Chinese Bats are Scarier than Vampire Bats Review for October 2020

Are you tired of this yet?

I am.

Are you mad yet? 

I am. 

Are you still listening to the CDC and the government to tell you what they think you should do?

I'm not. 

When we finished September, Florida Governor DeSantis reopened Florida to Phase 3, which banned local governments from fining or otherwise punishing citizens for not wearing masks. To circumvent this wrinkle, the County decided to fine businesses instead. Now they will fine the business if one of their employees are not wearing a mask at all times while in the location. 

I realized a few days before September ended that, historically speaking, Gate River Run opens up for registration on October 1st and I'd yet to hear anything from them. I did some sleuthing and found out nothing. No updates on their website, nothing on their Facebook page either. Hmmm... I also checked on Celebration Half Marathon (the only race I'm a streaker for), and apparently it was full-on CANCELLED in June.  

I really just don't know if there will be ANY actual races for the rest of the year. And if there are... do I want to do them? I think it's just time for me to accept that there are NO races to be done. My 2020 is a complete wash, and I'll start looking forward to 2021. 

On a national level, President Trump and Melania Trump both tested positive for Covid on October 2, with him returning to the White House after a 3-day stay at Walter Reed. 

During this time, the howling of snark and hate from the Left was obnoxious. People were pissed that, "Oh, he gets the GOOD drugs, because he's the President and can afford it, while us 'little peons' have to suffer!!" The Party of Tolerance and Love wished death threats upon him over and over. 

(Yes, I know this is satire, but come on, man, it's funny!)

On October 7th, the Vice-Presidential Debate between Harris and Pence was held live (there was a tiny audience, and the two candidates sat 12 feet apart, utilizing the Magical Plexiglass of Safety). He demolished every single point she made, but of course, all anyone could talk about was that a fly landed in Pence's hair. 

Julie Nolke released her third "Explaining the Pandemic to My Past Self" video on YouTube. Again, it's getting more political than funny, but I'm nothing if not a persistent "completer" so I put it up on the blog, since I shared Parts 1 and 2. 

On October 9th, Speaker Pelosi announced she would attempt to create a "Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office" by using the 25th Amendment. This would give power to Congress to evaluate the health and mental stability of the President. Idiots on the Left began drooling over the idea of booting Trump with this trick, but many of us on the Right have a clearer idea of what may be happening... stick with me...

Anyone who has seen Biden in the past 3 years has noticed a steep and drastic decline in his speaking abilities, his mobility issues, and his physical abilities. 2020 Biden is NOT the same Biden as 2016 Biden. This is also why I believe he (ahem... "he") chose Kamala as his running mate. Soon, Biden won't be fit enough to lead this country (in my opinion, he's not now, but still....) My belief is that at some point after January 18, 2023 (which would be 2 years + 1 day), Biden will, with 'great personal sadness', finally acknowledge his physical and mental decline, and, for the good of the Country, choose to step down and turn the Presidency over to Kamala. Why the weird timeframe, you ask? Well, there's some strict wording that goes along with the 25th Amendment. In Section 1, it simply states that if a President is removed from office, dies, or resigns, the Vice President immediately becomes President (not "Acting President"). Okay, so why is that a big deal? Well, let's look at the 22nd Amendment. In this amendment, a person is limited to being elected twice, or once, if they have already served more than two years  as President. So... 2 years + 1 day will mean that she will serve less than two years as President if Biden steps down, thus paving the way for her to be elected as President twice (serving a full 10-year term). Not that I think she has a chance in hell of being elected to a full term (since she couldn't even win her own state in the Democratic Primary election, but...), but I won't put anything past Democrats at this point. They play dirty.  

Of course, Biden has to WIN first, right?

Back home, I did a Doobert run on October 11th, running a cutie patootie dog from Lake City to Ocala. And thanks to a "Come to Jesus" moment with Hubby, I started finally hitting the gym again (my mental state is very thankful for that talk). 

