no pain no gain

So, seeing's how our gym attendance has been waning this month, SJY and I decided to get up early on Saturday and attend a class at our gym. I get home from work around midnight, unwind for an hour or 2, then head to bed, so it takes a pretty big deal for me to get up before 10am. For some reason, I figured the 10:15 Center of Attention, taught by Fran, was reason enough. I assumed the class would be 30 minutes of various ab exercises that would motivate me to get in shape for bathing suit season. I couldn't have been more wrong.
I can't even begin to describe the experience we had in the class...but I will say that I never realize how out-of-shape I am until I attend a class with 12 other people who are bearing witness to my extreme out-of-shapeness. It was ridiculous. The class was not a 30-minute deal where we all did crunches on the floor. Ab-solutely not. The class ended up being what I like to call--Pilates on Crack.
Our instructor kept telling us to squat and take energy from the earth and give it to the sun (whatever the heck that means), all the while twisting and twirking my body in various positions. Eventually, my body was in such extreme pain that I gave up trying to look like I was keeping up with everybody else. I looked over at my equally miserable husband (who is less flexible than me--if that's even possible) and as soon as our eyes met, we dissolved into juvenile giggles in the middle of the quiet studio. I did my best to laugh quietly, but that's pretty much impossible when you're trying to suspend your body in mid-air.
On our walk home, we chalked the class up to a decent morning of entertainment and went on about our day. I headed to work but as the evening progressed, I noticed my legs and butt beginning to get sore. By the end of my shift, I was hobbling around like a frickin' geriatric. The next morning, I woke up and some kind of rigor mortis had set in in my legs. I'm not even kidding. After 2 days, I still don't have decent range of motion from my hips to my ankles. This poses a serious problem when attempting to walk. Not that SJY is doing any better. It's like we're living in a retirement community, hobbling around and complaining about our ailments 24/7.
I'm hopeful that in the next couple of days we'll be able to walk down the stairs without the fear of our legs giving out, the rigor mortis will subside, and I'll be able to quit comparing injuries with the old people down the hall. Oh, and in case you're wondering...I'm totally going back next week.

Broken

So, what do you call it when your parents are married, but they don't live in the same city
and they don't talk to each other
and they don't love each other
and you can't remember a time when they actually did?

And how do you continue to listen as complaints are filed
and lines are drawn
and fingers are pointed
and denial is rampant?

And how are you supposed to deal with the fact that they have been at it like this for years
and the family is in a constant state of trauma
and there's no indication that things will be different
anytime soon?

t

little drummer boy

So, I think it's safe to say that I have a pretty crappy track record with upstairs neighbors. In Nashville, my upstairs neighbor would bang on her floor (my ceiling) if I or any of my roommates used any water between the hours of 7-8:30am...which just so happens to be when 90% of America gets ready for work. I worked the night shift at the time and, without fail, right when I would fall asleep in the morning, the banging on my ceiling would begin. We actually had about 4 house meetings with her to address the 'banging', but we never got anywhere. Needless to say, she was an idiot.
Then, I moved to Seattle and had the unfortunate experience of living underneath 1 human and 2 pugs. All I heard, 24 hours a day, was the clickety clack of little pug toenails on the linoleum floor above me...and all night long the pugs would run back and forth, from one end of the apartment to the other, barking and wrestling until their owner dragged her drunk self home at 5am. I worked up the nerve and wrote a nasty note telling my neighbor that I had better things to do at 4am than listen to her pugs run around like wild banshees. Of course, I finally gave it to her a week before i moved out so it didn't do much good.
My current upstairs neighbor takes the cake. Apparently, he's learning how to play the drums. I hate to say it, but every day sounds like it's his first lesson. SJY and I were gonna give him a month before putting yellow post-it notes all over his front door with "You SUCK!" written all over them, but then we found out he was only 15 and we didn't want to be solely responsible for shattering his shalom. So now, usually about 3 or 4 days a week, we are privy to some of the most god-awful sounds that I have ever heard...the other day I think he was even playing along to a John Cougar Mellencamp song, which is just heinous in and of itself!
I'm currently home with the flu, and have not left my apartment in a few days. My whole body hurts, I'm blowing ungoldy amounts of snot out of my nose, and I'm exhausted. This afternoon Miss Dottie and I had just settled onto the couch for a little catnap, when all of a sudden...bam, chink, bam, bam, chink, thud, thud, (unrecognizable sound), bam, chink...totally ruined any chance of relaxation. The flu has turned my appearance into one that closely resembles Cruella Deville, so there was no way I was gonna go upstairs and kindly ask him to shut the f&%* up. There's no sense in traumatizing the poor kid. But I have decided that maybe the post-it notes weren't such a bad idea after all...