Week 12: Just Keep Swimming

I always find the week before a big trip to be stressful. This week was no exception. Perhaps it would have been easier if I had not allowed my family and myself to utterly blow off the plan to spend Veterans Day cleaning and getting things done in order to go hiking. But no, we decided hiking would be more fun--and it was--but the car still needed servicing, the hvac guy still needed to come by for the fall inspection, the bathrooms were still dirty, the fish tanks still needed cleaning, the cat food supply was low. So today, the day before we leave we are running like chickens to get all of that stuff done. And what am I doing? Sitting here writing a blog post to memorialize it all.

Our goal was just to get the fundamentals done this week. We stayed the course on math, grammar, spelling, reading and the like. Not much else was accomplished academically, but we got in a lovely visit with "Auntie Kate" and my godson, had dinner at a friend's house, and worked out at CrossFit. It was, practically speaking, one of the weeks where living life takes a bit of priority of book-learnin' and that is just fine with me.

On a personal note, I got a bit of insight into the way this week was headed when I got up Tuesday morning. I had done a "Hero WOD" (an extremely hard workout named after a fallen soldier) on Veteran's Day, then proceeded to hike a couple of miles with my family. That night I slept more appreciatively than I have in years. Tuesday morning, I was truly looking forward to that first cup of coffee, so I poured my cup, went to the refrigerator, took out the carton of half-and-half, poured, and noticed orange liquid dumping into my coffee. Orange juice to be precise. I couldn't help but just laugh. It truly was hilarious. Thankfully there was more coffee in the pot so I didn't have to brew more.

But the reality of that kind of tired is also my greatest accomplishment at the moment. For so many years I have struggled with feeling lethargic, overweight, tired and achy. I knew that the fault lay only with myself, but there is at times for us moms a huge gulf between us and all our "reasons" and fitness. I am not sure how I came to the decision, but somewhere deep down I just decided--I'm going to do something radical, and now I have completed two weeks at CrossFit Woodbridge. It's hard, painful and at times humiliating (like today when I was so tired of jumping and kept getting all tangled up in my jump rope,) but I have not felt so good since before Molly was born. I could not be more thankful.

So that was our week. Next week we will be celebrating Thanksgiving with family, and I will not post, so Happy Thanksgiving to everyone reading, and may you be blessed richly this season with remembrances of all that you have been given by God's hand.