Yesterday, as something to do during the weekly manager's meeting, I started to chart out my days. Weekdays only, because the weekends are too sporadic to map. It wasn't fancy -- a grid with day going down and times going across. No space for writing, so I just shaded in all the times that I've got something happening. Travel time, work, cooking, eating, cleaning up, preparing lunches for the next day, getting the kids put to bed, nursing Alex... Shaded it all in.
What I discovered is that my time is very nearly as squashed as I feel like it is. I have 30-45 minutes after work on Mondays and Wednesdays, and an hour on Fridays. (I usually use it to check my email.) Most nights I have about an hour and a half between my shower and when it's time to nurse Alex,though some nights, especially the kids' bath nights, some of that is likely to get eaten up by having to finish the making-lunches chores. I usually spend that hour and a half playing WoW.
...That's it. That's all the time I get for myself. I don't even get a lunch break at work, because I work through lunch in order to get that time after work three days a week, and to offset all the doctor's appointments.
And yet, I'm still considering joining the local YMCA so I can swim for exercise. Mostly because I'm tired of feeling like shit every minute of every day, and the only way past that is to start using my body, make the muscles remember how to move, make the blood remember how to flow, make the heart remember how to beat -- but the only way I can do that without further damaging my knee, hip, or feet (I swear I need to replace the whole lower half of my body) is with swimming. I've tried and tried to come up with another option, and I just can't. Even slow strolling -- which is not aerobic exercise by any stretch -- hurts my knee and leaves my feet screaming for mercy.
So swimming it is. Luckily, the Y is only 10-15 minutes away, and it's new and shiny and pretty and it looks like the swimming pool doesn't usually get too crowded -- when I went to check it out yesterday, I was told that it was crazy-busy, and there were still three swim lanes open.
I'll need to hope I can squeeze into my swimsuit, or else figure out where to get a new one (everyone knows fat chicks don't swim!). And then I guess I'll experiment with squashing a swim into the more open afternoons, or else skip a couple of nights of WoW to swim after Penny's in bed.
Matt has been sort of uncharacteristically unenthusiastic, and I haven't figured out why. Too much time he'd be left with the kids solo? Expecting additional schedule crunch to dump more work on him or make me flip out entirely? Suspicious because the Y is technically a Christian institution? Other stress simply draining his energy for anything else? Whatever. This is something I want to try to do.
Today is Penny's daycare "graduation" ceremony. Expect lots of pictures sometime this afternoon or evening.
2 comments:
Because I don't expect I'll ever get to use it, ever.
With all the headless chicken running around we both do, it just seems extremely unlikely that I'll ever get the chance to put the nine hundred thousand other things I'm supposed to be doing aside long enough to go swim.
Just as a side note... I got my first swimming lessons at the Y, when I was about Penny's age. :D
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