So, I've started working out.
It makes me laugh just to say that sentence. "Working out" sounds like something Chuck Norris does. What I do is more like "huff and puff endlessly on cardio machines while trying not to grunt."
It is at this point in the post that I should tell you how rewarding my fitness experience has been, how energized I feel, how worth it is to get hot and sweaty with strangers four times a week.
But I will not tell you that, because I do not like exercise. I have never liked it, I will never like it, and furthermore, I think that anyone who does like it is just a wee bit sick in the head.
(And if I just stepped on anyone's toes with my four-year-old Nike crosstrainers by saying that, I apologize, but I don't take it back. You're nuts.)
I'm just not the health club type, really. I'm sure all those flat-bellied women in sports bras with matching ponytail holder are perfectly lovely, and I wish them all the best (even if I do want to shove a cupcake down their skinny little throats). But I don't look like them. I walk in to my health club each day, a bit on the chubby side, wearing WalMart yoga pants and a faded sorority t-shirt from 1992 (I'm sure the women of Tri Delta are so proud to have me as their representative).
But it doesn't stop with appearances. I just seem to do stupid things without even trying. I always forget where the headphones plug into the treadmill, so I end up turned upside down looking for the tiny connector.
I usually work out at 9 am, when I can watch Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert's shows from the night before, and I keep laughing so hard that other people look at me funny.
Worst of all, I always--always-- forget to take off my headphones before walking away from the treadmill, resulting in my head snapping back as the headphone cord keeps me attached to the darn machine.
There's just no way to recover from that gracefully.
Though I've had several (usually short-lived) seasons of health club membership, I'm finding myself a bit more inspired to get strengthened in the coming weeks. Dropping a jean size doesn't motivate me nearly as well as the thought of having to fight off a lion while nursing the other plane crash survivors back to health in the blazing African bush.
A girl has to be STRONG for that.
