"Mom, You're addicted to exercise."

I just read a friend's blog about her exercise routine and as I was writing comments on her blog I began to think about my past 34 years as a regular exerciser.

How do I know it's been 34 years? That's how old Ryan is. I was skinny when I got pregnant with Ryan. I weighed in at 118 the day I found out I was pregnant (I'm 5'7") and I got down to 105 for a time after he was born (I was anemic), but after I got well I gained back up to my normal weight. Though I was still on the low side of the height/weight chart I looked flabby around the middle and my thighs jiggled. I had never really had a formal exercise routine so I didn't know where to start. Enter my sister-in-law (now ex - but that's another story). She was a jogger. I had never known anyone who jogged and I was a bit curious so I took her up on her offer to jog with her. What an eye-opener! I barely made it to the end of the block and I was only 21 years old! I kept on trying and added a few calisthenics that I remembered from high school PE and pretty soon I was hooked. I graduated to fitness tapes - not made for the tv, back in the 70s - but the cassette tapes that you listened to and used a paper that came with them to figure out how to perform the moves. Then came Body Electric on PBS. I still work out with Margaret to this day. Every weekday morning at 6 am I workout to her show. Other tv shows were "The 20 Minute Workout" (which I hated), and "It Figures" with Charlene Prickett. I became a fitness addict. My kids hated my early morning jumping around and told me to seek help for my addiction. LOL

I guess I am still an addict. I own so many fitness tapes and dvds that they fill an entire cabinet. I have running shoes, cross trainers, and dance shoes. I own weights of all sizes, stretch bands, fitness balls, kettle bells, and the list goes on. I've spent years being lean and muscled but now menopause has taken it's wrath on my body and I have to work even harder to just look "OK." I no longer weigh what I wish I did and I have to restrict my eating. I've learned to embrace the 130's and sometimes the 140's (when I don't restrict my eating). I've come to accept that you can't change some things and I try to focus on my health more so than my shape. A couple of years ago I had gone to the mobile mammography unit and this young nurse put my foot in the bone density machine. She looked kind of baffled and went to get an older nurse. She checked me, then asked me if I did weight bearing exercise. I replied that I did almost daily. She told the young nurse that the machine was working fine. I had registered with a bone density of a 24 year-old.

I worry about the youth of today. I look around my classroom and I see over-fat kids all the time. They have flabby bellies and fat arms and the worst of it is that they complain about getting Ds and Fs in PE. When I ask why, they tell me that they refuse to dress out and participate in the class! Each quarter they have to run one mile (only once). I see them crying, acting like they are going to pass out, calling their parents because they are light headed and on and on. I tell them that I can run a mile backwards! And I'm old! That will shame some of them but not all. Their lifestyle today is very different from pubescent kids' lifestyles 25 years ago. They play video games, watch tv, and talk on their cellphones. They eat junk and drink gallons of sugared drinks. You don't see these kids out riding bikes or playing ball.

I'm not saying that you have to devote your life to fitness. I know that I go to the extreme, but I do think exercise helps the quality of life. I love to hike, work outside, and just keep up with my students and grandkids. If I wasn't fit I couldn't do those things. Will I let up anytime soon? I doubt it. It's a part of who I am and a part of my daily routine.

I'm not trying to scold those who don't workout. Everyone has the right to live their own life without judgment. This is just the way that I choose to live mine. I may not live as long as some who have never been physically fit. We can't know our future but I can work hard to prevent high blood pressure and keep my heart and bones strong. To me that's worth the effort.

Growing Up Country

I have come to realize that I am the epitome of the saying "You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl." And the truth is - I like being a country girl. I copied and pasted the recent facebook post about being from the south but I think there is a distinction between a southern belle and a country girl from the south. Country girls get dirty, southern belles try not to. I love being outside, be it working in the garden, flower beds or hiking. This involves getting dirty, so I must fall into the country girl category.

There's also some confusion about country people and hill people. I think hill people are those that lived a subsistence life. They owned a little spot of land and hunted to provide meat and maybe grew a little garden. Country folks, by my definition, owned several acres, farmed the land, raised cattle, hogs, chickens, maybe ran a dairy farm and raised crops, as well as a big garden.

I grew up on a working farm (heavy on the working). My Daddy milked cows when I was little but government restrictions tightened up and he later got out of the dairy business and raised beef cattle. We also raised hogs and chickens, grew hay and made a garden, picked blackberries, huckleberries, canned and preserved any fruits and vegetables that we could. One of my memories is the day that the baby chicks would arrive on the "mail car." They would come in a box and I couldn't wait to pet them. I thought they were so cute. We would take them out to the chicken pen and put food and water in old tires cut in half. Sure enough some would fall in the water and drown. Later when they got bigger, they became "fryers." So much for the cute little chicks. We always had hogs and it seemed like an old sow would wait until the coldest day of winter to have her pigs. Daddy and Mom would have to go to the hog pen and check on things all night. Sometimes one would be frozen and Judith thought it was great fun to wrap the pig in a blanket and rock it. We learned the facts of life living on the farm. You can't hide that stuff. We knew how calves and pigs came about. We helped in the garden, picking up rocks, pulling weeds, picking off bugs - whatever needed to be done.

