Getting Paid to Exercise

Right now, post surgery, I am absolutely dying to get back to Zumba and to walks with Thing 2. While I "feel" up to the walks, I'm well aware that I'm just one squirrel away from Thing 2 pulling all the incisions open, so for now I'm staying out of the exercise realm ---- for the most part.

Today, I was walking back into the office for lunch with a co-worker (I had gone home to let Thing 1 and Thing 2 out and have a sandwich and she had gone out for takeout). Anyway, we were chit-chatting while we walked in, and she was remarking about how hard a time she and her husband were having making ends meet. Since she was just talking, and not asking my opinion, I refrained from pointing out that bringing a lunch from home each day might be a better choice than $10ish takeout from Applebee's!

So, we're walking in and I notice a penny on the ground. I stop and pick it up and toss it in my purse. My co-worker asked what I was doing and I told her. She said something to the effect of "Girl, who has time to go around scrounging up pennies off the ground?" I came back with "Girl, I pay $4/hour class for Zumba, and right now I can't do it..... but reaching down to the ground... hey, I just got PAID to exercise!!!!"

We both laughed and walked back in to work, but it got me thinking a bit. I think it says something about our as a society if we are so fiscally and physically lazy that it is beneath us to bend over and pick money off the ground. Yeah, its just a penny, but it was also just bending over. Nothing lost in the endeavor, but a penny gained.