Destinations, Dreams and Dogs - International adventure with a fast-track family (& dogs) of Old World values, adopting the Russian-Italian-American good life on the go…!

 During the fall and winter, it seems that this couch potato fell off the turnip truck.  One thing after another conspired to keep me from exercising, and now I have fallen into one, big, amorphous blob.

Lovely.

I have my excuses, same as everyone else.  Alright, so maybe mine are a bit more exotic.  There are days when I must rise at 3:00 a.m.—can’t really see the point of rising earlier to exercise.  There are days when I’m in Timbuktu and running down dirt paths might be viewed as a criminal activity.  There are days when the weather is vicious.  There are days when I’m rarely in the same geographic location, so joining a gym is not really an option.  Using the occasional guest pass to a gym is too time consuming—changing, driving there, doing a routine, showering, changing, driving back—who has this kind of time?  I have kids, dogs, empires to manage.

I used to go out running with my oldest son, Petya, but now his spare moments after his own intensive sports training are spent sitting in my jacuzzi.  No time to do marathon runs  around the track with his mama.  I used to help in some of his tennis training—lobbing him high shots, slam-serving right to his feet, or even picking up hundreds of balls—but alas, he has fantastic coaches now that are straight out of some boot camp, for all I know, and his middle-aged mom has been sidelined.

So I did what any sane person who wants to change her life would do.  I got out the exercise DVDs that I carry with me, as if they were a talisman against my clothes becoming any tighter.  It was some new kind of fancy-step routine, that I was avoiding learning.  Here we were, a few days into the New Year, and I was shamed into showing up for my at-home, class-of-one.

Who shamed me, you ask?  The mirror.  Those puffy cheeks (not THOSE cheeks, my other cheeks).  Well, we might as well include all the cheeks, while we’re at it.  The mirror does not lie.  Stretchy clothes and big shawls can only do so much.

Happily, my DVD instructors slooowed down the steps for newbies.  I tried my best, and even rewound when I didn’t get the moves the first time.  After nine minutes, I was winded, and decided to come back at a later time.

Maybe if I do baby steps, nine minutes a day for about… ten times, okay, let’s be realistic here, three times a day, I’ll get somewhere?

I can hope….

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