About this time in October (I forgot the date...), a bombshell of a discovery was announced - Data from Hunter Biden's laptop was shared. Apparently, last year, he took his computer to Mac Isaac to have his data recovered. He never came back to pick it up. After 90 days, Isaac treated the laptop as "abandoned" and looked through the laptop. Data recovered included porn, sexual videos and photographs, proof of drug use, and multiple emails tying his father (one Joseph Biden, aka the old man running for president) to various scandals in China. Isaac made copies of the hard drive, and turned over at least one copy to the FBI, while keeping multiple copies to himself (for his safety). The FBI sat on it for a year, until Isaac handed over another copy to Rudy Giuliani. As with all things Biden, it was downplayed in the Mainstream Media as a "last gasp attempt" to get Trump reelected, and many argued that it wasn't relevant because "we aren't electing his son!"  (*Edited to add, that, as of today - January 17, 2021 - there is still NO reference to Hunter Biden in the "2020 Timeline in the United States" Wikipedia page. NONE.)

On October 16th, USA tops over 8 million cases (not deaths, only cases). 

On October 18th, Hubby and I had an IKEA adventure. I was supposed to have done a second Doobert yesterday, but it was cancelled. Hubby, thinking he would do the run with me, took the WRONG day off anyway, so we rented a minivan to pick up our desk parts (finally!) from the IKEA in Orlando. Stress, hilarity, and adventure ensued. 

On October 19th, one of the first challenges to the surge in possible Mail-In voting was denied. The Republican Party in Pennsylvania requested to limit Mail-In voting, on the grounds that the State Court changed voting rules, which can only be changed by the State Legislature, AND by pushing the time frame to ACCEPT Mail-In ballots days after Election Day (I think it was over a week that PA could allow more ballots to be received in the mail.) 
 

On October 21st, I received GREAT news! Gasparilla is ON, baby!!! There's a hell of a lot of restrictions, like fewer racers, social distancing, masks, and the whole 9 yards, but man! It feels great to have a race on the calendar again! (ETA: Future Lazy here, live from December with some sad news... Gasparilla is still on, but it has been moved to May 2021. I'm not sure yet how I feel about this... Yay that it's still an in-person event, but boo... it's gonna be hot!)

The next day, though, I got heart-stopping news... Mom had Covid. She messaged me on Facebook that she tested positive. She said she was "pretty sick" for a couple of weeks, but thought it was the flu. She felt like crap when she went to the doctor, still thinking she had the flu, and by the time she got the results (October 21), she was already beginning to feel better. For information, my mother is 68, lightly active, and now skinny after being obese for decades. In a word, she's awesome. 

On October 24th, we all went and voted. 

We would have done Mail-In voting, but our ballots were lost (ahem... stolen, or just not delivered) at some point after being scanned at the Post office. (Pro Tip: if you haven't signed up for USPS Informed Delivery, you need to go do it right now! It gives you pictures of what mail is expected to be delivered that day, so if you're waiting for a letter or package, you'll know it's on the way.) I'm disappointed to say that our daughter chose to vote for Biden. When we asked why, she said that she didn't like Trump's handling of Covid, and that he's taking away Trans and LGBT rights. 

I looked at Hubby, and he looked at me, both of us dumbfounded, and then saddened. She has found a large group of friends online, and I fear that many of them are extremely liberal-leaning individuals who, like many in their 20s, don't do research and just parrot what others tell them on TikTok. So as to not get on my soapbox, I chose to just let it go. I could give her examples all day long of why she's wrong, but right now, she values their input moreso than some Middle-Age Conservative Mommy... I just hope that Trump wins, or in the off-chance that Biden wins, I hope everything we fear that the Democrat Party has been threatening to do, doesn't actually happen. 

I finally did the Bridge of Lions virtual 5k on October 25th (only 4 months late). It took me over an hour (to be fair, I detoured to take photos of an alligator), but felt good to be out there again!

July 11th... October 25th... eh, whatever!

In other election news, SCOTUS decided on October 26th that Wisconsin cannot count any mail-in ballots received after Election Day. Also on this day, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed (52-48) as the new Associate Supreme Court Justice (the third to be seated by President Trump, after Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh). 

Liberals over the past weeks have, as usual, been smearing her and attacking her and her family, in the news and on social media. One of the more obnoxious ones is that they basically adopted black Haitian children to be "saviors" or to simply use as props. For instance, this race-hustling asshole Ibram X. Kendi said this last month:

On October 29th, the US reached 9 million cases of Covid (again, not deaths, just cases). I also was in the office for a few hours, to cover Temp Checks and do some filing. Putting on actual jeans felt weird. 

 
On October 30th, in Texas, a huge "caravan" of Trump supporters escorted the Biden Bus out of New Braunfels.  

