Last week I was catching up on Vicki’s blog, and I saw that she’d issued a bit of a challenge to her readers: 30 days of 30 Day Shred. And for reasons I have yet to fully understand, I immediately thought, “Okay. I’m in.” AND I SIGNED UP FOR IT.

CLEARLY SOME FITNESS-MINDED ALIENS SEIZED CONTROL OF MY MIND.

So I bought the DVD and decided that today would be Day One.

OH MY MERCIFUL HEAVENS.

However, in a delightfully unexpected turn of events, Melanie and I realized today that we both had committed to Vicki’s 30 Day challenge. I cannot overstate the importance of this discovery because HELLO, ACCOUNTABILITY, NICE TO SEE YOU. We also realized that we were both planning to set aside some time to “shred” this afternoon, but we were sort of blase’ about it because the workout only lasts 20 minutes, and how hard could that be, right? I mean, I can do all sorts of things for 20 minutes: I can lift the fried chicken off of my plate and put it into my mouth, I can repeatedly mash the buttons on the TV remote, and I can also send and receive countless text messages while continually sipping an ice cold diet Coke.

You may be picking up on why the aliens seized control of my mind and convinced me to sign up for the challenge in the first place.

So this afternoon, when there was not another living soul in this house, I turned on the DVD and got ready to feel the burn. I even wore my brand new lavender leotard and hot pink leg warmers.

Oh, I kid because there was a time when I really did own a lavender leotard and hot pink leg warmers.

I will spare you all the details of my initial foray into shredding, but suffice to say that within the first five minutes of the workout I was thinking Not Nice Things about Jillian and her perky fitness compadres. It didn’t help that Anita – who was quickly becoming my new BFF since she was in charge of showing us the “modified” moves, aka The Moves For Those Of You Whose Primary Form Of Exercise Has Been Pointing Your Toes While Typing – had abs so defined that I thought at first they must surely be the creation of some subtle airbrushing, only to realize that OH, those abs are totally real, and MY WORD, they are spectacular.

However, I moved past my bitterness, soldiered through the workout (does it tell you something that I was actually relieved when it was time for the ab segments because that meant I got to LIE ON THE FLOOR?), and y’all, when those twenty minutes were over, my leg muscles were so exhausted that my very first thought was I’ll never walk normally again.

Sure enough, I spent the next forty-five minutes trying to figure out how I was going to walk without looking like some straight-from-the-boondocks contestant on America’s Next Top Model who is trying to impress Tyra with what she thinks is a fierce runway walk. The only way I could manage to keep my knees from locking up was to lift my the tops of my legs to a forty-five degree angle with my waist, then sort of kick out my leg until my foot hit the floor, and later, when Melanie and I were laughing until we cried about The Day Jillian Nearly Killed Us, I described my new walk as something along the lines of what you’d expect from a demented clydesdale. In other words: it’s very sexy and now.

So tomorrow Jillian and I will meet again, and I don’t really know what to expect since I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to move my legs at all. However, I have decided that if I am not in fact mobile, then I will track down some sort of beige marker and spend my twenty minutes watching Jillian tell me to WORK HARDER and PUNCH IT OUT while I draw ab muscles on my stomach in an attempt to replicate Anita’s rockin’ six-pack.

Certainly I am climbing to new heights of fitness!

Or at least I will be.

Just as soon as I can, you know, stand up.

Remember when The Bachelor was on and Melanie and I thought a sure-fire way for the bachelorettes to know if they were reallllly ready for motherhood would be for them to take care of Jason’s little boy when he had a stomach virus?

Well. Today I thought of a new test.

I think it might be better than the first one.

Want to know if you’re ready for motherhood? REALLLLLLY ready?

Take a little boy who’s in kindergarten to buy shoes.

And you can’t go to one of those fancy stores where they let you sit in chairs while they bring you different styles and sizes. Oh, no ma’am. You have to go to a Gigantor Sporting Goods Warehouse where there are all sorts of helmets and balls and scooters and treadmills vying for your child’s attention attention while you try to find and fetch the shoes your own dadgum self.

SWEET. MERCY.

Because I’m here to tell you: after going to Gigantor Sporting Goods Warehouse to buy the little man a very basic pair of New Balance exactly like the ones he’s worn for the last seven months but now outgrown, and after 45 minutes of trying to find the right size and the right width and the right style to accommodate a super-high arch, and after getting the young’un who needed the shoes sufficiently settled down so he could try on the shoes and subsequently “go for a quick run, Mama” to see if he will be “really SUPER fast” when he wears them, I grabbed his hand, led him to the aisle with kids’ shoes and said, “Pick out the ones you want.”

