Complaints Archives - Coffee and Sweats

May 11, 2017 by: Nusrat

April Showers or When it Rains it Pours

Thank Goodness it’s finally May. It’s my favorite month because it’s my birth month and the weather is officially beautiful all over the planet. And it’s really about time for all those April showers to bring me some May Flowers.

Let me tell you how much rain I got in April.

Rambo was laid off. He left for work in the morning, had meetings scheduled all throughout the day, was told he was laid off and a security officer escorted him out of the building. Just like that. He was back home by 10 am. I didn’t believe him when he called to tell me. We both sat in the kitchen in shock because he just started this job 5 months ago.

Then there were the thunderstorms. I love Texas, but if it’s not tornado’s, its thunderstorms. Thunderstorms with golf ball sized hail. A portion of our backyard fence blew down. We need to replace the entire thing because it was barely standing before the storms. The insurance adjuster came out and checked out the roof too. Turns out we need to replace the entire roof as well. Insurance would cover some of it, but after applying our deductible it was not nearly enough.

Our fridge died. Just in time because you know nothing else is going wrong right now. The fridge is only 3 years old. Serves me right for buying the cheapest fridge at the store and one that was discontinued. Of course, it was no longer under warranty. So we bought another warranty and had a technician come out and fix it. He diagnosed a new compressor was needed. He’d have to order the part and be back when the part came in. By this time every single thing in our fridge was rotten. We threw out the entire contents of our freezer and fridge, then wiped the shelves down clean. It took four separate visits from a technician to finally fix that damn fridge.

The opposite of my life right now.

The hardest part of all of this was living without a fridge. We ate takeout every day, not something you want to do when you have just lost your main source of income. Also, with my hundreds of food allergies, there aren’t too many places I can order food from. Try finding a place that serves food that is free of grains, dairy, soy, corn, egg, almonds, and banana. Even salads didn’t make the cut. So basically I starved. I didn’t have food at home. and I couldn’t eat food outside the home which resulted in me losing six pounds! Maybe that’s my first positive for this month?

So as of the first week of May – Rambo is still not employed, the fence is still down and the roof has not been fixed, but the fridge is cold and I’ve learned that I can survive on just one avocado a day.

Praying for some beautiful flowers in May!

February 11, 2016 by: Nusrat

Ultimate Gift Guide

After Christmas, it’s Valentine’s day. Then Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, there’s also Birthday’s & Anniversaries. That’s a lot of gift giving. Gift guides are thoughtful gift ideas for what to buy your significant other. Some are decent, but most of them suck. After researching some gift suggestions, I’ve come up with the Ultimate List of what NOT to buy me. Not for Valentine’s day. Not for my birthday. Never.

Scented Candle

This is the perfect gift for a female you don’t care about. Give this to your co-worker. Do not give it to me. If I tried lighting a scented candle in my house, I guarantee you the house will burn down within twenty minutes. Little boys and lit candles don’t go together. As soon as they see flames they feel the need to run and touch it. (Also, why the fireplace gets no love). Of course, I could place the candle somewhere high up on a counter where they can’t reach. But soon enough there will be a plastic ball, a foam ball, a toddler sized Darth Vader stuffed toy or a light-saber. There will be something and it will be airborne and knock that candle over. And we will be homeless.

Box of Herbal Teas

Who thought of this? Who would ever want herbal tea for a present? That’s groceries. Placing tea bags in a wooden box does not make it a gift. Ain’t nobody got time to sit back with a cup of herbal tea. Give me coffee or GTFO.

A Cashmere Scarf

Sounds like a luxurious little gift but I would not be able to keep the cashmere separated from the lollipops and baby boogers that are the constants in my life right now. Let’s revisit this in twenty years.

Gift Card

Giving a gift card is like saying “Hey I don’t know you that well but I’m too lazy to learn more, so here’s a gift card to a random store. I don’t really care if you end up getting your gift or not”. If anything, just hand me some cash and drop me off in front of the store. Or, forget the cash and hand me all the gift cards I’ve collected over the years and drop me off at the mall for a few days.

Flowers

I don’t mind flowers. They’re pretty and smell nice. But only if you present them to me trimmed and in a vase full of water with the sachet of flower food already dissolved in. And then you throw them out a week later and clean out that gunky vase. Only then.

Now here is what I do want.

Chocolate. And Silence.

Place a box of chocolates in front of me. It can be a chocolate bar you got from the check out lane – I don’t discriminate. Then back away slowly. Grab the kids and leave me alone for a long time.

Best. Gift. Ever.

