There's No Holding Hands In Zumba!

I don't like strangers touching me.  Therefore, I'm the only person in the world who doesn't like professional massages. And hands-on prayer weirds me out.  And don't even get me started on so-called "trust falls."

NOOOOOO!!!!!!

I've also started taking Zumba classes twice a week.  It harkens back to my days as a dancer, although with much more jiggling.

My normal Zumba instructor is a dude who kicks my butt with some fun routines for an hour.  But last Tuesday?  HE. WASN'T. THERE.

There was a substitute Zumba instructor.  And she had her heart set on bonding with me.

Every few minutes she would make eye-contact with a class member, head their way and give them a high-five or a pat on the back or simply jammed with them.  Ok.  She's friendly.  I'm sure that comes in handy sometimes.

I was one of the first people she singled out.  About 15 minutes into the class she headed my way and jammed with me.  Okaaaaaaaay.

But apparently our jam-session was so mind-blowing that about half an hour later she approached me once more and held my hand while we zumba-ed together. DOESN'T SHE KNOW I HAVE THE WORLD'S LARGEST PERSONAL BUBBLE?????

I was so weirded out that I immediately excused myself for a drink from the bubbler and then slunk to the very back of the room where she would hopefully leave me alone for the rest of the class.

It's called a bubbler.  Not a drinking fountain.  Not a water fountain.  Bubbler.

Fortunately I was able to get through the rest of the class without any touching or eye-contact or any other weirdness.

But dear-almighty-god-in-heaven let my normal Zumba instructor be there next Tuesday.

It's Like Some Sort Of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Regarding Dodge Ball

Husband and I have started exercising, after a long period of too many sweets and too many trips to McDonald's.  As our jiggly guts can attest, it's hard to resist the siren's song that is McDonald's french fries.

Irresistible bastards.

Working out with him is actually enjoyable. We both motivate each other to get off our fat butts, and I can honestly say that if not for him, I'd still spend my nights sitting on the couch eating Fritos.  But every now and then I have flashbacks to my days of high school gym class.  It's like some sort of post traumatic stress disorder regarding dodge ball.

You're doomed. DOOMED!!!

I’ve made no bones about the fact that I hated gym class.  So you can imagine how thrilled I was junior year on the last day of mandatory gym class, EVER.

To celebrate the fact that most students wouldn’t take the optional senior year gym class, the teachers went old school and let us play dodge ball.

Displaying my usual athletic prowess, I spent the hour standing by the bleachers chatting to friends when WHAM a dodge ball smacked me right in the face, hard enough for me to see stars for several minutes.

The boy who threw the ball was more distraught than I.  He was a nice guy, and knew I wasn’t really playing the game.

But I still used the dodge-ball incident as an excuse to change out of my gym clothes, and spend the rest of the period sitting on the bleachers.

So really, it was one of the best gym classes ever.   

Who The Hell Throws A Suitcase?

Gym class was never my strong suit.  I was the kind of student written gym tests were made for, the kind of student whose otherwise perfect honor roll status should not be tarnished by her inability to shoot a free-throw or finish the shuttle-run without falling down.

Now it just so happened that my high school was located a couple of blocks away from a bowling alley.  So, in an attempt to be progressive, my gym teachers marched us down the road to be used as guinea pigs for an otherwise unheard of bowling unit.

With a little instruction, every one should be able to score 100 points in a bowling game, or so their theory goes.  I’m not sure how they came up with that magic number, but it was set as the standard for obtaining a “C” or better.

They hadn’t counted on me and my ridiculous bowling abilities.  The next two weeks went something like this:

Day 1:  It’s simple, just walk 1-2-3 and then roll the ball down the alley.  1-2-3 roll.

Day 2: 1-2-3 roll.  My ball rolls into the gutter.

Day 3:  No, Angela, you’re holding the ball wrong.  Hold it like you would a suitcase.

Day 4: Who the hell throws a suitcase?  My ball rolls into the gutter.

Day 5: Hmmm.... maybe you need a lighter ball.  Try this one.

Day 6:  1-2-3 roll.  My ball bounces into the gutter.

Day 7:  No, no, no!  Your wrist turned at the end.  Remember, hold the ball like you would a suitcase!

Day 8: WHO THE HELL THROWS A SUITCASE?!  My ball rolls into the gutter.

Day 9: SIGH. Good try.

By day ten I had no less than three gym teachers coaching me through a game of bowling.  With their instruction and support, I was able to score 37 points, a new record!  After class, one of the gym teachers pulled me aside and whispered, “You never bowled 100 but we’re not going to fail you.  We know you tried.”

Pity “C” for the win!

A Weighty Issue

I questioned whether to even publish this post. It seems whiny and self-indulgent. But, for the sake of the honesty and transparency I committed myself to when I started this blog, here it goes.

