Getting Back to the Gym Shocks My Chakras

Getting Back to the Gym Shocks My Chakras

I recently started going back to GloboGym, as I call it, a name based on the powerful motion picture “Dodgeball,” winner of the prestigious “Rob Schneider Ill-Conceived-Film-We-Hate-To-Love” award.

cinema.theiapolis.com

I didn’t want to start attending again, but a friend dragged me by the muffin top and we waded into the vast, unfamiliar Elliptical Sea.  

My problem is I don’t like working out around people.  Actually, I just don’t like people.  I could medal in Avoiding Eye Contact, and I don’t want to talk to anyone at the gym EVER. (Can I make that any clearer, people?) 

Listen up gym talkers, I don’t want to converse with you because first, I am sweating Chardonnay. (unassuming, yet oaky with a hint of fruit, since you ask) Second, even though I’ve known you for years, I do not remember your name nor what you said to me the last time. That’s decidedly too much pressure early in the morning. 

I also feel like everyone’s judging me at the gym, and I don’t want to see young, thin girls, reminding me I used to . . . well, never look like that.  

Not only an expert in Avoiding Eye Contact, I could also grab the Gold in the Smoke and Mirrors event because I’ve mastered tricking people outside my family into thinking I’m put-together and somewhat cool.  I work hard to be aloof and indifferent, and my jig would be up if people saw me do ANYTHING in Power Studio Jam Dance class.

http://www.pinterest.com/rachelbrooks/fashionactivewear/

In a gym, one also exudes coolness by wearing the right clothes.  I noticed right off my workout clothes were out of style.  As everyone knows, ladies now wear yoga pants in which one Vinyasticates, which makes the pants so much more pretentious and yoga-ier than regular sweats.

prolificliving.com

Yesterday I went to a GloboGym yoga class.  I really don’t "get" yoga so I just watched.  After observing for fifteen minutes, my keen journalistic instinct (not everyone has this) told me I pretty much knew everything there was to know about yoga, except for foreign phrases like “Vishti hatha ashtanga recaca,” which I believe translates, “Vishti has ripped one with a strange odor.”

gradydoctor.com

To me, yoga is like golf.  If I’m gonna spend an hour or two at something, I want to burn lots of calories instead of centering myself.  I mean, I can “center” with Benadryl, Kendall Jackson, Michael Buble, and my Skymall massage mat.  Dang, I’d be all kinds of centered.

I don’t think the yoga siri, or whoever, could read my aura as I watched the class on account of I don’t have a sociology degree.   But my aura wasn’t exactly positive.  As she babbled about keeping our chakras checked and other Utter Hooey, I watched a few downward dogs and decided everybody should forget their doshas, and work on their tushes.

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I probably won’t go back to yoga, unless it’s to actually give it a chance.  Because of my unwavering commitment to indolence and the Queen Latifah show, I’ll probably just continue to stay active by cleaning Cheetos out of the couch cushions. 

I really need to get my “asana” stationary bike, but it IS almost happy hour.   Maybe I should ease into yoga by giving the “centering” thing a try.  

deonthaiyoga.com

Do a little Partner Yoga with Kendall Jackson, sing a few mantras with Michael, and become one with my massage mat.  If anyone asks, I’ll be in Nirvana.

Confessions of a Real Mom

Confessions of a Real Mom

I’m not nearly the mother I dreamed I would be.  I’m too frazzled to be a room mom.  I detest cooking.  And since I have anger management issues, I yell at the umpires in middle school softball.  But I’ve recently discovered a mecca for brilliant parenting advice.  It’s a place where you’ll find tips from more obsessive supermoms crammed into one space than in the dressing room on “Toddlers & Tiaras”—the self-help shelves at Barnes and Noble. 

This magic aisle boasts hundreds of titles written by successful “real” moms instructing us slacker moms on the secrets of how to do everything from organize and delegate to go green and get rid of stubborn belly fat.

Those cool ladies also usually write blogs with charming names like “glitzysupermom” or “marathonmomof7,”  in which the overriding themes are “I’m OK.  You’re OK.  I’m just better than you, hon.”    

They make me wanna crawl in a hole with my Cheetos and Ho-Ho’s.   

The truth is, I’m intimidated by the over-achieving moms on book covers—the way they can run a corporation, communicate without screaming, make playdough out of dryer lint, and wear those skinny jeans.  How do their teenagers turn out so perfect?  If I were to try to implement their Five Easy Steps to Help Your Teen Express Herself, my daughter would probably respond by getting a Guns ‘N Roses tattoo and wind up on Jerry Springer.

If those pundits of self improvement, smiling at me from the bookshelves, are indeed as accomplished, confident, and slender as they claim,  I probably couldn’t relate to them anyway. 

I like a mom who, with frosting on her lips, fibs that it was Dad who ate the last piece of birthday cake.  I can identify with the frazzled mom who wants to lock herself in her bedroom in the middle of the day after a horrifying trip to Walmart with two preschoolers and a sick baby. 

I’ll bond with the mom who goes to the bathroom in the stall at Target holding a crying baby and her purse on account of there are no hooks on the door and who’s begging her toddler to get up off his hands and knees and stop sucking a receipt up off the floor.  That’s the seasoned veteran I’ll listen to.  She is real.  She is an inspiration.

Give me a mother who threatens to tie her teenagers to the top of her SUV’s luggage rack the next time they mercilessly ridicule her for simply tapping her fingers off-beat to the radio.  One who doesn’t bring weird vegetables for her kid to eat at playdates to impress the Oreo-packing moms and insist, “My son, Willow, would rather have raw okra than anything else in the world!”  Puleeeeeeze.  I guess he’s never had chocolate syrup then.     

I don’t think I’d connect with an “I-can-do-it-all” female dynamo who writes self-help books about things like relieving stress and taking charge of your life.  She would probably share her coping strategy with me instead of a gallon of Rocky Road.  

You can bet your sweet mac ‘n cheese she’d claim she doesn’t have cellulite either.   That’s because she probably teaches 5 a.m. Extreme Spinning classes at the gym.   I have an annoyingly energetic friend like that who posts all her athletic accomplishments on Facebook. She touts that she exercises because she likes to push herself—which sort of makes me want to push her down.

Truthfully, I don’t have much time for exercise or social media—except to stalk my kids on it.  An average mother can barely keep her head above water, much less find a working pen in her house and write a book.

As a matter of fact, “real” moms don’t write a lot of books.  They’re too busy making dinosaur dioramas and scrubbing permanent markers off the carpet.  They’re on their knees blowing bathtub bubbles and butterfly kisses, and pouring out anxiety and fear to the God of high fevers and brand new drivers.  

“Real” moms are teaching their daughters how to stand up against the wave of public opinion and how to ride out the rip tide of teenage emotions.  They are engrossed in their son’s school play, and they’re reveling in their daughter’s double-play.  They’re teaching their kids to take baby steps and sometimes leaps of faith.   

And there’s no where else they’d rather be.

So, to all my under-achieving sisters sloshing in the trenches of motherhood, it makes me feel better when you admit that you’re addicted to Reese’s Cups, that you don’t have all the answers, that a glass of wine makes you happy, and that you’re flying by the cellulite in your pants just like me.  

And for the record, I most certainly did not eat the last chocolate bunny from the kids’ Easter baskets.  It was Dad.