By deterrents, I really mean stupid excuses. If stupid excuses were currency, I could pay our mortgage with them and have enough left over to get that yacht I always dreamed of. And I’d be sailing it to my private island.

Today’s stupid excuse that almost derailed me: My husband couldn’t find his BlackBerry.

Told you it was stupid.

See, it’s been so long since we’ve been to the gym, that Hoylier couldn’t remember the combination to his locker (this is why I have a key, not a combination lock. And I have several copies of the key because I am awesome at losing things.)

In the span of time since we last actually went to the gym, to which we make a generous donation in the form of our monthly membership dues, Hoylier has acquired a Droid. So his BlackBerry, which is now just for work, has fallen out of favor as the toy du jour. Thus the BlackBerry has become misplaced, most likely in his desk at his office. The locker combination is saved in the now completely uncool BlackBerry.

And he needs the combination to to get his tennis shoes, which have in all likelihood rotted from lack of use languishing in his long-unopened locker. He tells me to just go on without him.

Well, let’s just drive to your office and get your BlackBerry, I suggest.

And that started a whole chain of logical reasons why that was, at best, a shitty proposition, and I finally just said, fine, let’s not go.

Sensing my weakness to just give in and not exercise because my husband has a missing smart phone – which may be the BEST shitty excuse of all time – he took me by the hands, raised me up out of my comfy chair and said, “Oh no, no, no. We’re going.”

He wore another pair of shoes that are comfy for walking and we both did 45 minutes on the treadmill.

This was the breakthrough I think we both needed.

Damn, I’m out of shape. I walked just under 2 miles in 45 minutes and I was sweaty and uncomfortable. And now I’m stiff.

And I am going back tomorrow. With my locker key. And I am eating lettuce for the rest of 2010.

OK, the last part is probably not true. But it feels right. The gym is a helluva appetite suppressant.