Walking at the Mall

Today after church I went to a mall to do my walk. (I didn't want to get all hot and sweaty outside.) I walked 1.2 miles.

This weekend I have been working on finishing some quilts, and I hope to have some pictures of them to share very soon.

Walking

I hate to jinx myself. I've tried umpteen times to start regular work-outs, join the Y, and other such sensible plans. But I've never succeeded at keeping it up.

Now I've started again. Who knows. I've followed my plan two days in a row now, so I have a good success rate so far, at least.

A friend of mine on Facebook said she decided to walk one mile every day in the month of June. And she did it! She is kind of like me, not really wanting to take the time or interest in walking or running, but thought she might be able to do it for one month.

She took a picture of her feet every day. And I loved the idea, so I copied it. I'm going to try to walk 28 days in July - not even every day. I'm not even starting with a simple little mile. I'm starting with LESS than that. I installed a pedometer on my phone. Yesterday I walked .47 mile.

Today I walked .65 mile.

So far so good. Wish me luck.

Lazy Me Enjoying Nature

Exercise: the bane of my existence. As you may recall, I joined a gym this year. I did OK (not great, but OK) at first. Lately I have not been going at all. I even went in and attempted to cancel my membership, but the manager, who is quite a good salesperson, convinced me not to. It does makes sense; I need to exercise for my health and longevity.

So.. since then I have not yet been back to the gym! Of course not! You have to drag me, kicking and screaming, to an exercise session.

This morning I decided to take a walk outside. It's such a pretty morning. Now I'm paying a gym membership so I can walk outside. LOL! Well, when it gets hot and humid, I'll be glad to have an air conditioned space to go to, once I manage to make it through the kicking and screaming stage.

During my walk today, this is what I enjoyed observing: birds! Beautiful lake reflections! Bird songs! Green grass and leaves! What a beautiful day!

I saw a bird like this, almost exactly in this pose in the small lake I walk past. I startled it, and it flew away, which was also a pretty sight. I am not sure what the bird is that I saw.. I think this photo is an egret, but do we have egrets in Minnesota? I don't even know. Maybe what I saw was a heron.



I saw a female wood duck that looked a lot like this:



I saw red-winged blackbirds, and a bunch of others that I could not name. The variety of songs is amazingly beautiful, too.

The lake I walk past was like a mirror this morning, so when birds flew low over it, they looked like this, but even better, with no ripples! So pretty!



If walking could always be this enjoyable, maybe I would keep doing it almost every day. I'll try (again)! Wish me luck!

I am Six and Eating Noodles

This morning when my husband left for work, I was still in bed. He came to say goodbye, and I told him, "I'm six, and I'm eating noodles with butter and crinkle-cut carrots." I was so excited about it, too! I remember telling him that, but don't remember much else. About an hour and a half later I woke up, and I was soooo groggy! It took me a long time to fully wake up. Why are some mornings like that?

I'm so lucky that I'm retired and can have mornings like that. I didn't force myself to wake up, just went with it. Had a lazy morning. I had intended to go to the gym, but I was too groggy for that. So by about 11:00 AM I was finally awake and got ready for work.

Worked a nice 3-hour shift; the time went very quickly today. Then I went to the gym after work instead of before. I am trying hard to be a regular at the gym. There is no reason to NOT go. I'm feeling good, and the work-out (mostly the treadmill, once in a while the elliptical) feels just about right, with an occasional increase in distance or time. I guess it's working out OK for me. In answer to some previous questions, the gym I go to is so convenient, and it's not full of skinny, tight-clothed aerobic princesses. It's a nice variety of regular people -- my neighbors. I fit right in, especially because I can go during the day, there are other oldies like me there as well.

Lately I have not been in a sewing mood, so I have been knitting instead. I have nothing new to show, however, since I showed you my funny mitten. I have not yet started Mitten #2. I have also been reading.. started a book yesterday and finished it today. It was short.

One reason I'm not in a sewing mood is the state of my sewing room. It's a mess! Yesterday, to add to it, Mr. Cat decided to jump up onto my sewing table when I was in the middle of something. I was telling him "no! no!" but he insisted on coming to "help." I tried to shoo him out of the way, he tried to run in the opposite direction, chaos ensued, and several boxes and piles of things went flying. I just didn't have it in me to clean it all up. So it's even worse now. I know once I attack it and get things put away I will once again feel motivated to sew.

I desperately need a haircut! I could go tomorrow, but a storm is coming, and they are predicting a foot of snow. Can you believe it?? Happy April, everyone. The good news is, April snows never last long. It'll melt soon, and we need the moisture.

I bought a few zillion balls of cotton yarn on sale at Michael's .. only 99 cents through this Saturday .. perfect for home-made dish cloths.

Trying Again.. for the 46 Millionth Time

I decided to keep my gym membership and try to get back into the exercise habit. Of course, I never developed the habit. I just had one somewhat good month of fairly regular attendance. I don't call that a habit. I have heard so many times: just keep doing something regularly for two or three weeks, and it will become a habit. That has never worked for me. Maybe it works for you "normies," but it doesn't seem to work for a person like me with ADD or whatever I have... short attention span, easily bored, distracted by what seems loads more fun. It could even be pure laziness. I'm still hoping for that magic pill I can take that will make me slim and beautiful, and able to eat whatever I want.

