As a kid, I played out side and ran around all day. In the spring, summer and fall, I probably spent five or six hours outside every day. Although I was already an inveterate reader, my mother would kick me out of the house to get some exercise (and save her sanity, no doubt).

My brothers and I, along with the other kids in our neighborhood, had the run of our block, and at the end of our street was a Catholic school with a huge parking lot, bounded by an enormous field. We rode bikes, played war, tag, Breakout, and other games that now make me wonder if we were all practicing for a life of evading the police.

In my early adulthood, I had a job that actually required that I walk around for three or four hours per night, and  didn’t really worry about my level of physical activity. But as I grew older, a more sedentary lifestyle, both at work and at home, getting regular exercise got harder. And when we moved from California to a place with real winter, and then had the kids on top of that, it became downright difficult to keep up the limited activity regimen I had established.

CamiKaos from Mommified Me issued a challenge last month to the blogosphere–to pledge to each other that we would exercise at least three times a week. I told her I would do it, as long as I could count my new workout: climbing the stairs wherever possible. Since, when I go to my office, I park in a garage where I routinely have to park on the 9th or 10th floor, that does require significantly more effort than you might originally think. (Oddly, I work on the 3rd floor of a 4-story building–it’s just the parking lot that makes me huff and wheeze.

Here’s a thing I know about myself–I hate to exercise. I will, however, concede that I need to do it. But if I can make it not a special thing that I have to do, and instead, a habit–that is what is going to make me succeed.

And look, she made me this adorable button: