And that’s why you shouldn’t exercise.

Me – this morning.

It is before breakfast. It is before work. I am on the treadmill – watching Daredevil on Netflix.  Moving at 3.5 miles an hour on an incline of three.  ‘Cause if I don’t do it before I go to work, it will not happen for the rest of day.  And if I don’t move my ass, expending energy and calories, I will not sleep well – which, tomorrow morning, will result in a tired Heather sporting a fetching side of petulance.

Every morning I’m on that treadmill. At the 5:00 minute mark I start swinging my arms wildly forward for a minute.  At 6:00 minutes I do the arm equivalent of a deep lunge to the side – targeting (at least in my lay-person, inner trainer’s mind) my back boobs.  I don’t know if it’s true, but I can kind of feel that area moving around when I try it, so I figure that something must be going on. I repeat these actions every 5 minutes until I hit 40:00.

YEAH!  Last one!  I whip those arms forward.  THIS.  IS.  GOOD.  I’m sweaty and I’ve burned up (I squint at the display in the half-light) 276 calories. Only 5 more minutes then I can cool down for 5 minutes.  YEAH! I AM AN EXERCISING GODDESS!!

I swing those arms a little higher.  As I’m swinging them back, my left arm somehow catches the wire from my ear buds, ripping my left ear bud from my ear.  Even before my arm has finished its swing, the right ear bud joins its partner in ferocious solidarity right before the tablet leaps off the treadmill ledge, landing on the belt.  I dodge the tablet, grabbing the arm rails for balance, but can’t help but watch as the tablet is propelled off the treadmill into the piano behind me.  As I remain fixated on whether I’ve just killed the tablet, my feet leave the treadmill belt and I find myself parkouring to avoid crushing the tablet, while still clinging to the arm rails. 

On the upside, I got a real good stretch of my arms before letting go.