Just Move It, Move It

Today, I got rid of Winter.  For the last few very cold, very wet months, I have allowed my back yard to descend into a giant muddy, dog-destroyed mess.  I have 3 large outside dogs.   One is a 13 year old Black Lab, one is a 14 year old Golden Retriever, and one is a 2 year old German Sheppard mix.  The 2 year old belongs to my daughter and he has drug around and destroyed most anything that was outside – dog bowls, chairs, tables, grass, pieces of wood, fencing, you name it.  I spent the winter looking through my windows at the sad state of my yard
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Today was the day to fix all of that.  And it was a beautiful day.  Earlier in the week a tree in my yard had fallen on my neighbor’s fence.  Some very good friends came over to help me with the repairs.  I actually love doing home projects but since I have NO idea what I’m doing, I prefer to be the assistant so that was my role today.  I woke up early – 5:30am and could not go back to sleep. So finally, around 8am, I got busy.  Before they arrived I took the opportunity to drag all the destroyed items from across the yard through the gates so they could be placed at the curb for trash pickup.  Then we all got busy replacing a section of the neighbor’s privacy fence
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After completion, my friends helped me enclose the open bottom area of my sunroom.  A few years ago, a friend of my daughter had closed off a section under the sunroom so the dogs have a sheltered area but it was very haphazardly done and looked really trashy.  I really wanted to fix it so it looked better.  We went to the hardware store for supplies, picked up lunch and then got busy, carrying large sheets of plywood, measuring, cutting, lining it all up and attaching everything.  My friend is a stone mason and he is going to do a stone treatment with stucco and stone to cover the plywood and my dogs now have their very own “condo” under the sunroom.  Very cool!

After cleaning everything up – clearing the built up dog hair and dried leaves off the deck, sweeping the deck and patio and cleaning the cobwebs from every window and door and corner – I headed out to take Senior portraits for my friend’s son and some couple photos of him and his girlfriend.  We had a great time climbing around on the railroad tracks, playing on small hills, standing on benches, walking down paths through the woods.  Move it, move it.

I arrived home about 9pm.  I have hardly sat down all day long.  Moving, just keep moving.  I hit my calorie goal about 6 pm.  Due to my job which involves a lot of sitting – at a desk, in a car - I usually exceed my calorie goal only on dance days and even then, it’s close.  Today, I will surpass that goal by over 600 calories.  YAY!

And my yard looks like a yard again.  I see results.  I accomplished something today.  I was moving.