New Milestone

This isn't the kind of milestone I get paid for. It isn't a milestone I listed on the side of the blog. But I feel it's a milestone worth noting anyway.
I have a good friend who's a competitive cyclist and works out 6 days a week. I can't remember exactly how he put it, but essentially he said that he can't go two days without working out because he feels yucky. I'd heard other people make similar statements and I didn't get it. I just couldn't understand that. I mean, that's crazy, right?
This past week, with my dad being in the hospital - the emotional toll his failing health and scary upcoming surgery has taken on me; my mom staying with me - the time and energy necessary to take care of her and get her where she needs to go; the Q4 sales meeting - the stress associated with making arrangements for that and making sure everything went smoothly; having all my sales guys in town - and the stress associated with that (some of you know EXACTLY what I mean here); all the company dinners - the lost sleep due to late nights out with the guys (and I'm not complaining about this - I could have gotten out of them if I'd wanted to). But you get my point. It has been a difficult week.
I slacked off with my work outs. And oh, boy! did I feel it! That's right! I felt yucky for not having worked out like usual.
In addition to that, Tuesday morning I got about 5 hours of sleep and as tempting as it would have been to sleep in, I didn't really want to skip my work out to do it! I had an excellent and plausible excuse and I wouldn't use it.
On Wednesday I had a work event where I got to sit in a beautiful aspen grove waiting for my co-workers to find me. I took my book to read while I waited for each team to find me and get their next clue. (Those of you who know me well know how much I LOVE to read.) After reading for about 2 minutes I thought - hey, I could be doing push-ups and crunches right now while I wait for these guys. So in between arriving teams I did 30 mins of crunches and push-ups. To sacrifice a reading opportunity to workout is a huge turning point for me.
And finally, by Sunday afternoon I was exhausted. I was so exhausted that I could have cried if I'd stopped to think about it long enough. I had a moment when I thought - if I had 30 minutes right now to myself would I sleep or workout? The answer was easy as pie - I'd work out. WOW! Did I really just say that? Yes! I would work out! And that's when I realized that I had truly hit a new milestone.