I was looking at my schedule for the upcoming week and I realized that there is pretty much no way in hell I’m going to make it to any of my usually scheduled exercise classes. Princess has a party today, which is early enough that I can’t make it to water aerobics. Then she comes home early tomorrow from school, which means I can’t go to karate class. My sister is showing up Wednesday, again early enough to kill any chance of me slipping in a water aerobics class. The dojo is closed on Thursday, the Y is closed on Friday, etc., etc., etc.
So I need some alternate ways to sneak in some exercise this week. Here are a few ideas I’ve come up with.
1. Clean the house. I’ve got family coming, right? So I should clean from top to bottom. If I throw on some heart racing music and really get into the swing of things, I could break a sweat and bust a move while chasing dust bunnies out from behind the fridge. Never mind that my sister doesn’t give a hoot about how clean the house is. All she cares about is whether there’s a place for her to sleep or not.
2. Chase the children away from the tree, the presents, the fridge… Basically, run after the kids and keep them out of trouble. I’ll have both home, and will need to be on my guard to make sure they aren’t getting into things they shouldn’t be. Last thing I need is for Pixie to topple the tree on herself, or Princess to go digging through my closet to find out what “Santa” brought her for Christmas. I figure if I do a few laps around the house every hour, that will produce a low but steady calorie burn and let the kids know someone really is watching to see if they’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!
3. Slush ball fight. It snowed here this weekend. Not a lot, just enough to foul up traffic and turn our yard into a mud pit. If I’m really desperate for some exercise, I can take the kids outside and we can throw slush balls at each other. I’d rather throw snow balls, but hey, this is Virginia. Snow in December wasn’t going to last anyway.
4. Sex with the Hubster. He is home this week. We just need to put another holiday special in the DVD player and let the kids zone out while we go get jolly in the bedroom.
5. Post Christmas morning clean-up. Given the number of boxes currently sitting under our tree and the number of presents still waiting to be wrapped, I’d say it’s a sure bet my living room is going to be completely trashed by the time the last gift gets open. If I want a workout Christmas morning, I can pull on my sweats, grab a trash bag and a box cutter and set to work. I guarantee you I will be busy all day this way.
Any other good ideas for a holiday week workout? We could always walk through the neighborhood to look at all the lights and displays, I suppose, and I could maybe even go for a jog or just turn on the Wii. But I’m looking for the creative route here. What do you guys plan to do to squeeze in a little exercise this week, huh? Let me know!
