Laundry Day

I’m partial to fabric softener sheets while my wife prefers liquid. This is one of the many reasons we don’t do joint laundry. Some of the others are that she has one style which is to use hot water and the longest, hottest drier cycle. Plus, there have been bleach accidents (hers not mine). And, of course, I am a grown up and certainly capable of operating a washer and dryer.

I won’t say what brand I use except it is something you do with a ball. I don’t have any special ties to that brand. It is just that the mega corporation that makes it often has coupons in the Sunday paper. Plus, the mega store we shop at often gives gift cards if you by multiples of certain items and fabric softener sheets are often one of the bundles. I don’t know whether that is really a deal but if you are going to give me money for things I normally buy anyway, I’m not going to turn it down.

It does mean that there are times when we look like hoarders. On the one hand, paper products don’t go bad. On the other hand, do you really need a six month supply of paper towels, kleenex or TP? Maybe a slight exaggeration there. But we have a house with space so it might as well be used for something. I’ve got a cabinet in the laundry room where I can stack my fabric softener sheets so it limits the amount of hoarding I can do. Just noticed this morning that I’m down to my last two boxes. Hope there’s a coupon in the paper on Sunday.

Now we aren’t big into the coupon thing. Because a lot of times the coupons are either for something we don’t use or something our store doesn’t stock. I don’t see the logic of forcing yourself to buy something you don’t need just to save 50 cents. Seems like that’s a losing bet. We have a two stage process for coupons at our place. My wife cuts out all the ones she thinks are interesting and then I go through and cull the stuff we’ve never used. I’m also the one who takes down the little envelope we have them in before we go shopping just to give the expiring ones one last chance to be of use. Ah we live a wild life.

I was going to go to the gym this morning but I had a bad acid reflux attack in the middle of the night. By that I mean I woke up with my throat on fire because the acid had made it all the way to the top. It was my own fault. We had Mexican last night and I was going to order the fish tacos or the shrimp tacos. Then I saw chorizo tacos and said “well that sounds good”. This is one of those little places where they just pile on the food so I had way more than I should have. Not that you needed to know that but I’m just setting the stage for further discussion.

Things were mostly settled this morning but I felt a trip to the gym might not end well. I opted for our treadmill downstairs. The good part about that is that if I want to sing along to my embarrassing pop music choices, nobody can hear. Well my wife is normally home but she was at the dentist this morning so nobody would have heard if I decided to go into a few bars of baby one more time.

The workout was a bit cursed though. I was about 10 minutes in and realized I didn’t have my Fitbit with me. Debated actually stopping to get but then decided that would be silly and kept going. Does a workout still count if you don’t get a step count? I actually still participate in weekly challenges with one of the guys from the Fitness Center at work and I wanted credit for my steps. Now it will look like I’m a slacker.

I have another app on my phone that tracks activity but I don’t carry my phone when I’m dancing or on the treadmill. Fortunately, that app has a feature where you can add missing activity. Since I’m too cheap to pay for the app with all the features, I can’t enter dance as a choice. Sometimes I call it walking and sometimes I call it running. Depends on the dance and the app really doesn’t care what I’m doing as long as I’m doing something.

Someday, they’ll make trackers that can be implanted and then you’ll never have to worry about leaving it behind.

Oh and after I got off the treadmill (just walking because my knees don’t like it when I run), I did three 30 second planks with a little break in between. Why? Because I know have this love/hate relationship with them. I know you could do longer but I swear I read somewhere that 30 seconds is a good time so that’s what I went with. The first two were actually much easier than I thought. Got a little shaky towards the end of the third one but if you ain’t shaking then you aren’t working hard enough. (Again, I read that somewhere – I swear)

And I got all that done with a stop at the pharmacy to pick up a few things and use a coupon that was expiring today before noon. I really think I’m going to enjoy this new lifestyle.