My excuses are walking out the door

Beginning Tuesday and continuing on through Saturday evening, I will be home totally alone. All day. All night. (If there are any criminals reading, I have nothing worth stealing and I have two vicious guard dogs – so just move along.)

Mr. Jelly Belly is moving our youngest daughter down to Athens, Georgia, where she will be starting her post-graduate program (Public Health, in case you’re interested). Why am I not going, you ask? Because it’s freaking HOT in Georgia and also because there will be manual labor involved. I will say my goodbyes from my air conditioned foyer, thank you very much.

One of the benefits of being home alone is that you don’t have to take anyone else into consideration when you’re planning meals. Lately it’s just seemed too hard to do the whole cooking two separate meals thing, so I’ve been giving in and just eating whatever it is that Mr. Jelly Belly wants to eat.

God help me. Last week I ate Hamburger Helper (Cheeseburger Macaroni). And it was just as disgusting as I remembered it. But that didn’t stop me from finishing the whole plate.

I will not be able to say that I can’t use the treadmill in the morning because it might wake him up. Or that I can’t exercise to a video because he is parked in front of the television. Or because he might watch me do it and laugh. (I should mention that I have two other televisions with DVD players that I could use and also that he would never laugh, even if he did see me, so those are really just more lame excuses.)

For these five days, and these five days only, I will not have Mr. Jelly Belly around to blame my bad habits and lack of motivation on.

Can I turn the corner here and get back on track? I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…

My busy, busy life

A man was standing on a street corner, hitting himself on the head with a hammer. Another man walks by and asks him why he is doing that. The man replies, “Because it feels so good when I stop.”

That old chestnut pretty much sums up how I feel about exercise. For the most part, I enjoy exercise. Well, the part of it that feels so good when I'm done. I have lots and lots of excuses for why I can’t exercise on this day or that day.

These are some of the arguments I have with myself regarding my motivational problems:

WHINY ME: I cannot exercise at home when other people are home. I am just too self-conscious and don’t like to hear the occasional smart ass comment.

PRACTICAL ME: You are up a good 2.5 hours before everyone else. Longer on the weekend. Unless the kids are home, it’s just you and Mr. JB, and he likes to waste half his day by sleeping until 10:00.

WHINY ME: Sometimes after I exercise, I feel so exhausted I want to go back to bed and am afraid I will feel too bad to be able to go to work.

PRACTICAL ME: Even if you really were too exhausted and had to go back to bed, you would still have two hours to sleep before you actually HAD to be up for work. You could pass on the internet. (WHINY ME: Eek!)

WHINY ME: I am afraid I will be walking my steady 3.5 mph pace on the treadmill and have a heart attack. I will fall down and no one will find me until they wake up three hours later. By then the dogs will probably be chewing off parts of my ears.

PRACTICAL ME: Don’t be an ass.

WHINY ME: By the time I get home from work and make dinner, I am too tired too exercise.

PRACTICAL ME: You are not.

WHINY ME: I don’t know how to work all the remotes to operate the DVD player.

PRACTICAL ME: I kind of do. Don’t tell anyone.

So the question now is, how am I going to get it to feel so good when I’m done, if I can’t even find the time to get started?

If I were to take an honest look at how my waking hours are spent during a typical week day, I would have to report this:

4:00 am – 6:30 am – Internet time. Sit on my ass, drinking coffee, checking mail, reading blogs, playing games.

6:30 am – 8:00 am – Shower, hair, makeup, etc., dress, pack lunch, head out the door for work.

8:00 am – 6:00 pm – Drive to work, put in my eight hours [this involves a whole new subset of time wasting, but doesn’t affect my ability to exercise], drive home.

6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Change clothes, make dinner, feed the dogs, throw a load of laundry in the washer, make coffee.

7:00 pm – 9:30 pm – Internet time. Sit on my ass, drinking coffee, checking mail, reading blogs, playing games.

9:30 pm – 10:30pm – Clean up dinner mess from kitchen, fold the laundry, read a chapter or two in current book, plead exhaustion from too much work; go to bed.

So you can see, that without cutting into my already too short sleep time, I just don’t have time to exercise. Every minute of my day is pretty full.

But I’m thinking I could find 30 minutes in that 6:00-7:00 pm time slot. It’s all about the priorities.

She's kidding, right?

So smack me with a loaf of Wonder Bread if you ever hear me saying anything that even remotely resembles the following (spotted on a weight loss message board):

“I went to the Chinese restaurant intending to order chicken and steamed broccoli, but when the waiter came by, I was so involved in the conversation I was having, that WITHOUT THINKING, I ordered my old favorite, Pork Fried Rice – it just slipped out”.

Sheesh. People.