Health Trek Day 22

It was a good weekend. My husband was able to scratch the last item off his getting ready for the winter list. It is incredible how much time we get ready for each season. Living on a lake makes the chores endless. We have docks to put out, boats, jet skis, canoes, and water toys to launch. Then after just a few brief weeks of being able to play with all these toys, we have to take them out and put everything back in storage! It gets harder and harder to lift, tote and tug all this paraphernalia back and forth as our backs get weaker and the arthritis attacks our joints, so my genius hubby keeps coming up with all these amazing ideas as to how to store everything most efficiently. He designed a wooden pulley that he attaches the docks to and then pulls them up the hill using his jeep or his son's four wheeler. Too bad he couldn't get them to stack themselves too!
I always swore I would never make lists! I was raised by lists. My mother worked as a waitress and had to leave for work as soon as I got home from school and could watch my younger brothers. She would leave lists all over the house. I had instructions on what to make for dinner. Lists of chores I needed to do. Reminders to make my bed, brush my teeth, no television until the chores were finished, what snacks to eat, what not to eat. Labels and lists on everything in the house, put this away, don't touch my makeup. stay out of my closet, don't play with my shoes (my Mom had hundreds of shoes and I was always playing grownup with them). So I grew an absolute abhorrence of lists! Promised myself I would never leave them for my kids! So I resorted to charts. I made incentive charts where the kids could earn extra allowance if they chose some chores from the charts and did them without asking. Sort of worked, sometimes...
Now I find myself making lists again. But I don't leave them around as orders for other people. I make them to remind myself what I need to do. Chores I need to get done each day to keep myself on track so I don't end up reading, knitting or playing computer scrabble all day!
Post Its are another wonderful invention. I shudder to think what my mother would have done with them! But I use them as reminders to myself. Stay out of the Fridge! Kitchen closes at 7:00 P.M. Remember the pants in the closet you are striving to fit into! Don't eat this, it's for supper! (that one for my husband who eats constantly and stays thin!)
Then there are the perpetual shopping lists. We write things down on a list we keep on the table then forget to take them when we go shopping. Always something I forget!
If lists work to help keep us on track, so be it. We'll do it. What keeps you on track? I would really enjoy hearing some comments from some of you as to how you are doing and what is working to keep you motivated. I have the most trouble on weekends, as meal planning seems to be hit or miss. We have company or got out more and the best laid plans seem to go out the window. It is harder to keep my will power in check when I have a perpetual eating machine at my side.
So It is Monday and we start again.
Have a productive day everyone and remember
ROCK ON!

Poem for today, written for my son when he was growing up:

Chores!
Chores! Chores! Chores!
No wonder that word rhymes with bores!
School is out, I'm finally free
I should be feeling full of glee
but Daddy says to mow the grass
It's not so high it wouldn't pass
At least to my eye it looks fine
I'd rather be swinging from a vine
Wouldn't it be super great
If a jungle I could create
With grass so high that I could hide
"Okay Dad, I'm going outside."
Now Mom says to fold the clothes
I'd rather spray them with a hose!
I would say we had some rain
But it would only be in vain
She'd only make me do it later
I am a good procrastinator
I hid them once beneath the bed,
Boy did my Mom's face get red!
When I wake up to morning's light
I start to plan my day just right
I'll string the hammock in the shade...
then I spy the list they've made
"Don't forget to take out the trash;
use the leftovers to make some hash;
Wash the dishes, sweep the floor;
Ye Gads, you mean there's even more?
Trim the hedges, paint the wall,
Clean your fingerprints off the hall
It's enough to make you mad
It's summer now, I should be glad
By the time these chores come to an end
It will be time for school again!

JPH

Plan for today:
Breakfast: Oatmeal, toast, tea
Snack: jello
Lunch: Soup, six crackers
Snack: apple and cheese
Dinner: cube steak, broccoli, baked potato

Exercise: 1 hour hard labor at the gym (been there, done that at 4:30 this morning!)
New exercise DVD: Yoga for the rest of us. Very good for anyone--she gives lots of hints to modify it for those of us who have been certified couch potatoes for so long.
And of course, Mr. Gestapo's list!