5 Things I Apparently Want So Badly I Will Brave a Stairmaster(TM)

After getting back from the gym last night, I got to thinking about a couple of things. I used a stair-stepper for the first time ever today. There is a reason they call it a stair MASTER. Because you are its slave. It is a cruel machine. I did it for maybe 3 minutes before I was like--- nope. Anyway, those three horrifying minutes got me thinking about my long term motivations... so here we are!

Liz's Health-Related Bucket List

1. I want to weigh less than my (male, 6'4") spouse. Also, those of you who are not strangers from the ethers of the internet (Hi Strangers!!! :) ) know how I feel about my husband-- which is basically that he is absolutely my favorite ever. I'd like to live somewhere near as long as he will.



Instead I feel like we're in that old nursery rhyme:
Jack Sprat could eat no fat,
His wife could eat no lean.
And so, betwixt them both, you see,
they licked the platter clean.
Who knows what that even means?!

2. I want to become slightly more coordinated so that I can take dance lessons. Those of you who went to high school with me-- and I believe Sarah commented on this the last time I talked about it-- know that even when I was smaller I absolutely could not dance. I am determined that someday I will be able to dance. At least a little bit, even if I will never do this:

I love watching ballet so much-- I'm just being realistic when I say:
"That's never gonna happen!"

3. I want to swim with wild abandon like I did when I was a kid, before I felt self-conscious about myself. I love to swim. I want to wear my swimmies without shame. When I was little I used to stay in the lake until my lips turned blue. I want to go out to the lake and go to the pool and go to the ocean and SWIM.

This is approximately how I dress when I go swimming and approximately the pose I stand in.
I couldn't be screaming "DON'T LOOK AT ME I'M ASHAMED,"  any louder if I actually literally screamed it.

4. For many reasons we are choosing not to decide whether or not to have kids. But part of our decision not to decide is that I'm not healthy enough to start a grow-your-own-human project. Whether or not we decide to have children-- I want that choice to be made without my physical health as a major factor. NOT of course, AGAIN, that we are interested in this at the moment. I mean, T works at a daycare for goodness sakes.

Ah daycare. Nature's birth control.
Wait, that doesn't make any sense...

and reason 5. TRAVELING, YO! Some of the most fantastic and beautiful places in the world are strangely, not reachable by lazy-car from the frozen tundra in which we live. You have to fly there and then walk and walk and walk.  I went to Spain when I was 15 and I think I lost like 20 pounds in 3 weeks. But the last time we went overseas in 2008-- I was tired, my feet hurt. I was hungry. I'm too fat for Europe!!!  That means I'm way too fat for Australia and New Zealand-- and way way too fat for any given place in Asia. There are so many amazing places to visit that are only accessible by hiking. I need to be in a shape to actually do that. Not to mention:

Chichen Itza:

This may as well be a cruel dating profile that ends in "No Fatties."

The Spanish Steps:

Wanna burn off that Italian pasta? Woot!

The Tiled Steps:

One of the least trippy things in San Francisco!

And those are just staircases that I could think of off the top of my head! I mean, THERE IS SO MUCH TO SEE IN THE WORLD. I will never see it with my butt on the couch.

So that's it, team. Thanks for listening. What physically challenging place do you want to go to? What's the most physically challenging place you've ever been? Tell us!