A MASTER TASK-MASTER

My Fitbit is so proud of me!

I’m not sure when it became a thing to want to impress electronic monitoring devices, but I seem to have turned that corner.  Possibly I spend so much time alone that any ‘pat on the back’ I earn is something to celebrate, but I have to tell you when I feel that happy, prolonged buzz on my wrist and look down to see the fireworks graphics signifying 10,000 steps I know that the rest of the day is just gravy.

We didn’t start out this way.  I got my fancy watch as a Christmas present in the dead of winter when it’s not easy to come by even 3,000 steps without putting on three extra layers of clothes and braving the elements.  I found out very quickly that the company that makes Fitbit is building and marketing extensions of our consciences.  Instead of a little angel sitting on my shoulder encouraging me to do the right thing I now wear a fancy watch on my wrist that buzzes me at ten minutes to the hour to remind me to “get up out of that chair and do something”!   

It has taken on the roll of a task-master, always bossing me around.  It is amazing to me that an hour can disappear so quickly when I am engrossed in something that I am reading or writing, but I do respect its efforts to help me shape up a bit. 

During that nice spell in January/February I was making both the dog and the watch happy by getting in my 10,000 steps, but when Old Man Winter decided to double down that ground to a halt.  Then I slipped and tried to break some toes – my step count plummeted further.  Once you break your stride it’s really hard to get back to it.  My records (because, of course Fitbit keeps records!) March and most of April are dismal.

About the time my Fitbit was preparing to declare me dead spring happened.  Not that I began taking walks for walk’s sake, but there were now things to do outside.  It’s nothing for me to take three trips around the yard per day checking if any of my perennials are up yet.  We bought some beef calves to feed out over the summer and I am repeatedly invited over to the corrals to ‘see how fast they are growing’.  As well we are installing a water line from the dugout to the garden which required a couple of my afternoon’s worth of work.  Instead of forcing myself to ‘one more mile’ to earn my 10,000 steps fireworks I was being pleasantly surprised with that reward while setting the supper table.

The warmer it got the more time I spent outside.  I put some early potatoes in.  I cleaned up my flower beds.  I moved my seedlings out to my greenhouse, and then back in, and then out, and then back in – and so it went until my heaters could handle the few degrees of frost we were still getting.  I planted a few more things and inherited the evening chores because the man is gone seeding till after dark.  Every day my Fitbit fireworks happened earlier.

On the weekend I planted all the rest of my vegetable garden – fireworks by 3:30.

On Tuesday I hauled (what seems like 14 miles of) garden hose out of storage with the help of four year old feeders who thought I was there to give them chop, and unspooled said hose to set up a watering system – fireworks at 2:15.

Thursday I watered all my perennials and then filled all of my deck planters – fireworks at 12:28.

I have to put bedding plants out in three different gardens next.  There’s no telling when fireworks time will be.

But, to put this all in perspective, I have to give credit where credit is due – if that crazy man’s alarm clock didn’t go off at 5:00 a.m. none of this would be possible.  He’s the master task master.