Today marks the start of the 7th week that I have been going to First Choice Fitness. I go twice a week for 2 hours each day to work with a personal trainer. I absolutely love it. Richard Burr is an awesome trainer, great to work with, sets the bar really high and on top of all that he is a big reader. I love it!!! I started taking my two oldest with me last week, one on one day and the other on the second day. D of course had already been there last year for a month. It was her tennis coach who had suggested First Choice to us. She is very mature and grounded and I knew she would have no issues meeting the coach head-on for whatever tasks he has in store for her. She loves going and would go both days if I would take her. I wasn’t sure how things would go with K. He enjoyed fitness in Florida, but I wasn’t sure how he would handle the 11/2 – 2 hours on his own with a trainer. However today, as usual, he really impressed me. He lasted the 11/2 hours and was eager to try things he saw others doing. The great thing about it was the trainer accommodated him and away he went. The thing that most impressed me was this thing called sleds. Richard has me do a lot of exercises where the exercise is designed to tax your whole body (many muscle groups). One of these exercises is pushing and pulling sleds.  The sled is 50 Lbs, and then you can add weights to it. When I first pushed it, I had to do it empty and it was tough. Now, I’m starting to find it easy to do an additional 50 Lbs 5 lengths (50 m) pushing and the 5 pulling. K has heard me talk about these sleds over the last few weeks and when he saw them, he immediately asked to try it. I was sure he wouldn’t be able to push it at all because of course it was hard for me the first time and after all he is only 54 Lbs, but I am a firm believer in letting the kids do, without limiting them by my pre-conceptions. Well, was I ever surprised and thoroughly impressed to see him push it for two lengths (I’m sure he could have done more, but someone else was supposed to be using it and so we left them to it). I was happy that I had chosen to keep my preconceptions to myself, that I had not tried to dissuade him from at least making the attempt at his vision of conquering the sled. He never doubted for a moment that he could do it and it was such a beautiful thing to see him accomplish it. When I reminded him how hard it was for me at the beginning,  there was a noticeable spring in his steps as he left with his trainer to go and challenge himself with other new and exciting things. I was quite thrilled to know him, he put a special smile on my face and a glow in my heart.

On Wednesday June 2, as I was driving to my workout, I drove past Tuxedo school and was promptly stopped a few minutes later with my very first speeding ticket. I wasn’t even in a hurry. I was just happily driving, music blasting (not too loudly), enjoying the wind in my face, the music in my veins and voila. I was driving at 69 Km/hr, while I had just passed a school zone, so ouch… I was 19 Km/hr over the limit. Not a cheap ticket, by any means!!! My only consolation is that this is the first after almost 20 years of driving.

I cannot believe that I have not written in my blog for a month a half. Since we returned from Florida, we have had a lot of catching up to do with visits and play dates as well community events. The kids were in a play for one event and I taught a dance for another event which ate up a lot of time. These were of course all completed by the third week of April. I have been busy reading Daniel Quinn and his Ismael trilogy which is an amazing mind-opening set of books. I have been thinking and questioning a lot of things and have not got to the point of being prepared to write about them yet. Also, I have been watching a few documentaries like ‘Crash’ and ‘Dirt’ which have plunged me into more thinking about food and growing our own food and that line of thinking. So, dear friends I have not dropped off the face of the earth, but am merely in some sort of suspended mode as I think through a whole slew of new information I want to act on.

What do these three things have in common? Well, they would all need to be present for my ideal personal holiday. This would be a retreat just for me, a meditative space. I would love to go away for at least two weeks by myself. I would take minimal things, most important in my luggage would be my books to read, journal to write in, sketch book to work in and computer on which to work on my children’s books.

My Two Spring Babies

In the last week at the RV park we are staying at, a family came to visit (the wife’s parents park almost right behind us). I’ve been writing a lot of tweets lately about how great it is to meet like-minded people. I wrote similar tweets when I meet Amelia and Kyle and family. On Facebook, my friend Barbara asked “But one learns more from being surrounded by those with diverse minds.” I thought this was a great topic for discussion, so here goes.

On Friday (yesterday) morning, I had a bit of an adventure, it involved the sewer. Have I got you? Are you curious? Good, I promise to fill you in, but I really need to start at the beginning.

As I said in the previous post, things tended to come easy to me. I have to admit, that I never pursued excellence enough to push myself, to challenge myself. After all, as Thomas J. Watson Sr. said “The formula for success is quite simple: double your rate of failure.” I definitely did not invite failure and therefore I did not invite success, not in the way I invite it now.

We have been in Florida for two weeks now. The kids have almost completed one week at the IMG Bollettieri academy. It’s been an eye-opening experience. We have a lot of work to do, but it’s great to have access to some of the best coaches around. Next week, we are going to try another academy, and then we may travel to a different part of Florida to experience yet another place. At IMG, the kids start tennis at 1:30 and go until 5:30, where they have a fitness component from 4:30 until 5:30. So far, they have not shown any sign of fatigue. They work with the full-time kids, as this week’s line-up of part timers were mostly older kids. They get to have group work, semi-private, matches and then fitness. The kids prefer more private time with a coach, so that is what they will do next week at another academy. On with the dream.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. I did not mean to write resolutions and by accident typoed revolutions. I have been working on these revolutions for the last few years. Read Chris Brady’s article to gain a fuller understanding of why I am doing this. I want to grow and become different,I want to be a mover and a shaker in an important movement. These are some of my past choices.