Good Morning Sunshine

Today actually looked like spring, though it was pretty cold and sure didn't feel like it.  As I was driving to Skidmore around 6:30 this morning, the sun was rising like a giant yellow ball.  It looked huge as it crested the horizon and radiated brilliance.  I didn't have my sunglasses with me (big mistake) and I actually had to shield my eyes from the rising sun, something that goes against every winter-fied cell in my body!  Come on sun, do your thing and get those trees budding and grass growing, so I can know for sure that winter has been banished and I won't have to deal with its ugly personality for at least eight months, please?!!!!!

Our workout today was just as the sun was rising, out on the turf of Skidmore's track, still lined with stubborn snow banks.  We did our stepping exercises through the woven ladder on the frost-covered ground, jump-roped (I'm almost getting back to 3rd grade proficiency!), lunged with medicine balls, side-stepped with elastic bands around our ankles, did push ups, planks, and sit ups until we just couldn't any longer, and more.  "More" included bicep and tricep curls, shoulder flies, chest presses, etc. with one of those rubber tubes with handles.  Mine was green, one step up from the easiest yellow, and I was a complaining baby about it!  Some of the men chose red, or even black, showing off their physical superiority in such exercises (so far!).  We even had to whip around a rope the size of a fire hose.  NOT EASY!  Then I went to work, with all the typical morning's anxious anticipation worked right out of me.  Morning exercise serves a purpose!

Besides exercise, I actually concentrated on other things today.  That's the great thing about morning exercise -- when it's over, it's over -- I don't have to think about it at all for the rest of the day (except if I'm whining about it in a blog post).  Of course, there's work, my real job.  The one good thing about working in a too-busy office is that you look up and it's lunch time.  You look up again and it's quitting time (though I have trouble quitting and getting out at 4:30.  I always manage to use the next 45 minutes to wind down and prepare for the next day).  And also of course, there's my after-work day, when I come home and go straight into Katie's house to get an irresistible baby fix, and I end  up staying until the boys are on their way to dream land and I can't keep my eyes open.  Doesn't leave a lot of time for much more than getting ready for bed so I can wake up too early!  Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about my latest obsession/distraction:  the Decorah Iowa Eagle Nest Cam - talk about lost productivity!  I only wonder how many comprehensively broad hours of work both at home and in the office have been forsaken to watch the parent birds care for three of the cutest little eaglets (the third hatched just last night) and feed them such things, so far, as squirrel, beaver and/or possum, trout, and a black bird.  Somehow it doesn't seem so horribly violent when I see how gently the parent birds feed the babies, how carefully they nurture and protect them.  Food chain.  Life and death.  It's all very simple really, and fascinating!  I don't really have any time at work to indulge, but when I finally get home and turn on the computer, there they are: a live screen saver of real-time nature at its most efficient.  I love, love, love it.  There's a lot that's not getting done at home, I'm afraid.  Good thing I limit it to home; work is just a little too demanding these days for such a diversion...

This afternoon when I was in the office and I said to a number of women I work with, "Well, today is Thursday and just one more day and we have a weekend!  Yea!" to which I heard the response, "Jeannie, it's your Saturday to work."   Dead silence.  A look of horror on my face, I'm sure...ARGHHHH!  I had forgotten.  We each take a couple of Saturdays during the fall and spring to answer phones and deal with office stuff, and this is MY Saturday.  Jeez, no rest for the wicked...

So here I am, just upstairs from Katie's house.  Her husband Bill is home for the weekend and the boys are bathed and ready for bed.  I lugged groceries up the stairs and had forgotten that, 2 hours ago, I did indeed buy low-fat frozen pomegranate yogurt which sat in my car while I was playing Grandma with Henry and Peter.  Hmmm.  Wonder if it refreezes well.  We'll see!

Tomorrow I plan to share a recipe for really cheesy potatoes, requested by my friend Jill "It's good to be Mrs. O'Brien" O'Brien.  And recipes for other requests are on their way. 

Hope you all have a good Friday eve and a great weekend.  Don't think of me while I'm at work Saturday.  Sleep late, loll about.  Just forget I said anything!

Photo credit: http://www.poetry-innerspace.com/city-sunrise-web.jpg