Two things I want to do are constantly pushed to the backburner. Writing and exercising. The two used to come easily to me, happening naturally during the course of a day. But now after working a full-time job-and-a-half, making sure the house is generally presentable and the family is generally fed, I’m having trouble finding any time for my two lost loves.
My husband has no sympathy. His only advice is, “Make the time.” He says, “If you really want to do something, make the time.” I say, “You’re obviously not a working mom.”
But, I have an admission… he’s right.
I thought about waking up at 5 a.m. to accomplish these things. Then I laughed. While I’m more of a morning person than I used to be, anything I write at 5 a.m. would be on the same level that my 16-month-old could accomplish. In our small house, truly exercising would wake everyone, and I haven’t found an effective tip-toe workout routine yet.
This week, I decided to just start an exercise DVD I got as a free “reward” for using coupons. I grimace at the thought of being “that” girl to use an exercise video… all the happy, skinny blondes in a row for me to imitate. I like to think of myself as a gym person or a sports person… let me play a game or run an elliptical, like an athlete. But with a gym-with-a-childcare-room membership out of my financial league and the painful realization that I need to speak of my athlete training days in the past tense, I reluctantly press “play”… here’s the kicker, with my toddler awake.
I follow along, and just as I’m getting my heart rate up, some tiny hands managed to find their way to the computer and press “stop.” When I resume, I realize my hand weights needed for the next segment are somewhere in the black hole (a.k.a garage), so I grab a couple of canned veggies instead. The girls on my screen are now on the second set of bicep curls. I join in only to pause again after my daughter’s head connects with my third rep of lifting canned green beans. As we start pushups and back muscle groups, she decides I need an extra challenge and adds all 22 pounds of toddler on my workout. Apparently, a situp is the equivalent of a personal invitation to play on the mommy jungle gym.
After the third day of exercise/toddler olympics, I gave in to the TV babysitter. She watched Sesame Street instead of the blondes all in a row (which will probably turnout better for her future middle-school emotional development anyway), and I got in the 50 minutes without hitting anyone in the head with green beans.
It wasn’t pretty, but I made the time.
As for the writing… I started.
Leave a Reply