Along the same lines as my college search PSA and my Corporate Wife PSA, I now present a Gym etiquette PSA.
But first, an update on my workout plan: Success! Well, sort of.
I went to the gym with no intention of running. I'm feeling a thousand times better and I'm pretty breathing normally. Still, I didn't want to push myself because I'm still not 100% healthy. And yet, I got on the treadmill, turned on my "work out" channel on my Pandora blackberry app and somehow convinced myself that I could do it today. I could run! I could run far!
AND I DID!
Ok, it wasn't far. But it was longer than I'd done, and it was exactly what my program had told me I was supposed to do. Well, almost.
And here's where the PSA comes in.
I'm running along, twenty seconds from finishing my last interval, and I'm in pain. I was tired and starting to get a cramp, but I wanted to finish. Jog, jog, jog, fifteen seconds to go and then all of the sudden...
SLAM
I hit the front bar on the treadmill right below my ribs. My treadmill had just come to a complete stop. At the same time, a woman had jumped onto the treadmill next to me (actually one foot still on my treadmill) where her son (or so I thought) was just starting his workout.
Had I hit the stop button? Had I dislodged the little magnetic thing? Nope.
The little whore had knocked out the power cord when she jumped on the treadmills. The ones people were already using.
In knocking the cord out, she also bent the prongs so there I was squatting on the ground, huffing and puffing, and bending the prongs back in place so I could plug it back in. It took her a good minute to realize that when I slammed into the bar and immediately started checking everything on my treadmill to see why my treadmill had suddenly stopped, it was because that pesky thing she kicked was in fact the plug to my treadmill, and not because I like injure myself. When she did recognize that I hadn't voluntarily thrown myself into the front of the treadmill, she said, "Was that me?"
And here's my PSA.
When I responded, "Yes" to her question, the proper response should have been a sincere apology. What did she say?
"Oh."
And that's why I'm writing a PSA about gym etiquette. And posting it as my Facebook status. And maybe I'll tweet something too. How long before #gymwhore becomes a trending topic? I'm kidding. About the trending topic thing, not about facebook. I had that posted before I even finished my cool down.
Oh, and I'm calling her a whore and not some other derogatory name because the guy I thought was her son was actually her husband, and cougar seems to be a badge of honor rather than an insult. But they had to have at least a twenty year age difference. He was probably younger than me, and she was... well, my mom's age. Gross.
Anyway, I'm calling this trip to the gym a success. I may not have run the final fifteen seconds, but I would have. And I didn't call the woman a whore to her face, so that's also success on my part.
Go me.
EDIT:
While I was running and feeling really proud of myself, I thought about a post in which I would discuss how the music I was listening to really inspired me and got me through the horrible, horrible running. Then the whore ruined my day. Oh well. I still want to share because these fun songs really picked me up, put a smile on my face, and got me to run (or kept me running) when I really, really didn't want to. Oh sure, some of them might not be "cool" according to people who have bad taste in music (ahem), but it worked for me. So there.
Hot n Cold by Katy Perry
So What by Pink
Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus
Hey Soul Sister by Train
Gold Digger by Kanye West
Showing posts with label country club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label country club. Show all posts
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
A real Real Housewife activity
Today, I'm doing my best impersonation of a real Real Housewife of Charlotte. I'm spending the day at a country club.
My husband and I belong to a country club. It's not what you think - we didn't pay an enormous initiation fee or have ridiculous dues or anything. Country clubs are a way of life in Charlotte. For example, we have three, no FOUR, within a two mile radius of our place. It's kind of ridiculous. Anyway, our neighborhood has a country club and the initiation fees and dues are part of the home owners association so it just made sense to join.
Our club offers a lot, including a restaurant/bar with good food, four televisions, and a table next to an outlet. Really, the table next to the outfit is key for me because I like to go to the restaurant/bar and work. Generally it's very quiet, except for Fridays when all the golfers descend upon quiet place, drink a lot, and get obnoxiously loud. There is also no internet access, which is usually good for me because I get distracted by things like the internet. (I can get internet, when I need to, but that's another story.) The other major benefit is that I can get up and go to the bathroom while I'm working without fear of someone swiping my stuff, which is the major downside to places like Panera and Starbucks. I love those places, but when I'm working alone, use of the bathroom usually signals that it's time to pack up and go.
