So, My Gym Called Me Today...

They noticed that they haven't seen me yet this year and want to know if there's anything they can do to get me to come in? As is my usual way I was extremely polite and only slightly apologetic and said that life was full of crap and I only narrowly missed a complete nervous breakdown and/or a complete fatal bout of consumption and that I should make an appearance without any lures or special intervention in a few weeks.

While in the line at the cheap-o grocery store where I was buying some extremely expensive meaty baby food* (but only 18 beers!**) I was thinking about all the interesting facial hair in evidence on this fine Sunday evening. It's not often one sees an abundance of facial hair at the grocery store. Except that what I was realizing is that Winco seems to attract the hairy sort because there are always at least three or four "mountain men" types in line wearing their greasy flannel shirts and super-bushy beards and this line of thought makes me immediately examine my chin hair situation because I'm suddenly wondering if anyone else has observed the hairiness of the clientele at Winco and included me in their line-up of examples.

Thankfully I have recently removed all visible chin-hairs and by some miracle of every saint possible I have actually recently shaved my legs and their five-o-clock shadow isn't yet visible thanks to the early changing of the clocks which fools only fools.

I was realizing how much I was longing to buy a gossip rag. I haven't bought one for myself since August. I did get two or three as sweet surprises from my thoughtful sweet husband who knows I'm no longer buying them and appreciates how much I thrive on the guilty pleasure of knowing all about how sleazy Angelina Jolie is. It was coming to me then, while these thoughts were surfacing, that there may be something the gym could do to drag bring me back into the fold.

A list began to form in my head on my way home, just as I jetted out of a green light with an acceleration that would have impressed every seven year old I've ever met; reaching 40 miles per hour in about 60 seconds flat...it came to me then; the answer to the question the perky fit lady on the phone had asked me; was there anything the gym could do to pry me off of my fat ass and into their super duper fitness facility?

Yes.

Yes, indeed. I think there are one or two things they could do:

• Line the road between me and them with apple fritters.

• Stuff my gym shoes with hundred dollar bills.

• Offer to switch my body for Queen Latifah's when she's not looking.

• Massage my shoulders while I toil on the elliptical.

• Promise to love me forever and ever.

• Swear not to laugh at me if I wear my tiara in for a work out.

• Build me a private room so I don't have to violently accuse of anyone staring at my giant posterior bouncing around like a pudding on fire.

• Hire Richard Armitage to be my personal trainer but stipulate that he must not fall in love with my luscious self.

• Provide me with an endless stash of unread trashy magazines because even though Heidi Montag appears to be just one of a thousand dull talentless blond people in Hollywood, I'm dying to know how she was betrayed by someone named Spence.

I don't think I ask for too much. I am a plain woman with simple needs. I am a woman with beer tastes on a water budget, but other than that...I'm every-woman. I'm you if you were really in touch with your low budget self.

(This would be as good a time as any to go and take my meds.)

Exit stage left.