As my children grew older, they began to suspect something wasn’t quite right with the whole Santa thing.  ”Why does Santa’s handwriting look just like yours?” one angel asked.   I began to compose my notes on the computer instead.  Ha!  Outsmarted a six-year-old.  I felt so proud.

Then, “why is the wrapping paper on the gift from Santa the same as the wrapping paper on presents from you and Daddy?”  Gulp.  Well, my dear, I’d respond, in my best Grinchy voice.  ”Santa brought them here, but he has so many presents to deliver, I offered to help him out with the wrapping.”

They may not have believed me, but they went along with it.  After all, we’re talking presents!  But eventually, I realized that they were going to learn the truth, whether they found out from classmates, from a slip-up from me, or just from realizing the strategic impossibility of it all.  To prepare them, I started talking about the “spirit” of Santa, and how it lives in all of us, emphasizing why we really celebrate Christmas, etc.

I don’t know when the blinders were removed, but, suffice to say, none of my teenagers still believe that Santa is real.

I asked one of my angels when he found out, and surprisingly, he was still kind of upset about it.  Not that Santa wasn’t real, but that I had actively encouraged him to believe otherwise.

In my mind, I was building childhood memories, but maybe I was just setting him up for disappointment.  Maybe I was just too influenced by repeated viewings of “Miracle on 34th Street” myself.

What do you think?  If you celebrate Christmas, do you tell your children that Santa is real?  How do they find out otherwise?  If not, do you think the magical part of Christmas is as strong without that belief?

Alas. Back where I started.  I’m not going to be the uber athlete I originally envisioned when I first began the program.  I’m not going to suddenly anticipate participating in the next 10K in my area.  Instead, I feel, kind of like a loser.  (Unfortunately, not as in The Biggest Loser.)

Thomas Edison is credited with saying, after another seemingly failed experiment, “I have not failed 1000 times.  I have discovered 1000 ways NOT to make a light bulb.”

Maybe the 1001st time will work.  Any other P90x non-losers out there?

I know that’s probably a foreign concept to you.  After all, what’s that you always say?  Oh yeah:  Ain’t no tired!

This isn’t a Dear Tony letter. I still want us to spend time together. There’s no one I’d rather downward dog with–if I have to, in fact, do downward dogs.  In the weeks since we’ve been together, I’ve come to miss your quirky sense of humor.  No one else says “tippy toes” like you.

You always say to do your best, then forget the rest.  Well, as busy as life has been these last few weeks, just getting through it has been my best.  But I’m ready to come back to you, Tony. I’m ready to keep pushing play.

Most of the time, I step on the scale in the morning like I’m paying a regular penance.  If the weight is reasonably stable or, heavens to Betsy– down, it starts my morning off with a bang.  If it’s up– an all too often occurrence, well, it can (heh heh) weigh me down.

I won’t weigh myself on mornings when I have a tennis match.  Who needs to think, just as your partner is serving, that your butt probably looks big in that 13 1/2 inch skirt?

I worry that if I don’t weigh myself regularly, the weight will creep up unexpectedly as I innocently scarf down pizza.  But when I’m actively trying to lose weight, and not just maintain, it’s hard to weigh myself because the scale just doesn’t move.

That’s where I was a few weeks ago when I began P90x.  I was hoping for some significant results in weight loss and well, frankly, I’m still waiting.  But I haven’t stepped on the scale in a few weeks, mostly because I’m tired of being disappointed in the lack of movement.

But every morning, as I enter the bathroom, that scale–those scales–they taunt me.  ”You’re afraid,” they hiss.  Yes, I think.  You’re right.  I’m not just afraid that I haven’t lost weight. I’m afraid that I’ve gained.

I try to think that the differences I see in strength and stamina are enough.  But I know it’s not true.

Maybe Thursday I’ll take the plunge, get rid of the uncertainty, and go toe to toe with the scale.  But then again, maybe I’ll schedule a tennis match so I don’t have to.

That’s not me.  Not me at all.  First of all, in case I haven’t been clear, I don’t like yoga.  I don’t like the struggle to maintain the positions.  I don’t like having my shoulders hurt at night from maintaining downward/upward/dogs.  I can’t clear my mind of all thoughts–other than “When will this be over?”

So how did I find myself VOLUNTARILY taking a yoga class at my local gym today?  Yes, it was shorter than the P90x Yoga class, by 30 minutes, so that was a plus.  But still, it was yoga. Somehow, I was intrigued and decided to give it a try.   It had many of the same moves (I’m supposed to call them poses, aren’t I?), but a few different ones.  I discovered, for example, that I could have lived my whole life and never have missed the Lizard pose.

But I got through it.  In fact, I only had to skip a couple of them, and then I got right back in.  I am positive that I can do better in that class now, after taking P90x, than I would have before.  But will I do it again?  My brain says no, but things are changing, so we’ll just have to see.

