For my birthday I got a Fitbit, despite the ranting of my previous blog it does in fact work.  I was curious mostly about my heart rate and where that tipping point might be between good old gluttony and heart disease.  So far, so good.  I apparently move around quite a bit getting my children ready for school and cleaning up the war zone that is left for me.  Also, when I work from home I am constantly moving and going up and down stairs.

Exercise has never been something I was thrilled about.  I never wanted to work out and used to cheat any time we had to run around the field at school.  I was way too clumsy for a treadmill and every time I did a hair flip, I would go flying off of the stupid thing.  Of course back then it really didn’t matter because I was rail thin and I had to walk everywhere.  Now that I’m in my 40’s it does matter and sadly, due to back problems, exercise isn’t really possible anymore without pain.  How I wish I had done more when I could, maybe the back problems wouldn’t have been so bad now.   Hindsight is 20/20.

So, it’s 8:30 am and I’ve already walked 1,100 steps and have barely left the house.  That’s pretty good, right?  Let’s just keep it our little secret that the dog had it on its leg while chasing a squirrel around the yard.  I needed to get to a point where I wouldn’t feel guilty about having leftover birthday cake for breakfast.  It’s practically a breakfast bar anyway; eggs, jam, flour, coconut….

I always assumed because I didn’t actually “work out” that I didn’t get any exercise.  I guess I really do get more than I thought.  This might in fact be the reason that I have been able to maintain a girlish figure of 472 pounds and not tipped the “half a buck” scale.  Of course, most of that weight is water and each breast must weigh a good 100 pounds, so in all reality some might consider me anorexic.  Can you believe that all this time I had my eating disorder wrong?

I do wish I could increase my heart rate and hope someday I will find a way to do so.  I find it interesting how at every doctor’s appointment they always ask if I exercise but when I say no, they just leave it at that.  Hmmm, if you read into that a little you might be able to say that exercising isn’t good for you.  If it was you would think the doctor would say something.  If I had said yes, I am a runner, they probably would have told me to stop.  Running takes such a toll on your body that it can’t possibly be healthy.

Did you know that people that run marathons often have their toenails fall off?  Good lord, why would you put yourself through that voluntarily?  I mean how can you look good in your adorable sandals if you are missing toenails?  Get your priorities straight people.  Why would automobiles have been created if we were supposed to run everywhere.  It’s bad enough I get a foot cramp when I drive 26.2 miles.

Today is my birthday!!!  I am still a whole bunch of old but today it’s wrapped in a bow.  I really do love birthdays, my mentality is very comparable with a child’s on this day.  It isn’t the gifts that I love, it’s the attention which is not something I typically enjoy.  I love to hear “Happy Birthday” and would be thrilled if there was a parade but that doesn’t seem likely.  I’m not really sure why I feel so special on this day, it’s not like I am the only person that has one.  The biggest perk is that there are no calories today, hence the tradition of eating cake.

The only unfortunate part about birthdays is that there must be a number associated with it.  I am thankful for every one that I get but do we really need to count them?  Remember the days when you were excited about that number because it meant you were at a milestone you have been waiting for.  You were finally a teenager, could drive, vote, drink, etc.  Now as my husband always says, birthdays mean you are one year closer to death.  I prefer to say Social Security, it seems a lot less morbid.

Even though I am a 40 something year old, I still feel young.  I moan every time I get out of a chair and I get rug burns on my breasts when I don’t wear a bra, but I mentally feel young.   Laughter is the key to feeling young and I do that any chance I can get.  Often times it’s when I’m alone which is fine unless you are out in public.  When that happens you just pretend you are on some Bluetooth type phone surgically implanted in your ear.  Just mouth “conference call” to anyone staring.

My family always makes my day feel special.  I had coffee and a muffin waiting when I woke up, cards, some of my favorite treats, it was wonderful.  I am so fortunate and thankful for all of the people in my life.  With age comes the wisdom to know who and what matter and to focus on those things.  It really is the little things in life, and I take time to notice these things every day and never take them for granted.  It isn’t what you have, what you wear, or where you live.  It’s how you treat people and making sure you take the time to stop and look around often.  Each day is truly a gift.

Speaking of gifts, my family was very generous and gave me a Fitbit for my birthday.   I have a feeling it’s broken, however, because it isn’t registering the 10,000 steps I know it takes to get from my kitchen to the bathroom.   I don’t need technology to tell me how much I walk, the chafing between my thighs usually does that job for me.

Happy birthday to me!!!!

This morning as I was scrolling through my Facebook posts, I happened upon a picture of a woman.  Not sure if it was an ad for yoga, or someone had liked her yoga page, something like that.  Anyway, the thing that struck me about this woman’s picture was that you could actually see her ribs through her workout attire.  You can barely see my ribs with an x-ray.  Does this woman eat?

