Exercise!

Exercise is one of the keys to happiness, IMHO. It is not a chore, it is a gift! If you make it a priority, like work or any other must-do thing, and do it every day, or almost every day, you will feel better, look better, BE healthier and avoid depression, low energy, etc. If possible, do it for an hour and do it outside, where you can also watch the seasons change and get the sun on your head, with its vitamin D benefits. And mix it up -- do cardio, running, weights, games, biking, swimming, power walking -- use your muscles!!

Sign up for races so you have a goal to work toward, and one more reason to get out of bed early. You can't believe how many people do this. I often look around the crowd and think, shoot, if this guy or that woman can do this, I can do it!

And check out this website: www.bodybyginny.com. This woman has transformed entire neighborhoods in Arlington, McLean and Vienna, VA with her brand of boot-camp style exercise classes. There's even a sample workout. Yeah, Ginny!

Two down, one to go, Part 2

The two-down reference (see previous post) is to the fact that my second child, who turns 17 in a week, is on an amazing adventure of her own in Cairo, Egypt. She and a friend are visiting one of my oldest and best buddies who works at the American University in Cairo. She is graciously hosting the girls, and has arranged for them to take basic Arabic lessons every morning, and work with Sudanese refugees at a nearby church in the afternoons. Aside from that, they'll visit the pyramids, souks, Muslim and Christian Cairo (two very different day-long tours, apparently) and go to a resort that looks like Shangri La on the Red Sea. They'll also visit her friend's large extended family in Malaga, Spain for a week after Cairo.

My daughter plans to interview the refugees, learn about the nightmare in Darfur and write about it for her college entrance essay when she returns. She'll also be exposed to a level of injustice and human misery she surely couldn't conceive of before, which I think most teenagers, and in fact most clueless Americans, would do well to see.

So that leaves my youngest daughter, the feistiest of them all, who finishes school in a week and will go off to the same camp as her oldest sister for the month of July. My husband and I will have ten days without kids before the middle one returns from overseas to work for the rest of the summer.

These short empty nest trials are a good thing. It takes a while to get used to the eerie quiet and realization each night that we don't have to wait up or check on anyone. There's a weird lonely feeling, even though we've yearned for this type of freedom so many times over the years. There's also undeniably a sense of total freedom. I don't have to come home after work, don't have to attend sports or school functions or drive anyone anywhere, don't have to make dinner if I don't feel like it, can go downtown or to a movie or wherever I bloody well want.

But what DO I want? What now?? That's the interesting and somewhat/sometimes troubling question...

Two down, one to go

My oldest child graduated from high school on the first of this month. Due to a serious bout of senioritis, this normally good student just quit doing the work and barely passed her final semester. After all the the other things I've worried about most of her life -- and I excel at worrying! -- this was unexpected and most unwelcome. When she walked down the aisle at the National Shrine with her perfectly straightened hair and big smile, I felt far more relief than pride!

So we came home, had a party, she packed up the next day and went off to her job as a camp counselor for the rest of the summer. In August she'll be home for a couple of days and then off TO COLLEGE. All my worrying about her grades obscured this important fact until she drove away and I walked by her room, now empty but for some boxes to be stored in the attic. Ohmygod, she's gone!! Every time it hit me for the next week I burst into tears, including in public and while lying awake in the middle of the night. This child who has been my constant companion, physically, mentally and emotionally for almost 19 years has flown the coop and all I could think was, "There are so many things I still haven't told her. So many things I forgot to share!"

Of course, she hasn't exactly been an open, willing receptacle for my many pearls of knowledge these past few years. In fact, her most frequent expression lately was, "OK, can you stop talking now, you're annoying me." For some reason -- probably those pesky traits of independent thinking and rising to a challenge that I've tried to beat out of her all these years, ha ha -- she just wasn't dying to hear all my sage advice and warnings of what to avoid as she sets out on this new adventure -- go figure!

So I've decided to begin a penpal relationship with my daughter, almost assuredly one-way. I'm going to write her a nice long letter once a week, the old fasioned way, with pen and paper. That way I can express myself to my heart's content, share all my hopes and dreams for her in a nonthreatening way that she can't interrupt. And she can enjoy getting a real letter in the mail (a rarity anymore) and regale her friends with how crazy her mother is. She already told me to keep it clean as she intends to share them with her pals -- apparently even my emails have been a source of great amusement during her summers at camp. Last year, when she started dating a fellow counselor, I sent several frantic emails about remembering who she was, not doing anything she wasn't absolutely comfortable with, and above all being careful. She responded with lots of LOL's, called me psycho and said they had only been going out for two days so I could relax. But you can never be too careful or proactive, that's what I always say!