Workin' Hard!

Every tiny little bit of flesh in my body is quivering. I can sit perfectly still and feel it trembling. Is that a good thing?

Perhaps I should back up.

Yesterday after work I went home and changed clothes, and then went to the gym. I immediately got the presentation, and the deal was so good that I went ahead and signed up. I had an 8-week pass from the Discovery National Health Challenge. If I signed up, Discovery paid the initiation fee; I got a reduced monthly rate for two years; and Discovery paid the third year. At least, according to the guy who signed me up. Perhaps it's a deal Bally and Discovery worked out. Either way, I get a good rate, didn't have to pay an initiation fee, and don't have to pay anything during the third year. So I signed up, got a quick tour of the facility, met with a trainer, and signed up for my free training session. We made the appointment for 5 a.m. today.

Yes, you read that correctly. A.M., ante meridian. 5. That meant I would have to crawl out of bed at 4:40, get dressed, put my hair in a pony-tail so I wouldn't whip beads of sweat all over the place, make sure I had my lock and key and membership card handy, drive to the gym, and be there at 5 a.m. I was there at 4:57 a.m., and people were already inside exercising. Mental note: apparently they open before 5 a.m., even though they say they open at 5. That's good.

So I went in, swiped my membership card the wrong way. Swiped it the right way. It still didn't take. Shrugged, went into the locker room and locked up my purse. Tied my key to my shoelace, and found the trainer. She whipped my butt! Not literally, of course, but it might as well have been. She worked me hard for 50 minutes. Then I crawled (again, not literally) to the locker room, got my stuff out of the locker, gave her my membership card, she swiped it the right way--it took when she swiped it--, signed the book indicating that I had received my free personal training session, got home, stripped before I had gotten down the hall to the bathroom, took a shower in the unheated bathroom and didn't even care that it was unheated because I was still so hot, got out of the shower to find that my face was still beet red from the workout, went naked as a jaybird down the hall to the bedroom to get my undies on, and then whined until Joe got up and dried my hair for me.

About the red face: since I changed my diet, my rosacea has cleared up. Apparently my facial skin doesn't like processed food. That's okay, because my body doesn't like it. Well, it does, in the sense that it holds on to it. But when I quit eating processed food, my body lets go of it and I lose weight. Anyway, I don't have to use green primer under my makeup anymore, which is nice. But I do still have the problem about my face turning beet red as soon as I do any physical exertion. Which means that my face probably turned beet red within 5 minutes of starting my workout, and it stayed beet red until my husband finished blow-drying my hair. That's two hours of having a horribly red face. It's not a pretty sight. I'm not talking about a delicate rose blush on a porcelain face. I'm talking about a normally porcelain face that turns a hideous shade of red ALL OVER. I'm not dying, may not even be physically uncomfortable (although I was this morning). I just turn red. On my face.

Anyway, it felt good. But I noticed as I sat down that my entire body, every muscle, is quivering. Not in a "wow that was great sex!" way. In a "wow what the hell did you do to me and are you going to keep doing this because I'm not sure I'm up for it" way.

And the answer is yes, I'm going to keep doing this, because I enjoyed it and I like getting smaller and feeling good about how I look and feel and being healthy. So you'd damn well better be up for it!