Being Creative or Borderline Cheating…

I agreed to be apart of Julie's 500 Mile Club and I have developed a plan in which I am certain to come out victorious and one that will hopefully encourage the rest of you into joining My idea of a 500 Mile Club. I have converted everyday situations into miles…

Dusting for 30 minutes equals a half a mile
Washing the windows for 30 minutes equals half a mile
Filling/emptying the dishwasher or doing the dishes for 30 minutes equals a half a mile
Vacuuming for 30 minutes equals a half a mile
Sweeping for 30 minutes equals a half a mile
Moping with a mop for 30 minutes equals half a mile
Shoveling for 30 minutes equals 1 mile
Mowing the grass for 30 minutes equals 1 mile
Raking for 30 minutes equals 1 mile
Gardening for 30 minutes equals a half a mile
Hoeing for 30 minutes equals 1 mile
Wrestling with children (putting on winter apparel constitutes wrestling) for 30 minutes equals a half a mile
Sledding for 30 minutes equals 1 mile
Folding/putting away laundry for 30 minutes equals a half a mile

Because it is necessary to count for something…

Scrapbooking for 30 minutes equals one tenth of one mile

And last but not least…

Blogging for 30 minutes equals one tenth of one mile


I am convinced that if you calculate all of these events and the number of times they are actually performed everyone could complete 500 miles worth of activities in a reasonable amount of time, all of which would count towards gaining the bodily figures we so desire. Creativity is the only way I can successfully accomplish this task.

Please feel free to add other suggestions into my comments. Now get moving and start tracking your 500 miles.

Good Riddance Tannenbaum

Now that the season has passed and the misery is behind me I can reflect on the wonderful joys of the Hunt for our Christmas tree. Pretend you just heard the needle scratch across a record and we are warping back in time about five weeks…

Oh, don't remind me that Christmas Tree season is almost here. I despise the things and, try as I may to sabotage the whole event, I somehow always cave in and find myself snapping photos of my over-bundled children as they desperately try to keep up with their daddy. He plows his way through the knee-deep snow (keep in mind that knee-deep on my husband is about 10" of snow and waist-deep on the baby), through row upon row of sap-producing, needle-tossing, water sucking, spray painted, trimmed-to-perfection bushes. It pains me to decide which of the perfectly manicured shrubs to select, remove from its current location and bring into my home. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is just the beginning.

Once the tree is home the fun can truly begin, as I pull out and untangle the lights that I hope still work (at least for one more year), then proceed to walk in circles trying to hang the lights I hope will work once I get them up on the now dying and soon to be dead tree. Then I get to open the boxes upon boxes of "ornaments" and remove them from their mounds of tissue paper to place them on the tree, pretending not to know I will be removing, rewrapping and re-boxing them ALL in just a few short weeks. All this while warning my children to "JUST LEAVE IT ALONE!"

I truly, on so many different levels, do appreciate and desire a Charlie Brown Tree. It is simple, it is NATURAL, and it is unique. This year I simply gave up. I untangled and hung the lights that happened to only function part of the season; I hung two strands of beads and two strands of metal hearts; I allowed the girls to hang candy canes and that was ALL. As close to simple as I could get my family to accept. And even still I overheard Josh comment that it was the most boring Christmas tree he'd ever seen.

Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, because I thought, and still think it was BEAUTIFUL. Yet another example of how minimalist I truly am. Maybe one year as a gift to me, we could just scratch the whole real tree thing and simply decorate the front window like one of Anthropologie's window displays, which, by the way, I spent half of one free afternoon simply admiring. Sounds pretty cynical I know, I just do not understand what joy there is pulling things out only to put them away…not for a tree. Someone please provide a worthwhile reason for enduring this ritual.