Mirror Mirror on the Wall...

...I'm like my mother after all.

When I was growing up, my mom would meet with some ladies from church about three days a week to exercise. They started out using an old record player in the basement of our church building. By the time I was a pre-teen (and thus, old enough to join them on the days we didn't have school) the group consisted of about half a dozen "old" women who let their kids run wild in the gym of our newly constructed church building while they sweated to the oldies with Richard Simmons.

As a self-confessed "gym junkie" these memories of my mom and her friends exercising at the church always made me laugh. While I toned and strengthed at Body Pump classes and sweated through Spinning classes at the gym I would sometimes remember my mom and her diligent band of friends doing whatever they could to try and get a little exercise. While I ran miles on the treadmill or spent hours at a time on a elliptical trainer I had a smug self-satisfaction in knowing that I was a true die-hard.

It's been 11 months since the arrival into our lives of the sweetest, cutest, most wonderful baby boy on earth. The first few months after his birth I was only managing to get to the gym about twice a month. Recent economic and financial situations have forced me to give up my gym membership altogether. (At least for now. Perhaps when Gideon is a little bit older it won't be such a production and I can go back to the gym regularly.) The resulting inactivity has caused my pants to fit slightly tighter than I would like on top of already being more tired and grouchy than normal. Occasionally I'd find the time to sneak over to my in-law's place and spend a solid hour in the basement with the treadmill, but it still wasn't enough.

So last Sunday when I saw an announcement in our church bulletin that they were beginning to offer exercise classes at the church three times a week. I couldn't help but be excited, even if I was having flashbacks of my mother. I was apprehensive when I called the woman, (who's name, Marcia, didn't comfort me because that's an "old lady" name) and she explained to me that the class was a group of women who got together and did various strengthening, cardio and toning DVD's. I didn't really know what to expect as I walked into the church at 9:00am Wedneseday morning. I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the women there weren't old at all. In fact, they were mostly my age. They all had young children and even a couple of them had kids a few months different in age from Gideon.

I relaxed when we started a pretty fierce kick boxing DVD and then followed it with some strength training that was so good it nearly made me cry. As I was gathering my stuff to leave I felt a moment of self-satisfaction. It had been a decent work-out with women who I could relate to. Having them there even helped to make the work out go faster. We were able to joke a little as our kids were running wild.

And that's when it hit me. Twenty years ago my mother was my age. The women she worked out with weren't old women. They were women in their late twenties and early thirties, with too many kids and not enough time to go to the gym. So they banded together and did what they had to do.

And so now I guess that's what I'm doing. My smugness at being better than my mother and her friends now gone it's been a liberating and even fun experience. And hey, it feels good to at least be doing something again.

Now that I've confessed to the world that my worst fear has indeed been realized perhaps I'll give you an update of the other goings on.

Travis and I are still both unemployed despite my having gone on a half dozen interviews and his having done twice that many. He's submitted dozens of resumes all over the country, but nothing yet. The bright side is, that his former company definitely wants him back. The unfortunate part is that it won't be until after March 20. And when he does go back to work, he'll be going straight to Guam. That's right, Guam. And he'll be gone for 4-5 months. As much as we hate having him gone, he's excited to get to do some diving. And we're hoping that we'll be able to work it out so that Gideon and I can go visit him for a few weeks. BUT.....given the time frame that he will have spent unemployed by that time (nearly a quarter of the year) we'll just have to wait and see what we can work out.

Other than trying to survive and not get completely on each other's last nerves, there's really not much going on. Life is boring with no jobs and therefore no money to do anything.

Gideon is as active as ever. He's running now. He only walked for a few days. He never slows down, doesn't like to be held or cuddled, and "talks" more than any baby I've ever met. He's a lot of fun though. We honestly don't know what we'd do without him.

Anyway, that's the news from here, I hope you're all doing well. And we're doing fine. Just trying to stave off the boredom. Thank goodness for wrestling, at least that gives us places to go occasionally. I don't know what we'll do when the season ends next weekend. Then I'll just drive everyone nuts with basketball I guess. (No I don't want to talk about yesterday's loss to Maryland. It really doesn't hurt the Tar Heels any. They're still going to get a number one seed and they'll still make it to the Final Four. It's definitely a bummer, but oh well, in the long run it doesn't matter, when they win the National Championship no one will even care. Like Cody finishing 3rd at Districts. It was a bummer that he didn't win, but he'll do better than that at State which is all that matters anyway.)