My doctor sort of inspired me. Or maybe it was my good numbers. My warning-sign numbers were all good (blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose), but my triglycerides need some work. Exercise and weight loss are supposed to help those numbers go down. So, with a heavy sigh, and a nod to my aging process, I am trying once again to make it a habit to go to the gym. Really, it's not that bad. If I can just get myself out the door and on my way, the rest isn't so bad.

Spring is still coming VERY reluctantly here. Yesterday we had snow in the air. It stuck to the grass for a while and then melted. We still have clumps of snow where it was piled high and hasn't melted yet. I don't believe we've been into the 60's yet this spring. We'll likely get snow again before it stops for good. I hope we don't miss spring entirely and go directly from cold to 90 degrees F and humid. That's been known to happen!

Whatever it does, I hope I manage to get myself to the gym the proper number of times. Maybe even lose a pound or two. I can't let the weather be my excuse, since the gym is heated and cooled as needs dictate. It also has lighting, nice equipment, and I feel safe there. All my excuses are gone.

I'd still rather be doing this:



It's my first attempt at knitting mittens. I've made a lot more progress on this since I took the photo. I'm working on the thumb gusset (is that the right word?) and hoping it looks OK and doesn't leave too many holes. Holes and mittens go together like ice cream and sour kraut. Yum.

Decisions

inspired by "Dancing With the Stars" -- can you guess how?

a bunch of doll quilts - and I'm making more!


Pictures above have nothing to do with verbage below, exept that the pictures above represent what I'd rather do (make quilts) than doing what the verbage represents (exercise).

If you've been around my blog for even a short time, you know that I occasionally try to convince myself to turn into a physically-fit person. My most recent attempt was to join Anytime Fitness. I was so sure that, since it is less than a mile from my house, and I drive past it daily, it would be easy to pop in for a quick workout.

Well, surprise, surprise, it hasn't worked out for me yet. I joined in mid January. I went faithfully for a couple of weeks. In February I went a tad less faithfully. In March I found myself making excuses and went even fewer times.

I don't want to keep paying for this thing if I'm not going to go. That's what I did at the Y. I paid that membership for several years while my attendance dwindled down to ZERO. Now I'm trying to decide what to do.

Should I keep paying and hope I get on the ball? History would suggest that is NOT going to happen. Should I save my dollars and accept reality for what it is? Should I pretend I'm still going to do work-outs but at home and outside on my own? (That's a laugh.)

The one thing that is holding me back from facing what is probably an inevitability is that I had started to feel a lot better after those first few weeks of faithful exercise. Do I really want to give that up? I recently went to the doctor and had all those usual tests: blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. I'm fine in all areas (hooray!) except one (boo hoo). I have high triglycerides. Exercise and some weight loss would help that a lot.

So I'm torn. I'm not a person who loves to be physically active, at least not just for the sake of being active because I should. Yet I don't want to give up on myself. Arrgghh!

Tomorrow is April 1st. Maybe I will start the month with new resolve..... then again, that might just be a big April Fool on myself. What should I do???

Zumba Gold

I went to Zumba Gold. Good thing I didn't go to plain Zumba. Zumba Gold (for old people) kicked my butt! I was exhausted. In fact, I left early, because I was that out of shape and pooped. There were 5 women and 1 man. All the women but one were "traditionally built". Even the instructor was not a svelte young thing. I am not sure if I like Zumba Gold (or any other color). At least this one class was reminiscent of aerobics classes I used to try back in the old days, cardio moves to music. I never liked those classes too much, and this was just a jazzed-up version of aerobics.

It was a good work out, though, and I could use a good kick in the butt at the gym, so ... maybe I'll convince myself to attend this class weekly and see how long it takes for it to become easier for me. I'm stiff and sore this evening, but I must admit it hurts in a good way.

Our annual quilt show (my local guild) started today, and I can't wait to go take a look. I'm going tomorrow. I have not seen any of it yet as I was unable to help on set-up day.

This is a quilt I made (and Diane S. quilted) but it's not hanging in the show... it belongs to someone else, so the show organizer allowed me to display a photograph of it instead.

Yikes! I Did it Again!

Oh, me and my big ideas. I have been thinking that I need to get some regular exercise. I always tell myself that I'll start walking outside. But there are always too many excuses: too hot, raining, too cold, too icy, too dark. So then I go back to thinking about joining a club.

A while ago I finally quit my Y membership, because I was paying but not going. Now there is an Anytime Fitness near my house. I mean.. really near. I could walk to it. Any time I'm out and about, I drive right past it. It has been shaking its finger at me and making me feel guilty. So I went in today and joined. Oh, boy. Here we go again. I hope I can keep going, because this is the closest to my house a gym can get without being in my back yard. It couldn't be more convenient. I want to be healthier... I hope I can get myself to go to the gym.

Funny thing.. the manager was very friendly and personable. He admitted to me that he hates to exercise, too. Somehow that made it feel more like a friendly place where I can make it work.

And now I'm retired so have even fewer excuses for not fitting it into my day. I've done this and failed more than once, as you may remember. Crossing my fingers! You can cross yours for me too, if you want.