The Gym

For the record, I did not even want to go to the gym today. I needed to go to the grocery store today.

But on Monday's visit Zack was taken in by the giant indoor playscape and begged to go back and play. He's his mother's son and really likes to have a bunch of other people to play with, so I could relate to his desire to go. Plus, he gets to play on a tunnels-slides-nets style playscape and I get to work out instead of sitting at McDonalds? That's a win for everyone.

I would have preferred a class but I checked out the class schedule and there were none that suited me. Oh, well, I thought, I can always swim laps. I got busy getting ready to go, so that we could get it done before Sammy's nap time. I got into my suit and threw on a plain pink sweatshirt over it in addition to my gym shorts. Because we really did HAVE to go to the grocery, I decided to get together my stuff to shower and dress at the gym, enabling us to go straight to the grocery afterwards. I had to do a bit of running around to get together some travel size products and I didn't have some of the things I needed so I finally just grabbed my way too big travel roll of EVERYTHING and threw it all in. After all, it was getting later by the minute. I had too much stuff, but at 9:15, I was loaded up and ready to load the children in their carseats.

On Monday I had discovered my gym card wasn't in its usual spot and had had to use my drivers license for them to look me up. I figured I do a quick search and find my card for today. Fifteen minutes and all the obvious locations later, I still had no gym card. I gave up and went to get out my drivers license, but it wasn't there. Arg! I had sent it with James the night before so that he could renew my library card. I ran upstairs to his nightstand thinking to find it, but couldn't. I called his cell. I called his work phone. I texted him. Finally he called back to say "Oops, it's still in my wallet..." So another fifteen minutes had passed and I had no gym card and no drivers license. ARGH! It seemed ridiculous to drive all the way over there, so I went back to searching for my gym card. This time I would do a hard target search of every console, seatback pocket, glove box and gym bag!

Fifteen more minutes and I gave up on my hard target search.

But after the kids had waited in the car all this time, and I had gone to all the trouble to pack up a weekend's worth of travel gear just to take a shower at the gym, I was not to be deterred. I proceeded to drive all the way to James' office and back to retrieve my drivers licence. When I arrived at the gym, I realized I had no towel. "Well," I thought, "I have this sweatshirt. I'll just use it for a towel."

My entire gym experience was just off. There was a section of the pool area under construction so that it janky looking. One of the lanelines in the lap pool was missing. There were no kickboards (there used to be a zillion of them!). I rubbed a big section of my ankle raw doing drills wearing swim fins. When I went to shower, I vividly recalled why I don't usually bother to try to shower and dress at the gym: there is nowhere in the shower to hang anything and the shower walls themselve are about seven feet high. My huge weekend kit turned out to be better than something little since I was able to brace it and stand on my tiptoes and get it barely hung up on the mystifyingly tall shower wall. It got soaking wet in the needle spray of the shower and later fell onto the nasty floor. My body wash was old and stinky (ewww!) and I went back over my shower with shampoo trying to get off the remaining old stinky scent. I dried off on my sweatshirt and managed to dry off my weekend kit only to have someone fire up the shower next to me and somehow soak everything in my separate stall anew. I had forgotten they don't have a hairdryer, so I pointed the handdryer at my head as best I could and got the bulk of the water not soaked up by my sweatshirt out of my hair so I could drag my kids through the grocery store. By the time I left, my faithful sweatshirt was dripping wet.

But, I think the crowning moment came as we were entering the gym to start with. I was just thinking I was glad to have something I could use as a towel when:

Me, with a sigh: Man. This is just sillly.

Zack: It is silly, Mommy. Do you know what is the silly part, Mommy?

Me, thinking it was the hour and a half in the car trying to get to the gym: No, tell me. What's the silly part?

Zack, shaking his head sadly: The silly part is that your shirt is really too jammie-y to wear.

Again I say, Sheesh!