Author Workout

My mother yearly gets me a subscription to Prevention Magazine. I'm not sure what I'm trying to prevent, as I've already had thyroid cancer, surgery on both feet, two back surgeries, four baby deliveries, enough stress to last a lifetime, and an extra twenty pounds have found a new home in my almost 40 body. Most months I peruse the pages of Prevention and find tidbits of info that interest me. However, this month about six pages caught my eye.

The pages contained lots of pictures and the title "Walk Off Two Sizes In Two Weeks with this fun boot-camp style workout." Ok, so does the title make this workout sound fun to you? Boot camp has never been my idea of a good time. So, I thought I'd read further.

I am already a walker. Ever since I took a job as a server at a nearby restaurant, I have walked more than my fair share. Each shift I work I clock about three miles on my feet. I work about four to five shifts a week, so that is pretty good. On top of that, I have four kids to keep up with. I run behind and beside bikes, I play basketball against my oldest, we take family bike rides, so you get the point.

Back to the boot-camp workout. How about trying it, I thought. Maybe it will do this body some good. This morning was day number one. The workout is something like this:

Five minutes of brisk walking (3.5-4 miles per hour) followed by 30 second breaks where one of the following is added before doing brisk walking again: High knees walks, the walking lunge, traveling squat, backpedaling walk, high step skipping, the shuffle, the crossover, incredible push ups, the bear crawl, the wood chopping squat, the crab walk, and the rope climb.

DOES THIS SOUND LIKE FUN? No, but it does sound like boot camp. They got that part right, at least.

By the time the whole workout was over, I spent exactly an hour sweating buckets. I spent 50 minutes on the treadmill (3 miles) broken up by bits and spurts of crazy moves like putting an old thirty-something though the bear crawl. Oh my goodness, it is a good thing no one else was home or could see me. I'm sure I looked utterly ridiculous.

I seriously doubt I'll lose 20 pounds or even four inches from anywhere on my body, but I am going to try to stick with this crazy boot-camp fun-filled workout for six weeks, at three times a week. That means that I have 17 more of these one-hour-embarrassingly tough-sweating profusely-workouts. That is only 17 hours of my precious time over the next six weeks. I can do that, can't I?

In order to keep my focus on the completion of this minor task, I am going to try to blog about it once a week. I'll let you know if my mind can master the matter of boot camp or if it is way too much for me. I'll share my moments of exhilaration and my points of frustration. And if you care to join me on this mind-blowing adventure, get a Prevention magazine from October 2009 and look at pages 88-94. Let the boot camp begin!

Kindergarten Homework

Tonight my son, a kindergarten, brought home homework, for the very first time in his precious life. His assignment? Write his name correctly three times using that wonderful triple-lined paper that teaches children to round their letters ever-so-perfectly, and count aloud to twenty a few times.

David has watched his sisters do all kinds of homework over the last few years. Kaitlyn, his oldest sister, musters the energy to learn pre-algebra, negative numbers, properties, and the like. Rachel, the next oldest drills on lists of 25 spelling words, Bible memorization, and long division. Meagan works on reading for thirty minutes a night, long addition and subtraction, and multiplication tables.

So one can only imagine the reaction of the sisters when David's homework was to write his name three times and count to twenty. "Just wait, David. Pretty soon you'll be doing a lot more than that!!!"

David's reaction to his first night of homework? "I hate homework."

Now in all honestly, David did not hate his homework. In fact, he sat right down with a sharpened pencil in hand and readily got to work making nicely rounded letters for his name. He didn't need Mike's help. He knew how to do it all by himself, he said. Well, he needed a little help making the letters stretch to fit the first and third lines, but when he was finished, he relished his success. He was proud of his accomlishment. He had tackled the world of homework for the first time, and he was victorious.

While he was counting to twenty and missing number fifteen, my mind flew back to his birth, the times that his sisters were in kindergarten, and I thought about how fast they are growing up. David will get to do homework for another thirteen years, give or take all of his college and graduate years. For now, he says he hates it. But I am praying that he will continue to feel that awesome sense of fulfillment with each educational step he takes. In all actuality, pretty soon he will be doing long addition, negative numbers, reading for thirty minutes, and studying spelling words. We'll be by him helping him every step of the way and cheering him on to whatever God has in store for him.

Kindergarten homework. Who would have thought? I'm glad he gets to share in the joys of homework. One day later this week he gets to draw a picture of his teacher as his homework. If he still hates homework by Thursday, maybe he'll draw a VERY interstering picture of Mrs. West, even though he loves her.