Moving forward

A woman I met in the skate ski clinic this winter was a NOLS instructor in the Northwest before moving out here, and brought her kayak out. She is generously -and trustingly- letting me use it! And it gets to live with me, which makes it much easier. That means I can go to the Arvada Reservoir, which is MUCH cheaper at $15 for the summer pass. Boulder Res costs hundreds. :(

I'm a little nervous about using her boat- it's MUCH nicer than my beater whitewater I got last summer. It's lighter and I suspect more fragile. *Gulp* I have to be careful. On the plus side, being lighter, I can heave all 17 feet of it onto my Subaru without help, strap it down, and remove it without anybody's help.

This Tuesday morning, I'll be taking the kids on a field trip to the fair city of Arvada to buy my summer pass for the reservoir, and I'll bribe them with time at the Arvada swimming pool not far away.

I hope to start off paddling two mornings a week, and work up to four mornings by mid-July, when the grandparents return from their trip and can take the kids one morning a week again.  I don't want to burden my husband with too many breakfasts without me so that he sours on this whole thing. So that fourth morning will be when the grandparents can take the kids.

Other than that, I'm trying to up my tai chi practice by a few hours a week, and I'm trying to bike the kids everywhere I can. I've also upped my general activity levels/lifestyle by creating a mini farm here at home, where there's plenty of hard labor to do building new vegetable garden beds, a chicken coop, bunny barns, landscaping... so I'm good and sore on a daily basis. (We're building it all ourselves from recycled materials we find at Resource here in Boulder)

I figure it's all a good way to toughen up physically and also mentally. I think a fair bit of stamina stems from our expectations of ourselves, and from reasonably working up to greater and greater amounts of productivity. There's a balance to be found between expectations (and desire) and the patience to sustainably push a little further. This kind of conditioning takes time- to build physical strength and endurance, and also the mental attitude and habits.  That's my theory, and I'm testing it out on myself. ;) A year into it, I see lots of progress in both realms.

Hopefully by mid-summer, I'll be training full-on, and still have the energy to plan and cook the family meals, do all the farm chores (weeding, watering, feeding the rabbits and chickens, cleaning their various homes, harvesting, canning, etc), and still be a happy, engaged wife and mother. Are my expectations too high? We'll find out!