Not My Pajamas

       A dear friend, who shall remain nameless and who did later eat her words, once criticized home-school moms for staying in their pajamas until after lunch. In order to avoid any confusion (should a reader of this blog stop by my house unannounced around 1 p.m. and find me looking too comfortably clad) I would like to make it clear that:
       Number 1 -- These are not pajamas. They are workout clothes. In many regions, such vestments are considered stylish and acceptable.

 

       Number 2 -- The reason I am wearing workout clothes is because at some point during this day, I will be working out. The moment may not yet have arrived, but trust that it is planned. I do not take this Under Armor lightly.

Above: Workout clothes; Below: PJs. The difference should be obvious.

 

        Some days, I actually exercise first thing in the morning -- or almost first thing. First first thing, I have to make myself get out of bed. This, as everyone knows, is the most difficult task of the day. I usually accomplish it by bribing myself with coffee. This works especially well if we have cream in the house, or at least half and half. Another first thing is making breakfast. Sometimes, I am the ambitious kind of mom who makes cinnamon rolls or banana muffins. Sometimes I am the kind who says, "the cereal is in the cupboard, and there might be some milk left in the fridge." Either way, breakfast involves me cutting up fruit and setting some at everyone's place. Many of the members of my family share an odd trait regarding food. While they will eat anything that is placed in front of them with nary a murmur, they will not under their own steam provide themselves with fruits or vegetables. I was raised to be a little rigid about eating greens, so I still dole out the morning fruit. By this time, the others are starting to trickle downstairs.

       Johanna is often first. She aims to wake up and start school every morning at 6, and she achieves the goal much of the time. Then Eric comes down and drinks coffee while he waits for Drew, who wakes up after 7 and is ready to leave the house just moments later. As for Luc, sleep is one of the central joys of his life, and he begged me to let him sleep until 8 this year, so he usually eats breakfast by himself. Since he's a budding chef, fixing his own breakfast is no problem (except the fruit part).

      So anyway, there's the fruit, and the coffee, and sometimes packing Drew's lunch (Monday is sometimes McDonald's Day, and Friday is Rotisserie Chicken Day now that he and his friends have achieved the grand privilege of leaving campus at lunchtime). After all that, sometimes I go for a run. Lately, though, I have had other workout commitments. On Tuesday afternoons, I run 400 repeats with Johanna. Actually, we jog to the track at Les Evaux, I run a lap or two while she changes into her spikes, and then I time her running 400s. It's good exercise, because she wants to know her time at every 100, so I race back and forth across the oval to tell her. On Thursdays, I usually run with a friend,  which -- as an opportunity for feminine adult conversation as well as fitness -- is a highlight of my week. And lately on Wednesdays, I've been running with Lucas, as his climbing class is on hiatus.

       Because sometimes I am the fun kind of mom, I have been trying to make these Wednesday runs "adventures,"  which means we run to a bus stop, then take the bus to a nearby sports store or -- last week -- the American Food Avenue, where one can buy Cheese-Its (for $8 a box). Lucas, who is far too old for this kind of fun, tells me that I need to brush up on the meaning of the word "adventure." In his lexicon, adventure necessarily includes some kind of danger, and apparently the dangers of crackers with artificial coloring and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil don't count. This week, however, Lucas himself suggested the adventure. He wanted to run to Melectronics (the electronics store owned -- like most of Geneva -- by the Migros grocery chain), buy a tripod with his laundry earnings, and take the bus back. It sounded motivational to me, and Drew wanted to come along, which made this a Fun Family Event. Drew has recently decided that all exercise is good exercise, and he runs everywhere -- even to swimming, which seems a bit like overkill to me. I'm just trying to keep the calories flowing into the system. Everything went according to plan, except that the run seemed longer than the 5.16k advertised on mapmyrun.com, and that I spent a good deal of time doing what our French children's books call "pouf-poufs" and saying, "You can just wait for me at the next light."

       While we at the Collège de Tirelonge like to think of ourselves as fit, we are not, strictly speaking, a "sport-études" program. That means we also have to do our full share of academic subjects. This is what that part of the day looks like: Johanna has a huge pile of books, a list of tasks for the week, and a blank planner to fill in with what she does. She pops in from time to time to ask about the side-splitter theorem, whether she has correctly identified an example of metonymy, or what the word "apologetics" means. I also do physics experiments with her, because what is more lonely than doing labs without a lab partner?

Johanna hard at work.

Lucas has a bit more imposed structure in the form of a schedule posted on the bookshelf and hourly check-ins with mom to start the next subject or finish the prior one. He has been making great strides towards independence, except that I have to really sit on him to keep him from putting too much "voice" into his academic essays. Those of you who know him will know what I mean.

Lucas woke up an hour early this morning so he would have time for his new favorite fun: video editing. The second computer is to listen to an audiobook of Huck Finn.

       In between discussing thesis statements, polyhedrons, and the Monroe Doctrine, I keep myself out if trouble by cleaning bathrooms and writing emails in French. Sometimes I cook. And usually, by 5 p.m. or so (17h around here), I have managed to exchange the "pajamas" for actual daytime grown-up clothes.