She didn't use her paddle that often, though she did on occasion. I'm guessing by her age she was just too frail to bother. That stupid bullshit of "this will hurt you more than it hurts me" might actually be true if the person has weak bone density.

Her preferred method of pain came in the form of humiliation. She loved to belittle her students and delighted in finding ways to do so. There was a boy in our class who had very little hand control and his handwriting was pretty bad. Every time we would have a handwriting lesson, she would tack his on the bulletin board and have all of us go up and look at it. "Now you see what he did? You see how he refuses to try and write in a better way?  I want all of you to go up to him and tell him you know he can do better than this."

Yes, that's right. Instead of having the kid tested to see if he had developmental issues or sitting with him and working on his handwriting herself, she did THIS. One time instead of putting his work on our class bulletin board, she tacked one of his assignments to the board in the lunch room for the whole school to see.

My personal bit of hell with this woman happened a few weeks before Thanksgiving break. We were supposed to be working in our phonics books while she zoned out or plotted how to sell our souls or something.  In a rare, rare, like insanely rare moment of ambition, I had taken my book home the night before and not only finished the assignment we were supposed to do, but the work I guessed we would be doing for the next day as well.

I did this because once we were finished with our assignments, we could do whatever we wanted . . . so long as it involved sitting quietly at our desks.  Was working on this story in my head and wanted to spend the time drawing my characters. Logically, if we finished early we would have a little bit of time, if we finished the night before, we would have ALL the time.

So there I was, drawing my characters.  From what I remember, the story revolved around some Amazonian type culture where all the warrior women worked to protect their lands from all evil males. This was how my little brain was processing the step-father abuse at home. Plus, I got to draw cool helmets. I was in the middle of working on an elaborate helmet when my teacher walked over to my desk.

"What are you doing?" she asked in her sweet old lady voice.

"Oh, I'm drawing."

She smiled that kind of fake smile adults smile when they really want to smash in a child's brain. "I think you know you have an assignment."

I nodded, so proud of myself. "I know. I'm already finished."

She frowned. "No you're not. I just gave out the assignment."

"Yes, I am." I started to pull my workbook out of my desk but she stopped me.

"You are lying."

"No, I'm not lying. I did it."

Her eyes grew cold. "Stand up. Come with me."

I was completely confused, upset, and just a little scared by this point, but I did as she instructed.  She marched me out the door of the classroom and down the walkway to the first grade door. She knocked and when my evil first grade teacher answered, I swear the woman smiled at me like they'd planned this whole thing, even though I can't imagine how they could have.

"Hello, may we come in and see your class?" My first grade teacher said we could, and I was taken in front of the students. They all stared at me, some of them even giggled a little.

"Now, you had little BHB last year, did you not?" my teacher asked.

The first grade teacher looked at me for a long moment, as if she was trying to remember if she had me or not. "Why, I do believe I did."

"And when she was in your class, did she tell lies?"

"Why I don't think she did. It's very disappointing that she lies now. No one likes a liar, do they children?"  And all the children in the first grade class agreed.

I felt such completely and utter humiliation at this moment.  Two teachers discussing me and having everyone talk about how much no one would trust me. I knew all the kids in this class would talk about this, to other students, to their parents, to everyone.

And the worst part was that it wasn't even justified. I did the assignment. I did it before I was supposed to, but it was finished. She didn't even check to see if it was finished. She just believed what she wanted to believe and acted accordingly.

I'm not sure exactly what I was supposed to learn from this.  Oh, wait. I guess it was to not lie. Or something. Anyway, what I DID learn was that some people are so set in their routines and ways of seeing things that if you dare to challenge them in even the smallest and most innocent of ways, they're going to do what they can to crush your spirit. Hmm, you know, the best thing I can say about elementary school is that I survived with my spirit uncrushed, DESPITE their best efforts to destroy it.

School Daze: First Grade

The main thing I remember about my first grade teacher was how she looked and how much I hated her. She was a plain woman with a doughy body who dressed in what she believed to be very fashionable things. She was short and had short, unattractive brown hair that lacked any kind of describable style beyond just . . . short.  She favored pastel colors. I think this was some kind of deception, a way to lull people into thinking she was soft and passive and easy.  She was none of these things. She was a little bully.

My short, plain first grade teacher was married to a man who also taught in the school. Her husband, as I recall, was also short and plain and lacking in the hair department. However, because he was a man in a school primarily ran by women, he commanded a certain level of respect. Because my teacher was his wife, she felt she commanded this respect as well. Every school has a level of elitism to it. Richer students have status. Smart students have status. Teachers had status and teachers with ties to other teachers possessed even more status.

In every pond, no matter how small, one will find the big fish. When said pond IS very small, said big fish know it. They hate their small pond and hate that their importance is based only on the size of the pond. There is a kind of perfect storm in people who are aware of their on insignificance but in a position of power over others. They are, in some ways, the worst kind of people.  My first grade teacher was a perfect example of this.

My first grade teacher, in her small town, small school, small pond kind of way, was an insecure elitist to the highest degree. She lorded over our class with an air of aristocratic irritation. She acted as if we should consider ourselves lucky that she taught us . . . which, as I recall, she barely did. Most of the time, we were given photocopied worksheets that she would require to have finished by the end of the day. The following day, each worksheet would be handed back to us, with whatever grade she felt we deserved.

Her aura of indifference was only broken when she became irate with one of us. When any child acted in an unruly manner, her look of smug boredom would be replaced by one of outrage. We would be pulled from our seat and paddled in front of the whole class. Most teachers would take you outside for a paddling, or at the very least remove you to a discrete corner of the room. Not this woman. She would paddle you in front of everyone.

I also remember her paddling the hardest of all the teachers I had. She would always leave bruises, because there was no real restraint in what she did.  She never paddled after she had calmed down from her anger. She always paddled at the height of it.  She never paddled a set number of swats.  Instead, she would paddle to whenever her arm began to tire. This was usually seven or so swats, given rapidly and furiously. I remember almost feeling ill due to the pain of sitting down after she did this.

And oh yes, I was paddled. I was paddled many times during her class because I would break the rules on the days when her whims dictated that broken rules required physical punishment.  There were no set rules of what level of discipline would be used.  Some days, and depending on what students were causing problems, she might decide to do nothing. On other days, even the smallest infraction might gain her wrath.

For instance, one day during an indoor recess, I playing a board game with some of the other girls. The boys, including her son who was in our class, wanted to play the game instead. They wouldn't leave us alone and I yelled at them. I realize indoor voice is an important thing, and I know some level of punishment probably should have happened (though also to the boys, because they wouldn't leave us alone, but that is a whole other can of worms).

She walked over and told me to go to the front of the class. Even then, I didn't expect to be paddled. I thought she was just going to talk about Indoor Voice again.  Instead, she walked back with her paddle, her eyes stormy and angry. She had me to bend over and swatted me six times. They were fast and very, very hard. Four fell on my ass, the rest on my upper portion of the back of my legs.

The thing about any act of violence is that even when you know it's coming, you're never exactly prepared for it. I was stunned during the punishment and afterwards. I'm never sure what people expect others to think when they act in a violent way to them. Maybe they expect some kind of respect or awe.  All I ever felt was anger. All of my life, if one thing has held true, it is that the more anger and violence I see from you, the more I despise you.

She told me to go sit down and in tears, I told her I couldn't. I was in too much pain. She looked at me and for a second I thought maybe it occurred to her that what she had done was very wrong, that she was a horrible person, and that she shouldn't be teaching children. Maybe this did occur to her, but instead of her apologizing like she should have, she spun me around again and swatted me four more times. Then she got in my face and with teeth showing, she growled that she could do this all day and that if I didn't want to be spanked more, I should get to my seat.

The rest of the day was deeply painful for me. The seats were plastic and had absolutely no give to them. I couldn't concentrate on anything but being in pain. I kept wiggling in my chair because there was no comfortable place. And as bad as it was on my ass, the worst part was where my legs fell against the edge of the chair, because she'd managed to hit me there too.

You know, as an adult looking back on this, when I think about what was going on in my life at that time, I realize that the worst thing about this woman wasn't her crazy want to hurt little kids.  The worst thing about her, especially in terms of her being a teacher, was that elitist indifference she possessed.

This was during a time when I was literally being tortured at home. My mother's husband was horribly violent to us. I know that when I went to school, there was no way she could have missed the bruises on my body. There is no way she couldn't have seen the suffering I was going through. She was a trained professional and she should have been able to see all the signs of the abusive homelife I had. As a teacher, she should have taken steps to get me out of there.

And it's not like the woman was stupid.  Things like child abuse are pretty obvious.  She just really didn't care.

