“You’re mocking me again.”

It’s a familiar breakfast refrain in our house. I used to wonder why he married me, until I realized that I am a source of constant entertainment and bemusement to him.

“Only you would make a game out of cleaning up, ” was his retort.

“I’m a mother. THAT’S WHAT WE DO!”

There was much laughter, punctuated by a child’s voice saying, “True. It still works.”

Last night I had meetings that were supposed to end at 8 and somehow extended until 9 and attempted to hijack my evening workout. There’s nothing that makes me more want to crawl into bed with the covers over my head than meetings that start late and end later, but there was no flippin’ way I was blowing off even a light workout. Especially a light workout; they’re fun and frankly, necessary. My legs needed to loosen up and I needed to blow off some steam; after evening meetings I feel I need either a stiff drink or exercise. I wore my gym gear to the meeting to cement my resolve.

Got down to the gym at around 9:10, cranked out intervals on the Concept2 rowing machine. Legs loosened up. All was well. Had the place basically to myself. It was fun. Finished up with rowing, legs still had energy, so I wandered over to the turf section of the gym, to see if the sled wanted to go for a spin.

I slapped a few hundred pounds on it and shoved it up and down for a spell, passing as I went, little heaps of weight plates lying here and there, kettlebells left standing forlornly on the ground and other bits of paraphernalia. No matter the gym, equipment always seems to collect in heaps after a day of heavy traffic; the cumulative effect of dozens of people “forgetting” to put away one item. Some days I can ignore it; you can’t let things like that interfere with your purpose in being there most times.

But last night, after pushing past these heaps four or five times, I devised a game, of sorts. I threw an extra couple of plates on the sled, pushed it to the rack at the far side of the turf, unloaded the plates to the rack, grabbed more plates from the floor and shoved the reloaded sled to the other end of the gym, racked those plates, picked up more from the floor. When I had moved the plates, I hauled kettlebells. I made up additional rules as I went along (minimum weight on sled, varied height of grip, etc.), but basically it was like those shuttle runs they made you do in school (does anyone else remember the Canada Fitness Test? I LOVED that thing!) except a lot heavier. And it was fun.

Must see if Katherine can beat her 2010 Book Reshelving Time this evening.