November 25, 2015 by: Nusrat

Thankful For Mom Friends

I hate awkward pauses. Especially ones where a table full of people are looking at me waiting for an answer and I got nothing.

So awkward.

Still nothing.

Thanksgiving break brings old friends around. Everyone is home for the holiday so it’s a great time to meet and catch up. Sitting at a bar we used to frequent often, I was having a great time with some of my old college friends and people I hung out with before I got married. I admit that after moving out of state right after the wedding, I hadn’t done a good job of keeping in touch with friends. So this was a fun night for me, several of these faces I hadn’t seen in years.

Some of my friends had new jobs or had recently become homeowners. Some of us were single, recently engaged or newlyweds. But only one of us had kids, though.

That would be me.

Maybe I should have prepared a little so I wouldn’t be so caught off guard. I was just excited to have a few hours to myself carrying a cute little purse instead of a diaper bag.

So it was inevitable that at some point, someone would turn to me and ask,

“So what’s new with you?”

The truth was there was nothing new with me. One of the worst things about seeing old friends is having absolutely nothing new to tell them.

I wanted to say that I’m a stay at home mom. I wear the same pair of jeans every timeI leave the house. I wear my hair in a big messy bun because I do not have the time or energy to blow dry it.

Work? No, I’m not working right now. Well, I’m technically working all the damn time but I don’t think they would understand what I meant by that.

Travel? It’s hard enough to go down the street to the grocery store with two young kids, you think I’m about to do some international flight with them? Do you have any idea how much STUFF these kids need? No Caribbean vacations coming up for me anytime soon.

“Oh, you know..nothing new.”

That was my lame answer. Nothing new. Nothing exciting. The fact that my toddler tells me he needs his diaper changed the moment he poops instead of sitting on it and smooshing it in, is the best thing that’s happened to me lately. He is so ready for potty training! That’s exciting, right?

And suddenly I longed for my Mom friends. I had joined a Mom’s group when I moved. I had no friends and I found a group of women who had babies born the same year my son was. Mom friends sympathize with every detail of your labor and the c-section you didn’t really want. They get how tired you are. They don’t judge your unwashed, frizzy hair. Mom friends can talk at length about leaky boobs and sleep regression.

Thankful for Mom Friends

I opted to drive home instead of moving on to the next bar and I thought about how much I had changed since the last time I was here. I had essentially traded in my cocktails for coffee and my designer jeans for sweatpants. I was the same person but so much more blessed than I ever was before.

I was thankful for the child-free friends who still make an effort to keep in touch with me. And now, I was thankful for the awesome women who also have no clue what they’re doing, as they go through this motherhood journey with me. It’s difficult not to compare myself to my old friends, though. I’ve traded in promotions for potty training and put my career on pause. It was the career pause that I had the most difficulty with. So much of our self-identity is measured by job titles, promotions, and raises. There was a tangible result of all the hard work you put in.

I get home past the kid’s bedtime and look at them snuggled in bed. I was so thankful for the two babies that changed me more than I could have ever imagined. And without any hesitation I realized.

Some pauses are not awkward at all.

November 15, 2015 by: Nusrat

I’m Scared of CrossFit – pt 2 My first Work Out

You can find I’m Scared of CrossFit – Part 1 here.

The last time I had signed my name on a form without reading any of it, I was in labor. I was exhausted, in pain and wanted Rambo to just STFU. This time, I was in a Crossfit box.

My first CrossFit workout was the most I had exercised in years….or ever. And it actually didn’t start off so bad.

I was one of three new joiners about to begin Elements training, where for six classes we would learn the basic form and techniques fundamental to CrossFit workouts. It was my first introduction to weight training. The coach taught me how to deadlift and power clean.

I know what to do with this now

She made me do these moves over and over again until my form was correct. It was the kind of personalized attention I wasn’t used to getting at other gyms, even when I had paid for a trainer. She was invested in helping me learn, with plenty of patience and encouragement.

We also did squats, ring rows and lots and lots of lunges back and forth across the box. I was determined to kill this workout. I was determined to look as hot as everyone else in this place. Just when the 15lb bar I was lunging with started feeling like 500lbs and my thighs were starting to give in, I heard her say:

“OK now you are ready to start the work out”

via GIPHY

I thought the warm up was the workout.

I walk over to her standing by the white board where she had written out the following:

Run 400m

15,12,9: Air squats, Ring Rows, Sit Ups

Run 400m

This was another way of saying “Run once around the entire building. Then do 15 Air Squats, 15 Ring Rows and 15 Sit Ups, followed immediately by 12 Air squats, 12 Ring Rows, 12 Sit Ups then 9 Air Squats, 9 Ring Rows, 9 Sit Ups and another lap around the building.

