Life is pain, Highness.

Husband has recently gotten me to accompany him a few nights a week to our local high school's activity center, which is free to county residents evenings and weekends and offers a track, basketball court, and weight room.

Aside from the awkwardness that comes along with seeing your old teachers stationed at the entrance desk, and any number of former classmates sweating while working off the beer guts they acquired in the intervening years, it is a really nice facility for our community.

I've started out power walking for 30-45 minutes, the Wicked soundtrack blasting through my iPhone. I haven't worked up the courage to publicly attempt to jog (because I am hilariously uncoordinated), but perhaps soon. Husband has been running without stopping for 20 minutes or more every time, plus some weight work, and I'm so proud of him.

We are planning to embark upon a full day of kayaking next month on the lower Colorado River, so I'm going to need some semblance of stamina, even though I've been assured that the trip is easy and for beginners (I'm not convinced the company had me in mind when they determined the "beginner" label).

As I watch my grandparents shuffle around their assisted living center, I'm reminded of how important it is to establish these proper eating and exercise routines now, in my twenties. Certainly not all of their physical problems can be attributed to a sedentary life (not that I would ever associate my grandmother with the word "sedentary"). But as I've watched her in particular deal with more falls than I can count, leading up to an inevitably broken hip and two operations, I understand more deeply that taking care of my young, lithe body will hopefully keep me from experiencing the same pain and heartache as her in my own old age.

I've always been the kind of person that lived with my head rather than my body. Physically I was and remain awkward and uncoordinated and uncomfortable with the husk in which I reside. But my mind is more flexible and sprightly. Plus, I really despise sweating.

But I hope that we continue our new routine. I enjoy feeling as though we are doing something good for ourselves, and doing it together provides some accountability, hopefully keeping us going when we would much rather sit on the couch eating barbecue sandwiches and watching Hoarders.*

A little pain now, a little less pain later, perhaps.

*This already may or may not happen on a weekly basis.