Annie: This is going to be harder than I thought.

Last time around, I was young and carefree, like Mae over there. Haha.

It may only have been seven years ago, but it was a long seven years. The most important change, other than my body's clearly having aged:

Child.

Last time around, I had a very busy professional life, but my leisure time was my own. Husband was very supportive (and frankly, worked shifts, so wasn't around half the time anyway), and I was able to exercise whenever I wanted to.

Now, though, there's Child. Child is four years old, and very busy. And inquisitive, and smart. And prone to doing dangerous things (like jumping off high things) if not supervised and ordered not to do dangerous things. Specifically, each time the mood hits.

Which leads to my current challenge: how to get my exercise time in with Child around? Husband still works shifts, so when he's not around, I'm a single Mom: which means if I want to get in my exercise after work and before 8pm (which I prefer because I sleep so terribly), I have to do it with Child around.

Take tonight. Tonight was the night I was going to do my first (of four this week, remember) 30-minute stint on my bicycle, which Husband set up on a trainer for me in the basement. I had set Child up with SpongeBob (I know, my how-to-be-a-terrible-parent blog is coming soon), and had logged, oh, maybe 3 minutes.

"Mommy!  Mommy!"

"Yes?"

"I want to come downstairs with you."

"OK, come down, but please play with your train set."

"OK"!

"Mommy?"

"Yes?"

"Where are my train cars?"

"They're in the box."

"But I don't see them..."

This continues for another, oh, 10 minutes.  I am, at this point, on the verge of tears. Then,

"Mommy? I have to go poop."

Child is able to poop alone - but tonight, can't remember how to turn on the light in the bathroom (the same one Child enjoys turning off when I'm in there).

So I ended up getting off my bike three times before packing it in (once to turn on the bathroom light for the poop, once to wipe Child after said poop, and once because Child had wandered into the laundry room and wasn't responding to my calls to come back out into sight).

Total time on the bike: I'd love to say 20 minutes, but it was probably more like 15.  The good news, which is actually quite awful news, is that in that interrupted 15 minutes I managed to work up a full sweat, and get to the point where I couldn't say more than a couple of words.

Seriously: 15 minutes. God, this is going to be long.

362 days to do.