An Idle Mind. . . .

Ever heard the term "An idle mind is the devil's playground?" I grew up on that term and it's true. Have you ever seen a person with too much time on their hands or not enough to do?

I have had the same routine for the longest time:

• Get up at 6a
• Get kid up and lay his clothes out so he can get dressed
• Get a shower and get ready for work
• Pack up the kid at 7:30a
• Drop kid at daycare
• Go to work
• Do work
• Leave work at 4:30p
• Pick up kid at daycare
• Go home and maybe cook some dinner maybe not
• Spend rest of evening in bedroom relaxing and drinking a beer
• Pass out at 10:30p

That is the most mundane schedule I have ever seen. Anything exciting in there? I don't see it. I have literally forced my schedule to be chuck full of stuff for ME. I now (in addition to the exciting schedule that you see above) take a cardio class for an hour on Mon and Wed. I also take a weight training class for an hour right after work on Tues and Thursdays and also take a water aerobics class on Saturday morning for an hour. The earliest that I get home is on Friday at 5p. The rest of the nights, the latest that I get home is at 9p.

I started doing the whole self help thing because I was depressed about my physique. I'm going to be 40 in a few years and I don't have the body I once did. I need to start taking care of myself. At first I wanted to just loose weight. Now I don't care. I'm toning up so much that I'm loosing inches more than loosing weight which is way more important. I make sure that I consume the right amount of calories according to what I think I might burn that evening. It helps and I've had quite a few people ask if I've lost weight when in reality I really haven't which means it's working!

I also noticed that with a full schedule, I don't have time to fight with hubby, I want to cook and have a plan ahead of time of what I'm going to fix. When I do get home at night, I do dishes, a load of laundry and do a little picking up around the house. With hubby being home most of the time, he does the majority of the cleaning so I just have a little to do when I get home and when I leave in the morning, the house is spotless and we have clothes to wear. I don't have time to come up with excuses why something didn't get done or why the house is a disaster. Hubby supports my new schedule and it makes me feel good that I'm doing it.

It's been a long time since I've done something solely for me and on such a consistent basis.