Work it, girl!
Eileen and I have joined "The Exercise Challenge", a club of our own creation. The mission statement of our club is: "To sneak up on ourselves and surprise our bodies into exercising without really knowing that what we're doing IS exercise." The problem, we find, is two-fold: we're exhausted each day and can't imagine finding time to exercise and we're lazy so it is easy to use the exhaustion excuse to talk ourselves into NOT exercising. However, we're both used to walking a lot and being relatively active compared to what we do now. The most exercise I've been getting these days occurs during the songs I sing with the Kindergarteners.
So tonight, to kick off The Exercise Challenge, Eileen and I walked to the supermarket and partook in the dancing that occurs each night on the large square in front of the supermarket. Two women stand up front on the top steps of the market and play traditional and not-so-traditional Chinese music and dance to the songs. A sea of women follow the choreography and this happens every night. We stood in the back and looked like fools trying to follow the steps. I've gone to step aerobics class with my mom and felt completely uncoordinated so I knew what to expect tonight but Eileen was surprised at the complexity and the difficulty and at our general inability to follow along. The choreography is quite complex, if you ask me, and there's no practice or run-through of the steps. We hung around in the back and collected a small crowd. Right about the time when I was ready to go back to the apartment and curl up into a ball on my bed, shunning the Exercise Challenge for all eternity, Robyn walked up and put her groceries down in a heap and joined in. After a few more songs, Robyn confided that she had no idea what was going on and we went into the store so she could show me some yoga DVDs she owns. I purchased a 4-disc set titled, "Inch-loss tranquility flow yoga style". I'm enthusiastic.
I also bought a cheap jump rope and tried it out in my apartment tonight. I got the kind that hurts really bad if you accidentally slap yourself with it - I figure no pain, no gain, right? Well, I almost put out my eye and slapped my toe so badly that I crumpled to the ground in a cursing puddle. The jump rope is in time-out in the kitchen right now. I say this now, but I'm really going to try and wake up early tomorrow to get a bit of inch-loss yoga in before school. I figure it will be good for me, and, getting up before I absolutely have to is certainly a challenge if not an exercise. I'll keep you posted.
