MS Clipart
This weekend has been one long weekend of raking leaves. Well it actually started a week ago.
The nice this is that my city will pick up your leaves if you rake them to the end of your yard, having them kind of hanging of the curb into the street.
There are 3 pick up times and this last Friday was the first, tomorrow the second, and the following day the third.
I did have a whole lot of leaves for them on Friday, but there are more. In fact, here is a picture I took of the 2nd batch I raked. So this is seriously a third of our leaves!
I have been raking for 3 days just for these 3 piles. It is hard to see the third pile behind the back tree, but it is there. Now I have to transport these to the front yard to be picked up. Mind you I have been doing this for days!
I heard a statistic a few years ago when I lived out west that heart attack cases go up nearly 60% when the snow falls. This is due to the fact that people, who are out of shape, shovel and have heart attacks because of it.
I could see this for leaf raking too. Not everyone has a yard like we do, with thousands of leaves falling every day, but for those that do, it is a lot of hard, heart strenuous work.
I could feel my heart beating in my chest and my muscles in my arms, stomach and neck tighten up every time I would rake. We have a lot of leaves so sometimes this would get really heavy and you could here me grunt and moan.
Last year I did not get all the leaves up because I was too tired. I let more then half the leaves mold under our snowfall and it was nasty to clean up after the weather. Not this year. I have even trimmed bushes I want dead for next year too.
What do I attribute this too…My lifestyle change!!!
I was on this journey last year but not fully until about December 2010. Leaves were already covered by then. I started P90X in December and finished around February/March. Then I did another half round of the X and now am doing Turbo Fire. It is because I got my lazy but up and decided to take charge of my health that I am able to do these tasks, such as the leaves, without too much worry of a heart attack, or just being plane lazy like last year.
I feel good and I just spent the last 60 minutes, raking leaves. In about another hour or so I will spend another hour or so taking them to the front of the house. This will entail a lot of bending and walking so you know my thighs and back and arms will feel it. But again, I will be able to prevail because I have been active, and real active for over a year now, and this is no longer a task that is too hard.
If everyone would just take their health seriously, ALL YEAR ROUND, then maybe our heart attack statistics would change for the winter time.
I know I will be shoveling this year, with a lot less chance of being taken to the hospital because of being more fit.
I hope that you have had good luck getting all your leaves up this year and out of your hard.
Have a great day!
