Improvisation

Maybe it was because it was the week before Spring Break. Maybe it was the hour-long staff meeting I had to sit through. Or, maybe I was still recovering from the weekend. Whatever it was, by the time I got home yesterday, I was Friday-night tired. Which is especially bad on a Monday.

I was so tired that I was seriously regretting having signed up for the fitness challenge at work. What was I thinking, signing up for two challenges in the same month? I thought I didn't have enough time in the day before. Did something happen in February that made me think I was miraculously going to have time to read, write, and exercise every day? True, I had found the time for the last couple of weeks, but last night I just didn't think I had the energy to do it all.

So, when my husband asked if we were going for a walk, I gave him a guilty look and whined, "I'm really tired. Maybe I could use my rest day today?"

My husband looked somewhat relieved. "You want to call a mulligan? My knee has been hurting and it might be a good idea to give it a rest."

Now I was the one to look relieved. That is until I remembered the flash challenge for the week: travel a mile each day. Even if I used up my rest day, that only applied to the 30-60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise. I still had to travel a mile.

My husband had already gone into the kitchen to start making dinner, and I really didn't want to go outside and walk the neighborhood by myself. What was I going to do? 

Then, I had a brilliant idea: the race track. 

Okay, it wasn't brilliant; in fact, it was actually quite silly, but it would work. The race track isn't really a race track. When our kids were little, they had ride-on toys that they would propel themselves on through the kitchen, turn through the family room, go down the hall, then turn again through the living room and dining room, back into the kitchen. They would go around and around as fast as they could go without running into walls (well, that may have happened a few times), which was why we began calling it the race track. If my kids could do laps around the house, why couldn't I?

And so I did. 

Around and around I went, while my husband cooked dinner and one of my cats gave me baffled looks every time I passed her by. At one point my son came downstairs, and he didn't even bat an eye at his mother walking around in circles, which makes me wonder if he has already come to the conclusion that I'm not the sanest person in the world. The funniest moment came, however, when my husband started walking behind me.

"Are you following me?" I asked, never breaking stride.

"No, I'm just trying to read you this story," he replied, matching my pace as he read from his cell phone.

Hopefully, we didn't have anyone spying on us through our windows because I'm sure we made a comical sight. But comical or not, I got in my 30 minutes and traveled my mile. Mission accomplished!