Exercising My Right

So yesterday I found myself in a place I usually steer clear of.  You see, like dark alleys and the wrong side of the tracks, the gym is a place I've heard enough bad things about to just stay the hell away.  For some reason, unbeknownst to me, I got the sudden urge to go visit the facility that takes an EFT out of my checking account each month.  You see, my husband does enough physical work for the both of us, so I usually just let him do his 'thang with that kind of 'thang.  I'm one of 'those' people who love food waaay to much to let a silly thing like body image get in the way.  However, somewhere in between eating three generous-sized pieces of birthday cake and the reminder for my impending vacation to Beach Country, I decided maybe I should do something somewhat proactive about cramming my body into a Spandex/Lycra blend from hell.

Upon entering this place, we'll call it Oz, I saw people chatting and laughing so I assumed it couldn't be that bad.  WRONG WRONG WRONG.  It's a conspiracy; Oz hires these folks to stand towards the front and frolic about in a manner that suggests a positive experience.  As I made my way upstairs, I knew for certain I'd made a bad decision.  Panting,  sweating, the heat----and oh my oh my, the smell. It was hell on earth for sure.  People of all ages suffering to the beat of what sounded like an electronic mash-up of cats walking on piano and the Looney Tunes theme song (edit: I have actually learned that it was just a Ke$ha song).  I took my place on the elliptical.  I smashed on the keypad until it stopped asking me for my weight and date of last pap and got rolling.  After about thirty seconds I considered stopping because I couldn't stop looking around.  I was bored.  Oddly enough, there is a TON going on inside of Oz.  FIVE televisions with closed captioning rolling across the screen and shitty music blaring "music" while people of all walks of life crawl, jump, and jive across the floor.  I usually don't consider my attention span to be short, but there was so much going on in the place I found it difficult to stand in one place.  It's a bizarre conundrum to be bored out of your mind while you have so many stimulants being thrust upon you.  Somehow I was able to hang for about a half hour before I thought my brain was going to explode.

After my thirty minutes of power (that's sarcasm, friends) I was unstoppable.  I GOTS THIS GYM THING DOWN!  And this is where I got cocky.  I happened to see a lady running in place from what had to be the police.  She was faster than fast and although I don't buy in to hype, I knew I had to join her.  How hard could it be?  I decided that choosing the treadmill next to her was a good choice so that I could copy her keypad functions more effectively than I did on the first machine.  As I got rolling, I was doing good.  And then it got bad.  Really bad.  I thought my heart was going to explode and I'm pretty sure I lost my voice somehow based on how bad my throat hurt.  Although I was pretty sure I had ran about twenty minutes, the clock only said I had run for a minute and forty-seven seconds.  Fuck.  New plan.  A quick google search (whilst on the treadmill thankyouverymuch) returned in .00007 seconds with a FREE app that teaches idiots how to run.  SIGNED, SEALED, AND DELIVERED (see: I downloaded it).  Basically it starts off with a "brisk" walk followed by intervals of running and walking.  Although I was shamed to be walking next to what had to be a part-woman part-stallion, I convinced myself that she didn't come out of the womb running and we all have to start somewhere.  Still, within two minutes of my "brisk" warmup walk, I was fucking bored again.  This is where the beauty of technology comes in and the ugliness of people comes out.

Naturally, I pull up an app that I pay for monthly that allows me to watch movies instantly (take THAT, product placement).  I tap on the first thing that they recommend based on my love for Katherine Heigl and crappy movies.  I needed something I could focus on and follow if I was going to torture myself any longer.  Let me just say that I had headphones on.  This is an important bit of information because this is when bad went to worse.

As I am peacefully viewing the feature presentation whilst I run (and gasp for breath), I hear something louder than my film say, "Are you fucking serious?"  It was too loud to be something in the movie.  That's when I looked to the stallion to my right.  Glaring at me, running way faster than me, she seemed to be quite upset that I was watching a movie.  At first I wondered if maybe she didn't like the movie, hated it even, and didn't want me watching it by her.  Then I wondered if it was more of a "OH HELLZ YEAH" kind of exclamation and that she really wanted to see it.  I went with the latter and scooted my phone closer to the middle of our machines so that she could watch too.  Not the right thing obviously.  As a looked at her, smiling as best as I could as the life is being sucked out of me, I hear her say, "Get the hell 'outta here" and shake her head in a less-than-pleased manner.  She continued to shake her head as she ran and I withdrew my peace offering by scooting my phone closer to my line of sight.  Although I tried not to stew about it, I couldn't help but think that her anger was displaced.  There was a guy in Jorts casually peddling a bike to nowhere and a girl who had perfectly coiffed hair climbing stairs leading to nowhere---but she was mad at the Rulking (see: running SLASH walking) girl because she was watching a movie?!  Why not be mad at the lady watching CSPAN because let me tell you, that shit is that same thing.  Anyways, 25 minutes later I finished my workout and noticed that the Angry Woman of Oz had departed at some point so my movie distraction had worked.  As I did my cool-down and tried to convince my heart not to explode, a man came up next to me and started jogging.  Something fierce must have been occurring in his head (or on the tv he was watching that was displaying the hockey game) because this guy was PISSED.  He was swearing and shaking his head and I knew it wasn't because of me because I had already closed down my personal movie theatre for the remaining duration of my workout.  Between the Angry Woman and the Angry Man, I came to the conclusion that this Oz is a pretty angry fucking place and I probably shouldn't return.

Just kidding, I'm going back tomorrow so I can catch up on The Office.



Friends: Let this be a disclaimer of content and allow me to say this is SARCASM.  I have nothing but jealousy and respect for you BAMF's working hard at the gym.  That shit is HARD and most of you bitches make it look easy.

Also, let's just pretend I haven't fallen off the face of the earth with this blog thing, mmkay?