Tag Archives: Chloe Ting

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Snow Globes and Turning 45 in 2020

Rainbows are supposed to be God’s way of saying tomorrow will be better, right? After 2020, is there a big enough rainbow?

It’s easy to think 2020 has been a disaster of a year.  I mean it started with forest fires ravaging Australia, and it never seemed to get any better.  In February, I started warning my work we needed a plan for when COVID 19 made it to America.  By March, we heard from my sister-in-law in WA that we needed to be taking more care because when it got to us, it would be bad.  By the end of March, my work offered people as much work from home time as they wanted.  Two weeks later, we were 100% telework.

With the stress of the election three weeks away and turning 45 today, it got me thinking about this year of isolationism from the rest of the world our house has endured.  It is a time I will remember for many things, and not all of them are as bad as I would think for the year.  Here are some of my favorites because I want to be able to look back years from now and remember how we got through the pandemic year 1.

I loved the night we all dressed up in our fine attire to eat as a family because we needed something different and fun to do. 

I love thinking about our little kids in the baby pools in our backyard, even if I am bitter about the reason.  We don’t have a real pool because a dishonest contractor took our money and ran. 

I love all the dinners we ate together on our screened in porch.

Blindfolded twister was a big hit with blindfolds and textured circles.

I loved some of the games we played, like blind twister.  My oldest son is a master of that one as his body control and balance is incredible. 

Then there were all the nights my wife and two youngest kids did feats of strength and balance.

There are times where looking at a book isnt the best way to teach letters. You need a strength and balance test.

I love my two oldest kids going back to school at desks used by their grandfather and great grandmother.  I just imagine them sitting there bored thinking their grandparents must have been bored at that very same desk at one point.  Then I think of them learning the same things because the most important things taught in school haven’t changed in the last hundred years.

O’s computer sitting on his great-grandmother’s desk.
A sitting at a desk made by her grandpa when he was in 6th grade.

I also love my wife and I doing the same daily on-line exercise routines.  She would do them early in the day, and I would do them at night.  Between those, cutting down on my soda’s and not eating out much at all, I dropped 40 lbs. and hit my 4-5-6 goal.  Lilly Sabri and Chloe Ting have been my favorites thus far, but that is just because I am a glutton for punishment. Still, I am moderately proud of meeting my goal, not to bad for a 45 year old man who has had Multiple Sclerosis for the past 15 years.

My favorite memories of the past year have been all of our family walks.  Every day from March through September we walked as a family come sun or rain.  As school starts again, we have not been able to do them every day, and I think I will miss those walks the most.  Just walking around our neighborhood and the surrounding areas, we got to see a fair amount of nature and spend a lot of time together.  Granted, I spend a lot of time on those walks prodding our youngest to keep up and not get distracted, but I enjoy our walks. They calm me.

Every anniversary, I write to me wife, “Stay with me. Walk with me. The best is yet to be. This I believe.”

So, I think it is more than fitting that on my 45th birthday, we would go for a walk at a park my parents used to take me for walks 35 years ago.  I didn’t remember that until my mom told me it was one we used to visit frequently.  I only remembered the racquetball courts and pool.  Still, it is one more thing this year with ties to the past, and ending the night thinking about all those ties seems fitting.  The best of life today is built upon so many past efforts and memories.

One of our many delays on today’s walk was when R deciding to climb rather than walk.

Maybe that is what I will take from this year of 2020.  We have so much to be thankful and enjoy even when we feel like our lives have been turned upside down and shaken like a snow globe.  Maybe we all need to harness our inner snow globe in an effort to enjoy the beautiful sights of our shaken-up world.     

Snow globe of a boy raying for a rainbow or just an end to 2020?
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The 4,5,6 Challenge

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Having a goal matters.  Every five years, I try to set a goal that seems like a “stretch goal,” or something I will be unlikely to reach without a lot of effort. Further, I find motivation from writing out my goal. It is as if writing it becomes a contract with myself. It is a commitment to attempt to be the person who can aspire to remake myself back into the fit person I was before MS. It is also a challenge, and I hate losing.

Five years ago for my 40th birthday, my wife gave me a gift of a trip to Yellowstone so I could run a half marathon and see Old Faithful that was on my bucket list (things to do before I die).  Of course, running a half marathon there is no joke.  It is a long run at altitude.  So for months before the trip, I trained as hard as I could in the D.C. humidity.  My brother-in-law who went with me asked, “what if you can’t finish the run? Will it still have been worth all the effort?”

I told him the answer I still use when trying something hard, “Failure is not an end point.  It is simply a way of measuring my next attempt.”  I finished the run in the top third of all finishers.  I may have fallen a few times, but I finished thinking “not too shabby for a 40 year-old.”  The effort paid off, and it would have paid off whether I finished or not.  Having the goal gave me a purpose to keep running when I was tired or just didn’t feel like it.

Now as I approach my 45th birthday, the question was what shall I set as my “stretch goal.”  With Covid 19 upending all of our lives, it may seem petty to think I need some physical goal.  Travel is out as three of the six in our family are high risk patients.  I needed something that would stick in my head and keep me moving.  Then my little kids were listening to some old kids music, and I heard “It’s as easy as 1,2,3 baby you and me…” 

The “4,5,6 challenge” is on! In October when I turn 45, I will have 6 pack abs.  That challenge is just what I need to keep working out and even doing the 10 min ab burn at the end of the workouts.  After 28 days with Chloe Ting, I am on to the “Beach Body on Demand” 21 day fit routines.  Dropping  the sodas down to at most 2 per day, eating healthy, and walking/running after our four kids has me well on the way.  If I don’t have the 6 pack abs by the time I am 45, I will certainly have a healthier body than when I started.  However, I plan to reach this target.  I already went from 234 lb in March to 197lb now.

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