Sadly, food is a huge part of my life.  I love food.  They say nothing tastes better than skinny but I beg to differ.  Lots of things taste better than skinny, should I list them.  Let me lick the cheese off of my fingers first.  Somehow, unbeknownst to me, I don’t weigh 500 pounds.  I’m about one cupcake away but I’m not there yet.  I do, however, have more rolls than a bakery.  I like to think of them as curves.  Oooh, I should go to the bakery today.

I keep saying I will start to eat better.  Tomorrow.  I’ll get back into the multiple items of clothing hanging in my closet that I can no longer fit into.  Tomorrow. It’s just so much easier to go out and buy new clothes and they’re so pretty.  Tomorrow?  I like pretty things.  I think my obsession with shoes might be partly because I never outgrow them.  I know, tomorrow I’ll go shoe shopping.  Fun!

Maybe tomorrow before I go shoe shopping I’ll make one of those green drinks.  Nah, I’ll just eat only green M&M’s and pretend it’s a healthy smoothie.  After all, there’s always tomorrow.

If cleanliness is next to Godliness, then I must be in a Barcalounger next to Satan.  Not because I don’t try, really, I feel like every day I am on an uphill battle to keep my house neat, clean and organized.  I just keep sliding down that hill getting dirt where it shouldn’t be, mostly because I have two children, three if you count my husband.  Once I get everyone out the door in the morning, I turn around and my house looks like a war zone.  How does this happen?  This never happened to my mother.

I grew up in an immaculate home where dust was never allowed to visit.  My mother is an Italian Greek woman (wonderful combination, yummy foods always) that would literally have your glass washed, dried and put away before you even realized you had taken the last sip.  As an adult, sometimes I stop by her home unexpectedly just to see if I could find a pillow askew or a dust bunny hopping around, but no, never is anything out of place or dirty.  So you think that might have rubbed off on me, right?  Not so much.

I have been much better about at least keeping the first floor presentable.  However, it is only presentable during the hours of 10:00 – 3:00 while my children are at school.  Once my family comes home all bets are off.  The upstairs is permanently off limits because that’s where I hide all of the items I don’t know what to do with on the first floor.  Why do I have those items?  Why can’t I figure out where they should go?  Why can’t I be that person that has a place for everything and everything in it’s place.  I got a label maker thinking maybe that would help with organization.  Yeah, well I probably should have labeled the label maker because I can’t remember where I put it.

I like to think that it is because I live in an older home with very small closets.  My mother’s house is older and has fewer closets, damn that woman.  I dream of living in a huge house with walk in closets everywhere filled with labeled organized bins.  I would have to buy a new label maker but it would be worth it.  Unfortunately, in the town I live in to afford such a home I would have to sell most of my organs and at least one child.  With a larger home comes more area to clean though.  More windows, which is not something I choose to clean, ever.  If they get dirty I either move, or think of it as a nice surprise when you walk outside and see that it is actually sunny out.  I love surprises.

There are some things in my home that I don’t even notice anymore.  My dogs scratch at our family room door when they need to go outside.  The paint is mostly gone where they scratch but instead of re-painting the door, I have started to look at it as a way my dogs express themselves, kind of like art.  It makes me feel better about the fact that it will probably be like that for years.  I could say that all of this happens because I live such an overscheduled life, but I’m starting to think that I might just be lazy, shhh, don’t tell my mom she was right.

Every day in the news you hear about terrible crimes that have been committed.  I often wonder how people get to that place in their lives where unspeakable acts don’t even phase them.  I just can’t understand unethical and illegal behavior, it’s not in my nature.  Ok, I’ll admit I do fantasize about hurling pennies at drivers that cut me off and I would really like to try tasering someone, but other than that I extremely ethical.  Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means saying I’m an angel.  I admit that I am an honorary card carrying member of the royal bitch society but I am as honest as the day is long.    Sometimes I imagine what life would be like if I had chosen a different path in my youth.  It’s sort of like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz deciding which yellow brick road to follow.

I remember starting down a crooked path in Junior High with a friend who shall remain nameless, mostly because I don’t remember who it was.  It was an eerily quiet cloudy day, the kind of day you get a chill deep down into your bones that you just can’t shake.  Actually, I have no idea what the weather was like that day but that really did set the scene didn’t it?  We were in the 5 & 10 and my friend was going to steal some candy and encouraged me to do the same.  I took a piece of Bazooka gum, stuck it up into the sleeve of my navy blue Baracuta jacket and went to purchase another piece.  When I was about to pay, the gum slid down out of the sleeve of my very stylish jacket and onto the counter.  Thankfully playing dumb comes easy to me and I purchased that piece as well.   That brush with the dark side scared me straight.

