Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Pedometers

Pedometers are evil.
Pure evil.

Somehow I got roped into doing a fitness program at school.
I'm kind of like Sister Two in that I have a hard time saying no.

We have teams of five and we have to actually
exercise 5 times a week for thirty minutes.
We also have to eat three cups of vegetables,
two cups of fruit and drink 48 ounces of water.

And sleep for 7 to 9 hours.

You get one point for exercising, one point for eating right and drinking your allotted water and one point for sleeping. 
At least I'll get one point for sleeping.  That I can do.

At any rate, I decided to buy yet another pedometer.  I somehow manage to either lose them or break them, so I decided that I needed another one.  My budget nag manager was thrilled.

I wore it today.  I had both noon recess duty and afternoon recess duty.
The older boys (5th and 6th grade) asked me to "bomb" the ball to them.
Basically I kick it as high and as far as I can and they run after it.
Then they throw it back to me and we do it all again.

I decided that could count for exercise.
It was more exercise than I was getting, so it should count, right?

With both recesses, I had my thirty minutes in.
I was feeling pretty smug.

I logged about 13,000 steps at the end of the school day which is a bit more than I usually log for a day with our crew, so evidently the recess exercise paid off!

We went into town and then went back out to school to "do just a few more things".  We finally left at about 7:30.

We got home to discover that our four rotten, big dogs had taken off.  We wouldn't mind so much, but Annie was with them. 


She has a bad case of hip dysplasia and we try to keep her in the house or fenced yard as much as possible .... because otherwise she'll run all over the countryside and then not be able to move for a week. 

Let me tell you, she is a heavy brute to carry in and out to go to the bathroom!  So, like I said, we avoid that at all costs, but somehow she managed to sneak out.

I hollered and yelled and hollered some more.

Still no dogs.

So I found my trusty flashlight, changed the batteries
and headed down the road.  No sign of them. 

I walked the creek bed down to the little lake.  I saw a couple of coons and a lot of jumping fish, but no dogs.  Decided to go home .... it was pitch black by this time and with all of the fallen limbs in the pasture, it was really hard to see and I had to slowly pick my way along.
Chip was waiting for me.  I had no idea where he'd been or what direction he came from, so I took the car and drove the canal road.  I drove down to the big lake.  Then I decided to call it a night.
Annie and Goliath were both home when I got home.

We discovered that Chip and Goliath had tangled with something.
They both had extremely bloody mouths and snouts.
So I was really concerned about Longbody,
our resident stupid basset hound.



He didn't show up and didn't show up.
  I walked the road some more,
hollering his real name and
not the made up ones that I so fondly call him.

I finally gave up, thinking he had probably met his maker with  whatever tore up Chip and Goliath.  About twenty minutes ago, he was crying at the door.  He didn't have a mark on him, but demanded to be fed immediately. Then I called him some of the made up names again.

All of that took me to 20,367 steps.  

I'm going to be sorry tomorrow.

2 comments:

SisterTwo said...

Now you are in my league. Any time I help at the ranch I can easily log 20,000 steps. During the cow sale it was closer to 25,000 or more. Just think you walked approximately 10 miles!!!

Anonymous said...

And let me tell you .... I felt it this morning when I got out of bed! I don't know how you do it!