Sheet Arm Raises

Diet:

Chocolate is the devil I tell you, the DEVIL. I have no idea how it happens to end up in my mouth when it is just sitting there but it does. I have decided that all chocolate makers should be burned at the stake and all their goods destroyed (or sent to me for "safe" keeping)....

New Life-er-size

Sheet Arm Raises

Have to admit this was fun!  I have a lot of trouble with range of motion in my shoulders. So I decided that my bed was the place to start for working these muscles!
First: I stripped all beds and put sheets in laundry
Second: I took out new sheets for each bed
Third: I had my Kale (he's five) stand on one side of the bed and I stood on the other. Together we made fast, strong "para-shoot" movements up and down from the bed to above our heads. 20 Times for each sheet and all blankets. So, all in all my arms were aching and I had done 160 arm raises. We giggled a lot and I worked hard. WOOT!

Life:
I made sure that I did NOT sit down today for longer than 10 minutes. I tried to keep "puttering" all day. I think this made a big difference for me. I think maybe I sat down for a total of 1 hour in my 14 hour day. WOOT!

And the sissors came out...

Do you know the moment? The moment when you brain screams, “OMG this did NOT just happened?” Well, it sucks and it changes you forever...

Long story short…my husband had been gone TDY with the military. I decided to look “pretty” the day he was coming home.  So I dug around in my closet and found my favorite dress. The one I was wearing the day we met ten years ago. Yeah don’t laugh, I know you know what is coming.hu my;aof ja;sl

I put on the dress, it was so tight I could not breathe. I started to pull it off and it got stuck…I pulled…nothing…tugged…nothing…thought for a moment…nothing…tried it all again…nothing…tears…nothing…begged God…tears…stretched…tears….35 minutes later…more tears...whimpering…exhaustion.

And out came the scissors.

So there I was on my bathroom floor, in a puddle of fabric that once was my favorite dress, with tear stained cheeks, and a runny nose.

The pain of stretching over my head made it impossible for me to get out of that dress without doing it.  Is this embarrassing…YES...but it was my first step.  

I was going to get healthy if it took every pair of scissors I had.    

At some point we all get stuck.

We get ourselves into a situation that there is seemingly no way out of it. Stuck like chuck… and we are faced with the facts.  

We have to cut away that which makes us trapped.  

  

We have to get out, start over, and NOT make those mistakes again...

     Thing is, I have tried to get back in shape before. My garage is LITTERED with workout gimmicks, weights, yoga balls, trampolines, an expensive elliptical machine, all of which look so pretty in all their dust.

      My DVD collection has TONS of butt lifting, arm punching, skinny girl screaming at me videos... Those last about 2 days before I sit on the couch with a bowl of popcorn watching them workout. 

Problem. I don't want to die young like my parents. My blood pressure and heart just can not take a sedentary life anymore.  I have a house to clean, a kid to home-school, and two masters classes I am enrolled in to work on, who has time for those things?

Then it occurred to me. My mother ate like the teenage field-hands that worked on our farm. How in the WORLD did she stay so skinny! Never ONCE did she do an exercise routine. Never ONCE did she buy some fancy equipment.  Oh THAT'S RIGHT! SHE LIVED HER LIFE!

She didn't have four hours for TV time snacking,  computer surfing, or video games.  She had 13 Children, she CLEANED, she PLAYED, she LAUGHED, she LOVED, and she LIVED.

I think that she had something there... so...here is my plan...

LIFE-ER-SIZE

For the next year I am going to clean my house, play with my son, and help my friends...but I am going to do everything with gusto, even if it hurts! I am going to go from sun up till sun down like mom did. 

I am going to come here and blog about how I feel, what I learn, and how I grow.

Then we will see who wins...all those money-making experts...or my mom. 

Cheers, here I go!