I've gone high tech with my workouts! Now, at Curves, I have a card that I insert into each machine that tells me how many reps I need to do, how many I've done, and whether or not my range of motion is enough for that machine. At the end, I get a rundown on what was good, what was not so good, how my workout compared with the previous ones, and the best news of all: how many calories I burned in the workout! And for my birthday, David bought me a Nike + iPod receiver to track my mileage and time on my walks. This is a supercool gadget with a sensor that goes on my shoe and a plug-in that hooks up to my ipod nano (for once it's good to have the nano--it's the only one that works with the Nike system except for the ipod touch). I play the music in my workout playlist and during the walk, I get encouragement from a voice telling me how I'm doing. I can press a button on the ipod and hear how far I've come at any time. At the end of the walk, I can read how far I've come and what my pace was and how it compares to previous workouts. Now I need a gadget that monitors my food intake and punishes me for my transgressions...
Tonight, I tried out the Nike gadget. Dennis and I went for a stroll under the full harvest moon, just here around our neighborhood. So I had two voices encouraging me. One pleasant female voice in my earphones, and one sweet little Dennis voice saying "walk. walk." and also pointing out the moon and trees and dogs along the way. What a beautiful fall night it is! We live very rurally, so we enjoyed the sight of the moon on the fields at the end of the road. So peaceful until we had to cross in front of the house where the Rottweiler lives, but all he did was bark threateningly tonight while Dennis pointed to him and called him a dog. No harm done.
We are having a touch of the October creepies around here, especially this week. I found a baby copperhead snake in the kitchen when I went in for a late snack (maybe this is actually more effective than a techno gadget to limit my food intake--a snake in the kitchen!), slithering around in front of the garbage can. I'm very glad I turned on the light instead of trusting my instincts to find the refrigerator in the dim room. David dispatched of the snake with a large pizza knife and I had a serious talk with the cat about falling down in her duties. As an apologetic gesture, she left a dead chipmunk right in front of my car door. I hope this means she's back on the job. The snake was enough, but today, when I was driving home, an albino jumping spider accosted me in the car. I don't know what breed it was, but it was colorless and medium-sized, and when I went to swat at it, it leaped 5 inches off the dash, prompting a girly squeal from me and causing me to do a very interesting car maneuver. Tonight as we returned from our walk, all the neighborhood dogs were howling at the moon. Halloween is clearly just around the corner.
We have a 19 month old now. It's almost unbelievable! His teeth are finally easing up a little bit and we had a day of nice and sunny personality. He slept until after 11 this morning because it was a difficult night for him, but then he ran and played happily all day and ate his meals with gusto (and significant mess). We made the obligatory mark on the door to measure his height, and he's at least a half inch taller than last month (the tape measure is still at David's job site so I don't have the accurate details). He knows so many words now, most likely near 100, possibly more. He reads to us now, pointing at animal pictures and identifying the animal and making the appropriate animal noise, pointing at faces and identifying the parts. He understands all of what we tell him, and he sat on the potty again today and used his diaper while sitting there. He's getting so smart so fast!
The picture shows him relishing his birthday Oreo cookie, with orange creme filling for Halloween (and for a more colorful messy baby face).
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