Pulled from my Tumblr, because who reads words on Tumblr.  Tumblr is for pictures and short quips, right?

I swear I am doing more with my days than an exercise routine.  Seriously.  I’m baking bread and dealing with small pockets of clutter.  I’m trying to reprogram Wii remotes, cooking meals, and settling squabbles among siblings.  And I am prepping for a camping trip.

But I am excited about the working out because it is an exercise in control.  I’ve been thinking about control quite a bit lately.  Usually in life, control is an illusion.  As humans we are subject to the whims of fate and circumstances and other people.  We only control our internal response to external events.

But there are two facets of life where we do determine both what happens to us and how we respond to it.  Exercise is one of those.  Being able to say “no” is control.  But making yourself say “yes” when the natural inclination is to say “no,” that’s ultimate control.  That’s what I meant yesterday when I said I win every day, but it wasn’t until later in the day that I figured out exactly what I meant by “win.”

I’ll not go into the second scenario.  Some things are just sweeter when you discover them for yourself.

Today was the first day of the fourth week of the plan.  I did a total of

185 squats (3 sets of 50 and 1 of 35)

a 60 second plank (it was a plank “rest” day)

90 crunches (1 set of 50 and 1 of 40)

35 push-ups (1 set of 30 and 1 of 5)

50 calf raises (This is a challenge I just added today, modeled on the squat challenge. Who knew these would also work the back of the thigh?)

I’ve broken these into sets alternating upper and lower body so that I can do the reps.  Once I reach max reps on everything (and I am still planning to add the wall-sit), I will slowly work on being able to do all the reps in one set each.  If I can keep to the plan as I have laid it out, that will occur sometime in mid-September, at which point the routine should look like this:

250 squats

330 second plank

250 calf raises

150 crunches

120 push-ups

330 second wall-sit

And that, ladies and gents, is a level of fitness that is more than acceptable in a 46 year old fat chick.

BTW, the scale shows +1 today.  But I marveled at how nice my feet and ankles looked as I was doing those calf-raises in front of the mirror.  I’ll take how I  look over a number any day of the week.

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So, I finished organizing the little girls’ clothes today.  This was made somewhat easier in that they wear the same size, so it was just one set of clothes.  Summer stuff in the dresser they wanted to dress out of, winter stuff in the other.  We don’t have the storage space to actually store it.  Plus, weather.  It is fickle.  The cool weather stuff needs to be somewhat accessible.

Then, the shelves in my room.  I had two sets that were stack-able but not with each other jerry-rigged together.  Every time I walked by, I was afraid they were going to fall on me.  Plus, for some reason, stacked stuff that is taller than I am makes me feel…..vaguely uncomfortable.  Not claustrophobic by any means, but….no spot to rest the eye.

So, I dismantled them.  The bottom section, which held shoes, is now in the closet still holding shoes.  The section that held clothes and the tv is now on the floor in the same spot.  My sons borrowed the tv, and I never watch it anyway, so…..we’ll see what happens there.  It was originally theirs anyway, and I took it because they weren’t caring for it properly.  If they do so now, I may let them keep it.

All that shelf shuffling entailed moving some stuff, mostly scrapping stuff, out of the closet.  I need to look at the clothes shelves and figure out how to neaten them, because I just put the stuff back on them without evaluating.  I need to clear the top of the craft cubby.  Then I need to set about crafting and reading, because I am rapidly reaching the point where this room is not going to get any better until I start using stuff up.

And here is the highlight of all that:  aside from the de-cluttering that can only occur through consumption and creativity….the only clutter left in this house is in my disorganized kitchen cupboards.  Which I did actually have organized until my teen “had a better plan.”

Yeah, guess what’s happening next week?  If you said “kitchen cupboards,” you are the winner of tonight’s round of the Clutter Lottery.

Oh, I forgot to mention two shelves at the bottom of one of the living room bookcases.  I’ll be sorting those with my cousin when she visits in August or September.  I want to wait on her because I want to preserve the “not knowing what all is there” until we are together.