Saturday, October 08, 2011

Strenuous days, a five-year-old boy, and a rough dinner

I haven't been exercising lately because I had this puppy to care for, a full-time job that gave me plenty of exercise. But more and more she's getting self-sufficient. And I'm gaining weight and feeling the need (guilt?) to exercise. So today I did my yoga routine for the first time in two months. Not as bad as I expected--my muscles seemed to remember what they were supposed to do. Granted, I'm a little less flexible--not that I was ever very flexible--and my muscles quiver more in some exercises. But on the whole, I didn't do badly. I went from that to Sophie's first training session, which proved to be less hard on my body than on my nerves. I worried a great deal about being pulled down between the car and PetSmart, but I managed to control her efforts to run to every person she saw and we made it inside. Lesson was very valuable, from how to use treats to vocabulary. Sophie is, I think, part way through what she should have learned in this first lesson--for instance, she knows "sit" and "down" and I learned a super new technique for dealing with her jumping on me.
Jacob arrived shortly after I finished a hasty lunch--he was not in sympathy with my almost desperate need for a late afternoon nap. Woke me up to "love" on me and for several other reasons.  Finally he kissed me and said have a good nap. When I woke up it was almost six and suspiciously quiet from Jacob's playroom--he was sound asleep. I fed the dogs, started dinner, and then wakened him gently by scratching his back. He never wakes up from naps in a good mood but his bad, whiny mood took a while. Then he began to whine because I'd promised a picnic and it looked like rain; I suggested the porch; he cried and wanted his daddy. Finally he decided on the porch, and we carried our dinners out there, only to have him declare it was too windy. Back inside, where he spilled his dinner on the living room rug. Then he wanted to go back outside--carried our food back outside. Then he was sure there was a tornado coming, and we had to go inside. Long story not very short: I had a cold ground beef patty, salad was okay, he had 1-1/2 chicken nuggets, declared he couldn't eat the corn, and finished his meal with chocolate-covered raisins--half good half bad is my grandmotherly rationale.
Rain is in the air, praise be, and Jacob is obssessed with tornadoes, telling me about the ones he's experienced--yeah, sure--and predicting them outside. We have the weather channel on but it's hard for him to distinguish between videos of past tornados and anything happening here and now. He keeps wanting to go to the bathroom to hide but I have refused.
Writing the great American novel? What's that? I may get to read the John Grisham novel that I'm having a hard time with. My colleague Fred tells me it has a section about an inapropriate develpment project, relevant to my work-in-progress, but I haven't come to it yet and am finding, as I have before, that Grisham just doesn't captivate me. This one is The Last Juror.
In sum, a grandmotherly Saturday. Were my kids like this?
Most of the rest of my family is in Austin for a race of some sort--I can't sort out if it's an ironman or a muddy whatever, but I'm a bit sad not to be with them.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Strenuous indeed. This is easy for me to say, but do try to find more time just for yourself.

judyalter said...

Thanks, Bebe. Actually it sounds worse than it was. Most of Jacob's folly was fun, and I enjoyed his company. It was needing that nap that got me down. Now off to put him to bed. Thank goodness he has stopped suggesting we go to the bathroom to hide.