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Me and the Gym
I never told you guys about how I joined a gym. I was going to but then my Grandpa died and the nieces came to visit and it got shelved. It’s probably a good thing I waited though because my opinion of the whole place has changed. On a daily basis. You could say I have a love/hate relationship with the gym.
When I first joined they set me up with a free complimentary session with a personal trainer. I said, Bring it on! I love personal trainers! I used to have one back in the day when I worked at the junk mail factory (an awesome company perk) and I loved it. Working out always goes better when you have someone else nagging you to do lunges correctly.
It turns out the free complimentary session at the new gym was more of a hard sell in disguise for their bazungo crazy expensive personal trainer program. What a crock. First the guy broke me down and pretty much made me eat dirt and admit that I was in much worse shape than I realized. He had me lifting all kinds of crazy weight in super slow sets that had my knees shivering like a little girl.
I know this method of working out is usually effective so of course I let him abuse me. I embraced the pain. But then the machines were so complicated. I was doing leg lifts backwards on something you usually use for your abs and something swung around and smashed my index finger in a way it should not have. It hurt. Bad. I still have a blue nail to prove it.
Blargin’ Trainer Guy. I hate him.
After about forty-five minutes of brutal humbling, we headed over to his desk to “talk about my options.” I admit it. I was sold. Not because I loved the work-out but he pretty much had me convinced that there was no other way to get in shape other than to hire him to whip me. My future looked pretty bleak. Even with his program it would probably take me six months to a year to lose the twenty pounds I need to lose. And let me tell you, those pounds were the ugliest pounds I’ve ever looked at. I’m sure he had me working out in front of a mirror for that exact desired effect.
We talked and talked. He complimented me on my knowledge. I learned about his struggle with MS and how he holds some kind of trophy belt for being the best trainer in all of California. It was a happy little talk and then right as the short hand reached the hour mark, he slid his laminated rates page across the desk.
Sixty dollars a session.
SIXTY DOLLARS A SESSION!!!! Plus a hundred-and-something-or-other for initiation.
Say what?!!
I’m not made of money. I can’t afford sixty dollars a week. Is this guy crazy? I live in a depressed town where everyone is on welfare. How do people afford this?!! Do their insurance companies cover it? Does the government offer programs for this? I saw plenty of people working out with trainers. They must be coming up with the money somehow. How do they do it? I pretty much emptied my checking account to join the gym in the first place.
Then the worst thing happened. The ugly cry came over my face. I didn’t mean it to. I never cry in public, well hardly ever. I hid under my bangs but once it started I couldn’t stop it. I guess I was a little more stressed out than I realized. Work had been tricky, money has been tight, my house seemed like it would never stay clean (thanks to my brother who was making it his personal mission to mess it up), everybody thinks I’m uptight because I’m a control freak about my house, Bug didn’t like their dumb kid’s club daycare and well, the whole navigating a dissolving marriage thing…you know, maybe it was just too much.
I put my hands over my eyes, got up from his desk and walked backwards. I hid behind a column that was near his desk and then just split. I didn’t even try to explain myself. What could I say? This guy doesn’t know half of what is going on in my life. Who knows, maybe he makes people cry on a regular basis. I’m sure his services are well worth $60 an hour. I charge more than that for what I do. But you just can’t spend money you don’t have.
So that was that. I haven’t talked to him since. I see him from time to time and I’ve been meaning to stop and apologize but I just haven’t gotten the guts up. He has my phone number, he could have called me but I think he’d rather wash his hands of a weepy over-weight middle-aged frump monster. I don’t know. I’m moving on.
I went home and thought a lot about the whole experience. In the end I decided that this guy doesn’t know me. He has no idea how I work out and how much willpower I have. I can get in shape without him. It might take me longer but I’m not a failure before I even start.
So far I’ve gone to the gym at least two times every week for about a month, often more. It’s too early to be patting myself on the back but I feel pretty good about it. I might not ever lose those twenty pounds. I’m okay with that. I just want to be healthy and not hate myself when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
Figuring out a good routine has been a little more challenging. I hate to go to the gym in the morning because that’s my peak creative time and I really like to devote my overly-caffeinated brain cells to my work BUT it seems like if I don’t go work out in the morning it doesn’t happen at all. I’ve tested this over and over for years. So I work out in the morning and it evens out because on those days I seem to have more overall energy anyway and I can work longer at night.
Finding a class that works for me in the morning is a whole other issue. I tried their yoga class but Barbie the Yoga Instructor drove me nuts. She was bendy alright but when she started swinging herself by her wrists and flirting with the very interested jock in the front row I got tired of it real quick. Which is too bad too because I love yoga.
I tried water-aerobics and loved it. It’s fun splashing around in a salt water pool with a bunch of grandmas. I felt like a super star when I could run under water and kick all their butts. Not that I was showing off or anything but sometimes it’s nice to not be the slow poke in the back of the class for a change. I even took my dad to a class. He loved it too. But the time slot was a bit late in the day so I’ve not really been going regularly.
Then I tried step aerobics. It’s perfect for me. It’s just complicated enough that I’m constantly confused and stepping backwards when I should be stepping frontwards. One day I forgot to drink my coffee before class and that day did not go well at all. I couldn’t get the hang of anything. It’s funny because while I have pretty good rhythm and love to dance, I’m terrible at taking instruction.
When the teachers says exit left, I exit right. Crossovers and step-behind grapevine-thingys have me tripping over my own feet. I’m a clutz like no other. But at the end of the work-out, I am exhausted and I haven’t thought one thought about how uncomfortable I’ve been. My brain is so tired from trying to keep up with the complicated routine that it has no idea that my body is sweating bullets. I love it. The teacher is excellent too. We stretch and use weights and everyday I am sore in the good way.
So I guess I could say I love the gym now. We’ll see how it goes.
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pretty good for the shape we’re in
They say my grandpa could linger on like this for a week or so. He’s not eating, he’s not drinking. BUT! He’s not in pain. He just sleeps. He wakes up just enough to tell us that he’s not in any pain. He’s very clear with a grunt and a shake of his head. He just wants to go back to sleep. It’s very confusing to those of us left alive, peeking at him from the fringes of his underwater dreams.
At least that is what I imagine it is like for him. It must be like when I am in the middle of my deepest sleep and somebody tries to shake me awake. I just want to be left alone. Does he just want to be left alone? He lets me hold his hand. I imagine that he is holding mine back but I can’t tell for sure. I don’t know if he knows whether I’m there or not.
He wakes up for the nurses, barely opening his eyes to acknowledge them so they’ll give him his medicine and go away, perhaps. Three seconds with us and then he’s gone again. My dad tries to shake his shoulders the way the nurses do but he doesn’t respond to my dad. We stand around not knowing what to do. Does he want us here with him? Should we stay? Should we go? How long should we stay? Do we put our lives on hold because we’ll never have this time with him again?
I deeply regret that I wasn’t there for my grandma when she died. I said goodbye to her on the phone but that was it and so many times I wish I could do everything over. I should have left work. What does a paycheck matter when you are losing a loved one that you’ll never see again and you miss so much?
Would it have made a difference if I was there? Is it better that I didn’t see her when she was in the worst of it? I don’t have any images stuck in my brain of her rattling with death like my grandpa is now. Does my grandpa want to be remembered this way?
I’m sorry to bring everybody down with me. I’m actually not down. We’re just plugging away with life like we do every day. Work, school, play, cook, clean, worry, repeat. I think I have a realistic grip on my emotions but then sometimes you think you are fine and then you are suddenly not. Kind of like clouds passing.
I’m mostly sad for my dad. I’m angry at his dispatcher who had no compassion and bawled him out for not being at work even though he was at work and sat around for hours waiting for his truck to be fixed when he could have been sitting with my grandpa instead. How can people be so unfeeling?
Of course my dad holds a brave face. He always does. I’ve never seen him cry. It’s not like any of this is a surprise either but it’s still hard to process. I know it’s hard on him. My dad holds the entire family together by working so hard. We all depend on him—even me with my streak of independence and my flailing freelance business.
So when the dispatcher calls and I see my dad trying to defend himself for something he didn’t do in a time when he’s allowed to drop a few balls, I get so angry. How can anyone bawl out my Dad who does so much for everyone? He’s always kind to his dispatchers. I wanted to crawl through the phone and strangle that guy. But then again my dad needs that job. We all do. Strangling him wouldn’t help anybody. So many people are unemployed, we have to hold onto what we have because we could so easily have nothing.
I feel guilty for having my camera with me at my grandpa’s in this dark time. I want to capture his last moments and hold onto them forever but it feels like I’m documenting death and it’s such a private thing. I don’t know if he would want you to see him this way. He’s never minded being on this blog before but I just don’t know and I can’t ask him. So I take some pictures of his brightly lit cheerful room and put my camera away. The rest I’ll remember with my mind’s eye.
I wish he would wake up and say goodbye to us and then drift off into sleep forever. Why is he hanging on in this strange state? He probably can’t help it. Is he holding on to this earth for something or is it just his body on autopilot waiting to run out of gas? I’ve tried to figure it all out in my mind a thousand times. Everyone goes differently. I look at the hovering nurses wishing they had answers but if they did they don’t share them with me.
At one point the nurses wake my grandpa to give him more morphine and my dad takes advantage of the moment of lucidity and says, “Brendy and Bug are here with me.” Grandpa opens his eyes and looks down at Bug. He gives her a big smile. The biggest smile I’ve seen on anyone in days. Of course my camera wasn’t ready for that moment, it was packed away in my bag. But I’ll remember that smile forever. He knew us. He smiled at Bug.
Bug never knew my grandpa like I did. She didn’t know the man who tucked us in so carefully with sheets and blankets and chairs put up against the side of the bed so we wouldn’t roll out in the night. She didn’t know about the cool scooters he bought for my brother and I at a garage sale and how he fixed them up so they rode so smoothly, better than any scooter they make today. She didn’t know what it was like to visit him in his workshop and smell the oil and sawdust of his tinkering. She did love him though. He’d make funny sounds with his mouth for her and sit her on his lap, just like he did with me. So many memories… I could write pages and pages.
I know she’ll remember that smile and it’s probably what we’ll talk about when we talk about my grandpa from now on.
I did go back again. But there was no change.
It all just makes me think of that one phrase my grandpa used to always say. If you asked him how he was doing he’d smile and say, “I’m pretty good for the shape I’m in.”
I guess he still is.
