Monday, June 30, 2008

Is That a Rug?

I have a whole mess of hair. An exact metric ton, I believe. And it's curly. Getting up and just running a brush thru it is not an option. I take it like a trooper. Heaven knows I'm not one to complain. In fact, people who constantly gripe, "I wish my hair was_____ or ______. It would be so easy. My hair is just so straight," kind of get on my nerves.

Since I have to start from freshly washed in order to do my hair, I have mastered the art of pulling it up...or so I thought. This morning I took my dog to the park, but of course, was not about to shower and blow dry my hair to go sit there. The minute I got to the park some lady said to me, "Wow your hair looks great like that. It looks like one of those hair pieces."

I'm not sure if anyone but a curly haired girl can fully understands the indignity of that comment, but by no means was I flattered. It looks like a hair piece? Are you kidding me? Who says that? That's not a compliment.

Rest assured I went right home, washed my hair and immediatley began the process of fixing my rug.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Officially Dumped


I should have seen it coming, but I was completely blindsided. I didn't even really want a personal trainer to begin with, but that didn't take any of the sting out of being dumped by him. Looking back, I may have played a pretty large part in being dumped, but I think my excuses for cancelling were more than reasonable.

"My dog swallowed a corn cob and I have to take him to the vet."

"I have to go to the doctor and get a typhoid shot."

And my personal favorite, which, I believe was the straw that broke the trainers back, "I just got a pedicure."

Monday, with all of my excuses exhausted, I went to the gym and ended up getting "the talk." I got all of the standard dump lines. "I think this is for the best," followed up with, "I'm no good for you," blah blah blah. He swears that he wasn't dumping me. As he put it, he was setting me up with someone who would be better for me.

Basically, I find the entire concept of personal training wildly awkward. It doesn't matter who the trainer is. I am a chubby girl at heart. Always have been, always will be. Being the center of attention is not my cup of tea. The idea of a person just standing around watching and commenting on my workout is horrifying. Fictitious or not, all I can hear is the trainers interior monologue, "Man this chick is a mess. I can't believe she is so out of shape. Does squishy have a mascot?"

Anyhow- The first couple of half hour workouts with Newby weren't that bad. Then came the first of our one hour sessions. Newby knows how I feel about working out, and is aware of my self consciousness whilst at the gym...and yet still he had some ridiculous new ideas that he tried to trot out and see how they would fly.

I really think that he came up with the most humiliating and demoralizing exercises possible, just for kicks and giggles. First thing I had to do was jump rope with the SHORTEST rope in todo el mundo. Newby, while he is cute as a bugs ear, is about 2 inches shorter than I am and fit as a fiddle, so he had no problem demonstrating how this all should go. That made the hunched over, sweaty, uncoordinated, bouncing boob fiasco all the more humiliating.

Then we moved on to crab-walking, followed that up with bear crawls, with push-up's every couple of steps, and the cherry on top of the humiliation sundae was WHEELBARROW'S!!

My interior monologue went a little something like this, "Seriously, does this fool not know how much I weigh? Has he no soul? This is precisely why I nearly got an F in jr high PE. I can remember exactly, to the day, when it was that I last did wheelbarrow races. I was in 3rd grade with Danior Martin and that didn't end well. I have successfully avoided any semblance of such activities since then, and that is by no means of chance. There is no freaking damn way I am doing this."

What this train of thought translated into was me sitting Indian style on the floor of the aerobics room with my arms folded and shaking my head, "Absolutely not. I refuse to do this. With all do respect, you have got to be eff-ing kidding me. Under no circumstance am I doing wheelbarrow's with you. No way."

Yeah-I didn't win that battle and it was every bit as horrible as I thought it would be. If I didn't remember why I stopped going to the gym in the first place...I can kind of remember now.