It's Alive! The Return of Cranky Fitness?

Wait... I thought I killed this thing!

It makes no sense at all to bring Cranky Fitness back from the dead. No one reads blogs anymore. And of all the blogs people could be not-reading, this one seems an unlikely candidate for resurrection. 

But on the other hand...

I still have an obsession with health and wellness: I want more! I want to be strong and disease-free and live a good long life full of ridiculous adventures. While at the same time, I remain stubbornly slothful and hedonistic. So I want hacks and shortcuts! But not false promises and hype. How to sort it all out? For me, it's still a work in progress.

I also have thoughts on a whole lot of other subjects too, spinning around in my head relentlessy, like the wheel of the worlds fittest hamster. It seems I may need an outlet.

I know that should I decide to keep posting, I'll probably just be talking to myself. But that's ok! As I totter off into my Golden Years I figure I'll be doing more of that anyway. Better here than in line at Stop and Shop.

So for those brave enough to Read More, let's start with a brief update, and then move to possible plans for the future. Including a Cranky Conspiracy with a secret hidden agenda!

So, What's New With Me?

Here are some highlights, future details forthcoming.

We Moved to Spain. (Half-Time for Now).

We have an apartment in Valencia, an amazing city where people love to blow things up, build monumental art installations and then burn them all down again, take three-hour lunches and march in endless colorful parades. Poor Spaniards, they don't have automatic weapons for random mass shootings so they have to find excitement where they can. 

Yep, they burned the pretty lady to the ground.

We are very happy when we are in Spain, yet we haven't quite committed to living there for the rest of our lives. Many of our friends who live in the U.S. think we are crazy for overreacting to current political events, while many of our friends in Spain think we are crazy for not having moved there full time already. As we fly back and forth several times a year, at least the "crazy" part is one thing everyone agrees on. 

I Got Thyroid Cancer and Had a Thyroidectomy in Spain

 

image: oldbooks

 

Which, my Spanish not being all that great, made for some very amusing stories! Well, maybe they weren't so amusing at the time.

 

Oh Yeah, and I Ended Up With Hypoparathyrodism

What the heck is hypoparathyroidism?  Well, in short, it's when your parathyroids refuse to do their job, which, who knew--turns out to be important. Mine have been on strike since the surgery six months ago, refusing to emit even a trickle of parthyroid hormones. They got squished or something, traumatized in some way, got their feelings hurt very badly.

I know you just can't wait for an exhaustive list of my symptoms and complaints! Wait... where are you all going?....

Well, perhaps another day then.

But you know how you sign all those forms before surgery that say there's a teeny tiny chance that bad things might happen, but only in less than one percent of cases? Not you, obviously, ha ha ha! And so of course you sign the papers. Better than cancer. But still. Damn. That's not the top 1% I wanted to be in.

 

So What's Gonna Be The Deal With Cranky Fitness?

Hopefully, some posts will appear! That will make for a nice change from the past decade or so. For how long, I have no idea. 

Also, if keep this thing going, I'm considering a transition to include a broader range of topics, so I don't get bored. And also so I can make a few observations about the differences, both pro and con, of living in Spain versus the United States, and offer some advice to anyone out there contemplating it.

This may or may not involve a Rebranding. Which is a sort of presumptious notion, considering the Cranky Fitness brand is not exactly a thing. I promise I'll handle it every bit as carefully and successfully as Cracker Barrel just did. 

Tentative new title: La Vida Cranky.  I just bought the domain name for $11, so damn, you know I must be serious. 

Anyway, we'll see. 

And What, Pray Tell, Is the Cranky Conspiracy of Which I Speak? 

Shhh.... it's just between us, okay? Those few who got this far into the post. The scant remaining Most Awesome Blog Friends Ever.

The thing is, I just finished writing a novel. That makes two of them! And yet, shockingly enough, agents and publishers do not seem to be interested in taking a chance on a 65 year old author with no platform who writes quirky books that do not fall into neat categories. Were said author to write as well as say, Virginia Woolf or Jane Austen or Margaret Atwood, that might knock down some barriers to entry, but alas, she does not.

 

Who's Afraid of Crabby McSlacker? No one, apparently.

On the other hand, these novels aren't bad. The plots are suspenseful, the characters three-dimensional, the prose is not entirely cringey. Beta readers have given quite positive reviews, of the "I stayed up way past my bedtime to find out what happened!" type. 

But yeah, all that and 78 cents will buy you a postage stamp. Still, I can't help thinking there are at least a few people out there who might spend a diverting few hours with my characters, and I wanna find them.

So here's where you all, all three or four of you if I'm lucky, come in. If I turn on the lights, can we make the place looked a bit lived-in for a while?

I need to look a little more like a writer again. And one way to do that is to, well, write? In public? And if any of you leave comments, it would look like the blog still exists, and it would mean the world to me.  Plus, I miss you all!

So is there anyone left from the old days? I'd love to hear what you're up to! Or did anyone randomly google in and want to leave some new spam and see how long it takes me to delete it? That works too! (BTW, when I finally checked in the blog there were over 4,700 unmoderated comments glaring at me reproachfully, so apologies to anyone legit who got lost in there when I deleted the whole crapload of them at once).