So today I'm working at the club, but not without a little eavesdropping first.
Usually it's just men in here, who stop in for a drink and a snack after golfing. They have two conversations: 1) Tiger Woods, and whether his extracurricular activities have affected their perception of him, his popularity, and/or his golf game, and 2) Poorly dissecting whatever non-golf sporting event is happening at the time. For men who claim to be sports fanatics and refuse to let me change the televisions off of the ESPN networks, they really know very little about sports. For example, this was the conversation I overheard during the World Cup:
Dope 1: "The US plays tomorrow (Thursday) at 10am against Slovakia ."
Actually, they played Friday against Slovenia, as I had just told the dope who incorrectly repeated this information to his friend.
Dope 2: "They have the possibility of advancing, but we gotta get through England first."
All true, except the US had already played England and tied 1-1.
My favorite quotes were during March Madness, but I can't remember the quotes for the life of me. I do remember thinking, "This is ACC country, the supposed Mecca of college basketball, and you don't even know that UNI upset Kansas?"
The women, on the other hand, gossip about the other women in the club. They talk about everything, and quite viciously at times. Today, it was about a woman in their tennis league and whether she can really afford to continue in the tennis league, given her financial situation. I mean, her car has 200,000 miles on it and if she can't afford to get a new one, how can she afford to play in the tennis league? Over a lunch, these women decided to replace the woman with the difficult financial situation. They weren't going to ask her, of course, whether she was planning to continue playing tennis or really what her financial situation was. They just were going to replace her. Got it.
This is my fear of becoming a real housewife - I could become one of these women. I gossip and judge people of course, and I'm obviously doing it right now, but I don't spread rumors about people and I definitely don't make decisions to cut people out of my activities. Rather, I'm afraid that this will become normal for me because this is normal conversation at the country club. It's part of our culture, and I'm afraid that it will become part of my normal world if I become too involved in these activities.
However, their cattiness or the men's ignorance of sports doesn't prevent me from spending my Thursday afternoon hanging at the country club just like a real housewife of Charlotte should.
My husband and I belong to a country club. It's not what you think - we didn't pay an enormous initiation fee or have ridiculous dues or anything. Country clubs are a way of life in Charlotte. For example, we have three, no FOUR, within a two mile radius of our place. It's kind of ridiculous. Anyway, our neighborhood has a country club and the initiation fees and dues are part of the home owners association so it just made sense to join.
Our club offers a lot, including a restaurant/bar with good food, four televisions, and a table next to an outlet. Really, the table next to the outfit is key for me because I like to go to the restaurant/bar and work. Generally it's very quiet, except for Fridays when all the golfers descend upon quiet place, drink a lot, and get obnoxiously loud. There is also no internet access, which is usually good for me because I get distracted by things like the internet. (I can get internet, when I need to, but that's another story.) The other major benefit is that I can get up and go to the bathroom while I'm working without fear of someone swiping my stuff, which is the major downside to places like Panera and Starbucks. I love those places, but when I'm working alone, use of the bathroom usually signals that it's time to pack up and go.
So today I'm working at the club, but not without a little eavesdropping first.
Usually it's just men in here, who stop in for a drink and a snack after golfing. They have two conversations: 1) Tiger Woods, and whether his extracurricular activities have affected their perception of him, his popularity, and/or his golf game, and 2) Poorly dissecting whatever non-golf sporting event is happening at the time. For men who claim to be sports fanatics and refuse to let me change the televisions off of the ESPN networks, they really know very little about sports. For example, this was the conversation I overheard during the World Cup:
Dope 1: "The US plays tomorrow (Thursday) at 10am against Slovakia ."
Actually, they played Friday against Slovenia, as I had just told the dope who incorrectly repeated this information to his friend.
