1.) Your favorite kind of exercise.
My favorite kind of exercise is unintentional exercise. Like when you go to the mall with a friend to help her find a dress for a wedding and four hours later realize you haven’t even had a coffee break! And by “with a friend” I mean “by yourself” and by “for a wedding” I mean, “for no good reason at all”.
Or when you decide to reorganize a room and you’re so in the zone of reorganizing that four hours later you realize by God you broke a sweat, skipped lunch, AND have a nicely organized room! WINNING!
Or when you clean the kitchen, sweep the floor, and make dinner without ONCE checking your email you psycho!
Or when you go outside to harvest a few vegetables from your beautiful garden and after 5 minutes realize there are a whole lot more tomatoes than you anticipated and then after five more minutes you’re out of breath and muttering to yourself about how sorry you feel for farmers now that you can really relate to the physical labor they endure. OMG you’re farming!
Of course this is not to be confused with unintentional exercise that makes me angry.
For example, when the dog slips out the front door and zig zags through the neighborhood while you chase it. And when your neighbors see you, you have to pretend the whole thing is funny while on the inside you’re cursing your dog. And your neighors. And yourself. AND WHOEVER LET THE DOG OUT!
Or when you pick up an accent table from Target and decide to put it together on your own instead of waiting for Mr. Handyman to come home. After struggling with the diagram directions for 30 minutes you screw everything together, but things don’t fit quite right and you realize Leg C and Leg B need to be unscrewed and swapped and flipped around and before you know it you’re sweating, cursing, and throwing Leg C and Leg B through a window.
Or when you have to run up the stairs to discipline a child after he shouts “THAT’S WHAT YOU GET!” while slamming his door. The stair sprint, combined with the ensuing discipline measure, paired with the “oh no he didn’t!!” rage is not an ideal form of exercise.
The nice thing about rage inducing, unintentional exercise is that you can easily combat it with euphoric shopping therapy unintentional exercise…just steer clear of the DIY furniture.
Kim says
Housework, gardening and running after errant children/dogs IS exercise! Shopping can be a marathon event – you need more training! Go!
Dominique Goh says
Housework and chasing after kids is certainly exercise.. really exhausting too.
BalancingMama (Julie) says
I could not agree more!
Funkidivagirl says
I love cleaning the garage…weird, huh?
Maggid says
Oh how you can make me laugh.
“Oh No he Didn’t . . ” ooo-wee –
I’m not ever gonna grow up (at least i suspect this to be the case) – so, I can’t wait until then to be a writer like you . . I’ll just practice and “go for it.”
Love Your Work . . and – thank you for encouraging all of us.
just JENNIFER says
Yes, yes, these things are totally exercise! Gosh, shopping makes me tired and my back ache. That must mean I’ve exercised. ;-)
pattisj says
Thanks for the outright laughter this morning. All those qualify as exercise? I must be in pretty good shape, after all. ;) Have a blessed day! With only GOOD unintentional exercise. Cute pic of the dog on the rug. Adorable, and artistic.
Betsy says
I didn’t quite get a pic every hour, but I did a “day in the life” =)
PS I totally agree wtih the disciplining the kid one. HATE it when that happens!
Charlene Ross says
Thanks for the laugh today. (I needed it!) You are hilarious!
OldDogNewTits says
Your answer is perfect. I especially love the part about the dog escape being “funny.” So much of my life is supposed to be “I know! Can you BELIEVE it happened AGAIN? (fake laughter)”
Esperanza says
Hi Kat!
I just found your website and I love your writing prompts and decided to join the fun : )
Thanks for your funny self, I really enjoy it!
carol says
that’s my kind of exercise!
Andrea says
I’m with you on unintentional exercise. Painting is a form of this. I didn’t realize it was until I decided to paint my children’s rooms and two bathrooms in one month, and I was eating Hungry Man-sized meals at every meal and still managed to lose quite a bit of weight.