Sistah Pat

Metaphorically speaking, of course. A lot of folks are still in the dark but I have my electricity back on. I’m kind of fumbling around with what’s on the agenda. Each day that we miss school has me trying to recall what meetings, trainings, and obligations I’m supposed to be involved in. It seems like we’re tied up with mandatory testing all year. Education is one big series of testing for the kids. It starts this week and I’m not ready. I’ll be working with a group of 9th graders and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. My plan was to get with some people and get a handle on exactly what needed to be done on Monday.  I’m not sure because the paperwork is on my desk but I think we’re supposed to start testing tomorrow and Thursday. Maybe I won’t even have to worry about it because they’re saying we may be out of school all week.

Our school superintendent was involved in yesterday evening’s news conference and said he’s not sure when schools will be up and running again but parents should plan for a week without classes. This morning’s paper says a third of the schools are still without electricity and several of them suffered damage.  Some fool (Sorry, it makes me angry!) asked why teachers weren’t volunteering to go to the schools that have electricity and supervise kids so parents could just drop them off. Teachers are not licensed day care providers.  Why do so many people assume teachers are there to raise and care for their kids? We’re there to teach them and I’m so tired of people thinking of teachers as glorified babysitters. They wouldn’t dream of suggesting that employees of the General Electric plant volunteer to come and fix their appliances or employees of Ford come and fix their cars. Nuff said, move on…

I’m not masochistic enough to weigh myself this morning. Three days of eating crap and not exercising are bound to show up. Instead, I’m going to have a perfect day today and tomorrow and weigh myself on Thursday. Yeah, I know…I’m such a coward.  Oh, wait!  Do I hear my treadmill calling?  “Patttttty, come up the stairs…I’m waaaaiting.”

12:30 - Just finished a phenomenal workout.  I’m all sweaty and icky and it feels fantastic!  I was doing my 95 minute 3 more miles workout and I was twenty minutes into it at 3.3 mph and an incline of 4% and my pulse was only up to 102.  My metabolism is so damn low!  They tell me that’s good in terms of heart ailments but it’s not good when you’re trying to lose weight.  For most of my workout, my pulse is between 100 and 110 but I can get up to 115 at an incline of 10%.  Anyway, I decided to get off the treadmill and do some fast paced low impact aerobics and then jump back on it.  I did aerobics for about 3 minutes and checked my pulse and it was up to 120!  Whoo Hooo!  The rest of the time, I kept the treadmill running and went through my regular routine of 5 minutes at each incline but I frequently jumped off and did some butt-kicking aerobics!  Wow!  What a difference!  Everytime I stayed on the treadmill for a couple of minutes, my pulse rate would start to go down.  My target heart rate should be between 83 and 140 and I could get it up to 130 by doing the aerobics.  Mr. Treadmill may be getting lonely for a while.  This requires some thought…