Dope 2: "They have the possibility of advancing, but we gotta get through England first."
All true, except the US had already played England and tied 1-1.
My favorite quotes were during March Madness, but I can't remember the quotes for the life of me. I do remember thinking, "This is ACC country, the supposed Mecca of college basketball, and you don't even know that UNI upset Kansas?"
The women, on the other hand, gossip about the other women in the club. They talk about everything, and quite viciously at times. Today, it was about a woman in their tennis league and whether she can really afford to continue in the tennis league, given her financial situation. I mean, her car has 200,000 miles on it and if she can't afford to get a new one, how can she afford to play in the tennis league? Over a lunch, these women decided to replace the woman with the difficult financial situation. They weren't going to ask her, of course, whether she was planning to continue playing tennis or really what her financial situation was. They just were going to replace her. Got it.
This is my fear of becoming a real housewife - I could become one of these women. I gossip and judge people of course, and I'm obviously doing it right now, but I don't spread rumors about people and I definitely don't make decisions to cut people out of my activities. Rather, I'm afraid that this will become normal for me because this is normal conversation at the country club. It's part of our culture, and I'm afraid that it will become part of my normal world if I become too involved in these activities.
However, their cattiness or the men's ignorance of sports doesn't prevent me from spending my Thursday afternoon hanging at the country club just like a real housewife of Charlotte should.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Water aerobics bitches
I go to water aerobics class three or four times a week. We had a couple of intolerably hot weeks in Charlotte and water aerobics was a great way to get my exercise and not die. Now I just love it. The class is mostly comprised of older ladies, but my instructor gives suggestions on how to make it harder so I can really get a good work out. It's a lot more fun than the treadmill or elliptical, and given the time of day the class is offered, a hang out for Charlotte housewives.
The ladies in the class are a mixed bag. Some come to socialize, some come to exercise, some do a combination of both. I generally don't care what the reasons are as long as they don't distract our instructor from the lesson. There is one exception to this indifference: The stick thin women who do nothing and still get to be stick thin. They need to leave.
We have two women in the class who I'd guess are in their late 40s. They both wear bikinis to water aerobics, and not the athletic two piece types either. They wear the kind that look like if they bounce at all, their breasts will be on display for all of us. They may relish that idea, but I certainly don't need or want to see that. They come to class and talk the entire time and exert no effort at all. Half of the time they're not doing the right exercise and the other half of the time they simple go through the motions. For example, our instructor told us to grapevine across the pool so they did... slower than the 80 year old woman who just had her hip replaced.
Why pay for a class when you're not going to take advantage of it? Those are the kinds of people who make me angry in exercise classes. I'm jumping and propelling and squeezing and suspending and all the things that my instructor tells me to do to make it harder, and these sticks are doing nothing and getting to be thin. Grr. I hope there's some sort of karma that will right this injustice.
Until then, I'm just going to splash them as much as possible.
The ladies in the class are a mixed bag. Some come to socialize, some come to exercise, some do a combination of both. I generally don't care what the reasons are as long as they don't distract our instructor from the lesson. There is one exception to this indifference: The stick thin women who do nothing and still get to be stick thin. They need to leave.
We have two women in the class who I'd guess are in their late 40s. They both wear bikinis to water aerobics, and not the athletic two piece types either. They wear the kind that look like if they bounce at all, their breasts will be on display for all of us. They may relish that idea, but I certainly don't need or want to see that. They come to class and talk the entire time and exert no effort at all. Half of the time they're not doing the right exercise and the other half of the time they simple go through the motions. For example, our instructor told us to grapevine across the pool so they did... slower than the 80 year old woman who just had her hip replaced.
Why pay for a class when you're not going to take advantage of it? Those are the kinds of people who make me angry in exercise classes. I'm jumping and propelling and squeezing and suspending and all the things that my instructor tells me to do to make it harder, and these sticks are doing nothing and getting to be thin. Grr. I hope there's some sort of karma that will right this injustice.
Until then, I'm just going to splash them as much as possible.
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