A guilty pleasure

My teenage sitter generally comes over one or two afternoons a week for an hour so that I can go work out. The timing is not ideal; an hour is is scarcely enough time for me to race out and barely break a sweat before I have to race back and send her on her merry way. I'd love to have her here a bit longer, but she's a serious student and is not willing to give up more than an hour of her time on a school day. I'll take what I can get. As rushed as I always feel when she's on the clock, the $8 an hour I pay my sitter for a quick workout is money well spent.

Despite the very obvious fact that the snow had stopped falling a good 15 hours before school was scheduled to begin, school was canceled town-wide today. Our streets are still a bit iffy, I'm told, but I wouldn't really know. I haven't ventured out. It's cold and Evan's breathing is still not 100% and so we occupied ourselves here at home all day. Keeping my kids happy while cooped up at home for the third day in a row proved more of a workout than anything I might do at a gym. And so when my sitter arrived at 4:30 as previously scheduled, I bid my children a fond farewell and headed upstairs. I did not go to work out. I am not doing any errands in lieu of exercise. I am not even taking care of any household chores. After a day spent locked in the house with two small children who have already been here for several days -- a day of markers and glitter glue and jumpolene jumping and board games and puzzles and cars and trucks and balls and dress up clothes and and snow equipment on and off -- I am sitting and goofing off. For a whole hour. By myself.

Exercise be damned. This may well be the best $8 I have ever spent in my life.