Four days went by without my very expensive treadmill getting any use. We can’t have that, can we? But there were excuses each day. The first two days I had those joint pains that made exercise impossible. The next day I was gone all day, and yesterday I was so exhausted from lack of sleep that I couldn’t bring myself to move much at all. Today was Monday, which could have been another great excuse, if excuses are even needed.

But I did work out this morning, although it was only for twenty minutes, not my usual thirty. I intended to go the full thirty when I got on the thing, but after about five minutes, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I’ve learned that lesson one too many times already. Twenty minutes felt like enough, and after four days of inactivity, it probably was.

This afternoon I made up for it by working in the yard. I pulled out the weed trimmer and spent all of about ten minutes clearing the high grass in my yard. That was as long as I could hold the trimmer without my arm shaking, but it was long enough to get the walkway more or less cleared, so that the next time the UPS guy has a package for me, he won’t get scratches on his bare legs.

So, twenty minutes in the morning and ten more in the afternoon. There’s your thirty-minute workout for the day. I hope to do better, but I won’t push it. I need to get out into the yard more often, even more than I need to use my expensive treadmill. Surprisingly, I recovered fairly quickly from the tingling in my arms that the weed trimmer caused. And there don’t seem to be any ill effects, allergy-wise. In fact, I was sneezing more before I did any yard work than I did afterward. Go figure.