I’m not saying I’m craving yoga, but one morning when the kids and I got up early to watch the sunrise, I swear I actually kind of wanted to do a sun salutation.

Tonight, however, I’m not in the mood.  I’d love to finish working, then climb under the covers and watch TV.  No worries, though.  My daughter says she’s making me do Kenpo.  And she can be a little scary, so I guess I will.

I’ve finished three weeks and this week is just cardio.  Which kind of stinks because I really enjoy the weight training more.  And, of course, anything is better than 1 1/2 hours of yoga!

But these last two weeks, I’ve been more consistent.  Maybe it’s having an exercise buddy.  My husband has been leading the charge, and this past week, my daughter exercised with me (nope; she hasn’t forgiven me yet).  Maybe it’s knowing that I’ve publicly committed to doing it and I’ll have to face you with failure if I stop.  Maybe– despite the fact that someone must have put Krazy Glue on my scale to make it not move– I can handle the exercises better this time around.  Except the yoga.

The first week is hard because everything is so new.  The exercises truly are both muscle and brain confusion.  This time around, I found myself saying– oh yes, I remember that.  Or in some cases, Oh no!  I remember that!

Next week we do another round, and then it all changes again.  Just when I get comfortable.

Last night, as my husband and I did the Kenpo exercise, which is similar to Kickboxing, I found myself actually enjoying it, and trying to do higher kicks, stronger punches, just because I could.  It was a little scary.

Tony Horton, P90x guru, talks about getting out of your comfort zone.  While he’s specifically referring to the comfort zone of what we think we can do physically, I’m getting the sense that there’s a mental shift that takes place too.

Have you ever had a physical accomplishment that changed your mental outlook?

But it wasn’t pretty.  And here are some of the random thoughts I had during this first week of P90x Boot Camp.

• To my surprise, some of the exercises were actually doable.  Others required my watching, as I lay in a puddle on the floor, thinking, I’ll never be able to do that.
• One and a half hours for yoga is about one hour too much.
• I find myself quoting Tony Horton in everyday life, most notably: Do your best; forget the rest.
• Although I like his phrase, Do your best, forget the rest, I still beat myself up for not doing the rest too.
• At some point, I’m going to get tired of always being sore.  Actually, I think I reached that point on Day 2.
• The scale is still not moving to my liking.  Or at all.
• I need to work harder.
• I can’t work any harder.
• You mean the 90 in P90x means 90 days?  90 days?  That’s 83 MORE days!
• I did seven days of P90x.  Yay, me!

But as much as I love reading books, I also enjoy saving money on books.  And that’s where my beloved Barnes and Noble fails me.  Because their books are just so dang expensive.  I probably wouldn’t think that was the case if it wasn’t for my smartphone.  For even as I am holding a hardcover book in my hand, poised to make a purchase, I will look up the book on Amazon.com, and find that it is often as much as $8 or $9 less.  Really?  And with Amazon’s Prime Membership (a terrific deal at Christmas time, let me tell you), I can get the item delivered within two days.  Free.

So instead of the traditional shop and buy at Barnes and Noble, I am more likely to shop, then put in my Amazon shopping cart.  And as much as that makes financial sense, it still makes me kind of sad because I don’t want my buying habits– and those like me– to be the downfall of bookstores.  We’ve already seen Borders close.  I don’t want Barnes and Noble to be another casualty.

But I still want to save my $8.  Hopefully B&N will get onboard with mobile technology and automatically send coupons to smartphones when you enter the store.  That would be an incentive to make the purchase at the time.  Until then, I’m still going to make my expensive book purchases online.  But maybe I’ll be sure to stop by the B&N cafe for a snack.  You know.  Just to help keep the business afloat.

On the plus side, after doing several days, I can say that my eyebrows don’t hurt.  Neither do my fingernails.  I take that as a moral victory.

The way the P90x program works is that you do a different DVD each day, or so, with rest days built in.  One day might work on cardio, another on muscle building, another on abs.  The theory is that by continuing to confuse the muscles, the body works harder and we achieve greater change.

I know my muscles are confused.  They keep asking me: “What did I do that was so bad that you have to do this?”  and “When can we stop?”

To be honest, I can actually do most of the activities on some of the instruments of torture DVDs.  I kind of actually like the Kenpo one, which is kick boxing based. The weight training ones aren’t so bad either.  We’ll not mention the afore-mentioned yoga one.

If I had lost 10 pounds this week, no doubt I’d be singing the praises of P90x.  ”Yes, it’s hard,” I’d gush.  ”But it’s sooo worth it.”

Obviously, however, that didn’t happen. (The scale– she changes so very slowly.)  So I’m still fighting through, cursing the undoubtedly very nice Tony Horton, and hoping that I’ll see some MAJORLY good changes next week.

Any words of advice?  What gets you through when you feel stuck, whether it’s with exercise or something else?