Home Workout

The Saturday workout was supposed to be a 10,000 meter row. Sometime around 1:30 I realized that wasn’t happening, but I got a six hour workout in anyway: I painted the ceilings downstairs. Now before you roll your eyes dismissively at me, consider the logistics for a moment. In that time I climbed the equivalent of 31 flights of stairs, walked 8000 steps and performed countless overhead presses from taking a wet roller on a pole and rolling in awkward positions for hours. In the process of performing the latter I reacquainted myself with the shoulder pain I had from too many burpees in 2019.

If there’s anything positive about this pandemic, its that I’ve finally stopped procrastinating on home improvement projects that have nagged me for years. This isolation and my sweat equity have brought a new kids bathroom, freshly painted laundry room and kids bedrooms, new door hardware on all the upstairs doors, new ceiling fans in each of the bathrooms, new shower in the master bathroom, new ceiling with crown molding in the guest bathroom, removal of the massively overgrown junipers that greeted visitors along the driveway and now, finally, freshly painted ceilings in the downstairs rooms. The house is like new, if you will, and today I walked around feeling both a sense of accomplishment and soreness in places I wasn’t aware you could feel soreness.

So yesterday, as it snowed outside in that “it’s 2020 why not throw squalls in May at them to complete the mind f**k” kind of way, I ignored the outside world and checked boxes that were way down the list when we started this year. If the world was normal I’d be getting ready for my son’s graduation, planning a trip to New York to move our daughter back from college, and complaining about the pollen count while tactfully ignoring my to-do list of home improvement projects. But it’s not normal, and I’m pressing ahead on that list, making the most of found time at home. I’ll still need to get that 10,000 meter row in before the weekend ends, but I’m not complaining. My alternative workout yesterday turned out to be pretty productive after all. Now what else is on that list?