Twelve weeks

Holy mother of gawd. I got a letter in the mail today saying that the AIDS ride is a mere 12 weeks away.

Twelve weeks.

I have twelve weeks to get up to riding 100 miles a day. Day after day.

My dinner tonight was a handful of hot tamales and a few slices of plastic-wrapped cheese.

I'm so stressed out at work my body feels like a giant rock. Everything aches. My neck, my shoulders, my head... I swear someone has a voodoo doll of my likeness filled with pins. I constatnly get these pricking sensations all over my body. My hands occasionally go numb, especailly my right hand. A lot. Everytime I look up from my desk, someone is heaping on another great idea over my head, because it would look nice and what's another 15 minutes in my daily workflow?

Another 15 minutes is heaping guilt that I actually took a lunch today. Saying "I can't" makes me look obstinate, like I'm not a team player, and who wants to be that person?

But after several weeks of this increasing physical discomfort, I don't know that I can be this person.

I have to get out and ride. And not eat Hot Tamales. And maybe find a different job, one where I don't feel like dying/killing myself all the time while subtly being accused of not being a team-player in the process. There is no I in team. There is no I in me, either.

I am a drone.

I would so go to another country and become a Buddhist monk if I could just take my kids and live oppulently.

Twelve weeks. Almost a hundred miles a day. Seven days.

Gawd I need some Advil.