There's a gymn in the office where I work. Unlike the last place where I worked that had a gymn, where a woman wouldn't dare go into the place, this one seems to be used by all kinds of people in the office, male and female, the fit and the not-so-fit alike.

Because I'm just now, once again, trying to get along without my cane ( it's amazing how much less my back bothers me when I don't have to deal with boxes of HVAC parts) I don't want to go crazy on the weight equipment which I really don't understand. But there are two treadmills in there, each with bars along the side to hang on to if I needed to. There are also free weights ranging from a pound upwards. So, after making sure I could do the treadmill all right at a reasonable speed without losing my balance, I've added some weights to swing as I walk. I go in there on my dinner break and try to get in 20-30 minutes of excersize....

I feel a little self concious, though the place is set up very advantageously. There's a change room in the ladies rest room right accross the hall from the gymn, so it's not like I have to wander through the entire office in work out clothes, or worse, all sweaty from having done the excersize. There's even a little t.v. in there with a place to run a DVD or VHS tape. I'm tempted to take my yoga DVD, which I've never tried, in and try it out there. I could come in to work early and do it.

Okay. Who am I kidding? I don't have to be to work till 2:30 in the afternoon and I'm still lucky to make it on time as it is.
But it's a good thought, and yoga is supposed to be one of the best excersizes you can do if you have back problems.

Anyway, my excersize goal is 10,000 steps a day. It's kind of a sad goal, really, since years ago I used to be able to walk for miles and miles and at a pretty good clip too. But now, I'm as challenged as the next middle aged broad (and getting broader) in our society to make it. I found that in "average life" I was walking about 4500 steps a day, which isn't bad, considering I was using my cane then. But now that I can use the treadmill I'm up to about 7500. Hopefully, in the warmer weather I'll be able to walk outside again - of course I'll have to take the time to do it. I'm way impressed by Friend Will. He can walk 4 miles on his lunch hour! No wonder he looks the same as he did in high school only with some grey hair!

But the treadmill is really kind of soothing. If I don't decide on some mental activity, like saying some prayers or mentally laying out furniture in the new house, I can, literally not think about anything. It's great. I can understand how some people can become sort of addicted to excersize....nevermind the zone diet when you can just zone out!
It's like a 20 minute mental vacation, a side benefit of having to be alert to where my body is in space and how it is moving to maintain my balance. Every thing, even my ruined balance, has a silver lining, it seems. You just have to dig harder to get the lining of some issues.

Sometimes, I think about how, when hampsters use a wheel humans find it funny, but me using the treadmill is supposed to be an intellegent thing to do. Hmmm.

It's also good that my life has taken on the kind of regularity that I can do this. That was one thing about being self employed that was both good and bad: you never knew what kind of day you were going to have. And, since I don't have to fight my biological clock and get here at 0'dark-thirty in the morning, my life is no longer an epic stuggle to be awake when other people expect me to be awake and somehow get enough sleep in between. Routine is supposed to be boring, but I believe it might be good for me. After all, I seem to be some kind of a lightning rod for excitement - or maybe I just see the interesting aspects of things. Either way, maybe it's good, just now that my job is pretty predictable, I have a set dinner time and set hours.

Maybe later, after we sell the house, ( a saying that, at our place is now like "when our ship comes in") and things have been settled for awhile I'll crave something new to do...I'll take some classes or re-learn to play the clarinet, or plant some kind of exotic vegetables in the garden, hell, I might even bungee jump or moon somebody now that it's legal to do so. Though, I admit, I can't think of anyone I feel the urge to moon. It could be that I lack basic tenents of the personality type that moons people - that could be tied in with feeling that planting a tomatillo would be, on some level "exciting".

What I'm saying is, on behalf of hamsters everywhere, maybe there's something to hanging out in your own environment and not going anywhere real fast for a little while. After all, the more I see of the world, the more willing I am to see less of it!