Owwww

I went back to my ridiculously hard gym class today. The one where I lift weights for an hour straight and then slither home and avoid stairs for the next two days. I was looking forward to seeing my friend Carrie, who always goes to the class, and who I haven't seen in ages. And she wasn't there!

So I go in, find myself a spot at least 20 feet away from everyone on all sides. The class starts, I'm happily lifting away and a couple of people come in at the last minute. One woman, who's obviously been working out already, tosses her stuff down about 3 feet from me. And OMG. She smelled awful! There's only one woman I've ever met who smelled worse than her. This was AWFUL! I was holding my breath as much as possible and breathing through my mouth whenever I had to. And I slowly moved myself farther and farther away from her as the class went on. Eww . . .

Then there was a woman who was there was completely stuck in the 80s. She was wearing a striped scoop-neck tank, gray lycra shorts, and big billowing powder blue shorts over top. Her hair was in a ponytail with long side sweepy bangs and a skinny blue sweat band that was literally doing nothing - not holding a bit of hair back. Poor, poor woman.

Alright, back to trying to stretch my butt out.

Random Thoughts

So I finished my first business trip for the season and have lots of stories racked up. And thoughts to share.

First, I am very unhappy with the redesign of InStyle magazine. I've been a subscriber for a few years now and always look forward to enjoying my style tips on the plane. Sadly, the new magazine is disorganized and a jumble of randomness. It now has a feature on famous people's jewels. They open up their jewelry boxes and talk about their favorite pieces. OK, Donatella's was vaguely interesting, but not her bragging tone. Kimora Lee's diamond Hello Kitty pendant? Come on . . . I think I finished looking at the mag in 45 minutes and left it on the plane. Definitely not renewing that one.

I went to a Chili's for dinner in a western suburb of Denver. As I was walking out, the first thing I noticed was the case of Michelob shoved under one of the benches outside the door. Then I saw a pretty trashy couple - overweight, hairy guy and belly shirt with flab hanging out on the lady - sitting on said bench smoking cigarettes. Next thing I saw were an abundance of kids running around the parking lot while the trashy couple occasionally yelled at them. I was nervous I was going to run over one of the kids when I was backing out, but I guess that wouldn't have been a tragedy. Um, trashy couple - Chili's also sells beer.

I hate people who can't wait their turn to leave the plane. It's pretty straightforward - we unload in order of seats. Yet again, as I was reaching up to get down my suitcase, a stream of people pushed past me so that I had no chance of getting down my suitcase and moving forward. The last woman to shove past me before I could get my bad down hit me pretty hard. I walked off the plane and headed for the escalator and the same woman stops short so I stumble, turns around and walks into me - again!

Speaking of plane oddities - why can't people lock the bathroom door? For about the 3rd time in 2 months, I opened the door on someone in the plane lavatory. What kills me is that the flight attendant always yells at me! There's a reason there's a lock on the door - it makes the door say "occupied" and lights up the occupied sign on the ceiling. If it isn't locked, why would I assume there's a person in there? The best flight attendant response was, "You know, you could knock." Right . . .

Anyway, it's nice to be home. Around for about 9 days before jetting off yet again. Time to get to the grocery story since I have no food!

Catching Up

It's been awhile. Lots has happened in the last month. Jon deployed. I got the dreaded summer cold and everlasting cough. I swung through Ann Arbor for Art Fair and collected a few cool items. I am busily putting together my travel plans for the year and it's shaping up really well. I'm excited about all of the West Coast travel I'll be doing. And I'm incredibly busy playing with the other military widowed wives. Oh! And I've left Jon in the dust with our Harry Potter book club and am finally starting the final book! What's better than sleepless nights due to Harry Potter obsession?!

OK, so a few funny stories. The other day I went to the dermatologist. He has me on a few new meds and just before leaving, he reminded me to be obsessive with my sunscreen if I'm going to be out in the sun for more than 20 minutes because I'm sun sensitive now. I said, "I'm really good about sunscreen, but I'm not one to spend a lot of time in the sun." And he said, "I can see that! Well hey, pale is the new tan, right?" Sad when your dermatologist tells you you're pale.

So I've been sick for a few weeks now. My asthma has, sadly, kicked in and left me breathless for about 3 weeks. This means no cardio. Which means I'm getting the chubbies, and also getting stiff and sore from too much inactivity. So finally I gave in - and tried a yoga class. Sounds harmless, right? Wrong. I've spent many years being scared of yoga. I'm not into new age-y stuff. I don't even go in for modern dance. Classical music? Check. The Green movement? Uh-uh. Processed food? Check. Organic clothing? Come on, I'm going to wash it. Does it matter if there are chemicals on it now? Classic clothing? Yup. Boho? Can't do it. And really, who doesn't mistakenly believe that yoga is to weird music, holding odd poses for 10 minutes and looking around for your chakra or whatever?

So anyway, I had gotten so uncomfortable I had to work out. And low impact is the only option right now. I love Pilate's, but most of the classes are during the day. So yoga it was. I dug a mat out of the storage room and found a place in the dark room. Unfortunately, I chose a thick mat and the instructor wasn't OK with me using it. So she brought me a regular thing mat. Oops. The instructor started off talking about her two week retreat in central Cali and the cleanse she did. Okkkk . . . And then we started moving. And it was great! Most of the stuff I'd either done in Pilate's, or was similar to dance moves. I even started to sweat! Now great gobs, but my forehead was damp. Well, then the instructor told us to cleanse our internal organs with our breath. That's a weird thought. OK, keep going. And then we ended with the corpse pose, where you just relax on your back and focus on breathing. The instructor told us to "let yoga do its magic!" Well that's weird. But OK, I can handle three odd comments. The rest was great! I walked out of there on jelly legs I was so stretched out. I can't wait to do this again!