 

At about :06 in the video above, you can see that the bus is in the center lane, while there is a white truck with a big Trump flag, and a black truck behind, pacing the bus (with plenty of space in-between). At some point (the video from YouTube is actually multiple videos), you'll see that the Biden Bus has moved over to the right lane, in front of the black truck, and at :30, a white SUV is trying to "shove" into the space between the bus and the truck. The black truck does not move to allow the SUV into the space, even though the SUV is clearly in the wrong. At one point (4:20 in the video below), the SUV forcefully moves over, causing the black truck to swerve and over-correct, hitting the side of the SUV. The SUV drives on like nothing happened! (The black truck DID call in the police report, with the plates and description of the SUV). Oh, and the best part... the SUV was being driven by a Biden/Harris staffer. 

Liberals and the Media being what they are, they made this entire event some sort of MadMax situation, alleging that the Trump supporters ere surrounding the bus in an attempt to run it off the road. Later that day, it was announced that the FBI was going to launch an investigation into the "hateful incident." After it was shown multiple times on Social Media that the SUV (and the Biden/Harris staffer) was at fault, the story quickly disappeared. 

So... we move into November. There's already talks of "cancelling" Thanksgiving. People who are saying they'll still have Thanksgiving are being called heartless for potentially killing their grandparents and loved ones. People are virtue-signalling already, stating that they love their grandparents enough to not invite them to dinner, even though they may suffer alone in a hellhole of a nursing home and possibly die. I plan on eating Thanksgiving with my mother and my family. Any one of us could be hit by a bus tomorrow; if we are all healthy, why would I ever think that it's smarter to skip a family get-together? 

Come to Jesus Heart to Heart with Hubby

Now, this may come as a surprise to some folks, but...

I'm lazy. 

I can be apathetic. 

I have no willpower.

I lack self-discipline.

This is one of the reasons that I would sign up for at least one race a month; it gave me something to focus on... a carrot of sorts. 

Back in March, when it was "15 days to flatten the curve" (don't get me started...), I used it as an excuse to just chill. No gym. No running. No laundry. No cleaning house. No grocery shopping. Just... chill. This idea was partially also driven by the fact that my weekly parkruns stopped on March 12th and Planet Fitness closed on March 20th. 

And then we rolled into April and everything stayed closed. Spring races I'd signed up for were either cancelled or changed to virtual races, which I don't like to do. Between March 21st and May 30th, I went for a walk or run a big whopping seven times. And three of those were for the races that swapped over to virtual. 

Screenshot from My Garmin account

So... I can't go to the gym... why can't I go for a run on the treadmill? I mean, I used to be on that treadmill religiously every Tuesday night after work. Why not now? Well, because I'm lazy!! I think I did the Shake Your Honeymaker virtual run on the treadmill, but it didn't get used for 4 months after that! I started using it again in August, when I signed up for a virtual half-marathon. Yes... I know I hate virtuals. I'll get back to this soon. 

Soon, spring melted into summer and I just didn't want to go outside, even at 7am. I didn't want to deal with a community full of liberal snowflake assholes who would scream at me for not wearing a mask. I didn't want to get disgustingly sweaty and have to take a shower as soon as I got home. I just wanted to get up and sit at my desk and live vicariously through Facebook and Twitter.

 

Because of my inactivity, muscles that never hurt before gave me major problems (from which I've still not yet recovered, really). I've lost every gain I'd gotten over the past year or so. My little baby tushie I was cultivating is gone. My arms are so flabby, even Hubby noticed at dinner one night (he told me later that he thought to himself, "oh man, she's lost all of her gains...") 

And suffice it to say, I'm the fattest I've ever been in my life, at 245 pounds. 

After being jerked around with "work at home for one more week," "oh, just one more week," "two more weeks, please be patient" emails from work, we were truly ready to return to work in May. And then we got jerked around again and were basically told "yeah, just stay home until we say come back." That was a big blow to my psyche. I'm the kind of person who needs a deadline (or a carrot...) This stringing along is wreaking havoc on my day to day life, adding to the general malaise that I'm feeling, I think. 

County offices reopened in June, and I worked a few hours a day in person, but after a few weeks, and when case numbers began to rise again, my boss said I should just stay home again. Yay, more indefinite-ness. 