What if I hadn’t been caught, would I have continued down that crooked path of crime.  One day Bazooka gum, the next day stealing the elderly’s wheel chairs.  Just like that, you snap your fingers and you are living the thug life.  I just shuddered at that thought because I am pretty sure Vineyard Vines clothing would not be acceptable attire while living the thug life.  How sad for them.  You would think that in itself would scare them straight never mind the threat of going to jail.

I will say that if I ever am to commit a crime, it is going to be good.  For example, how cool would it be to hijack a Hostess truck?  Right?  Think about it, being chased down the highway like OJ with helicopters hovering above capturing all of it on film.  Yelling “you won’t take me alive with an empty stomach copper” while you hurl Suzy Q’s at them, because who really wants those anyway.  Or maybe throw the snowflake marshmallow puffy things because we all know no one in their right mind eats those.  Of course at the end of it all I would pay for any damage and any product used because I’m as honest as the day is long.

This morning, as I sat at an 8:00 basketball game without a drop of coffee in my system because we were running late, I started to think about how overscheduled we all are.  We constantly hear about “the overscheduled child” but what about the overscheduled mom (or dad or caregiver to be fair)?  We are the ones that had to sign our child up for basketball, set the alarm, get breakfast ready, make sure the uniform is clean (not this time, sorry buddy), drive 30 minutes to the game all while praying to the rain Gods that the afternoon’s soccer game will be cancelled.

People always say that children need down time, time to decompress and to stimulate their brains.  Multiple studies have been done on this topic.  What about my brain?  What about my time to decompress?  The few brains cells I have left that actually function could really use some re-compressing (is that a word)?  Who knows, my brain is too fried to even know what is or isn’t a word.  I’m sure the red wine I drink may also be a contributing factor to my loss of brain cells but that’s not the point of this blog.

Where are the studies on overscheduled parents? For our children to be overscheduled it takes work from us as parents.  We can’t forget the sign up deadlines, or the shin guards, or the poster board that is due tomorrow, the carpools, the teacher gifts, school picture day, etc.  My blood pressure went up just typing all the things we do.  This year I actually forgot school picture day until my son called me from school in non-matching gym clothes with hair sticking straight up to tell me I forgot.  I managed to iron a change of clothes, get them to the school with a comb in 14 seconds flat.

What happened to the days when we were kids, oh so long ago, when there were no schedules, no running around, and no stress.  Our parents never seemed stressed, did they?  The cigarettes they smoked might have helped with the stress, but still, they seemed more relaxed.  Our parents didn’t drive us everywhere, my mother didn’t even have her license and I managed to get where I needed.  Where I needed, that was the big difference, we no longer only do what we need.  I think one day recently I actually put 4,000 miles on my car and never even left town.

We were sent outside to play kick the can.  Or in my case as an only child, to go outside and fill my pockets with rocks until my pants fell down.  That wasn’t the actual goal or instruction from my parents, it just happened.  Or to play my all-time favorite game of sitting in the bushes in front of my house and stealing the balls that came over the fence from the school yard across the street.  Now that I think about it, it’s kind of amazing that I was able to have two semi-normal children.

It’s not always our fault however.  Especially not if you have a child that tends to procrastinate.  In that case, after you finish running around and cooking dinner, and you think you might be able to decompress, with a glass of wine of course, your child asks “do you know how to tea stain paper”?  Um no, and what?  When did you find out about this assignment, oh right, 3 weeks ago and it’s due tomorrow.  I am happy to announce I can now proudly add that skill to my resume.  Go me!

Interesting day, I started a blog.  Woohoo.  I’m sure this is an exciting day for everyone that is lucky enough to read this.  Why would I start a blog?  I have lots to say, of course.  Lots of very random things, I might add.  So random that I might very well regret this.

What started today’s conversation about blogging was a random FB post about an estate sale I went to this morning.  I believe the blog provoking comment was in regards to the lack of class some people have with respect to other people’s property.  Like climbing through bushes to get a sneak peek into the sale.  Please.  How about you use that extra few minutes and shower, maybe even wash your clothes.  That’s mean, I know, but it’s my blog right?  They do smell, it’s really quite gross.

It is entertaining to watch how others react.  We all have numbers, we can’t get in until they open the door and call our number, and yet 500 people are crammed onto the porch just in case.  Then they prop the storm door open, just to eliminate any time wasted with opening a door.  The magic time comes and did they really get an advantage?  No, I strolled in right behind them, no shrubbery in my hair, no pulled muscles, no stress, and my integrity intact.

Then the game begins.  Which direction to go, up or down, left or right, these decisions can affect everything.  I didn’t know what was in this sale so I just walked around without a plan.  I giggle a little when I see people really rushing through the house and I like to block them, just to watch them sweat.  You know, kind of like when someone is trying to cut you off while you are driving and you slow down and block the way.  Yeah, that’s what I kept doing on the staircases.  Slow and steady.   Ha ha.