Fall!

I am just so loving fall! I know, this is uncharacteristically chipper of me, but before you think I've upped my Prozac dosage to the point that rainbows are shooting out of some of my major orafices, let me tell you what I love about fall.

I love the boring routines.

I looked forward to summer like you wouldn't believe. Well, you would believe it if you lived through the same hellish Chicago winter that I did this past year. When summer came, I was determined to seize every last moment of it, and I believe I did. We swam, we took trips, we ate picnics in the park. It was awesome. But by the end of summer, I actually began to grow weary of the lazy "what the hell should we do today?" feeling I had every moment when I woke up.

I think I did a pretty good job of scheduling fall activities in just the right amount. As I mentioned previously, I kind of over-scheduled us in the early part of the summer, and it felt a little stressful. On the other hand, I also hated having nothing scheduled at the end of the summer. It's a very hard balance to achieve.

But I think the fall schedule is going well. I try to work in some time at the gym every single day, which actually works wonders in terms of giving me a break from The Boy and his Terrible Two-ness. I think the gym daycare is good because, besides the obvious benefits of being exposed to other children and different toys, The Boy is forced to entertain himself there, which is a skill that he somehow lost over the summer. (I don't know if it was the constant entertainment in the summer, or having so many people around to play with him during our travels.)

As for the obligatory update on my workout pursuits, I think things are overall going well. Yoga has been better since that first awful week. For some reason my first week attendance was very low, and everybody who went seemed like a yoga master. But then in subsequent weeks, the attendance has almost doubled since that first time, and some of the people are struggling just as much as I am. The husband and I are continuing to do the weight-lifting class on Saturdays, and this week we also added in the Monday session. Which means on Monday, I actually became one of those annoying people who goes to the gym twice in one day. Don't worry, though, I have not done that since. I think Monday is going to be my only doubling-up day. It's very exhausting to go twice, especially when you aren't eating very much, and also, who the hell wants to go through the hassles of getting to the gym, getting dressed, doing the daycare drop-off, etc. two times in one day?

I've been trying to replace eating with stuff like reading and TV. Mostly reading, because some of my favorite TV shows and I are not on good terms. Like The Office. I just don't like the Jim and Pam pregnancy storyline, though I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's a show about an office, not some family sitcom. Or maybe because I feel like the writers of The Office played the baby card too quickly. And also I'm just sick of Michael's stupidity. Plus when I realized Wisteria Lane is adding a new resident this year with (gasp!) a mysterious secret past, I decided to cut out Desperate Housewives as well. I'm still going to hang in with Grey's Anatomy and 30 Rock, plus I have added Glee. And I have Mad Men while that season is still going.

Book updates: I just finished the two existing books in the Hunger Games series for young adults. Loved. They're totally not something I would normally read, but I'm trying to branch out. Now I have a few other books on hold at the library, and in the meantime I checked out two books today. One is The Drunkard's Walk, which is a non-fiction book about the concept of randomness. I was hoping for a Freakonomics kind of thing, but so far it's a little more academic. But some of the stuff reminds me of the fun experiments I used to learn about in my psychology major days, so at least I feel like I'm exercising my brain a little by reading it. I also checked out Middlesex, which is a bestseller I happened to miss. ("Bestsellers you happened to miss" being a major category of books you can get at the library.) I hear it is really good. I haven't started it yet.

Well, I think The Boy has watched enough consecutive episodes of Dora that I should maybe get off the Internet and give him a little bit of attention. (In my defense, we just had the carpets cleaned this morning, and the floor is too wet for playing.)