my feet at 5:45am

I am under a lot of stress as of late. I think having a second child, combined with work and some of the extra stuff I put on myself create a great deal of stress in my life. I wish I could step away from it, but I can't. It is in my DNA. I am an overachiever. I don't mean that in a boastful way, but for me, it means each day is an effort to improve upon the previous day. This can be very hard, because I often don't know where to stop. I'm always thinking about the next sewing project, the next book to read, the next report to write at work, the next meeting.

One thing that I've been doing regularly for the past 20 years is exercise. I'm pretty religious about it. So is Vic. We fit it into our schedule and it has to be a darn good reason to not do it. I work out Monday, Tuesdays, sometimes on Wednesday, Thursdays and I walk on either Sat or Sunday. It takes me away from my family for 45 minutes or so, but I'm much calmer and more patient afterwards.

I've been going to early morning fitness classes that start at 6am so I'm not impacting family time so much in the evenings. I find that this has been a good solution (apart from getting up so early). Today it was minus 8 and I got up and did NOT want to. But I did and was so happy that I mustered through it.

I am pretty convinced that Woody Allen was right when he said "90% of life is just showing up."

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Speaking of showing up, Sophie was getting really anxious about her Christmas concert at school today. Lots of nervousness was coming out. We persevered and she did just fine. She has a great music teacher, Mr. Hahn, and the 2 numbers they did were very cute. She felt so good afterwards and got a nice cookie from Tim Horton's for her efforts. Just keep showing up, Sophie.