Friday Afternoon - published on fb on Feb 8, 2013

Having now gorged on a yummmm carrot-tomato-orange salad which in my mind tastes exactly like my mother and my grandmother made, feet feeling a nice tired and a body which will deserve to rest early, having been inspired to write after a long time, thought I would share what made it so worthwhile. Normally, I am exhausted by Friday afternoons, just want to go home and rest. This afternoon was not far from the same; in fact, this morning, while in a fourth grade class, one of the students asked me, "Are you feeling tired or stressed?" She then went on to state, "It cannot be stress because you get paid to do such a cool job. My father also has a cool job. He gets paid to test games". I told her that I did indeed love my job and that it truly was fun and that I was just tired. However, this afternoon, I was determined to work out, having missed my workout this morning. Now, with my weird schedule, taking classes two week nights, and my bedtime extended beyond what I was earlier used to, even though I am up really early for most people, it isn't early enough that I can go to the gym and be back to have my children's hot lunches prepared. Those of you who know me, know just how obsessed I am with children's nutrition, particularly given one of my children's history. So, anyway, since January I got hooked onto Just Dance 4 on the Wii, and do that sort of as a consolation prize. I can have food cooking, wake up my younger one, make my tea in between the songs and still feel like I get a good workout. I never ever imagined I would be saying this one day. All this so that I can lose some more weight before I start seriously running again. Even though I woke up at 3:30 this morning, I decided to skip my workout because I had too much work that I wanted to complete before I went into school. I was tired and, like most Fridays after school, I would have come home and just plonked and done something brainless. However, because I was determined - oh, and one of the main reasons for that determination was the Nike fuel belt that I started using about two weeks ago. It has been instrumental in ensuring that I keep to a certain activity level. I like that because it is a a challenge and I love challenges. This afternoon my fuel belt was still on red/orange after school and that was not a good sign. This, despite the fact that I had walked around quite a bit all morning on campus. So, off I went to the gym after school. I really missed my 4 a.m. gym friends. It was too crowded as well but those were just excuses. I decided I couldn't go outdoors since my nose has been feeling like spring and my sneezes won't stop. I got a really good workout and felt truly reinvigorated thereafter, so much so that when I got back home, my hubby asked me to go and buy some greens and I wasn't like - "Can you go?", etc. He happened to be home because he is transitioning jobs and I have had the luxury of having him cook the last two days. Today, the salads were cut and I just had to garnish them, but I did. Not just that, but after returning from the store, my fuel belt still needed more pumping. So I put in some "Just Dance4". Now I am almost at my goal but know that I will more than surpass it by the time I sleep. I am feeling so much better that I wonder why I haven't thought of doing this before on a Friday afternoon. It will be a great way to celebrate the end of a working week! Now, if only I can start running the miles again....