My Husband "Subvet" says that when our first son "Sonshine" was born the sun rose on our world, when our second son "Gator" was born the sun laughed and when our daughter "Sugars" was born all the flowers bloomed. That says it all.

"Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass...
It's about learning how to dance in the rain."
Anonymous

Your mind is the garden, your
thoughts are the seeds, the harvest can either be flowers or weeds. — William
Wordsworth

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Me and Richard Simmons

I think I've told you guys before that I'm a big fan of Richard Simmons.

It started waay back in High School. Back in my actively anorexic days. (anorexia is like what I've been told about alcoholism...the demons never leave, you just keep beating them with a stick whenever they decide to pop up again).
Anyway, back in the day..as it were...I would exercise to Sweatin to the Oldies...the ORIGINAL. (yup, I did say waaay back when). I love that the exercises are basically dance routines and that Richie (as I can't help but call him) is simply hilarious. He's a ham from start to finish and every time I find myself laughing. No matter how many times I've seen the tape.

So, at the beginning of '08 I decided to get back to exercising.

I started off walking the halls at work for 15min each night...but eventually got too busy to do that.

I tried walking the neighborhood, but it petered out too. Then I found a boxed set of Sweatin to the Oldies Vols 1-4....well, now, that I just couldn't pass up!!

I figured if I got bored with one DVD I'd just switch to another one and still keep my schedule going. Trying to exercise each night that I'm home alone in the dead of night. This worked pretty well until my recent schedule change. Now that I have 4 days off every week I'm switching to days for that stretch. This is planned and is a very good thing for the family. I get the chance to do things with the kids and give hubby a break that I just don't get when I work scattered nights and have to stay on a night routine. However, the down side to flipping my schedule every 3 days is that I no longer have 4 nights a week with hours of time to myself. This means I've lost that time when I did all my sewing....and all my exercising.

As with all schedule changes adjustments are being made and I will over the course of the next month figure out good times to add these back in. In the meantime I have started back to walking the halls at work for 15min in the dead of night. At least on nights when I get a "dead of night" time. We'll see how that goes.

A couple of months ago I got rather bored and found myself googling Richard Simmons for no good reason other than staying awake at work. After surfing his website for awhile and reading all these stories I realized that MY story is just like the others on his site. So I clicked on the "contact Richard" linkyloo and fired off an email letting Richard know how I've been dating him on the sly for YEARS AND YEARS now. In order to send the email you have to fill out this form wanting name and address and phone number stuff. Well, I hate those forms on principle and never fill in the correct information. So, putting my middle name as "last name" and leaving off a number or two of my address I filled out the form and sent in the email without giving it another thought. I mean really, he probably has an entire staff of mail screeners donchaknow!

Imagine my surprise when I see an envelope last week addressed to my first and middle name with this bizarro version of my address laying on my dining room table along with the day's mail.

and inside??




Now, it being more than two days since I fell off the turnip truck I'm entirely aware this quite possibly wasn't written by Richard. And it's probably a stock phrase/signature.....and I am not a person who gives a flip about getting autographs. I mean not.at.all.

But for some reason this little cardstock pic gives me encouragement....and when I look at it I find that tiny spark of motivation to get up and exercise again....

7 comments:

Lisa said...

I love Richard Simmons. A good friend of mine (with a really serious weight problem and health issues to go with it) got to meet him and said that in real life he was as genuine and sweet as he could possibly be -- very caring, very encouraging. He may seem a little goofy, but he's the real deal. I wouldn't wonder if it wasn't really his signature!

ellen b. said...

That is so bizarre that the mail got to you! Encouragement is a good thing....

Linda said...

So how is it that the Post Office delivers a package addressed to me at my correct address to my upstairs neighbors and even has them sign for it even though Xiu Jeng looks nothing like Linda Orlomoski and yet you get mail from Richard Simmons' people even when you goof up the address? 'Tis a mystery!

Either way, I hope that little brochure definitely gives you the motivation to keep on keeping on!

Stephanie D said...

Well, that's a nice touch, and I'll bet he wrote it himself. Sounds too personalized not to.

... said...

oh, i don't know... i betcha he did write it. very cool. you keep it up girl 'cuz just like #21 says... you're worth it! =)

Mrs4444 said...

That's really cute. Whatever works, right?!

Adrienne said...

Here come the bongos!!!!

Too cool!

I like Richard, too. What ever he does in his private life, he keeps private, which is as it should be.