I’ve been working really hard to get some habits going in my life that I can do without having to think about them so much. I’m doing my morning breakfast, dish washing, tooth brushing and mouth wash gurgling, and putting lotion on my hands in exactly the same order every day. That may sound like a dumb thing for a 65 year old to be practicing, but it’s something I have to think about each day, or I forget to do half of it. I’m not ready to make a list and post it, so I’m hoping by doing them in the same order each day I can turn the whole routine into a habit.
I’ve been very faithful to do the exercise sets that the Physical Therapist planned out for me. Now for that, I did make a list, and I check each time to see what the next step is. No, I can’t remember them all if I leave it up to memory, so the list is necessary. I’m not going to bother to try to memorize it anyway, because he will be changing it near the end of March.
I’m still trying to find a good substitute for the 10 minutes I’m supposed to spend on the exercise bike. On pretty days I can walk around the house a few extra times and make up for it. On rainy or raw cold days (hey, we had SNOW on Sunday!) I’ve been walking around inside the house, but I doubt if I am doing as much inside as I would outside.
Our driveway goes from the front around to the side of the house, where a sidewalk connects to the patio along the whole back side of the house. And there’s a sidewalk from there all the way back around to the front of the house. So I have a ready made “track” that I can walk on, without having to worry about traffic. Plus, the slope from front to back of our lot gives me a chance to walk up and down hill, too.
I’m wearing a pedometer and recording my number of steps each day. I figure I’ll average them together from this week and try to beat that average from now on.
My mood has been good, and I’m feeling confident that I can improve my mobility and stamina. I still spend the majority of my day working at the computer, trying to stay caught up with our Lost Toys Search Service and taking care of our online sales. I’ve had to slack off on adding to our catalog momentarily, as I got behind on requests for help when we went to Huntsville a couple of weeks ago. It’s kind of a two steps forward and one step back kind of thing, as I get new requests constantly, while I am trying to take care of the old requests. But it feels so good to be able to help people when they are so miserable that the Toy Search has a lot to do with my being upbeat. I wouldn’t want to stop it, no matter how much of my time it takes. It’s certainly a better use of my time than watching TV!!