Our Granny churned butter in a jar. She would rock it back and forth until it made butter. Judith and I tried our luck at it but I'm not sure we ever made butter. When it was done we would spread it on a biscuit and sprinkle it with sugar. We thought it was good eatin'. We also learned to cook at a pretty early age just by helping out in the kitchen. We didn't know anything about cooking "fancy" food but we could put a country meal on the table.

If you grew up country you know about wilted lettuce, radishes, and onions. You would melt bacon grease and pour it over the salad. I miss that sometimes. I always thought you should have pinto beans with wilted lettuce, and of course cornbread (without sugar). The older folks ate milk with cornbread crumbled up in it. I never really like that.

Mom and Granny sewed our clothes. We would go to "Zula's" and get patterns and material and they would make most of our clothes. Mom ordered us shoes and underwear from Aldens, Sears, and Montgomery Wards. There weren't any trips to the mall back then. We had pageant dresses and prom dresses and even our wedding dresses handstitched from home. Our Granny had an old treadle machine and Mom had an electric one. There wasn't a week that went by that one or both those machines weren't busy making something.

Looking back it seems that being country was a hard life but never once did I go to bed hungry. We had lots of food and I never worried that we wouldn't have food. I always had lots of clothes, a warm coat and shoes, pajamas, and warm quilts on my bed.

I remember at about junior high age thinking we were poor because we lived in the country on a farm. My friends and family who lived in town seemed to me to have a much better life - they even had dishwashers and I was so envious of that. I got my eyes opened real wide though, on a school trip. I won't tell the story here but suffice it to say, when I got home from that trip, I realized that we weren't poor at all. My parents just chose to live a country life and raise country kids.

I'm thankful that I know how to cook, can, preserve, raise a garden and sew (not very well). I know that if desperate times called for it, I could make do with whatever I have and survive. I'm not sure that most folks could do that. JC was also raised country. We live modest life that's within our means. We draw pleasure from the simple things that life has to offer.

Animal Crackers On Your Breath

I wasn't going to blog this week. I have had a rough week and honestly nothing had given me any inspiration to blog about...until today after school. I was so tired and I just hate staying late on Fridays but I needed to put some grades in the computer and set up a lab for Monday. Late this afternoon our resource teacher asked me if I could stay after school and sit in on a special ed meeting. My heart sank but I said that I would.

Following the meeting the resource teacher and I came back to my room and we were just talking and somehow in the conversation it came up that in many churches most of the kids don't sit out in the sanctuary any more. Most churches have children's church or other programs for kids. It wasn't like that when my kids were growing up and I remembered a funny church story about my kids.

My son, Ryan, is 3 1/2 years old than Misty. For much of their childhood we attended the First Christian Church of Flippin. Back then a wonderful elderly lady named Bevie Hodges kept the nursery during church. In the nursery there was a rocking chair for Bevie, toys for the kids and a BIG cookie jar always filled with animal crackers. Ryan started going to church with me when he was only about 2 weeks old and he had always stayed in the nursery with Bevie. After Misty came along I got to thinking that it might be too much for Bevie. She was old and there were several kids in the nursery. When Ryan turned 4 I told him that he was going to sit out in the sanctuary with me during church. My kids didn't sass or talk back but I could tell that he was NOT a happy camper. That first Sunday rolled around and Ryan slid into the pew beside me. He had his little papers from Sunday School and some other papers and crayons that I had brought to keep him occupied. He didn't make a sound during church and I was so pleased with his behavior. Once Church was over we went back to the nursery to pick up Misty. When we got to the car Ryan got in the back seat and as I was strapping Misty in her car seat he forcefully pulled Misty's tiny little head around and said "Misty, I smell animal crackers on your breath!" This may not seem funny to anyone but me, but it cracked me up. His big brown eyes were so serious and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

I almost gave in the next Sunday but I didn't. What I did do was bring animal crackers for Ryan to have a little snack during church. I'm glad that I made him sit out in Church with me. I think that our kids need to learn that there's a time and a place to talk and a time and a place to be quiet. My kids learned that in the First Christian Church. My daughter, Misty, is a grown Mom now and she recently wrote a blog about "Write it down in your Notebook." It's her story of how I dealt with her when she got old enough for her turn to sit out in the sanctuary with Ryan and me. The days of the animal crackers were over.