ninety days from now

It's 11:15 PM on Friday night.

The children are all in bed, sleeping.

Charlie is out of town on his business trip.

I'm wrapping up a project for work and preparing to turn in for the night.

Suddenly, I hear a sound unlike any sound I've heard before. It sounds like a window slowly being opened. A window downstairs, directly beneath our bedroom. I catch my breath, afraid to move. The noise stops. I wonder if I imagined it, or if I really did hear something? After a few tense moments, I slowly exhale, questioning what would I do if there really was something in the house?

The noise happens again.

This time it is followed by a a thump, thump, thump.

Adrenaline surges through me. Instead of rousing my sleeping children and fleeing the scene, I jump off the bed, grab a hair brush from my night stand, and stomp as loudly as I can to the stairwell. I flip on the light and make a whole bunch of grunting noises that are intended to sound ... ferocious ... like a mother bear who is prepared to protect her cubs.

If something appeared - or came charging up the stairwell at me - the adrenalin was so intense, I felt like I was fully prepared to brush it's hair really hard. Although, in reality, if something came charging up the stairs at me, I probably would have wet myself as I ran screaming in to my children's room while fumbling around the phone trying to call 911 for back up support.

Fast forward 10 minutes. I'm back in our bedroom. My ears are straining to hear any more sound. I didn't go downstairs and inspect the source of the sound because if there had actually been something there, I wasn't prepared to drop dead of a heart attack. So instead, I climb in to bed, fully dressed and turn the television on low as I ready myself to stay up all night because OBVIOUSLY that's exactly what I need to do to ensure my family's safety.

Within minutes, I was completely sucked in to an infomercial.

I'm sure you've seen it, before.

P90X.

I know a few people who have done the program with remarkable success. But I'd never considered it for myself, until that very moment as I sat in bed clutching a hairbrush to fend off whatever was in our basement.

At some point, when the prior noises I'd heard had vanished and they started to show the same infomercial for a third time, I dozed off. Who knows how many more times the infomercial played, permeating my subconscious as I slept. I assume a lot, since the next day, I couldn't shake the "before" and "after" testimonials from my mind.

And then, just seconds before I ran out the door to pick my husband up from the airport, I ducked in to use the restroom and well ... would you look at what happened?!

Regardless of whether this occurrence was a factor of an old, brittle toilet seat ... or the weight that was inflicted upon it, it was a horrifying event.

HORRIFYING.

Despite my best intentions to seamlessly integrate exercise and good nutrition in to my life since I've returned to work full-time, I've failed miserably. While I don't really eat junk food ... I don't really think about what I chomp down, either. And yet, I've always wanted to be more of a conscientious eater as opposed to someone who doesn't think about food until they are so famished, they'll eat a paper bag.

Maybe it's the 40th birthday that's looming ever closer, but I know that if I want to get in to really good physical shape - the best of my life - this is the time to do it. Moreover, I recently read an article that concluded it doesn't matter what kind of good physical shape you were in when you were a child ... the secret to longevity is good physical conditioning when you're middle-aged.

(Although, if I'm planning to live to 100, technically, middle aged won't begin for another 10 years. Right?)

When Charlie returned from his trip, we had a brief pow-wow before my husband decided that breaking a toilet seat is conclusive evidence that we need to make a commitment to getting in better shape. So, he pulled the trigger and ordered the program.

It arrived on our doorstep, today.

When we saw the box with the product markings clearly evident all over it, we laughed when we thought of our mailman, thinking to himself, "Suckers! I can't wait to see how this one goes..."

We're excited to get started, so tonight, we're doing our fit-test. In order to be physically able to do this program, I needed to be able to do 15 push-ups, one wall squat for 60 seconds, 25 ins and outs (like a sit-up, but with your legs parallel to the ground, without touching), and 10 curls with 10 pound weights. I also needed to be able to jump three-inches off the ground. All of these things sounded so easy. Until I tried to do them. The wall squat nearly had me in tears and I thought I was going to lose my dinner with the ins and outs.

Charlie was just as challenged by his pre-test as me.

But we're not deterred. We are so totally doing this. And 90 days from now, I'm going to post our before and after pictures. OH YES I AM. And also, I'm going to be able to do a flip on the bar. Did you think I forgot about that? I haven't ... it's been on my mind for the past two years that I've made absolutely no progress towards my goal of what would seem like a simple task of hoisting my body around some rings.

Wish me luck. We start, tomorrow. And provided I can lift my arms up to a keyboard, I will strive to document our progress every single Wednesday until we are finished.