Papa Smurf can keep his shoes

What do you think of when you see these shoes?

Papa Smurf?  Wham backup singer circa 1988?  Perhaps.

How about these beauties?

All I can think of is Michael Ian Black's essay, "Why I Colored My D*ck Day-Glo Yellow" from My Custom Van (ps.. you should read his essay Taco Party if you already have the book in your possession.  You will thank me.  Promise.)

So you may ask what is up with the shoes, and no I didn't buy either.  What I did do was buy new Mizuno running shoes in a nice neutral silver.  They have sadly sat on my closet shelf each day since summer asking if today was the day to be broken in at the gym.  Nope.  I stopped by a different sports store over the weekend looking for compression shorts and wandered over to candyland of brightly colored shoes.  For the record Ben was disappointed I didn't buy the candy apple red and yellow ones that reminded me of a big top tent or a hot dog, or better yet a hot dog eaten at a circus. Whatever, they were UGLY.

More times that I want to admit, I've made work meetings or unending paperwork that goes with this job, or hauling kids from place to place, or choosing to go to the grocery alone priority over going to the gym.

To think that a year ago I was logging over 500 miles by year end and doing a Saturday boot camp workout and now, well... you get it that I've not only fallen off the wagon but also the wagon has run over me.

My tiredness from earlier this year is now compounded by a month long bout of insomnia.  I've been trying to stop medicating my way to sleep, find an outlet for stress, as well as something to help alleviate my current mental funk.  I decided I would do whatever it took to get myself back into regular exercise as this has been a solution in the past for all fronts.

What did it take?  Buying 10 personal training sessions, wrapping them, writing FROM: BILL, handing it to Bill and then asking him to hand it back so I could start redeeming this this week.  I'm thinking that if I start now and not with every other person with fitness resolutions on Jan 1st I might be more successful. Second, if I know I paid for them I'm more likely to not negotiate away the time.

I'll be honest with you, even after the surgeries I am flat out tired, all the time tired.  I'm trying to figure out what I can cut out and I can't come up with anything else I haven't already stopped or said no to doing.

Come January we are moving to 2 appointments a week for Ben plus I have a new class to prepare not taught before that I know will take additional time at work to prep.  I need to make changes now.

The #1 thing I marked as my goal for the first time in like ever was not loose weight, but rather make exercise a priority (again) with a focus on maximizing workout time.  I met Monday with the trainer and she has given me a 30 min target workout for 3 weekdays and an 1 hour weekend workout.

Let's see if I can make it happen.   I know that making this stick has so many benefits.   I need to for my health sake as 40 is looming and I want to be in better shape at 40 than 20.  More importantly I want to stave off diabetes for as long as possible.

Maybe I should have bought the smurf shoes after all as working out as fast as possible to get them off might have been the motivation I needed.