As usual.

As usual, I am spending more time on the couch in the afternoon because it's winter.  I'm not running around with a whistle and a stick on the ground (field hockey) or a stick in the air (lacrosse), and so I go right to baked goods and sweaters and throw blankets under the slanted afternoon sun with my cats.  That's January.  Our family routine is without mandatory games and practices everyday, so what's left is usually just for our kids, and it's slow and steady and comfortable, and there are actually days when I don't leave the house, and sometimes Rudy's hair in ponytails is the highlight.

I know that's how I like it, and I know that's how it goes, and still, every winter, when I give in to a relaxed afternoon, I feel lazy and ashamed and then console myself by feeling accomplished and deserving, and then the hour or so is gone because it's time to wake up Rudy and meet Marley at the bus, and I don't think about it again until the next day.  This winter, though, it is a little worse because I haven't really made time for any physical activity.  Usually, I'm at least doing yoga on Saturday mornings, but this winter Marley's and Rudy's simultaneous gymnastics and dance classes mean Todd and I are both committed at just about the time when my shavasana would be beginning.

And now it's February, and that's always the month when I realize I need to get something going because lacrosse starts in six weeks and I always want to be a coach who can join in, at least in the conditioning for example, and go push-up for push-up with the best of them.

And I will get to it.  I will, because I always do, and because there are standards that I will just hold myself to even when they get ridiculous or inconvenient.  But in the meantime, I did something that I know will be a part of the last few quiet afternoons I have left this in February.  I set up a Pinterest account.  The other night, Todd asked me if I was blogging, and then corrected himself, and said tweeting.  And I answered, "No.  Pinning."  And I felt both trendy and vacuous.  Because I mean, really.

And here I am, on the couch, blogging and looking at pins, and I excuse it and indulge in it today because earlier this week, I had an afternoon at the doctor's with my mom and Rudy while Bean was at school.  My mother's endocrinologist needed a urine sample, and because her Alzheimer's is progressing, that was not going to be easy to get.  I was brought back to the early days of specimen collection with my daughters as I set up a hat in the toilet for my mom, and used my upbeat-hooray-for-using-the-potty-voice for my three-year-old first, and a sixty-four-year-old second, and my tone and feelings of relief and congratulation were the same for my disoriented mother as they were for my potty-training kid.  I mean, really.  After that, I need a few hours of looking at pretty pictures and categorizing them into my own self-absorbed vision boards.  Right?