Something has to change

Everything hurts. My lower back hurts. My middle back hurts. My neck hurts. My shoulders hurt. As I type this, my wrists ache from the 40-plus hours of typing I do each week. I feel like saying to someone, "My body feels like someone beat me up with a baseball bat." But that would be too dramatic. And I don't owe money to anybody in the mob so it would be inaccurate, too.

The reason my body hurts is that I'm working too much and traveling too much and mothering too much. I have spent the last three weekends in a row traveling to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boulder with a 1 year old. Twice by myself, which has given me new appreciation for single mothers, and this most recent weekend with Dave, who I lovingly refer to as my sherpa when we fly because he is the one tasked with lugging the car seat, baby bed and other MBC (miscellaneous baby crap) through O'Hare International Airport while I carry our 25 pounds of precious cargo.

Owen is at the worst possible age to fly. He is walking everywhere and wants nothing to do with sitting in a seat for 4 hours. He is too old to be the blob of babyhood that sleeps on my chest the entire flight and too young to plop in front of a DVD. So we spend a lot of time in the airplane bathroom, where he plays with the water in the sink and pulls paper towel after paper towel out of the dispenser.

On our flight to San Francisco two weeks ago, Owen yanked at the liquid soap dispenser until he succeeded at pulling it out of the holder. He put the pump into his mouth and sucked on it, like he does with everything, and looked surprised when he pushed down on the pump and ended up with a mouthful of soap. He started sputtering and spitting it out and looked at me like, "Why didn't you tell me, Mom?" I watched it happen, it's true. Partly because I knew it wouldn't hurt him and partly because I was trying to teach him the rule of "cause and effect" (something apparently lost on children until they leave for college). And yes, partly because I was just too tired to stop him. 

Gone are the days of doing the in-flight magazine crossword puzzle, reading a book or listening to the "Once" soundtrack on my iPod. Gone are the days of enjoying my own complimentary beverage because these days, Owen wants to drink whatever mommy is drinking, even if he's got the same thing in his sippy cup. On our flight to L.A. three weeks ago, I was stupid enough to get a Diet Coke from the nice beverage cart lady and spent the first half of drinking it dodging Owen's attempts to stick his hand into my plastic cup to fish out pieces of ice and the second half cleaning it off of both of us after he knocked the can off the tray table.

My latest exercise routine

It's after one of these four hour flights that I realize why I feel so exhausted most of the time, even after 8 hours of sleep. At work I'm slammed with emails, conference calls and reports that need to be written. At home I'm slammed with sticky hands, food-stained carpets, poop explosions and the endless search for wayward sippy cups.

I'm not saying this to complain, really. I say this because amid these two very important jobs, mothering and earning a living, I notice that a very important thing gets neglected: my health.

The truth is that I'm 41 years old and my body doesn't stay fit and limber all by itself. In fact, it gets stiffer and flabbier by the day. Some days I feel like a car whose owner doesn't take it in for routine maintenance. One of those Honda Accords that you assume will last forever or that you'll just drive and drive until it breaks down on the side of the road. You figure you'll just leave it there and go buy a new one.

Lately I've been realizing that I'm treating my health like an old friend who will always be there for me, no matter how little I write, call or visit. Lately I've been getting more and more used to the aches and pains, more acclimated to getting through the day jump started by coffee, then mellowed out with two or three glasses of wine after work. Lately I've been lamenting the fact that this 15 pounds of baby weight doesn't seem to be going anywhere unless I change something when my plate already feels too full -- a fitting cliche for this conversation. 

I say all of this in the most self loving way possible. I say this as someone who has spent way too much time hating my body, hating myself because I'm not 5, 10 and now 15 pounds thinner. I say this as someone who has tried to impose exercise routines on myself, starting with high school when I would sit in my room and map out how many minutes I would spend on the treadmill, exercise bike and rowing machine each day on a calendar and calculate how much weight I could lose by a certain vacation. Then do none of it and feel like a failure.

I say this as someone who knows that exercising and doing yoga are more about how I feel than how I look. I say this as a woman who recently watched a male server at Pret A Manger, one of my favorite sandwich shops, neglect finishing my order after a 20-something in a short skirt walked in and ordered four iced coffees. I say this as someone who watched him make those four iced coffees before remembering to wrap up my grilled ham and cheese sandwich still waiting on the counter.

Last night, as I complained to Dave for 100th time how tired I am, how none of my clothes fit, he made an offer I think I'm going to take, an offer that made me realize how lucky I am to have a spouse who charges my iPhone for me when he knows I'll forget and says things like, "It's all part of the partnership." He said that we should make my health a priority as a family, that we should start working our schedule around my need to bike to work, go to yoga and meditate.

So today I'm going to take Owen for a long walk when he wakes up from his nap. And tonight Dave is going to come home in time for me to go to candlelight yoga at 7:30 p.m. I know that reordering my priorities, or balancing them better, will be an uphill battle. But stay tuned, because at least it's a start.