I’ve gained 40 pounds since my wedding. Twenty pounds with each child. With my first child I really thought that I needed to eat ice cream and Taco Bell each day. So I did. I once made my husband cross 3 lanes of traffic to get to Taco Bell so I could have a 7-Layer Burrito.

By the time my body fully recovered from that first pregnancy, I gained twenty pounds.

Ashamed of my gluttony during my first pregnancy, I resolved to eat better the second time around. For the first twenty weeks I did great. I threw up everything I ate and lost 10 pounds. And although I was put on limited activity for my entire third trimester, my weight gain was very healthy.

I still gained twenty pounds.

God Bless Husband, who truly believes I’ve only become more beautiful.

I’ve been in denial about my weight gain. I reasoned that since I can button up my pants (regardless of the blubber spilling over), that I’m doing ok. I reasoned that since I’ve got an hourglass figure, I look voluptuous, not fat. I simply stopped picturing what I looked like from the shoulders down, preferring to imagine what I used to look like.

I don’t look voluptuous. I’m not big boned and I’m not tall. I’ve got to much fat on a frame not sized to hold it all. I look out-of-shape. I look slovenly. I looked up my BMI and I’m well into the overweight range.

Is this what people think whenever they look at me?

I can’t keep denying this. It’s so easy to ignore the truth.

I was a skinny child. Not just little, skinny. I was a slender young adult. I never had to worry about my weight. I ate reasonably, indulged when I wanted, stayed moderately active, and everything was fine.

Not so much anymore. I still eat reasonably, and only indulge occasionally, but even so, I’m always hungry. Despite eating three healthy meals a day, I’m ravenous by 8 pm, and need a substantial snack (like a bowl of cereal) to feel full enough to sleep.

Just chasing and hauling my two kids around our 2-story home all day isn’t enough. I haven’t exercised regularly since 2007. Working bizarre hours at a full-time job and taking care of two babies drained me of time and energy.

And I’m tired of this. I’m tired of hating my appearance. I’m tired of feeling old and worn out.

So yesterday I joined a gym.

It is less than 10 minutes from my house. It has free childcare.

I’m excited to get going. Just because I haven’t been doing it doesn’t mean I don’t like exercise. It’s incredibly good for my mental health. Sweat and stress seem to drain from my body; I feel physically and mentally detoxified.

But I can’t seem to defend myself against the critic inside that says “You’re fat and there’s nothing you can do about it.” It’s the same critic that silenced me all my life - “If you aren’t naturally wonderful at this, you are a failure and there’s nothing that can be done to exonerate you for this.”

I know I will never look like I did pre-pregnancy. But I’m hoping to at least love myself the way I look now.

Why Lifting Weights Is The Source Of My Everlasting Shame

I sucked at gym class.

Maybe it was because it wasn’t until I was 18 that some one finally told me in order to catch a ball I actually had to be looking at it, rather than holding my hands hopefully out in the air, while cringing in the other direction with my eyes squeezed shut.

Maybe it was because even after a 6 week course and the personal assistance of 3 individual gym teachers, I still couldn’t bowl over a 37.

Maybe it was because I could never remember which direction to run in basketball, or baseball, or soccer, and because I could never figure out why someone would want to put their body between the floor and a volleyball hurtling towards them like a death-sphere.

But maybe, just maybe, it was because of this...

My high school had a football team. That means we had a special room full of weights and cardiovascular equipment. That also meant we didn’t have textbooks that knew of the Korean War or sometimes even classrooms with real walls.

And thanks to this weight room, we had to do circuit training.

Now before I can go further, I must explain that I have eczema. Horrible ugly itchy eczema that I’d itch until it bled. Seriously, bleeding was better than the itchiness.

One day the class was doing circuit training and I was doing “circuit training” (i.e. sitting on the equipment and trying to look like I knew what I was doing.) At some point I had absentmindedly scratched at my leg, and unknowingly left a small drop of blood on the seat of some bench-pressing-torture-device contraption.

Gym Teacher noticed and FLIPPED OUT, screaming about how dirty and filthy this was and how this is how people get HIV/AIDS and maybe even ebola or monkey pox or dysentery. WHO KNEW? Meanwhile I tried to harness my powers of invisibility.

Just as I could feel my molecules becoming noticeably more opaque, one boy, who I’ve known ever since kindergarten and was kind of a bad ass in a scrawny fifteen-year-old boy sort of way, looked straight at me and silently mouthed with a smirk, “I KNOW IT WAS YOU-OU!”

Except to me it sounded more like this:



Now, I know Gym Teacher was right - blood is gross. But to my defense, we weren’t given time to properly wipe down the equipment in-between circuits.

Yeah, gym class sucked.