So at this point, I'm feeling useless. Why bother getting out of bed? Why take a shower? Why eat well? Why go for a walk? Why give a shit? (Looking back at it now, I was in a pretty bad place, honestly). 

To try to kick myself in the ass, I signed up for a virtual half-marathon. Yes, I hate virtuals. Yes, I've said it a lot over the past 7 months. But I needed something to strive towards. So over  two weeks at the beginning of August, I put in the work and walked one mile a day. I felt better. I had a task I could check off. 

And then I earned my medal. And I stopped walking again. I didn't do anything again for 6 weeks, when I did a virtual for Arc. 

Oh, and to make matters worse, I didn't know that Planet Fitness reopened. AFTER MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND!! They've been open for months and I had no idea... Although. Let's be honest... if it was open, was I actually gonna go at this point??

So that brings us to October.

One night, I don't know how or why, but my dam broke. I was lying in bed with Hubby and he said something, and I kind of just unloaded on him. I'm unhappy with the situation I'm in. I don't like this floating from day to day type crap. I don't like that I'm sitting so much and I hurt at the end of the day. I don't like that I've eaten more fast food in the past 6 months than I had in the past 2 years. He just lay there with me, stroking my shoulders, or stroking my hair, listening to me vent, and then he said the most glorious thing that any man could have said... he said "What can I do to help you?" 

I told him that I needed his encouragement, but not a gung-ho PE teacher type attitude. I wanted him to be proud of me when I made good choices, but to not scold me when I made bad ones. If I felt I was being "forced" to go to the gym, I wouldn't do it. If I felt I was "getting in trouble" for eating a cookie, I'd eat 10 of them. 

Between the two of us in this impromptu brainstorming session, I made some plans. I would do the following:

1. Hang my workout clothes in the bathroom where I will see them all day long, every time I go in there.
2. Always have my gym water bottle in the freezer (half-full) so I can grab it and go.
3. Go to the gym (or to the park) every day that I have to take him to work early in the morning (he generally works at 7am). 

In turn he would do the following:

1. Applaud my attempt every day.
2. NOT chastise me for not going to the gym/park, nor chastise me for poor eating choices.
3. Grab my ass multiple times a day :) 

One other thing I added to this plan was a small package of star stickers. Remember how awesome you felt in school when you got a gold star on your addition homework or your book report? Yeah. I'm that kind of person. Sure... I could put smiley faces or sad faces on my calendar, but come on... stars!

So as you can see, since having this Come to Jesus moment with myself at the beginning of October, I have been to the gym 7 times, and I've gone to the park 2 times. I'm absolutely ecstatic with that progress. If I can build on this progress moving forward, I think I'm in a good spot. 

What does my typical day look like now? Well, I get up at 6:30 with hubby and get dressed while he's in the bathroom. I put on my gym clothes (so nicely laid out or hanging in the bathroom for me) then put on my sneaks after doing "morning bathroom stuff." I grab my (already frozen) water bottle from the freezer, my pre-filled the night before bottle of OJ and we head out the door. I drop him off at work and then drive to the gym. I do 10 minutes on the elliptical to warm up, then do a set of 10-12 different upper body weight machines to work the left side of my body, and then do 20 minutes on the ARC trainer while watching one episode of a sitcom on Netflix (right now, I'm watching Community.) Once I'm done, I pick up a soda at Wawa across the street, head home and take a shower. I'm usually at my desk at home by 9am at the latest, checking my email in my bathrobe. On Sundays, instead of the gym, I go do a 5k at the local park, mimicking a parkrun. Sundays are very peaceful at the park because there aren't many people there (it's much busier by the time I leave at 8:30).

And how do I feel? Physically, I feel amazing. Like I said, I'm focusing all of my workouts on upper body weight lifting, especially because the left side of my body (lats, pecs, biceps, triceps) are very tight and cause me pain on a daily basis. By the end of the day, I'm tired and worn out, which means that I'll sleep well, which is a huge bonus. 

Mentally, I feel in a better place. I feel purposeful again. There's a reason to get out of bed, besides to fight with assholes on Social Media and watch YouTube (oh, okay... and to go to work...). At the end of the day, I know it's time to prep for the morning (fill the OJ, freeze the water, charge the earbuds, lay out the clothes), which gives me a task to check off (maybe I should get a gold star for that too).

To wrap up, here's a bunch of memes that I want to share, but I don't have any logical place for them in the narrative above. Enjoy!!