I haven't been so great about working out regularly, but lately I have been trying to get in at least 30 minutes of walking, dancing, or something. Not necessarily all at once, but cumulatively. My body likes it, and I can tell when I've been not doing it, as my body is very mad.

But tonight, I hit the complex fitness room, and then the pool.

20 butterfly flaps @ 50 lbs
15-ish butterfly flaps @ 40 lbs
13-ish minutes on the exercise bike: 3.1 miles, 102kcal. I noticed that my exercise bike endurance is up. I got the feeling that I want to devote perhaps a whole morning a week just to that. Well, a nice portion of a morning, anyway, and not Wednesday or Friday.

After that, I hit the pool. First I hit the hot tub. Ahhhh, mmm. Then I dangled my feet in the water of the big (unheated) pool. Then back to the hot tub. I really did enjoy my Saturday mornings at the pool while I was growing up; I want to give Little Fayoumis somewhat of the same thing. Family bonding time. Now, with the new schedule, it may actually work out. Huh.

Water has some mysterious thing for me. I like putting my feet in a clear still sheet of water, and watching the ripples take over, making as few ripples as I can. It's one of the childhood rituals that still has power. I need to do it more often.

I decided that I was actually going to go all the way into the pool. Now, this is "winter" in Arizona, so the pool must have been a good 65-70 degrees. Maybe even 60. I waded in, and gradually worked myself deeper and deeper, pacing back and forth. When I was deep enough in, I started swimming. Wonderful. I love the water. When I was a teenager, boojum and I discussed things, and I decided that water was probably my element. It wasn't until I started to embrace my computer geek side that I felt a kinship with air.

Some of the young people passing by asked me if that water was not indeed cold. I replied that it was not so bad to me, but then, I was an Alaskan. They understood that.

I have a cunning plan to rebuild my affinity for things that are not hot: if I devote even ten or twenty minutes a day, especially during the winter months, to being in the pool (unheated!) then I will stand a chance of not freezing my buns off once I hit Fairbanks again.

My arms and upper back told me that whatever it was that I had been doing, they liked it, and they wanted me to keep doing it. Yay for building muscle! Yay for getting it so that the mind wants to stop before the body does! Yay, me!