School Daze: Kindergarten

It's the beginning of a new school year and I thought it might be fun to rehash some of my memories of my own K-12 experiences. By fun, I mean probably awkward, painful, and fraught with stuff I can tell my therapist! Enjoy.

Kindergarten:

It's actually so funny how excited I was about the first day of school and how despairing I was by the time that day was over. My naive little self thought this school thing would rock, and I would rock because I could already read and write. I was so wrong.

I also thought it would be cool because my teacher, although no relation to me, had my last name. I suppose in my 5 yr old mind, having the same name gave us some kind of magical connection that would keep us in synchronicity. Again, I was wrong. That woman was an irrational bitch who should have been allowed no where near children. And I knew this by the end of the first day.

I've talked about some of her evil shenanigans before (heads on the desk, paddling me, bitchery over my creative talents), so I'll just discuss this thing she did to me on the first day of school. When I was dropped off for the day, I was told that my grandmother would be picking me up. I was to wait on the playground and leave with her, and then she was going to drive me to the nearby town where we would have a nice dinner to celebrate my first day of school.

The problem was, while I was told this, no one bothered to tell my teacher. As the school day ended, she began to sort us all into what lines we needed for our bus routes. I told her I wasn't to be put into line because my grandmother was picking me up and I started to walk off to the place where I was told to wait.

The teacher grabbed my arm and jerked me back into the line. She got down on my level and hissed at me that I would do as I was told. I tried to explain to her that while this might be the case later on, today it was not so.

I like to consider how this sounded given my 5 yr old speaking skills and the fact that I was crying due to the arm pull.

"B-but . . . Gran is pickin me UP and they pointed to there to wait." All of this would be said through tears and sniffling. It's one of those situations that a small child, having just met one of the most evil people in the world, as some difficulty in communicating.

Were this conversation happening to me as I was older, it would not have been the case. "Excuse me, Miss Evil, but I do believe there has been a misunderstanding. As this is my first day of school, my step-grandmother has plans for me in which we shall celebrate.  I would very much like it if you let me go stand where I was told to stand so that I may go with her and my impressions of my first day of school would not be all the disheartening and borderline abusive things you have done, but a pleasant afternoon with someone I love."

Even through tears,  I think she would have gotten that. Although, to be honest, I think "Bitch, let me go and get the fuck away from me" is closer to what she deserved.  Yes, I know no one likes it when kids cuss their teachers. This one needed it.

Because, the story doesn't end with my clambering into the bus with my little hurt arm. It also doesn't end with the next two hours of fear because this bus driver wasn't going anywhere remotely near my house (though he finally did). Nor does it end with now wretchedly carsick I got on the trip.

The story ends with the fact that my grandparents on my mom's side knew I would be with my other grandmother, so they decided to drive into town and get some shopping done. My parents were both at work and wouldn't get home until almost eight. My grandmother, having never found me after school, assumed plans had changed and that she hadn't been told, so she went to visit her mother.

When I got my little five year old self off of that bus at my grandparents' house, they weren't home. My parents weren't home. Our nearest neighbors lived too far away for me to walk to their house to call. So until almost seven that evening, I sat on my grandparents' porch, alone, confused, a bit scared, very hungry, and weeping.

Needless to say, my first day of school and its various levels of pain, humiliation, and torment had a strong and lasting impression on how I would view school as a concept and teachers in general. All excitement and wonderment I had about going to school died as I was sitting on that porch. It would be many, many years before I   regained an positive feelings about the educational experience.

A Good Day

Today started out with some irritations, but in the end it was a great day. For one thing, my roommate got an issue settled that has been bothering him for well over two weeks now. I'm very happy it is settled because it had to do with medications and that is never an area where one wants things to mess up.

Second of all, despite having no predictions for it to do so, it rained. It rained for hours and cooled things down and made the whole world feel normal again. I get to sleep in a nonhot room and have nonhot sleep, which makes me almost giddy.

So I'm ending this day feeling very grateful. This isn't going to be a long post, but that's okay. I think at this point sleep is more important than verbose blogging. However, I did want to note how very thankful I am for this reprieve in the Holy Hell it's Hot days of August. Sometimes nothing is better than unexpected reprieves.

GRRM's VC Andrews' Fanfics

Note: This post is intended in good humor and not meant to be taken seriously. 

