The absolutely delicious chocolate cream pie I had for my birthday at the Beeliner Diner. I’m going to get fitter but I’m not going to completely deprive myself.

As a birthday present to myself, I got up at 6am on Tuesday to attend a 6:30am metabolic conditioning class at a gym I’d never been to but that I’d seen an ad for on Facebook. This is not something I usually do, and to be honest, something I am likely to do again. Metcon, as it’s called, is when you do several sets of an exercise for 30 seconds at a time with 10 second breaks in between, then switch to a new exercise and do it all over again. The exercises were hard and I had to take a few breaks. By the end it was clear to me that this kind of class is not for me. The owner of the gym talked with me during one of my breaks and said, “it gets easier every time,” and then as I was leaving, one of the other women in the class said to me, “I’ve been doing this for a year and it’s still really hard.” But I’m really glad I went.

Tuesday evening during Niki’s martial arts class I talked with my friend Brian, the general manager at EvolveAll, where my kids have done martial arts forever and where I have occasionally taken classes. Brian is extraordinarily kind and understanding and I knew I could be candid with him about my desires and fears. He explained the options for classes and training at EvolveAll and I decided on an assessment as a first step. Meanwhile, I signed up for a 10-class pass at Sun and Moon Yoga. And yesterday morning I got up at 6, again, for a 6:30am yoga class. I have intermittently loved yoga. I hadn’t been to an in-person class since before the pandemic. I tried online classes for a while but my house (especially when the kids were home from school) was not conducive to a peaceful, focused yoga practice.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a morning person and I am typically at my most alert and creative late at night. But as a mom, I’ve learned to do plenty of things that are not in my nature. Since she’s been doing crew this spring, Zoe has had to get up at 4:30 or 5:30 for various practices and regattas and I am usually the one to drive her to the boathouse when it’s still dark. If she can do this, which I know she does not enjoy, I can too. But I am old enough to know that if I’m getting up early, it needs to be for an activity I will enjoy at least a little, and not dread.

By yesterday afternoon I was quite sore. And sleepy. But I did have a salad for lunch! And I took naps. And of course Zoe told me last night that today was one of the days she had to be at the boathouse at 5:20, so I woke up at 5 to drive her. It would be nice if I could coordinate my morning classes with her morning practices, but that would be too easy, right? I mentioned to her last night that I might try to take a walk in Anacostia Park while she rowed, but it was completely dark when we got to the boathouse and I did not feel like a walk along the river in the dark would be super safe. I am determined to take a walk sometime today. Maybe I can convince Niki to walk to martial arts tonight instead of drive.

On my birthday I also went to DSW to buy new sneakers, but of course they didn’t have the ones I wanted in my size (11). I ended up ordering them online and was amused to discover that my two colleagues on the communications team at my office also have generously proportioned feet (size 11 and 12 wide). Is there a correlation between communications skills and big feet? Probably.

I know I’m not the only person to have gained weight during the pandemic. It’s a lot easier to justify eating your feelings and sleeping too much and lying around like a sloth when you’re in lockdown or you think this whole mess is going to end in a few months. It seems like a few months has become three years, and when your clothes don’t fit anymore you’ve got to take steps. Or I have to take steps. I won’t presume to speak for you. I will never be skinny or fit into my high school prom dress (why would I even want to?) but I am ready to regain some strength and be comfortable in pants without an elastic waist. That doesn’t seem overly ambitious, does it?