Skip the Gym and Take Mom Shopping

If you want to lose weight and strengthen your muscles, you don't need fancy workout equipment, all you need is an elderly mother, a car (preferably a minivan) a doctor's appointment and a grocery list. It helps if your mother uses a walker, but you can substitute barbells or a large, overstuffed suitcase instead.

And if it happens to be the windiest flippin' Wisconsin February day ever on record, well, you've lucked out, because as this will increase the resistance against all of your muscles each of the 22 times you enter or exit the car.

You are now ready for your workout.

To start, get in your car, drive to your mother's house, get out of the car, enter her building. Walk briskly down the hallway to her apartment, open the door, chase the cat that escapes from her apartment down the hallway. Bend over, pick up the cat, walk back to the apartment, place cat back in.

You're warmed up! Great! Now on to some weight training.

Walk back down the hallway and back to the car with your mother, open the passenger side door for her, take her walker and wheel it around to the back of the car, raise the hatch, grab walker with both hands, lift it up to chin level, bend forward, place the walker in the car, press down on the handles so the wheels lock and it doesn't roll all over the back of the car, then reach up and close the rear door. (Better stretching is attained if the pull-down handle is missing like mine is.)

Get back in the car.

Next, arrive at the clinic, pull up to the door, get out of the car, go around to mother's side, open door, go to back of car, lift door, bend forward, grab walker, pull it out of the car (you can unlock the wheels at this point, if you remember, but you get a better workout if you drag/struggle with the walker with the brakes still on), bend forward, place it on the ground, wheel it around to your mother, close her door, get back in the car. Oops, forgot to close the back hatch -- get out of the car, close the hatch, get back in car, drive to a parking spot, park, get back out and walk back to the doctor's office.

Repeat all of the above exercises in reverse after the doctor's appointment,

After the doctor visit, drive to the grocery store, park the car, remove the walker, go into the store with your mother, take the walker from her after she procures a motorized shopping cart, wheel the walker back out to the car, open hatch, bend forward, place it in, reach up, close hatch, return to grocery store. You have now entered the triathlon part of the workout, where you will sprint from aisle to aisle searching for sugar-free honey, seedless jam, and iodized sea salt, all the while bobbing and weaving to stay well away from your mother'˜s front bumper. Once you get to the pet supply aisle, bend over and lift the 25 lb. bag of kitty litter she points to and place it in he her basket. Don't worry, there will be several more opportunities to lift it again for even more muscle toning.

After the shopping is complete, push the cart with the 15 bags of groceries and the kitty litter to the car while your mother rides her electric cart back to the car. Open her door, go to the back of the car, throw the bags in, lift the kitty litter out of the cart and heave that in, get in the motorized cart, drive it back to the store, walk back to the car.

Are you feeling the burn yet?

Check your pulse rate while you drive to the next store. Still alive? Well, then you have to finish the rest of the errands.

Pull up, get out, open her door, get the walker, blah, blah, blah, you know the routine.

You're almost done with your workout!

You're on the home stretch now. You'll really be able to test your endurance once you get back to her apartment where you will wheel the rusty community grocery cart that is parked near the main door over to the car, transfer all 18 bags plus the #!@%& kitty litter from the back of the car into the cart (lift and bend and lift and bend!), push the almost immovable cart it into the building, down the hallway, then hold the door open with one hand while yanking the cart over the threshold, chase the cat down the hallway after he escapes while you are fighting with the cart, return cat, transfer all bags from the cart onto the kitchen counter, plus the kitty litter, then push the shopping cart back out the front doors and park it in front of the building.

You did it! Your three-hour workout is over!

At this point, some people like to do some stretching after their workout, and I'm no different. I find that what works best for me is to go home and stretch out on the couch for the rest of the day.