I figured that if he loved the shoes enough then he would convince himself that the fit was perfectly adequate. This is a shoe-buying strategy that I’ve employed countless times in my own life, and since I was burning up hot and in dire need of a trip to the restroom, I knew that something had to give. Desperate times, desperate measures, etc. and so on and so forth.

And that is why the boy and I walked out of Gigantor Sporting Goods Warehouse earlier today with some newly-purchased sneakers that cost less than $20 and have big plastic pictures of Iron Man on the sides. They even light up when you walk. They’re ugly as all get out, and my child loves them and cannot quit admiring his feet.

Also: my child has never seen Iron Man.

Go figure.

By the way, on about four different occasions during the shoe shopping I found myself wondering WHAT IN THE SAM HILL I would have done if I’d had more than one child with me. What would I have done if I’d been trying to manage, say, an infant and a two-year old in addition to the boy who needed the shoes?

I’m not sure, but I think it would’ve involved a lot of crying.

And my hypothetical extended brood probably wouldn’t have been very happy, either.

As long as I’ve known him – which at this point is the better part of three decades – my husband has loved video games, and with the exception of the PS3, he’s owned every major game playing console at one point or another. I, on the other hand, don’t even know what you call the piece of equipment that hooks up to the TV so that you can see the games you put in the disc drive thingy, thus my awkward use of the made-up term “game playing console.”

Given how far behind I am on the terminology learning curve, it probably isn’t a surprise that I’m not much of a video game person. I just don’t have the patience to sit in front of a TV for hours on end while I fight a series of space battles in order to return an orphaned alien named Thorzino back to his home planet of Microtundria. I would much rather use that time to do more worthwhile things, things like reading blogs and perusing celebrities’ Twitter feeds and watching marathons of “The Real Housewives of New York City.”

However.

Before the young’un was born, David bought a game called Fusion Frenzy for the Xbox, and after watching D and our friend Benji play a round or four hundred, I decided I’d give it a try. Lo and behold, after a few weeks of obsessive consistent practice, I became pretty good at it (for the 2008 version of the same phenomenon, please see: Pathwords). I really looked forward to playing it every night after supper.

And then I had a baby and never played again.

The Wii has been a big hit in our house for the last couple of years, and every once in awhile I’ll feel all daring and kicky and jump in and play a game with my fellas. In fact, a few weeks ago I tried to play Mario Kart with Alex, and y’all, I was so horrible at it that my own child looked at me sympathetically, patted my shoulder and said, “It’ll be okay, Mama – you just need a little practice.” After our game was over I told him I was sorry that I wasn’t a very strong Mario Kart competitor, and he said, “Mama, has there ever been a video game that you really liked to play?”

WELL. Funny you should ask. Because AS A MATTER OF FACT, YES.

So I told him all about Fusion Frenzy and how his daddy and I used to play into the wee hours of the morning. He was fascinated. Then he asked if maybe we could play sometime, and since it’s totally a family game, I said that would be great. And then I started to sweat because OH, SWEET MERCY, THE PRESSURE.

This past Sunday afternoon Alex announced that he would LOVE to play Fusion Frenzy with me, so I asked David to load the game and put the TV on Mach 4 or Channel Frequency 2.09 or whatever setting the TV has to be on in order for the video games to show up on the screen. Once the game was up and running, I selected my favorite Fusion character, Naomi. Naomi always wears a bright orange track suit with a cropped jacket and platform sneakers, and I think that is so hysterical because it’s pretty much the exact same outfit I wear in the afternoons when I run my errands before I head to hip-hop dance practice. She also has jet-black hair and likes to kick people. Our resemblance is uncanny.

Alex thought the whole game was pretty much the most wonderful invention man has ever known (lots of people jumping and running through lots of tubes on lots of spinning surfaces = gold), and he was completely surprised by the fact that I was sort of decent at it. I was rusty, of course, but I managed to hang in there, and by the end of our four rounds, do you know what happened?

Why, Naomi came in first and stood in the winner’s circle – that’s exactly what happened. She stood in the winner’s circle with her bright orange track suit and her platform sneakers and she owned it. Oh yes she did.

Alex was playing as a skateboarder named Zac.

Zac came in third.

Maybe Zac needs a little practice.

I really did try to contain my excitement about beating my kindergartner at a video game, but ohmyword, I was BESIDE MYSELF. Now granted, since we’re trying to teach the little guy good sportsmanship and all that, I didn’t do a victory dance or anything; I just sat in my chair and said things like, “Good game, buddy! You did a great job!”

