Thursday, July 12, 2012

Fat Ass in Fleece Pants - from 2008

I did something totally crazy today. I was coming home from dropping the dog off for a hair-do, and I had on my sweats and sneakers (typical morning attire) and I decided to go to... THE GYM.

Part of my new be-more-healthy plan is to exercise more (or, exercise at all, as the case may be) and I've been planning on going down to the health club where I take Leila swimming and see about getting on one of those new-fangled exercising machines. Usually, the only exercise I get when I go to this health club is turning the pages of my magazine while sitting in a beach chair watching Leila dive for colorful rings, but not today. There happened to be someone available to train me on a couple of these exercise devices, and suddenly there I was, huffin' and sweatin' on something called an elliptical. The machine said I burned 300 calories, but my trainer-guy, Mike, said they run a little on the high side (its nice to know my machine wants me to feel good about myself, though.)

The machines have TVs on them, and you can plug your headphones into them and watch a show while you're torturing yourself. I hadn't planned on this, so I watched The View with closed captioning. I do not recommend this. Those View women are always talking over each other, which is usually tolerable, but I don't know how the person typing in the closed caption can keep up with them. There was never a complete sentence on the screen, and, if you've been reading this blog, you already know that I prefer long, rambling run-on sentences, complete with commas and semi-colons, rather than short, incomplete sentences. Next time, I'm bringing my headphones, and not wearing fleece pants. I was boiling and looked like a lunatic. The other women who were working out were all thin and fit (no wonder: it wasn't their first day at the gym) in their cute work-out clothes and their Wall Street Journals, and looked like they were going to go on with their super days with energy and efficiency and super-duper attitudes. I did not fit in.  I can't really put my finger on the kind of negative thinking these women bring out in me, and I am aware that my snarliness is really about me and not them, but it does make me feel better when I tell myself, "She may be thin and fit and together on the outside, but I bet she's drinking chardonnay by four in the afternoon."

I may have been prompted to go to the gym because I went out for chinese food last night, coupon in hand, and ate all manner of things that probably do not fit it to my 1500 calorie-a-day thing. Now its lunchtime, and Rob did not take the leftovers with him to work as instructed ("Get the greasy chinese food out of here, and nobody will get hurt!") so I'm sitting here salivating (I'm not kidding, I really am) over the thought of leftover mongolian beef and curry chicken, because the only thing better than fresh chinese food is leftover, room-temperature chinese food, and my will power is well hidden right now.
 
I plan on going back to the gym on Friday in preparation for the Halloween night candy bonanza (I'm going to set the machine's calorie goal to a million) and this time I'll be prepared with more appropriate work-out pants, a pony-tail, headphones, water bottle, and maybe I'll bring along a Wall Street Journal, just for show. Act as if, right?

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