Effort to Improve

I have been thinking a lot about the things I need to improve upon. When you start to get on your own nerves, you know you've got a problem!

I joined the gym months ago and had not gone. Truth be told there are many weeks when it was impossible. With chemo, you cannot introduce kids to places that sickness lurkes, because we can't afford for them to bring it home to Wayne. So that leaves a good solid week a month where he is healthy enough to take it if the kids get sick. But on the good week he has, we are out doing other things - and I don't want to "waste" our nights running on the treadmill when he is feeling good enough to hang out with me.

So anyway, I haven't been working out. My stress level is high, my jeans don't fit the way they should, and I have had enough. So, no more excuses. Yesterday I went to the gym. Yesterday I came home with blood oozing through my socks from 4 blisters (from very cute but very unfriendly weekend shoes) that have set up residency on my toes. Tomorrow they will be bandaged and I'll try again...

The other thing I am working on is being a better Mom. I don't spend as much time as I should just hanging out with the kids. I am ashamed to say I find myself taking on projects, working, cleaning, running errands - all day long, and hardly ever sit to just snuggle or play. It's sad ... and it's stopping.

So, today I looked past the laundry, the dirty floors, the empty refrigerator, and my mile-long to list and focued on what is important.

We built train tracks and hand-mixers (made of out tinker toys). We ate at McDonalds for lunch and went to the party store so Caeden could pick out a bouquet of balloons (he sees me editing pictures of other kids with balloons and he gets a bit wistful for some of his own). As as much as he enjoyed them, the pictures look horrible because the balloons and the turning trees just don't quite go together. But he loved them, and that is what the point was ...


We went to the park and we took pictures. I got "the picture!" for Christmas cards. It's the one that is going to be ordered HUGE and placed above Grandpa and Grandma's sofa. They just don't know it yet...

Then we filled up water balloons and played "catch" in the front yard with them...enjoying one of the last really warm days of the year.





Taking a good hard look in the mirror was exactly what I needed to do. Look at what I would have missed. :(