But in my head I was running around in circles, giving chest-bumping high-fives to anybody who’d take them and shouting things like “MAMA’S STILL GOT IT!” and “MAMA HAS MAD SKILLZ!”

And in addition to mad skillz, Mama also has a deep wellspring of widsom and maturity.

Clearly.

When we moved here from Louisiana, I was thrilled to death by the prospect of seeing snow every once in awhile.

I may have been a little unrealistic in my snow-related expectations, because in nine years, it has snowed four whole times, I think. The first year we lived here we had a beautiful winter wonderland-type snow. When the little guy was two we got some flurries. Last year it snowed just enough to cover the ground for fifteen minutes while we took pictures. And yesterday, much to our surprise, it snowed all morning long.

Now granted, it had melted by two yesterday afternoon, but still. SNOW!

We had a blast.

I also washed about seven loads of clothes yesterday. And while I folded them I watched a marathon of that “Clean House” show and MY WORD I could not turn away.

This really has absolutely nothing to do with snow, but I felt compelled to share.

Have a great Monday, everybody!

So about a month ago my beloved Hoopty Laptop died forever and for good and for real. I know that I’ve mentioned this about six or four hundred times, but in case you missed the memo, just let me confirm:

HOOPTY IS DEAD.

When Hoopty was still alive and kickin’, I had sort of a make-shift office at the bar in our living room, but the beauty of Hoopty was that I could carry her with me to the couch or the guest room or even to the front porch, where I’ve been known to blog a time or twelve when the boy was playing outside.

Well.

Hoopty’s death meant that I switched over to an old desktop that we had in our garage, and we set up the desktop on our dining room table because I kept telling myself that this was all very temporary. That we’d be buying a new Macbook very soon. That I’d be back to the bar in no time at all.

(JUST LIKE MY EARLY TWENTIES!)

(BADA-BING!)

But.

We just can’t afford a new computer right now. We may not be able to afford a new computer in 2009. I do have a work-issued laptop that I use for my secret-y part-time job (you know. the one where I design and build all the missiles.), but it’s certainly not meant to be my primary computer from home. So since Ye Olde Desktop is going to be my bloggy partner in crime for awhile, my husband suggested that maybe we should turn our playroom into an office for me so that I’d feel a little more settled with this new set-up.

This decision was made all the easier given the fact that the five year-old didn’t really use the playroom anymore. As it turns out, he’d much rather stomp and flip and jump in every other part of the house, not to mention that his Star Wars action figures seem to require wide open spaces for maximum battleage.

So, this past Saturday I started the process of cleaning out the playroom. About a third of the toys and books made their way back to the little guy’s bedroom, but the rest of the stuff is headed for a local charity. I took a picture before I pulled out the trash bags; keep in mind that you can’t see the TV and the three baskets of small toys with pointy edges in these pictures, but you’ll get the general idea of “before,” at least.

And by Saturday night, I had it looking like this.

I think the vacuum and the overturned stool really add something special, don’t you?

Yesterday I set about the business of trying to get the room into some semblance of working order, and since my budget was a lofty sum of zero dollars and zero cents, I had to shop for everything inside my house.

So here’s what I did.

About a year and half ago I bought a desk at a thrift store for about ten dollars, not really knowing what I would use it for but figuring it would come in handy one day. I moved that desk in the old playroom / new office, then cleared off the black chest that was already in the room, and I filled it with mementos and pictures and books that make me happy.

Then I moved Alex’s playroom bulletin board above the desk, and I covered it with stuff that makes me happy.

Then I found a bunch of artwork that makes me happy (ARE YOU STARTING TO NOTICE A PATTERN?), and I thumbtacked it to the walls because I am very, very fancy.

I guess what I’m saying is that I had absolutely no decorative strategy for the office except that I wanted it to be functional and I wanted it to be filled with colorful things (THAT MAKE ME HAPPY).

In other words: if we can’t afford a new computer and I start to feel a little sulky about it (which, honestly, I have), I want to be surrounded by stuff that reminds me HEY WOMAN, GET OVER YOURSELF.

And here’s the final-ish result.

And what I didn’t think about last night when I was thumbtacking all the stuff to the walls is that I would have some seriously great light in the mornings.

Plus, you know, I get a kick out of the boy sitting in the chair. He’s sort of fun and stuff.

I was a little skeptical about whether the whole cleaning out / repurpose-ing process would be worth it, but as I sit here surrounded by so many little things – photos of family and friends, handprints of a mighty sweet five year-old, verses that are speaking to my heart right now, my favorite pens in a handy juice glass – that remind me of the blessings in my life, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that it totally was.

I think Hoopty would be delighted.