For the Strength of Mothers . . .

Don’t look now, but yesterday I emptied our truck of 36 bags of sand. They weighed 50 pounds each. And, because I wanted to really challenge myself, I started my stopwatch. Are you ready for this? I moved 1800 lbs. of sand in 9 minutes 26 seconds! (If there had been just four more bags, I would’ve moved a ton of sand. Whew!)

You might be asking yourself why I was moving sand in the first place. Because it’s crunch time for my son’s Eagle Scout project. He’s putting in a set of horseshoe pits at our local park, and we kind of jumped the gun when we purchased the sand. (We should have waited until later today.) As it was, my husband didn’t figure that leaving 1800 lbs. of sand in the back of our truck for 30 hours would be a very good idea. And since Bug was up at the park staking out where the rest of his troop would help him dig the pits, the sand emptying fell to me.

You’d better believe that I got good and sweaty toting all that sand. I even wondered if I’d regret it today, but I’m happy to report that I’m feeling great! In fact, this morning at aerobics I only felt a little bit of tightness in my lower back. Nothing too bad. I guess that all these months of aerobics and weight training has really paid off. It just goes to show that fitness can’t always be measured with a scale. ‘Cause the scale still says what it did at the end of October of 2006, but I definitely feel a whole lot more fit.

On a different note, I must gush about my favorite watch. It’s a Timex Ironman Triathlon slim design. Although I don’t use it much for exercise, and I’d never dream of trying to train for a triathlon, I use it all the time in my motherly activities. It has three different alarms. I set one to go off on Tuesdays at 2:50 P.M. to help me remember to pick up Bug from piano lessons. (Prior to setting the alarm I’d forget half the time.) The others I use for similar purposes. They’re great as reminders.

I also use the timer feature a lot when cooking. The self-frosting chocolate zucchini cake my family likes takes 40 minutes to bake. I simply set my watch timer and then wander. That way I don’t have to be in the kitchen listening for the oven timer. If you have small children who sometimes have a hard time sharing their toys with siblings or friends, you could set the timer on your watch for 5 minutes and at the end of the time have your child swap toys with the other child. (I’ve found that after both kids have had a chance to play with the toy they seldom need a trading timer again.)

Last of all I use the stopwatch as a motivational tool. Like yesterday’s sand moving. Only sometimes I use it with the kids. I say something like, “We need to clean this bathroom. Let’s time it and see how fast we can get it done.” Nothing like a time incentive to get them moving.

Well, that’s it for today. Tomorrow the kids head back to school, and I hope to be a more diligent blogger. Ta-ta for now.