Happy Independence Day!

We slept in quite a bit this morning--despite not going to bed too late, we were up a number of times during the night. Our neighbors came over yesterday and had asked us to "keep an eye on the house."

Apparently some sales guy had come by, offering to do lawn work (they don't have any lawns). The mom had accidentally and naively said, "We're going to be gone this weekend, but let me check with my husband."

When she went back out to talk to the guy, he was gone (and her family annoyed with her for telling a stranger they were leaving the house for the weekend).

So we agreed to "keep an eye on the house." We actually take this somewhat seriously, trying to be good neighbors, and since the only windows facing their house are from our bathrooms and give only a view of the side of their garage, we'd step out front every couple of hours and look around.

We also, whenever the dog barked, went running out to see what the excitement was.

Nothing.

I don't know what got into our dog, but she barked more times last night than when we locked her in a crate for housebreaking. I kept getting up, putting on my robe, opening the front door, and peeking around to the neighbor's place. Quiet. Every time.

Except that I had very little sleep until daylight.

Our exciting plans for the fourth were to have a barbeque at my dad's house. He had some friends and relatives over and we took down the whopping $15.00 worth of fireworks I bought.

When it got dark, I noticed the time and hurried up to get us home. I wanted to go and work out. I ended up leaving our house at nearly 11:00pm to head to the gym.

They still clean the locker room at 1:00am. A two-hour workout may seem like a LOT, but when an hour of it is slowly plodding on a treadmill, then I change, then I swim, then I sit in the hot tub, then I shower and dress--it's about 2.5 or 3 hours total. I knew I'd have to cut it short, which still annoys me (even more than getting home at 2:00am after a workout).

Anyhow, I managed to do my 3.1 miles on the treadmill in a record 56 minutes, but kept walking very slowly for another half hour for two reasons. 1) my heart rate had hit my supposed "maximum" during my tiny little running spurts and I was trying to get it back down under 100 BPM and 2) There was an interesting episode of Cold Case that I wanted to see the end of.

It left me only 30 minutes to get into the hot tub, soak, shower, and get dressed.

I hesitate to complain about the locker room issue. I don't want the guy to lose his job (or lose hours). Also, I only pay $49 a year for my membership, so I really don't have much room for complaining about anything. BUT I don't think it's right that women are limited in the time they can use the facility based on the locker room cleaning schedule--and it's not like it's a brief cleaning--it's two hours long and there are no other options for the locker room--not even a showering area or changing area with opaque walls.

So I guess I have something else to complain about now.