Things so rarely go as planned.

The new elliptical?

Broke. A mere 20 hours after that picture was taken.

I was seriously frustrated and wanted little more than to be 3 years old and able to throw (physically) the temper tantrum raging in my head. Also, I wanted an adult to fix my toy and make it all better.

Once it sunk in that I was the adult here, I sniffled a bit, called my mom and wailed about the injustices of being the adult here and why didn't she warn me this is what it was all about? Oh, wait. . .. Then my husband stepped up and offered to handle it for me.

Which he did, the following day. We'd discovered a crack and a piece of non-integral plastic appeared to have fallen into a very integral part of the machinery. Well, that's why we paid more - to have a warranty, right? We took pictures and everything.

Didn't need them though - this store believes in good customer service, and the first person DH spoke with was nice enough, taking the details and arranging for their service specialist to come take a look and determine whether it could be fixed in home or not.

Less than an hour later, the store manager - who incidentally sold us the machine - called personally to double check the details, apologized profusely, assured DH that a) this was unacceptable and that b) there is nothing we could have done in the span of 36 hours to break the machine. He immediately offered to replace the unit with another exactly like it, at no charge to us.

Done.

The new and improved version (in that it's working) arrived today. Seemed already to be smoother than the other, confirming that there was something wrong with the other machine. Except this one was weirdly not recording any information and kept pausing. I was getting ready to throw an actual temper tantrum, when it occurred to me that maybe unplugging it and replugging it might reset it.

It worked.

So did I.

But I was a little scared the entire time that it would break. We heard a little noise - later confirmed to be the sound that is natural when reaching the longest stride - but generally ok. But I was nervous. Because after AB1 had broken, I had to confront my fear that I might actually be over the weight limit for this machine.

I confided my fear to DH. He suggested we go buy a scale to know for sure.

I didn't like that idea at all. He suggested this would bug me until I knew. I gave in. We bought a new scale. It's quite fancy - tells you all sorts of things, provided you stand on it the right way, for an appropriate length of time and touch your nose with your left ring finger or something equally complicated.

The good news: I do not exceed the weight limit of the machine.

The bad news: Even though I knew it already, I cannot avoid the fact that I am at my highest recorded weight ever.

Depressing.

But! We are working to change that, and Aunt Beast (2) is going to help me with that. This week's short-term goal is to get on every day. Try to do 20 minutes. Do at least 10. Soon I should be up to a consistent 20. Once I hit that goal, we try to add short increments until I'm consistently doing 30 minutes a day. Then we add 5 minutes until I'm at 45 minutes a day. Then an hour. My Tier 1 goal is 1 hour, four times a week. If I could do that - coupled with 20-30 minutes on 'off' days, I think I'll be doing really well. I have no firm timeline placed on that, but I have a tentative goal for that. Depending on how life works.

You know how rarely things go to plan though, so as I'm learning with my job, flexibility is key here.