Monday, March 2, 2009

Let It Snow!

It is a semi-snow day. That means there is 8" outside my door (and I live in the mid-atlantic, so we aren't hardy.) Schools are closed but workplaces graciously allowed us to use leave. Or telework. I picked leave because I didn't want to spend the day worrying about whether I was working hard enough.

Yes, I should fix that problem.

After three visits to the frigid windy out-of-doors to shovel out my car. And a path to my car. And the lumps of sodden detrius (snowius?) that the plow left in an attempt to shovel my car in. (In between the last two I got a better hat and ate a bowl of potato-cheddar soup.) I finally finished, laughingly asking myself if I could count that shoveling as exercise.

Gob-smacked I realized that it is exercise. That wet snow at the end of a lever counts as moving a weight. That doing it swiftly and getting out of breath counts as aerobic activity. Well golly gee, why am I minimizing my actual work by laughing at myself.

Sheesh. I hate that. But at least I figured it out. Everything counts. Running up six steps to get the mail counts. Carrying groceries counts. It's all work. Maybe if I stop calling it exercise, it won't seem so trivial.

1 comment:

Journo June aka MamaBear said...

YAY for you figuring it out. Shoveling snow is usually an awesome workout, weights AND cardio. I live at 7200ft, so going up one flight of stairs gets MY heart racing! ;-) Hang in there, you CAN do this and you ARE worth it. Stop being embarrassed and so hard on yourself. You are doing it for your health and that's what counts.
Path to Health