You know, it's always bothered me that George R. R. Martin is uncomfortable with fanfiction about his work. On just a general level, I think this is a mistake because fanfics, even the bad ones, are an avenue to inspire readers to keep with your story. They can also help to hone the skills of people who will one day become writers themselves.

In GRRM's case though, I'm even more confused. How can a man claim to hate fanfiction, when part of the very foundation of his most famous work has its roots in fanfic. After all, if it was not for VC Andrews and GRRM's very evident love for her psychosexual young adult horror novels, A Song of Ice and Fire might not exist.

 Don't believe me? 

Okay, I want us to examine what we see in these two pictures. The first picture is the inside cover of VC Andrews' book Petals in the Wind.  In this picture, we see three blonde people. One is a little person who is rather unhappy about the whole situation. Then there is a plotting and scheming pretty girl who seeks vengeance against her enemies. She has many enemies. She will do whatever she has to in order to make her plans work. There is also a beautiful male who loves her more than anything . . . and just happens to be her brother. 

In the second picture, we see an Entertainment weekly pic of characters from Game of Thrones, the HBO show adapted from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Although the show has dulled the men's hair out, what we should have here are three blonde people. The first one is a little person who is rarely happy about any situation. There is a plotting and scheming beautiful woman who seeks vengeance against her enemies. She has many enemies. She will do whatever she has to in order to make her plans work. There is also a beautiful male who loves her more than anything . . . and just happens to be her brother. 

What does all this tell us, oh my brothers and sisters?  Why, it tells us that GRRM is a great fan of the Flowers in the Attic stories.  He felt inspired by the story of the earnest and lustful Chris Dollenganger, the angry and revenge driven, yet motherly and graceful Catherine Dollenganger, and the dark plight of the tragic twins Carrie and Corey.

Big fat tears of sorrow must have rolled down his cheeks and into his beard as he read how they were trapped in that attic and poisoned by their own mother. Like all of us, he felt confused by the fact that even though Chris rapes his sister in the first book, we're all very happy when they marry at the end of the second book (because yeah, that's a twisted damned feeling). He felt so much injustice over the fact that Carrie lost her twin, never grew any taller, and died a very broken woman.

Conflicted by all of these fucked up emotions, he decided to right the wrongs . . . or rather, he decided to WRITE the wrongs. And in this moment, the Lannister family was born.

It was horrible that one twin would be lost, so instead of having the younger children be twins, he assigned the twinship to the older two and just cut Corey out completely. Instead of making Carrie a sad victim of circumstance, he transformed her into Tyrion, a wisecracking, well-read, complex man who is one of the main protagonists of his series.

Despite his rapey and incesty nature, Chris Dollenganger was a fairly flat and goody-twoshoes character (yes, I'm not sure how that works. Andrews is twisty like that). GRRM wanted him  to have more complexity, so he created Jaime, a man blessed with looks, talent, and riches. Then he marred the character with a complexly conflicted sense of honor and a tainted past. He left the incest part though, because as Chris main motivation for life was his sister, so would be Jaime's . . . at least for a while.

His greatest tribute is with Cersei Lannister, his very own Catherine Dollenganger.   He blessed Cersei with the one thing Cathy never had, her brother's children. Cathy had three kids, but two were from other men and the girl was adopted. He kept the same ratio of kids though. One girl, one boy, one badshit evil child so horrible no one could ever redeem him.

Like Cathy, Cersei is desired by almost every man who sees her. When the need arises, she uses this lust to her advantage. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Cathy and Cersei are both wronged as young women and put into situations where they are basically prisoners. Once they are free, they use their minds and charms to find as many ways to gain justice as they can. In the end though, both of them make some missteps and it almost proves to be their undoing. No one is perfect.

In my mind, I can so clearly see George R. R Martin back when he was a 13 yr old girl. He would be sitting on his bed, wearing his pink pjs and purple mules, listening to NKotB as he reads tattered old paperback copies of VC Andrews' work.  He would bite his lip as he wrestles with his feelings about why rape is wrong by fucking Andrews manages to make seem OKAY when Cathy realizes that her brother's destructive sexual obsession for her is the purest form of love she will ever know.

I can see him toying with a pigtail as he pulls out his pink glittery notebook and starts writing his own version of the story. Instead of an attic, they're in a castle.  Instead of an evil old grandma and a slutty widowed mother, there is a honorbound  Hand of the King and a drunken fat monarch. Instead of being poisoned, it just so happens that their captors are the ones who get poisoned.

