Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “my.” Start your post with the word “My.” Bonus points if you end your post with “yours.”
My First Aid/CPR certification expired during Covid. They gave everyone an extension because classes couldn’t be held and this cannot be done on Zoom. But classes have resumed and I had to go. I need it to teach exercise to seniors.
I had to be in Sarnia, a city about 40-50 minutes away, at 8:30 in the damn morning. This is a major ordeal for me as I am a retired senior who has been home, like many others, A LOT the last year and half. I get up when I wake up.
I need to have two coffees to be able to drive. Then I need an hour to pee and poo so I can make it to town.
The program I volunteer in is a mental health program. I am not only a volunteer, I am a member. They sent me to a course teaching exercise because I deal with depression and anxiety and have found exercise to be essential. But I do have bouts of anxiety. I spent the days before this class anxious about having to go so early and drive in downtown traffic. OK, you can laugh, its only Sarnia but I live a very rural life.
My sleep was so bad I woke up a few times before 5:30. I was tired and anxious when I left at 7:35.
But I did it! It was not easy. She did not provide coffee; it was 8 hours of constant rushing through a usually two day course. Dry as dust. The only break a 40 minute lunch. Anyone who has taken a First Aid/CPR course will know its very physical. On the floor pumping dummy’s chests furiously for two minutes imagining what it would be like actually waiting for an ambulance. We did the choking and Heimlich maneuvers. I don’t know my own strength: I whacked my partner’s back too hard and really did the Heimlich moves instead of pretending. She said, “I wouldn’t want to get in a fight with you!” You got that right, sister! No didn’t say that, I apologized and really did feel bad because she was older than me.
I’m going to interject here and do my duty as an exercise coach. There were 4 women in the class, 3 were exercise instructors and one was a volunteer driver, all retired. The driver had a hard time getting down on and up from the floor. She is a very hardy farmer, probably does a lot of outside work, but when you get older you need a different kind of exercise. You need range of motion for your joints and strength in muscles not used when just walking. You want to able to get up if you fall down. And you need balance training because when you get older its hard to catch yourself and you do fall down. Then you have an exercise in humility. Our coach says things like, “you want to be able to get up off the toilet by yourself” You wouldn’t hear that in a Peleton work out.
Ok that’s my spiel. Its my job.
This morning I woke up at 5:30 again without the alarm. I got up to pee but went back to bed and slept in until 8:30! And I’m feeling so good that I did it! I got through that day and I had only one answer wrong on the test. I got 99%! That surprised me because by around 3:00 my brain was shutting down.
SoC: I just got a text that my sister is at the beach at the end of my road. I’m going down.
Yesterday I left early so I left a mess and dishes. Of course last night I didn’t do dishes or clean up I was so tired. But I am going to leave this mess and go to the beach.
I’m going to have to give up on the bonus point.
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