Let's see, how can one begin?
I hope to make this humerous, while bringing truth to light about the real life of a home school mom!
At about 9:30 a.m., the mom decides it is time to get ready to exercise. She plugs her 6 year old into a computer phonics game and goes to put on exercise clothes.
She sees the bed and remembers that she needs to strip the sheets on her bed. She strips the sheets.
She goes to use the bathroom, so that the old, saggy female plumbing won't give her trouble while she is exercising, and she gets sidetracked playing “Jawbreaker” on her Pocket PC. She finally gets up and gets dressed.
She heads downstairs to the treadmill, but halfway there remembers the sheets sitting on the bed that need to go in the wash, so she goes back and gets them. On her way, she sees the tissues that her allergy-prone child has discarded on the carpet, and picks them up and throws them away.
She gets the sheets and goes down and sticks them in the washing machine. While she is at it, she folds the stuff in the dryer and takes it up and puts it on her bed. Since she is upstairs again, she goes into dear son's room and strips his bed as well. While she is in there she puts away his toys, throws away stray tissues, and puts away clean clothes that are sitting on his dresser. She takes his sheets downstairs, and makes sure that she has her hair clip, her MP3 player, and her water jug. She dumps the sheets at the washer and then goes to the treadmill.
She turns the treadmill on and sets it to run Program 1. Seems easy. It's for 30 minutes, and that's what she wants. She starts out the warm up and walks for 3 minutes, and then she sees her dear son poking his head around the corner. She stops the treadmill and asks him what's up. He says the computer locked up. He rebooted it but needs help getting back into the phonics program.
She walks upstairs and shows him how to get back into the program, and gets him into it. While she is in the kitchen, she empties the dishwasher and loads the things that are in the sink. She goes back downstairs to the treadmill. She sees part of a sewing project has fallen behind the treadmill, and she squats and squeezes and gets to where it is and picks it up. It is the sleeve to a size 6 months sweatshirt. Her son is now six. ::sigh:: She turns the treadmill back on.
The crazy treadmill does not seem to understand what she wants to do (remember, she selected a pre-set program). The crazy thing keeps changing pace, changing to an inclined ramp, no matter how many times she reduces the speed and puts the ramp back to level. It seems convinced that she should go 6.0 miles per hour. She knows that she will get an inflamed knee if she goes that fast, but it speeds up every 60 seconds anyway.
Dear son is back again. He says big sister kicked him off the kitchen computer. She turns the treadmill off again and sets him up at the downstairs computer, by the treadmill, to do the phonics program there instead. She turns the treadmill on again and is finally able to finish her time on it, with her son resting his foot against it the whole time, giggling because it tickles his bare foot as the treadmill turns.
She turns the treadmill off and closes it (so dear son won't play with it), and goes to check the washer. There is very little time left on the cycle by this time, so she goes into the sewing room to do some pick up while it finishes. She picks up the construction paper that is all over the floor from dear daughter's birthday card project last week. She also picks up pins from daughter's sewing project, and ignores the mouse droppings from whoever had the pet mouse out last.
The washer turns off, and she transfers the sheets to the dryer and starts the next load. She goes upstairs to shower, but since she is still sweating, she puts away the clothes that she brought upstairs earlier. As she reaches the bottom of the pile, she is glad she put them away, because her shower towels were in this load, and she is going to need them.
She goes into the bathroom to shower, and resists the urge to clean the bathroom first. She turns on the water and hops in. She shampoos, conditions, and starts to shave limbs. By this time the water is no longer hot. Remember, she just started the second load of sheets in hot water – necessary to kill dust mites in an allergy home. By the time she finishes shaving the water is truly 70 degrees–not her idea of a good time.
She gets out of the shower and gets dried and dressed. She starts to dry her hair, and daughter comes in to remind her that she needs a ride to work. Hair finished, it is now 1:05 p.m. Daughter is supposed to be at work at 1:00, and it took 3 and 1/2 hours to exercise and shower.
That's why homeschool moms don't usually bother trying to exercise.
