Nicola Cameron Writes

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Pain Level: What the everloving fuck did I just do?

During this month of me walking on the treadmill every day, there have been some changes to my body. The expected ones, like my calves becoming things of beauty and my butt tightening up, were nice bennies, but once again I’m more interested in bumping up my endurance and strength than weight loss.

Except … I’ve lost back fat of all things, which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever but does make it hella easier to scratch between my shoulder blades. I decided to look this up (turns out there’s no correlation between walking and a smaller back, as there’s no such thing as spot reduction), and came across an article on interval training with regards to walking, where you can add thirty second bursts of power walking to your usual strolling speed of 2 MPH.

Ha. Ha ha ha. My usual strolling speed on the treadmill is 1.5 MPH, so bumping that up to 2 MPH is power walking for me. But I decided to try it. For my first 15 minute session I added seven minutes of walking at 2 MPH, and for my second session I added four minutes. Wow. That made a difference, if you could define “difference” as “being drenched in sweat while your bad knee curses at you in ancient Sumerian.”

I’m gonna try it again today.

Time on Treadmill: 45 minutes.
Energy Level: Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha.

I think working in a hot garage is taking a lot out of me because man, I have been ridiculously tired all week. I’m getting enough sleep (at least, I think I am) but I wake up wiped and wind up slogging through the day until I can go to bed. I don’t feel sick, my sinuses aren’t hurting, I don’t think anything’s wrong, per se — I’m even pounding down enough water to rehydrate a fleet of camels and taking electrolytes so it’s not that.

At least it’s supposed to cool off after the weekend here in the clavicle of Texas, which is something. I plan on splitting my time cleaning, writing, and making a few new sparklies for the Etsy store (got a gorgeous pair of jade cabochons that I have plans for, muwahahahaha…), and catching up on my rest.

Time on Treadmill: 45 minutes.
Allergy Level: My eyes are sticking together

Didn’t quite manage the full hour to make up for yesterday, but I did get an extra fifteen minutes in on top of my daily half hour, and I’ll do the same tomorrow. I would’ve gotten it all done today but man, I was BUSY — contract editing work, then running to my rock and gem store to get some stuff for a couple of new pieces, then back to editing, then I had to feed and entertain the cats, then feed us, then go back to editing. It was kinda amazing that I was able to sandwich three fifteen minute sessions in among all of that.

But I did, and I feel good about it, and I finished the editing job, and I got two pieces soldered, polished, and in the tumbler (a pair of sterling and carnelian earrings and a pendant for a family member), and I came up with a new story idea, so yay for me. I figured an episode of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries was a good reward for all of that.

Time on Treadmill: 0 minutes.
Pain Level: Yeah, no

I am making an executive decision here and taking the day off from Chuck. Maybe this is a mistake, maybe not, but not only are my allergies flaring up like you would not believe, it is also incredibly painful to walk right now. The muscles up the outside of both thighs ache for some reason, and my joints — good Lord, you don’t even want to know. We’re talking hobbling and hanging onto furniture just to get around. My kind buddy J got up to get me missing silverware at the writers meeting tonight because I must have looked like I was about to cry when I discovered I hadn’t gotten a fork.

I have both knees wrapped and braces on both ankles, I’ve taken two doses of CBD oil and ibu, and all I want to do is go to bed and hopefully have a night of sleep that is moderately less agonizing than last night was.

Besides, twenty-seven straight days on the treadmill is a pretty good record, no? And if I’m feeling better tomorrow, maybe I’ll try and get an hour in with Chuck. No promises, mind you — much will depend on how I’m feeling. I don’t mind walking through a cold, but I feel so cruddy right now that I’m honestly afraid I would fall over on the damn treadmill. Health and safety first.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Ennui Level: Parisian

Why is it that every time I get hot, sweaty, tired, grumpy, and don’t want to be touched (aka any time I’ve come in from working in the garage), that is the EXACT moment that all the cats in the house decide that they have to interact with Mom in some way? Jasmine does her best to surgically attach herself to me, Jemma headbutts my hand until I pet her, Jessie does the same thing until I let her snuggle into my left arm, Jeremy starts whining about God knows what, and JJ shouts because he’s now a shouty old man.

Never mind — they’re cats, it’s what they do. In fitness news, my butt is definitely getting smaller and firmer, but I’m also developing some aches in my left thigh that make it difficult to sleep on that side (and that’s my favorite site). I’m thinking about investing in one of those roller thingies to see if I can work the knots out that way. The weight is continuing to drop incrementally, and I can now fit back into my black jeans, which is a win. More importantly, I can do 25 minutes on the treadmill at a stretch, which means the endurance is definitely coming back, yay!

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Tiredness Level: not even, and I really have to go to bed

We finished Stranger Things 3 tonight, and I think it’s the best season yet, which apparently runs counter to a lot of opinions out there. My reason for appreciating this season so much is that it captures the look and feel of 1985 to an amazing degree (I was in college this year, so yeah, I remember it quite well), plus I love the deepening of the relationships between the various characters, especially Eleven and Hopper. And hey, it brings back some very fun memories of wandering around malls, back before Amazon started delivering everything to your door.

I’m also kinda delighted with something that I just realized tonight — the quasi-romantic pairing of Hopper and Joyce is not only age equivalent, but Winona Ryder is actually four years older than David Harbour. Since I get a little sick of seeing actors cast with love interests twenty years their junior, this is a nice change of pace.