At this point, GRRM smiled to himself and knew his story would grow. Maybe he would even have some racy scene IN an attic . . . no, better yet, a TOWER. Once he threw some kid out the window for good measure, he knew the whole thing was golden.

Steps and Progresses

Today I upped the number of steps I'm doing by five on one set (the harder set) and ten on the second. It almost done me in, I tells ya. As my roommate said though, as rough as it was, I still managed to do it. Progress. Yay. I may be talking about the steps a lot. For one thing, it's the most intense work out my 38 yr old/500+ lbs self has done in many many years . . . possibly ever!  Secondly, as much as it hurts, I'm seeing some quick results.  I'm fairly happy about that.  Third, I'm just so bemused and happy about how LITTLE money was spent on this.  I absolutely adore that part.

For one thing, I don't have a lot of money TO spend on exercise equipment. I don't have a lot of money to spend on ANYTHING, really, but certainly not on stuff like this. And really, I have this theory that work out equipment really isn't designed to be used. I think most of it is designed to look inspiring enough for someone to go and fork over money to own it.  Then I think the idea most companies have is that it will get pushed into a corner with some good intentions wistfully thrown its way, collect dust, and eventually get sold at a yard sale. 

If someone actually is ambitious enough to start using the equipment on a regular basis, they will soon find themselves with broken equipment. If this person is even the slightest bit self-conscious about their weight, there is no way in HELL they are going to tell anyone they broke the exercise machine. That would just lead to too much emotional trauma.

Anyway, I thought I would show you some pictures of my setup. My roommate took the pics for me. I thank him for that. Oh, and before someone accuses me of karma whoring, yes, I realize I am not the person who came up with the idea of using pavers for steps. In fact, I'm not even the one in my HOUSE who suggested it. That was my roommate. I'm just trying to show anyone who is interested what this pavers/for/steps set up is like.

The first pic is an above view of the pavers. He put a brick and a spoon on them for a size visual. I personally find it to be very visually appealing, as there are basically tone on tone of grays and brick colors then this small bit of white. We even get leaves in there for movement.

The pavers are a good size for stepping. They're not so narrow as to cause me to stumble and miss my footing, nor are they so wide that I risk only stepping half way off and falling because of that. Both of these factors are very important to me because I'm not the most graceful of people and falling is one of my biggest fears where the work out is concerned.

The second pic is the side view of my pavers. As you can see, it's not really that high, however, for me it is still high enough to make an impact.  When I decide I need to add inches to it, the pavers themselves only cost like $1.50 each. I can easily and affordably add more.

You also get a nice view of the rock wall along my porch.

Finally, this is the front view of the pavers. They actually stay on top of each other fairly well. I think tomorrow I'll need to even them up again, but doing so once a week isn't that much of a hassle. When choosing pavers, it is VERY important to make sure they have a texture that isn't slippery.  Safety should be a major concern when you're doing something like this for yourself. After all, if you fall and injure your legs, you'll soon lose all the progress you've gained.

Again, yes, I realize they aren't that high, but they serve my purposes.  I've figured out that one of the key elements to working out successfully is to start slow and build up as you can.  You won't do yourself any favors by choosing something so minor and lax that it doesn't get your body's attention, but at the same time, if you try and start with something too physically difficult, you will soon get discouraged or injured . . . and then most likely quit.

And I will tell you, every day before I go out there to do the steps, my brain tries to talk me out of it. It gives me a million excuses as to why it shouldn't happen. after my first set of steps, my brain tries to convince me to go back inside. I did a little bit. Why bother with more? It does this after the second set and the third set as well.

By the time I walk inside, breathless, exhausted, kind of sick, and in pain, my brain is full of glee because the steps are OVER. And at that very moment, my brain starts trying to talk me out of doing them the next day. I know this is going to happen and I've accepted it's just part of whatever fucked up wiring I have. At the same time, unless I truly am sick or injured, there is no reason for me NOT to go out there and do my steps. I really hope this "don't do it" battle isn't a forever part of my work out experience, but it may well be.

I am admitting to this because I'm guessing a lot of other people probably go through that as well. Don't listen to your brain and don't think you're alone in this struggle. I'm right there with you, fighting every step of the way against my own self-sabotage and self-destruction. I'm also pretty sure I'm going to win.