Sit stay

Put on your jeans, they said. It'll keep you honest, they said.

Honestly, I need to be able to breathe when I sit down.

It's no mystery how this happened.

A few weeks ago I started eating a lot of bread. Like, a lot.

We all did.

I know many people are baking. We are not. We are supporting the local farmer's market bread stand. We have purchased a great deal of bread.

Seriously. I don't even want to tell you how much. We have been all, support the community!

Generally, in normal life day-to-day, I don't eat much bread or pasta or really any simple carbs except for like, chocolate or sugar injected directly into my veins.

But those would be balanced out with the amount of walking I did.

Now I eat bread and do a lot of bottom sitting.

Oh, and I train my dog. Every day.

We are all distance learning up close and personal. The kids, Wanda and I, all together and separately till death us do part.

Wanda failed the week two test, which was to walk next to me in a straight line for 15 steps and then sit on her butt of her own volition.

Wanda was like, I do not want to sit on my butt, thank you very much.

To which I was all, here, let me help you.

But by that point she should've been doing it with no help. Just, you know, me saying, "Sit!"

I tried Jedi mind tricks. One time we went for the sit and she looked like she was going to do a perfect sit. And then she continued until she was lying flat all comfortable on the warm pavement.

She is not a large dog but I am not a large human and I will tell you that when she doesn't want to get up it is not the easiest thing to get her up.

You have to submit videos a couple times a week and then one of the end of the week test so that Mark, the trainer, knows that you are ready to move on.

Wanda and I were stuck in week two for a few days into week three.

But now we've almost caught up, and she does some good sitting and staying. We even impressed people in the park the other day.

Today's our meeting for week four. We haven't yet done the week three test, which I hope to submit tonight.

One of the challenges, as I believe I mentioned, is getting a child to cooperate enough to video. And to focus on us rather than the adult humans clad head to toe in tie-dye performing skateboarding tricks.

When Mark said we needed to train around distractions, I cannot imagine he meant clowns on skateboards. My kids were certainly distracted.

So Wanda and I might actually do the exercise correctly but the video shows...the skateboarders, the very interesting crack in the sidewalk, and a close-up of my butt.

Honestly, I know, I do, that it's fucking tedious to stand there while I back up to five feet and then count to 50 Mississippi (which to spell I always have to do the M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I, but is fortunately not Massachusetts, which I find impossible to spell on my own).

But look at that good sit stay!

Anyway. I now have watched my butt walking away from the camera and bending over to do the two-handed presentation to get my dog to sit and honestly if I never watch a video of my butt again that would be just fine.

Oh! And as it turns out, when Nick does these videos for me, there is also a focus on my butt. But clearly this is a choice and not a height issue. I'm...flattered?

In sum:

I don't want to grow out of my real jeans. Not my spandex jeans that make me feel better.

So I am trying to rectify this.

More in-home workouts. Less bread and butter.

But honestly, who wants to eat salad when the world is going straight to hell?