Saturday, October 4, 2008

Fighting the Call of the Wild

Tomorrow is the day that I convince myself I am not a bear. I'm totally serious. This time of year, I go nuts. You may have noticed, I only blogged once last week. I really wasn't all that busy. I didn't have any deadlines. The kids were normal kids; no illnesses, no weird projects, no appointments, no sleepless nights, or wild new behaviors that I had to spend time breaking. I was just busy eating my way through our grocery budget and then doing what one should do when they have successfully consumed enough calories for a week in just one day, sleep.

I do this every year. As Fall gets into full swing, instead of getting a burst of energy like a lot of Autumn Lovers, I just turn into a bear. I eat and sleep. When I am not sleeping I wish I was sleeping. It's more than just a longing to sleep, I am actually really exhausted. Exhausted enough to miss several workouts in a row, and nap in the middle of the day. I actually dosed off for a brief second this week while I sat in a lawn chair in the front yard as my children played. Today, I ate so much cheese, food made with cheese, and then, just to balance everything out, a whole assortment of desserts that thinking about it right now, is just a bit overwhelming.

Tomorrow morning, I will go out and run. It is going to be quite chilly here, and I don't care. I can't afford to. I can't keep this up for a second longer. The week was nice. It was like a little vacation. Kind of like what I imagine going on a cruise would be like (I have never been on one before so I can't be totally sure). I have heard you can eat pretty much all day while you are on board. I have also heard that the food is amazing. I can't say that the "amazing food" part fits this past week, but definitely the "eating all day" part fits. Also, I imagine that with all the "At Sea" days, one would probably sit out on a lawn chair and dose.

Basically, my home was like a Carnival Cruise line. Except the food wasn't as good, and we didn't have any fabulous ports. Unless you consider Super T fabulous.

Which, at times, it totally can be.

It's time to snap out of it. Time to look back at this week as a distant memory. Time to find my groove again, and fight my way back to the numbers I recognize on the bathroom scale because unlike a bear, I will not actually sleep through winter without eating. No, Ma'am, I won't. In fact as a general rule, I have found that I usually am good at keeping up with this pattern of eating and sleeping up until March. At which point I totally panic because I realize Summer is just around the corner, and I will have to take off the extra large men's sweatshirt and elastic waisted sweatpants.

I've heard that next week it will really feel like Fall is in the air, as the weather takes a turn. It will take all that I have not to sit down with a big bowl of soup and sleep the week away.

It feels like I am fighting my natural instinct.

If you see me cruising around town in a cozy sweatsuit, try to give me the benefit of the doubt and assume I just came from the gym. I am feeling pretty confident you'll be right.

Somewhat.

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