And the winner is . . .

We have a winner for our FREE BOOK.

After I coerced, twisted his arm, and threatened to remove his college funding, Child #4 was thrilled to draw a name out of our authentic Down-Under Australian Hat  . . .

And the winner is - Kathy B ! Kathy, your book is on its way. Thanks to all who entered.

This weekend was crazy busy and I didn't have time to get to the YMCA on Saturday. It was sunny Saturday so I thought I'd try a quick workout at home. I remembered college-son had bought a new piece of highly sophisticated workout equipment . . .

Now when I think of jump ropes I think of kindergarten and, "Cinder-ella, dressed in yell-a; went upstairs to kiss her fell-a; how many kisses did it take?" Then you would jump, count the number of jumps until you missed, and that is how many kisses it would take. Take for what, I'm not sure. But we didn't ask that in Kindergarten. Maybe it took 54 kisses to get the prince to decide you were a keeper. Or 15 kisses to decide you didn't want to be a keeper.  At any rate, this was easy stuff in kindergarten.

Since I'm no stranger to sweating a bit, jump roping shouldn't have been a problem even though it's been forty-five years since kindergarten. But after about two minutes of jumping, I realized different muscles are used to jump at age fifty rather than run. To divert my attention, I even tried the "Cinder-ella, dressed in yella . . ." routine. Let me tell you, it didn't take many kisses till I had to stop because my calf muscles were staging a revolt.

 

But something else happened. After stopping and starting this jumping routine several times, I realized other muscles that surrounded a particular inside bodily organ weren't quite what they used to be in Kindergarten. Let me say it as tenderly as I can: if you're over forty or have had a kid or two, you know what bodily function I'm talking about. It's the one that warns us women we can't walk and sneeze at the same time without embarrassing ourselves. 

I'm not going to give up jump roping, though. Next time I'll just make sure I visit the little girls' room first. 

By the way - THANKS TO ALL WHO CAME TO MY BOOK SIGNING. It was great! My daughter is my favorite photographer. She loves to capture me at my best: