Sunday, January 16, 2011

A little of this, a little of that, and my gym rant

This week has been truly non-eventful, which, in our house, can be a very good thing. We started out with snow and ice and now are in the 50s. I took a couple of my runs outside this week, which was glorious! Days like this make me forget Spring is still far away.

We gathered with the Billups clan last night for "Christmas." I watched my father beaming as his six children and four grandchildren created the most beautiful cacophony and chaos. It really was a great evening.

The food modifications are going well, and so is running, for the most part, except when I am stuck in the gym and have to be a hamster on the treadmill. The gym. Ah yes, that reminds me. Time to rant a little.

So the "gym" is actually your typical apartment complex fitness room. For those who don't know, the Lloyd family downsized to an apartment back in June in order to save money and prepare for a house purchase in this frightening economy. Putting five people, a dog, and a cat in 900 square feet is working much better than I had anticipated. We have no maintenance, valet trash, a pool, and yes, the gym. The gym is fine, really. Nice equipment, clean, television. The television. This opens a whole can of worms which makes me do everything from silently stewing to questioning who I am and what I stand for.

Our apartment complex is filled with many families just like us, plus singles, new divorcees, and a very special breed I like to call "the overgrown frat-boy with his first real job." It is the latter, (they do realize they all look exactly the same, right?) unfortunately,  who is at the root of my fitness room television issue. I can go in at any, and I mean ANY time of the day to work out, and there one will be, remote firmly in hand, watching ESPN. Ok, so he was there first. Fair enough. He only has 10 minutes left on his treadmill countdown. I'll just wait. Just when I think I may be able to commandeer the remote and head towards HGTV or Food Network bliss, my hopes are dashed by a figure coming through the door in oversized nylon shorts and a backwards hat. The "overgrown frat-boy remote handoff" then takes place. I am stuck. Yes, I know, partially my fault. I'm a strong woman, right? Why don't I just ask for the remote instead of doing the passive aggressive eye roll? Because I am deathly afraid of losing my Polite Southern Girl membership by asking for what I want. And I really hate that about myself! Almost as much as I hate seeing entire shows devoted to Tom Brady, who I really couldn't care less about, except that's not true because now I've had so much over-exposure to him, I wish that smug egomaniac would just cut his hair!!!! Ok, I know this is ridiculous. I have an Ipod. I'll use it. If I want to watch something, I'll just download episodes of Madmen and Big Love and watch naughty TV while the renaissance man next to me sees the injury list for the Bears for the 50th time. Problem solved.

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