Dilemma at the Gym.

I was working out on Tuesday, and I picked an elliptical trainer thingy that had a good view of the Who Wants to be a Millionaire with captions because, well, it's trivia and if it's trivia then I can be entertained for that entire time and so that with my wee little iPod shuffle (that's orange! I love this wee little thing! It's so wee, I'm destined to lose it in about 90 days, but it's perfect for working out! can't you tell by my exclamation points?) piping my workout music into my ears and the trivia, ye gods, the trivia for my eyes (although some of it--yikes, "Finish this phrase: a good man is hard to..." seriously?) I would hardly notice the half hour passing and I don't need to worry about accidentally being introspective or dwelling on anything and it's like this perfect storm of how to get Kari to actually like (or maybe just Hate Less) working out.

Except there was one teeeeeny flaw in this plan: commercials. And it really felt like it would be question, and then we'll be right back to see if she can answer another dumb-shit question! question, and then stay tuned! question and then Febreeze for all your things with surfaces! So my attention would wander just a bit.

I purposely put a little hand towel over the readout when I'm on one of those torture devices machines because if I pay attention to the time as it passes, that's all I pay attention to, and then I barely make it to 15 minutes. If, however, I can not notice? I can easily make it to thirty or even forty minutes. It's awesome. So distracting me is a very big priority for me.

So there I am, annoyed by the ads broken up by wanna-be trivia, desperately searching or something to pay attention to that wouldn't make me the Creepy Person at the Gym. Focusing on the ass in front of you? Someone will eventually notice. So eyes up! at the TV! at all times! is the unspoken rule.

My eyes are scanning the TVs, and it's like, afternoon news (car crashes! and a fire! and a car crash! and guess what, it might rain tomorrow), ESPN (hey, I hear there's something about basketball going on?), local news, Scarborough Country (even though we're in a super-liberal town in a pretty liberal part of it, so really, wtf? I mean, Trader Joe's is across the street!), and then... Oprah.

How bad could it be?

It just so happened to be showing an episode on thirteen families in Charlotte who adopted twenty-eight different children--teenagers!--from an orphanage. In Liberia. And then a gay couple who had fostered twenty one different kids and adopted four of them and were in the process of adopting, like, sixteen more (that poor kid who was left out...). And then. Then. Then it was of the family who had a set of identical quadruplets, without fertility drugs, just pow! bang! bang! bang! four beautiful daughters. The family's name would make a fiction editor's eyes roll until they could see their own brain: Breedlove.

It's not weird to be snibbling on the elliptical trainer thingy, is it? People would just think I was having a really good workout, right?

Right?

Shit. Next time I'm plopping my fat jiggly ass in front of the VH1 television screen, wherever it happens to be. I don't care if that means I have to use the rower or if it means I have to watch thirty minutes of Paris Hilton: Misunderstood, Skank, or Just Really Shallow? because that must suck less.

It's a little thing, but it's not.

I've started working out again. It's nice. It's a time when I can go absolutely zen brainless listening to music and reading crap magazines and still feel virtuous! It's win-win-win! Plus I've lost four pounds already! I haven't weighed myself since that four-pound weightloss weigh-in, just in case that was a water weight fluke. In fact, I'm focusing on that. Four pounds! Lost! Which means, actually, I can now fit into my Real People clothes as long as I don't breathe. That also means I only have twenty pounds to go before I'm at my weight last summer. Which wasn't ideal, but it also wasn't No You'll Never See Me In a Swimsuit Ever Fuck Off bad, so that's a plus. No pun intended.

Almost two years ago, I was on an exercise kick because I'd gained back some of the weight I'd lost for my wedding (ha! I was twenty-five pounds lighter then! ha!) and I saw this gym had a buy-three-years-membership-now-save-a-ton! deal. So I did. And, in fact, promptly stopped going because I got a job that was leaving me exhausted at 3:30. So, thumbs up, Kari! Well done!

Fortunately, I'd also bought the go-to-all-the-gyms-in-the-area pass, because the gym nearest me is in the corner of a dying mall. Well, the middle part of the mall is dying. Either end of the mall is anchored by a Target and a Home Depot, so no matter which end I went in, I was screwed.

Wait, that sounds dirty.

What I meant was, it was costing me more because I'd just take a little trip through Target and find a t-shirt! That was only $6.99! So I should just buy four! about once a week. Not good.

But then the walk from Target to the gym was through an echoy mall with empty storefronts. In fact, the only store still there is Claire's, and I can't figure out how they're selling enough $4.99 earring sets to stay open, but open they stay. It was depressing. The people at the gym were not very friendly. And I had a trainer that I had to avoid because part of my membership "deal" was that I got to see a trainer free five times. I went those five times before I stopped going, but Rick (Steve? Tom? Whatever his name was) would still call me. He even sent me a Christmas card. I did not make that up for comedic effect. Anyway, I didn't want to explain to him that I wasn't going to pay for more sessions with him because frankly, I was too tired to go to the gym at all and have him guilt me about going to the gym and what all, so I thought it best if I just never saw him again. It was a little like breaking up with a boy. In eighth grade.

Now I'm going to the shiny new gym that's not so near my house but is near a Trader Joe's. I justify replacing my Target shopping with the TJ shopping because hey! organic! Plus: this gym is much nicer. The people-watching is much prettier. In fact, I bring the prettiness average down quite a few notches as I sweat and grunt my way through my workout. I am not a pretty sweater. Meaning sweating person, not the knitted or woven garment. I get all red and flushed and my skin gets all patchy and teenage acne looking. But hell, it's not like I'm going there in order to look glam. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Anyway, I went today, and then went to TJ's and basically I feel that no matter what, if I do nothing else today (oh! and we cleaned almost our entire house this morning, like with mops and stuff! so there's that too!), I was still virtuous and so can consider this day a Win.