On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I get up when the clock still starts with 4 in order to make the AM bootcamp session. (Tuesdays and Thursdays mean sleeping until a whopping 5:30 to get to the battlefield to run before anyone else gets there.) Anyway, on MWF, I get home around 6:45 and immediately take Kane and Cynder for a 45-minute walk. I feed them breakfast when we get back to the house, tidy up a bit, and then hop in the shower and get dressed in a frenzy in order to start working at 8. By midmorning, I’ve got an hour and a half of exercise, three hours of work, and 6 hours of awake time behind me. And I’m exhausted.
During this time I often think about how nice it would be to take a nap. To sleep in and skip a workout. To pour some sugary, HFCS-laden cereal and CAFO milk into a bowl three or four times and call it breakfast AND lunch, instead of taking the time to make organic sweet potato hash browns and local, cage-free fried eggs for breakfast. To save my tired and sore legs and not walk the dogs, to keep them penned in the back yard, pining to stretch their magnificent muscles and spend some quality time with me.
How nice it would be to drive through a Dunkin Donuts drive-thru at 7:55 in my pajamas because hey! I work from home and I can, instead of driving to the next town over before most people are awake to do something constructive and healthy and challenging with other people.
How nice it would be to not shower or fix my hair or put on any makeup or get dressed, because realistically the only person I may see today besides Jeff is the mailman. And he’s so terrified of Cynder and Kane he doesn’t dare linger to chit chat.
And that’s when I hear Robert Frost whispering to me that it wouldn’t really be that nice. Because letting yourself down doesn’t feel nice. Sometimes meeting my own needs is exhausting. But it’s always worth it.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
As a side note, to look at these two, you’d swear they were the ones with the sore muscles and packed day. 
Leave a Reply