Oh, as for the title of this post, I need to get up tomorrow for an interview but I’m not really tired. This should go well!

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Sweat Level: positively awash

“Nic, you’re a romance writer. Why do you keep banging on about all this jewelry?”

I’m glad you asked. See, writing is my passion, and it’s what I’m going to be doing until the day I drop dead over my keyboard. That being said, my writing process involves various kinds of crafts, jewelry fabrication being one of them. I literally cannot “just write” — I’ve tried it, and I get so boxed up I can’t even find a glimmer of a way through the story. But if I split my time between writing and fabricating a pair of earrings, the writing goes great guns because while I’m working on the jewelry I’m also mentally going over the story, padding out places and whittling away at others. When I’m finished with the jewelry I take all of that back with me to the laptop and put it into my WIP.

Also, and I hate to be blunt here, but books make money across a period of time. A book I sell today won’t pay me royalties until three months from now (or one month if it’s Smashwords). Whereas a piece of jewelry will pay me today, if I can find a buyer. And to be honest things are kinda tight in Casa Cameron right now, so anyone who buys one of my pieces is literally helping to feed my cats. If you want to see more of my stuff (sterling and otherwise), please do check out my Etsy store — there are all kinds of nifty sparklies up there right now.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Irritation Level: snappish, but I don’t want to kill anyone. Yet.

Mrgh. Uterus-related details coming up, so bail if that squicks you.

Okay, so we’ve all established that I’m in perimenopause. And one of the joys of that particular state is that your period decides to show up whenever it damn well pleases. 28 days? Oh, no, my sweet summer child, your cycle is now 33 days. Except when it’s 21 days, which appears to be happening now, except that all I’m getting is a dark brick reddish smear, not even enough to warrant a pad. I don’t know if this is my uterus’s new way of heralding an oncoming period (which was supposed to start on the 17th), or this is the beginning of the end, or what. I do know that I’m retaining a bit of water, I’m definitely irritable, and I want to eat my weight in doughnuts. No, I’m not going to do that, but I want to.

Okay, yeah, I had one doughnut because Ramón brought them home. But screw it, it’s not like I have them every day. And I have to admit, it was kinda overly sweet. My tastes appear to be changing along with this new addiction to cardio.

Oh, the picture? Yeah, I spent the afternoon and evening in the garage making an amethyst and sterling bracelet (the bracelet roundrels have a hammered texture, which is why they look sparkly) when I wasn’t walking on the treadmill. So go me, I guess.

Time on Treadmill: 30 minutes.
Leg pain: a solid five, but that’s due to the incoming weather patterns screwing with my joints. CBD oil and ibu should calm everything down by the time I get to bed.

Welp, I knew it was going to happen at some point. One of these days I would spend the day doing stuff, forgetting all about my treadmill friend, and when it came time to take a shower and hit the hay (yes, I take showers at night. I have to — I’ve been drenched in sweat this last week well past midnight) I’d think, “Ya know, I’ve been good. I haven’t missed a day yet. Skipping it one time won’t kill me, and maybe I can make it up tomorrow.”

And it wouldn’t kill me, it really wouldn’t. But … I’d know that I missed it. And that would make me feel, not bad or guilty, but like there was a gap in my day. Like, have you ever had a day when you know you forgot to do something, but you couldn’t remember what? It’s like that.

So I got my shoes on, got on the treadmill (I think I’m going to start calling him Chuck) and banged out thirty minutes to the Femmedance playlist. And now I am showered and about to hit the hay, so g’night.

Time on Treadmill: 35 minutes.
Weight: lowest that I’ve been all year. Eat veggies with at least two meals a day, people. Trust me, it makes a difference.

It’s somewhat hot here in the clavicle of Texas, to the point where we got up to 100°F with a heat index of something like 112°F. What makes it worse is that we’ve been having a fair amount of rain (nothing like the Gulf Coast, of course — NOLA and the rest of Louisiana, you have my deepest sympathies) so it is muggy as hell here right now. We had yet another storm go by earlier in the evening, mainly off towards the west so we didn’t get much rain, and it cooled everything off a lot (thank you, Thor), but it left behind a buttload of moisture in the air. And since I was trying to cook hamburgers, kale chips, and sweet potato fries, that added even more heat to the kitchen. In case you haven’t already guessed, heat + moisture makes for a very soggy Nicola, as I sweat copiously at the drop of a hat.

So can someone tell my why, when I am sweaty, sticky, hot, cranky, and just want to get dinner MADE, dammit, that’s the time that 3/5ths of the J Crew decide that They Must Be With Mom? Jeremy was constantly under my feet, JJ was shout-meowing from the living room, and Jasmine tried to surgically attach herself to me yet again. Why? Why don’t they do this during the winter when I’m cold and would appreciate an extra bit of body heat? Why must they decide to pile on when all I want to do is climb into a cold shower and sluice down? Cats, I swear.

That being said, I’ve learned that when I’m hot and sweaty and just want to get the treadmill part over, it’s best if I leave off the podcast and switch over to music, specifically my Femmedance playlist. Say what you will about her, but Katy Perry has some extremely danceable hits, and sometimes that’s exactly what you need if you have to keep bopping along.

Oh, also, we got to Episode 3 of Stranger Things 3 tonight and my buddy Cinco and I agreed that Hopper could get it. You know he gives the best damn hugs.