Keeping Your Fitness Wheels on the Road of Life
April 20, 2009
This is what my last few weeks have looked like; I won an Emmy. 
Battled a brush with death in my kitchen with my beloved George Foreman Grill, despite the fact that my two geriatric fire extinguishers refused to ex-ting. Grounded my son. Met Dr. Oz.
Lost my new phone. Found my new phone. Bounced a check. Found a $100 bill. Scored 4 for 4 with family April Fool’s pranks. Waited in line all night at Buffalo Wild Wings Grand Opening so my son could win a year’s worth of free wings. Won a year’s worth of free wings.
Realized the extreme insanity of waiting in line all night in order to spend the next 52 Friday nights at Buffalo Wild Wings. Got $20 in extra bucks on my CVS receipt. Texted my friend and hit send the moment I realized he was sitting two tables away at Starbucks. Washed seven loads of laundry on the first sunny Saturday of the season. Saw three Broadway plays, compliments of my Emmy goodie bag, which also held a netty pot, a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup but no partridge in a pear tree. Peeled 14 potatoes in ten minutes (my previous best time has never been more than one potato per minute, yay me). Burnt my hand (dinner seems to come around every friggin night). Stepped on a pop top, blew out my flip-flop, cut my heel had to cruise on back home. <silence>
Okay, the part about the pop top was an exaggeration but the rest, I swear, is true. Whether I was in sync with the universe or out of sync, my recent past has been filled with high and low moments of grace. Life truly is a highway and it is easy to cruise straight ahead if there are no pot holes to avoid but, just like a driving overcorrection, once you start swerving, it sometimes takes a few miles to get back on the blacktop.
What does this have to do with fitness? Fitness is what keeps me sane when my life starts swerving from one gutter rail to the other. That and God’s grace.
Give me 30 minutes of vigorous movement during which I can quiet the yammering hyenas in my head and I can deal. Without this, without the mental clarity that exercise provides for me, I am not a very nice person, to drive in front of or sleep beside.
Even on days when the coffee kicks in and life is percolating along smoothly, my workout releases me from the grip of “not enoughness” that wakes up with me each morning. Say I’ve had a few too many consecutive nights of ice cream and find myself tugging at my lycra waistband in discomfort. Even if my bloat doesn’t vanish after I exercise, those bloated thoughts do. So I can concentrate on things that really matter. Like what to buy at CVS with my 20 Extra Bucks.
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