A relaxed and lazy Sunday - NOT!

Past time for an update and a confession. Actually, the confession will be the update! I have not been able to stick with my goal of 25 Jazzercise classes in 25 Days. Argh!!! Well, Life got in the way a time or two. First, there was the Saturday that we went sailing with Leo on the Chat de Mer. Then Wed'day and Thursday of last week I was not feeling well. I had some mild flu-like symptoms, and some rather dramatic fluid build-up in my lungs that made it hard to breathe. I don't know whether I was having an allergic reaction to something new or different blooming outside, or if it's adult-onset asthma (is there such a thing?), but when I was up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep because I could barely breathe, I was sure wishing for a rescue inhaler! My mom, several siblings, and at least two nieces have asthma and use inhalers regularly, so it does run in my family. I've really never heard of it coming on in an adult who never had a problem before, though, but boy, I surely have first-hand knowledge now of how asthmatics suffer. This is not my first episode either, they started about 6 months ago, and occur sporadically and with no rhyme or reason.

Long story short, I missed Jazzercise on Wed'day and Thursday. The "asthma" is my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

Then, this past Saturday I went to San Jose with my friend, Susan, for a digital scrapbooking laptop crop sponsored by DigitalScrapbookingPlace.com so, again, I was not able to attend my Saturday step class. That's 4 missed days. We had a blast at the crop, by the way! Met lots of nice people, learned some new digital scrapbooking techniques, ate way more chocolate than is good for a human being, and got lots of layouts done (including Ryan's bathtime layouts, Heather, so expect those in the mail soon along with your 4th of July page)! I worked mainly on my own personal pages, and pages for my family, which was really fun because I usually spend most of my time on layouts for my Webajeb customers. [You can see some samples of my Webajeb work at http://www.webajeb.com/ and http://www.webajeb.blogspot.com/).]

Ok, so we're up to 4 days missed in my quest for 25 Jazzercise classes in 25 Days. Then, yesterday, I slept in due to getting home very late from the laptop crop, and I missed the only two Sunday classes. I was ready to chalk up another lost day when Mike suggested a bike ride as an alternate form of exercise. I was having an "I-can't-seem-to-make-any-decisions" day so Mike chose our route. That won't happen again. He decided we would ride from our house, up the hill on our street to Rose Drive, up Rose Drive to Hastings, and then dooooowwwwwnnnnnn Hastings to Southampton Road, down Southampton and over to the Benicia State Recreation Area. Once there we first stopped to eat some ripe blackberries near the ranger's kiosk, then we cycled the approximately 5 mile round trip (mostly flat but there was a hefty headwind part of the way) to the end of the park and back, with a sidetrip up a gravel path to some fig trees we know about to see if there was anything ripe. (There wasn't; in fact, the figs were all teensy and hard-as-rocks, probably due to the drought we are having this year). Next we rode through town to the library (this part was my idea - I had a book on hold I wanted to pick up). We took a short break to drink some water, then started the torturous trek back.

Yeah, I said torturous.

Remember all that downhill riding we did? Well, there's no way to ride back to our house without tackling some pretty hefty hills; either the steep but relatively short climb up Panorama or Hastings, or the long and steady rise of 2nd Street. We chose 2nd Street and managed to ride all the way, slowly but surely. Even that, though, was nothing compared to Rose Drive! Once we turned onto Rose the headwind was horrible. Most of the time we even had to pedal on the downhill portions of this hilly road else the wind would bring us to a stop. Finally, the last uphill block did me in and my bicycle and I toppled onto the shady grass in front of Matthew Turner Elementary school. Once I'd caught my breath, I walked my bike the rest of the way to the top of our street, about 2 blocks, and only then did I climb back on to coast down the hill to our house (in order not to be embarrassed in front of our neighbors).

We arrived back home about 4 p.m. I'm pretty sure I didn't get up off the couch for the rest of the day OR evening.

Mike seemed to do fine on our ride and, wisely, he pretty much held his tongue about the rough conditions though at one point he did ask, "Are you going to count this as a Jazzercise class?"

Oh, yes. Yes, I am.

Baby's Got New Shoes

I'm on Day Six of my 25 days of continuous attendance at Jazzercise! During the last six days it has become painfully clear (and I mean that literally) that I need new shoes. My back is killin' me! I work hard in class. I do a lot of jumping, jogging, lunging, marching, skipping, and just all-around steppin' to the music while pumping my arms, keeping my abs tight, and using my core muscles to avoid straining my back or neck. In spite of all my efforts to do the moves correctly, I'm still having low-back pain.

