Mom Does Something For Herself!

I should repeat--I'm actually doing something for ME. Besides gardening. I grow things because I like to, I also garden to feed my family so that doesn't really count.

I write about my boys. Everyday I do stuff for my boys. For the puppy. For my husband. For Cub Scouts. For Robotics. For this. For that.

All that stuff isn't about me.

High time I do something-anything-for ME.

Enter BOOT CAMP. Sounds boy-ish, right? A friend from church had a string of FB status updates all about Boot Camp and the stuff they were doing. And it intrigued me. I messaged her and she told me all about it-and, she offered to go with me to try out the Boot Camp location near me.

So I did.

I should back up and add that I've always viewed myself as a tomboy. My college friends might call it something else, but I'll stick with "tomboy" for the purposes of  this post. I like sports. I like watching sports. I like playing sports. I like working out-truly-I like to sweat. I just haven't been working out for a whole bunch of reasons, but not because I don't like to do so. I wouldn't even call it "lazy" because honestly, "lazy" just isn't a word to describe anything about me.

If you read the ABOUT section here on the blog, one of the reasons for writing this blog is to try to find ME in this house of testosterone. Life has kinda gotten in the way of ME being me for oh, the past 15 years. Coincidentally, my oldest is 15. Crazy, right? A whole lotta stuff has gotten in the way of ME. C-section  complications. Depression. Basal Cell Carcinoma. Law Suits. Losing an historic family home. Job loss. Miscarriages. Chronic back pain. Depression. Bryce's horrible food allergies. Depression. Bryce's speech. Bryce's GI troubles. Bryce's ER trips. Most recently, the tragic loss of Brad's parents.

I don't want this to be cause for a pity party. I'm also not making excuses. Life has had it's bad moments the past 15 years--but it's also had a lot of good moments. Truly, more good moments than bad. But the thread running through it all is that all those moments have gotten in the way of ME and being who I am. It's not that I just sat back and allowed life to consume ME-I was IN the middle of all that stuff, after all. I just lost sight of ME and really allowed ME to drift out of the picture.

I've been quoted as saying, "I'm not even on my own to-do list."  Truth.

Ok, so back to the friend from church (Cheryl) and Boot Camp. Cheryl met me at the gym (at 5:30 AM) and motivated me through what was the toughest physical thing I'd done in a long time.

I loved it. I bought a Groupon for 4 weeks of Boot Camp  and I told my friend Rachel she should do it, too. She has also lost her sense of "ME" in her house of  boys and is fighting back to be herself. Please check out her blog-she's an AWESOME writer.  So now, Rachel and I are partners in crime, going to Boot Camp every morning at the crack of dawn. Well, before the crack of dawn. But we go 5 days a week, sometimes 6.

We love it. I love it. I *needed* it.

I was on a scrapbooking weekend a few weeks ago with my best friends from college and I told them that I finally felt like the old Dort was back. (my college peeps call me Dort.) Since this group of girls has been with me through all the stuff over the past 15 years and they've  known me for 25 years, they would be the first to disagree with me if I were wrong.

But they didn't. They agreed--I'm the most like myself than I've been in recent years. And they're happy for me!  Most of all, I'm happy for me.

Is is going to Boot Camp daily for the past 9 weeks and losing almost 12 pounds and 9 inches that made me finally be ME again? Not directly. It's going to Boot Camp daily-for ME-and doing something with Rachel and all the lovely women I've met at Boot Camp. It's pushing myself physically for no other reason than to push myself physically. It's doing things at Boot Camp that I didn't know I could do. Squat thrusts. Push ups (real ones, not always girl ones!). Planks. Bicep curls with 20lb dumbbells. 1000 reps. 100 squats.  Pushing every.single.muscle to it's limit. Then getting up the next day and doing it again. For fun.

I do this for ME so I can be better with THEM.