Staying Active

Current Location: Auburn, WA

First off, a big thank you for all of the support and understanding. We are working on figuring things out and already have a couple of prospects. Your response is the main reason that I feel comfortable sharing my thoughts. It helps immensely just to write them out, but it's never easy opening up to the world. So again, thanks for the wonderful responses!

We've actually had a few reasonably nice days. Not bright sunshine, mind you, but we've seen patches of sunshine and blue sky, in between the clouds and drizzle. But hey, I'll take it. Unfortunately, the forecast for the next several days is not so promising. Oh well, gotta enjoy it while we can.

One of our priorities this winter, besides finding jobs, has been staying active. We so enjoyed our summer where we were outside and moving every day. The weather here has made that difficult. We get out for hikes whenever possible, but we know that won't be enough. Hunter still makes us get out, rain or shine, but those walks tend to be rather short. We are really adamant that we aren't going to gain back the weight that we lost this summer. Nor do we want to lose our fitness.

So we decided a gym membership would be a worthwhile investment. It's not in the budget and while we can't really afford to stray from the budget much, we both decided this was a necessity. Not only for our physical well-being, but for our mental state as well. One of the best remedies for depression is activity. And if that means that we need to cut back somewhere else, then that's what we'll do.

We decided that a national chain would be the best choice since we aren't sure where we'll ultimately end up. We really debated on whether we should wait until we get settled, but who knows when, or if, that will be. So we decided we should just bite bullet. I found that 24-hour fitness offered a free 7-day pass, so we started out with that during the week between returning from Colorado and going to Alaska. We went 6 of the 7 days. A good start. And we found that we kind of missed the routine when we were in Alaska.

So upon returning from Alaska, we took the plunge and joined. We've been pretty good about going almost every day. Right now, it's easy since we're not working. It feels really good to move about and get a good sweat rolling down your back (I know, that's not very girl-like). We're not doing any strenuous weight-lifting or body-building, mostly just cardio and some circuit training.

It's nice to have at least one purpose for getting out of bed in the morning. With not having any place to be by any certain time, it's really easy to become lazy. We're trying to force ourselves to get up and be out of the house by 9, but we've not been very successful at that yet. We'll continue to work on that one.

One added advantage to the gym - a hot shower every day that we can stand in as long as we want! Yes, we can take hot showers in our rig, but since we're not hooked up to water, have limited power, and are trying to conserve our propane, we try to be mindful of our water usage, especially hot water. And there have been some days where the promise of a hot shower is our only motivator for going to the gym. Hey whatever it takes, right?