It's gotta be the shoes. Improper fitting shoes, broken down shoes, the wrong shoes for the sport, all these things can cause problems in the back, hips, knees, ankles and feet.

I've been way overdue for buying new shoes, and exercising every day has really brought the issue to the forefront. I don't like shopping; in spite of being female, somehow I was born totally lacking the shopping gene. Finally, after suffering with the onset of backpain for the past few days, I got myself in gear and went out to buy shoes. For years I've been partial (and very loyal) to the New Balance brand of shoes. Being picky like that makes it harder to find just the right shoes, which is another reason why I kept putting it off. I simply do not enjoy the hunt! But I got lucky and, yesterday, found them at the only second store I went to. And they were on sale!

So, when I go to the 6 p.m. class today I should be all set to come home withOUT an aching back.

I'll have blisters instead.

There's always a price to pay

I'm keeping to my goal (so far) of attending 25 Jazzercise classes in 25 days. Three down and 22 to go! Of course, there's always a price to pay. My back, neck and shoulders are aching! I'm lucky in that I'm not having any trouble with knees, hips or ankles....YET! But I've dug out every tube of muscle rub cream we own, as well as a couple bottles of pain relief tabs.

When I got home from class this morning, got the shower done, pain meds applied, I read a couple of blogs. One blog that I follow (out of 48 - yeah, I know, I need to get a life) is written by a man named Tim. Among the topics he writes about are exercise and diet. Last night he wrote about the breakfast he'd had that morning of steel-cut oats, and it sounded so good that I decided to have oatmeal myself today.

I don't have the steel-cut variety (I understand they are really good for you so I'm going to see if I can find some) but I've got the regular old-fashioned type. I like to make my hot cereals with milk instead of water, but remembered that I'd finished off the milk with my dinner last night. I thought I'd use powdered milk but I couldn't find it in our stuffed & cluttered pantry. However, I did run across a box of WestSoy unsweetened vanilla-flavored Soy Milk. Hm! I was a little unsure how it would taste so I used 1/2 water and 1/2 soy milk when I prepared the oatmeal. It was delicious!! Tomorrow I plan to use all soy milk. I highly recommend this. The vanilla flavor added a nice touch and with the small amount of brown sugar that I usually add it was more like a dessert than a healthy, good-for-you breakfast. Plus, it's nice to be using that box of soy milk because I have no idea how long ago I bought it!
So that's my story for today, so far. The rest of the day will be spent getting some of my digital scrapbooking work done, a little grocery shopping, lunch in the garden so I can enjoy my single stalk of gladiola blooms while it lasts, and then, well, I think I may need to lay down and rest my poor, old, aching muscles (but aching in a good way, of course)!

Embarrassment can be the Mother of Determination

Tuesday evening I went to Jazzercise Benicia, as usual, for the 7:15 p.m. step class. The instructors always recognize and announce milestones in class attendance as each person reaches them. Toward the end of class our instructor, Jennifer, announced that I had reached the level of 25 classes. Twenty-five classes in SIX months???

How embarrassing!!!

It's never taken me this long to reach the 25-class mark in the six years I've been going to Jazzercise.

As I collected my handful of Hershey's kisses from Jen, and another lady received hers for having reached 100 (yes, one hundred) classes, I decided I needed to do something about my embarrassing and pathetic attendance for 2008. I mean, really, 25 classes in 6 months is only an average of 4 classes per month! Even subtracting 2 weeks for my trip to China, and another 2 weeks for my son's wedding, that's still only 5 classes per month. Ouch. Besides, it's ridiculous, now that I work from home and my schedule is totally flexible (and no more commuting to Napa), that I can't get to class more often than that!

So I've made a short-term goal of attending class EVERY DAY for the next 25 days, and after that a more long-term goal to attend a minimum of 4 classes per week for the rest of the year. I Googled Jazzercise Benicia's website and printed off their class schedule and stuck it to my fridge with magnets. I prefer step classes vs the regular jazzercise classes so I circled all of the step classes. There's at least one every day of the week. Perfect.And I'm off to a good start.

Yesterday I went to the 8:10 a.m. step class. Tonight is the 7:15 p.m. class that I regularly attend, and tomorrow I'll again go to the 8:10 a.m. class. I've already got my excercise clothes ready for tonight, as you can see from the first photo (Jack helped).

One day down, 24 to go!