Weights

I started exercising at the beginning of the month. This is nothing monumental. I'm mentally shamed into doing it at least once a year. It's the follow through that gets me every time!

Still, this time I started for a totally different reason than I typically do. I've started exercising before to lose weight (which still certainly could apply), to get more energy (I'm woefully inadequate in that department) and to control the grouchies that come with PMS (sorry to any male readers. I'm so sure that is TMI.). And yet I always stop after several months.

This time, I'm trying to have a totally different mindset. I'm not weighing myself; my jeans will be my guide. Exercise does not energize me no matter how many times Bruce assures me that it will. It just makes me more tired. (However, I do get better sleep when I exercise.) And forget PMS; I'm pretty sure I'm just a grump.

No, this time when I started it was an age-related reason. (Forty is closer now than 30.) I kept getting Charley Horses. And at the stupidest times. I'd try to shave a leg, and I'd get a stitch in my rib cage. Well, that just can't be good. Evidently my muscles, as they were, must have decided to get an early start on atrophy.

I really do not like to exercise. I don't like the feeling of my heart racing, or of sucking air in my mouth so quickly that I nearly swallow that hangy thingie in the back of my throat. And I don't like to sweat. (Bruce makes fun of me often for that! I can sweat if I know a shower is imminent. Otherwise, no, that's out of the question if I have any control of the situation.) I do feel better after exercising though.

I TiVo Denise Austin every morning. She's great. She varies between aerobics, weight training, pilates and yoga. I like the variety. And I like that, if I fast-forward through all commercials, it only takes me around 25 minutes to finish. I'm not competing with anyone here, I just need to keep my muscles from rotting off the bone.

I don't let our kids touch my weights. They aren't heavy, just five pounds. But five pound weights in the hands of wound up kids jumping around next to the television screen and glass door of the entertainment center... somehow that just seems like a bad combination. I'm sure it foreshadows terrible things.

Alas, my bright little 5-year-old has devised his own method of joining mommy during weight training.



I never knew Tinker Toys could be so handy!

Is he a genius, or what? I mean, the engineering part will make his daddy proud. I'm just impressed that he came up with a work-out plan that is sure to minimize sweat.