Keeping up appearances

Last night I decided I was going to go to the gym after work today. This is not a decision to be taken lightly as it requires me to leave work 15 minutes early, run (literally) in my work clothes to the gym, speed through a wardrobe change and the fastest workout ever and then run again (literally) over to the daycare to pick up my kids before 6pm.

I have a strong suspicion that despite my running here, there and everywhere, I am not doing myself any good with my gym dash. So why would I force myself to suffer through the horrible situation (including waking up at 2am already nervous that I wouldn’t make it back to the nursery before closing time)? Duh, I’m keeping up appearances.

And by appearances, I don’t mean my actual appearance. I mean my husband’s perception of what I am doing. As long as he sees me making an effort, I figure I can get away without making any actual progress for a good couple of months. And right now, that sounds pretty good.

So here are three quick tips on how you can go about keeping up appearances when it comes to going to the gym:

And just in case you were wondering if this really works, when Nomad Papa saw me tonight, he exclaimed, “Look at mommy! I love seeing her like this!”. And then he paused for a moment and said, “You did go to the gym, right? You didn’t just put on the gym clothes to try and fool me?” I think he would have kept on in that line of teasing if he hadn’t clued in to the sweat marks in my make-up and the spark of indignation in my eyes. You see, I’m quite good at keeping up appearances.