laws of the universe...

There are certain indisputable laws of the universe, which pertain to old mamas like me, like skip a day washing your hair: you will end up in the emergency room, with either yourself or one of your kids. Oversleep: not know if a particular child actually got on the bus then when the nurse calls, so you say they are sick, only to have the nurse call back and say oops, he's here after all. Let the groceries dwindle: people come over for dinner. Wear a sock with a hole in it: find a really cute pair of must-try-ons at the thrift store. This morning, I slept in. I didn't mean to. I had a cup of tea before bed, and KNEW it wasn't a great idea, as once I get up in the night to use the bathroom, all bets of going back to nighty-night, ha. So I tossed and turned and prayed and thought about things...then fell back into a nice deep sleep, only to wake up at, ha, 8:10. My girls had long gotten on the bus, oops. Sorry girls. But here's the thing: I decided that since I was already lazy, I would just laze some more, and I scrolled through the news on my phone, all comfy cozy, when the dogs started barking like crazy. A peek out the window, and of course, the guy delivering the boards for the new roof was in the driveway. He was getting out of the truck, and I was in my nighty. Dang it. I threw on my jeans and my bra and the same shirt I wore yesterday, and he was knocking and knocking on the door, then back in his truck by the time I made it out there...

Anyway, he stacked those boards up near the other roof pieces, which are probably going to be installed this weekend.

But my point is, if I lounge in bed, someone will knock at the door. I have tried to be proactive about this possibility in the past by getting up and getting dressed, brushing the teeth and washing the face, before getting back in bed with a book, but darn it, once I'm up and at 'em, I don't usually get back in bed.

Here's what I was saying yesterday about my new fitness goals: I have some again, ha!
I've decided that I am not too old and tired to get into better shape. I've been inspired by FatGirlFedUp, I follow her on Instagram. She weighed 485, and has lost over three hundred pounds. But I said to myself at first, "Well, she's young." Oh, the excuses! Anyway, she is SO inspiring. She said she had high blood pressure and joint pain and was in terrible shape, but one day she decided it was enough. She puts out messages daily, and honestly, it took me a good week of reading her prompts before I geared up to actually EXERCISE AGAIN! I keep thinking, if she did it, I can do it. And that's the key ingredient. Hope. If you don't believe you can do it, you will never even begin.

It takes work, and it takes days following days of work, but if I just sit here and wish, it won't happen. My knee is a wreck, so I have to work around that. I can't go on those walks in the morning at this time, because it's so much wear and tear, so I will do what I can here in the house.

My workouts are hilarious, I laugh at myself even. I do "real" push-ups, but I can only go down about an inch. The first day, three sets of ten, yesterday four sets of ten. I do various other stretches and lifts and dancy-boxy moves, but it gets my heart rate up, and those muscles stretched and moving. I have ten pound weights, which seem like they are fifty pound weights, and wah, there was a time a few years ago when they felt like feathers. But cheers, here's to new beginnings!

I'm thinking there might be a time in the near future when knee replacement surgery is a possibility. The orthopedic dr. told me about 8 years ago that we should try to get another ten years out of them before replacement, I have advanced arthritis, and there are crinkles and cracklings, but the buckling thing is not fun. So I am telling myself that if I lose some of this weight and get into better shape, my knee will thank me, and if I do have surgery, it will go so much better. I am also conscious of my other knee, which was previously the one I favored, having to do extra work now, and it's rather scary. Mobility is a treasure, worth suffering a bit to keep.

Renovations progress:

We painted this bedroom yellow when we built the house. It was baby Joseph's room, my fifth child, who was 11 months when we moved in here, marking the first time we didn't have a baby in our bedroom with us, but it didn't last long, ha, Aaron was already on the way:) This room was the room each subsequent baby moved into after moving out of the big beautiful baby carriage in our room. Then when Camille moved out of our room at around three years old, she had a playpen at the end of our bed, then slept in a nest on the floor when she grew out of the play pen...she didn't WANT to leave our room, and ha, I wasn't in a hurry either...:). But she moved into this room with Charlotte Claire, and they shared it ever since then. Now that Joseph, who had a bigger room downstairs, moved out and they moved into that, this room is going to be Jon's new room. It was painted purple for Char and Cam, but Jon wanted it gray. He removed all the carpet and padding, and the baseboards yesterday, so we are almost ready to install the flooring. We're deciding whether to paint the wood trim with white enamel.

When he moves into this, we will do the same thing with his old room, which will go to Sonja. New flooring, new paint.

I don't know how to operate the saw, or how to install this flooring, but I will learn, and I will post lots of pics.

Oh here's a funny thing, yesterday I kept smelling something awful. It was sniffing around, thought one of the dogs rolled in something, so I was sniffing them, and they were fine. The garbage can, nope, looked through the bin where the potatoes are, nope, fine...hmmm. I told Kathryn I would give her five bucks if she found what smelled (I was thinking the cat brought a mouse in or something) But then, lightbulb! The pumpkin Camille had painted! It had rotted on the tv cabinet cube-y thing! I was SO glad I found out what it was! Yuck to the clean up, but yay to getting rid of the smell!

Here's what our house looks like right now from my chair:

(those mats are my work out mats! And my kitchen counters ALWAYS need decluttering! And the bin in the kitchen on the floor is Paul's, his hunting clothes!)


Why there's a little mail scale on the coffee table, don't know. That's the huge mirror I bought and haven't cleaned yet.

And here's what I look like on this fine morning:


And Camille as a kitty for her activity club party last night:


I don't know why I'm in the sorting and organizing mood, but I am, so I am going with it. Yesterday, I cleaned out several kitchen cabinets by taking out all of the contents, filling up the countertops, then sorting. Who besides me has three things of garlic powder? Four boxes of bandaids, plus like fifty floating around, three bottles of calamine lotion, four containers of ibuprofen, stale peanuts (not just one jar, THREE), gingerbread flavored coffee from like three years ago, half a bag of sticky Jolly Ranchers, packets of Arby sauce...) So I sorted and purged, wiped down the inside of the cabinets, and put things away in new convenient ways, the coffee stuff near the pots instead of in the cabinet on the other side of the room, ect.

It feels nice to open the cupboards and not have things falling out. And to see it all neat in there, oh what fun-ness!

Anyway, this fine morning is slipping away as I sit here and write. There are things to do, and we are out of: half and half, garbage bags, sandwich baggies, and running low on toilet paper and paper towels. The veggie drawer is almost empty, and the bananas and apples are almost gone.

We will be going to the store in the old van, the new tires haven't come in yet, I thought they had, and the nicer van is sitting there with it's flat tire, looking all sad. They are both 2008 vans, but one is nicer, ha.

Anyway, have a good day, and hope you weren't bored to death with all my ramblings...one of these days I'll start to edit my posts....maybe.