The Mediocre Housewife vs. The Fancy Gym {Day 7}

This summer, my friends told me to join a new gym that had been built in our area.

“It’ll be fun!” They said. 

“Your kids will love the nursery!” They said. 

“We’ll get in shape together!” They said.

As mentioned in a previous post this week, growing up I attended asthma camp. I run a mile in 18 minutes on my best day. The last time I went to the gym I used a two-week-free pass I got when moving to a new town, but bypassed all the equipment for the tanning bed. When Mike and I first got married, I was stressed out and coped via a serious addiction to ice cream. I joined a gym for two months. He thought that every night when he showered, I went there for a quick 30 minute workout. Instead I was driving past the gym going to either Dairy Queen or TCBY and gained 15 lbs with my new “membership.”

Now that I have small children why would I need to go to the gym? I lift them in and out of their cribs-- and I have 90th percentile babies people! I do calistehnics every time I fish for a Cheerio underneath the couch and I often carry very heavy baskets of laundry down (and once a month back up) the basement stairs.

My membership guide Reuben took me on a tour of this new gym, and let me tell you, every inch of it smelled like a spa. "That's because there is a spa!" he told me. I quickly evaluated all the things I could do in this building besides exercise and counted over a dozen. They hooked me with the phrase "two hours daily childcare." 

My friend convinced me on my first to try a class with her called ‘Barbell Strength Training.’ 

“It’ll be easy!” She said. 

“You can do it!” She said.

The class started at 10:45 so I got up at 6 am to start getting the kids and me ready. Things always go wrong for us the first time we try something or go someplace new, does this happen to anyone else? Warning sign #1, I was determined not to let this happen at the gym.

So at 10 o’clock sharp we pulled into the shiny new parking lot. Warning sign #2, our car was the only non-fancy SUV or sports car there. I have hit the garage door with every corner of my car, sigh, and am not allowed “nice things” anymore per The Husband.

I met my girlfriend in the lobby and she quickly told me that Lou needed socks to climb the indoor playground with the older kids. Warning sign #3- she needed socks! I ran out to my car and found an infant sock (I have no infants, it had been in my car for over a year) and in the trunk there was another sock that had something on it (I said silent prayers it wasn’t mouse poop). As my kids stood next to me in the parking lot, I quickly slammed the trunk of my SUV and heard a loud noise. Then my head hurt. I had hit myself in the head with the trunk door. This happens often, apparently upon a quick poll, not to other people. I am chalking this one up to my legally blindness and bad peripheral vision.

Thankfully there was a hoody in my car (because that is where we store the excess clothes) and I used it to press onto my head that was bleeding profusely. We hustled into the gym, I dropped my screaming children off in the nursery and found some cotton balls for my head wound.

So far the gym was getting zero points for “fun” and “easy” but I was determined to give the “get in shape” piece a try.

By the time I walked in to class, I was 5 minutes late and had to parade myself in front of the hottest, fittest bunch of humans I’d ever seen in my life. I never knew spandex and neon colored clothing could actually look good on people. My friend looked at me sympathetically and wondered what I was holding on my head and I looked at her in fear and horror because the barbell I was about to pick up looked like some kind of medieval torture device.

I casually set my wad of cotton balls down next to my mat and started asking people around me how to take the weight off my barbell. “How much weight do you want off?” They asked. “All of it, take off all the weight. Give me just the bare barbell, please.”

It was as bad as anything could be and the very intense lady with the microphone yelled at us and I wanted to cry. God had mercy on me and 10 minutes in sent in an angel in the form of a nursery worker with a white board that had my name on it.

Afterwards I couldn’t go up the stairs for three days.

I kept trying the gym because it was so nice and I could put my kids in the nursery and lay out at the pool drinking healthy smoothies. We almost quit several times because Mack hated the nursery and Mike accused me of never working out and only going to the gym to take a shower (an accusation I would deem as true).

Please bear with this photo-less blog post --my children fasted from sleep last night. 

But listen, I can’t wait to share with you a picture of my work out clothes and shoes. Did you know I love to paint furniture? Did you know since I am a non-athlete I paint furniture in work out clothes? Did you know since I am on a Spending Fast, I cannot buy any new work out clothes? That’s right people. I proudly go to hot yoga once a week with a huge yellow stripe of chalk paint across my arse.