And we would be timed.

I didn’t have time to throw a tantrum because the other two guys in the class had already taken off running. So I ran after them. And you know what?

It was horrible. Because I don’t run. Not inside. Not outside. Not after a bus I’m about to miss.

Also, there was an Indian restaurant two doors down from the CrossFit box and as I’m running past it gasping for air, I’m sucking in the delicious Indian food aroma and all I want to do is run in there and shove some Naan in my face. But I resist and I want to cry and I hate life right now.

Smells SO good

Back inside, the air squats and the ring rows weren’t so bad. It was the sit ups that killed me. They were real sit ups and having to lie down and sit all the way back up and touch the ground between my feet made me dizzy. Somewhere in the haziness of it all, I could hear Rambo shouting words of encouragement. You know every fight scene in a movie where the guy gets punched in the face and everything he sees is blurry and in slow-mo? That’s where I was.

My last lap around the building I was feeling all kinds of sorry for myself. Why was I so unfit? Why did I marry a man who likes to wake up at 6 am on weekends and go for a run? I bet that Naan is really soft and warm. I turned the corner and Rambo was there cheering me on.

My time was 12 minutes and 13 seconds. I was not dead. I high fived a few people. I took a sip of water which was a bad idea because it immediately made me nauseous. The coach wrote my name and time up on the white board. Amazingly my time wasn’t that bad compared to everyone else’s.

I had to sit down for a moment and not talk. I was pretty sure if I opened my mouth just a little bit, I would throw up. And people had just seen me run – I didn’t need any more embarrassment in my life right now.

Rambo on the other hand was talking a lot. He was talking about monthly fees, and budgets and how proud he was of me. I was exhausted, in pain and although I love him for being there right at the end when I wanted to die, I really wished he would STFU.

So I signed whatever I had to, to get out of there. During the car ride home my dizziness subsided enough to read the receipt in my hand.

I had just signed up for three months of CrossFit.

September 16, 2015 by: Nusrat

I’m Scared of CrossFit

Nothing kills your workout like getting paged over the gym speaker system for you to return to the day care center to come get your child.

You know what I do in that situation? Just pick up my boogie-nose-almost-hyperventilating-from-crying-so-hard-child and drive straight back home.

Maybe I’ll try to work out again next month.

So my ten minutes of exercise a month (five of which were spent fiddling with the treadmill/FitBit/earphones), haven’t been too productive. This has gone on for some time. Rambo works out every day. I work out never.

Then Rambo does something unexpected. He up and joined a CrossFit gym.

I knew nothing about CrossFit. Except that they’re like a cult and once you go CrossFit you don’t stop talking about it and people begin to avoid you.

He laughed off my warnings and diligently worked out. Within two weeks I noticed a change in him. I don’t know what it was. Was it confidence? Muscles? He looked more in shape. How does that happen in just two weeks? I was curious enough to join him for a class.

I went along to his box. I didn’t know that CrossFit locations were called boxes.

Very appropriate. For a gym that is more expensive than the fancy pants gym with the smoothie bar, hair salon, indoor/outdoor water park and steam sauna, this ‘box’ looked like an empty warehouse. With all the contraptions hanging from the ceiling and torture devices laying on the ground, it looked like the kind of place a kidnapper would take his victim.

CrossFit Torture Box

I noticed not a single clock, just a timer. As someone who is constantly checking the time, this panicked the crap out of me. The loud thumping heavy metal music gave me heart palpitations. The weights clanging loudly on the floor from being dropped gave me some serious anxiety. I’m used to soothing sound machines and whispering while the babies sleep. Oh and why were the doors wide open with industrial sized fans in two corners? It’s summer in Texas and I was in a warehouse full of sweaty people with no air conditioning.

This place was my own personal hell.

But then I noticed the bods. Shredded, muscled up, glistening with sweat bods. No, they were not supermodels. They were regular people. Friendly people – after the class every single one of them came up and introduced themselves to me. Some were dripping with sweat and it was a little awkward trying not to get their bodily fluids on me, but they were all smiles. Yes, almost cult-like.

Those people are not being held captive

I could not get over how fit everyone was. I have had memberships at so many gyms before and the people working out in those places do not look like this. It was the super toned bodies of all the women (and men) in that box that did it. I wanted to look like them. Despite the panic & the anxiety of being completely out of my comfort zone – I signed up for CrossFit.

Typical self-destructive behavior or the best thing I’ve ever done for myself?

Coming up in Pt 2 – My First CrossFit Workout, or Trying not to Throw Up/Die in Public