But I Didn't Pee my Pants. Really.

I met my friend Gin at the gym this evening. My plan was to walk around the indoor track for two hours. What the crap was I thinking??? TWO hours?! OK, the most strenuous thing I've done in the past eight years is blow my nose. After I had my third baby, I started doing step aerobics five times a week. I lost a ton of weight, I looked good, and I felt great. In fact, I turned into one of those sickening people who actually liked to exercise. I looked forward to my workout and I felt sad if I missed it. How sadistic is that?! Now I'm once again struggling to add exercise to my daily routine of cleaning spilled milk off the kitchen floor, changing toxic diapers, fishing the ice pack out of the toilet (don't ask), and trying to get marker stains out of clothes.

So, finally, I got up the energy to meet my friend at the walking track. I got to the gym and drove around for half an hour looking for the closest parking place because why should I get exercise walking from my car when I could pay the gym to let me walk around inside their building? I found a nice close space next to a snow bank the size of Mt. Everest.

I didn't realize that when Gin said, "Let's walk" that it really meant, "Let's run as if we're being chased by chainsaw wielding madmen." Oh. My. Gosh. Seriously. She's running along, not even breaking a sweat and then there's me with my stubby little legs working double time to catch up to my friend who is like 7 feet tall. I'm lumbering along, looking like the full grown mountain troll in Harry Potter, drool forming at the corner of my mouth, sweat pouring down my face, and my legs protesting the cruel and unusual punishment.

Not only was Gin running, but she was TALKING! I wasn't even able to gulp enough oxygen to support breathing, let alone TALKING. Seriously, she's easily conversing about this and that and I'm making these guttural grunts in response. Somewhere around the 400th lap I had a heart attack. At least I think I did. I'm pretty sure it was the big one.

Who ever said that exercise was good for you?! Repeat after me - exercise is evil. Pure, unadulterated evil.

I had to borrow a couple of big muscley guys from the work-out room to carry me out to my car. OK, so I didn't really, but this is my story and I'll tell it how I want.

I had decided to stop at the grocery store on the way home to pick up chocolate a few things until I got out to my car and had second thoughts about that plan. Remember when I just had to get the nice close parking spot? The one next to Mt. Everest? Well, I had managed to get out of my car without any problems, but (perhaps because my legs had turned to Jello from walking) for some reason, I had a hard time squeezing between my door and the snow bank to get in my van. I grabbed onto the handle and opened the door and in slow motion, looking like an episode of I Love Lucy, the door swung open, me still hanging onto the handle, falling back, back, woah, down, down, splat! And let me explain something here. After getting a good foot of snow dumped on us, today was 40 degrees and snow was melting, causing rivers of slush everywhere. I fell, not in an ordinary snow bank, but one of wet, slushy, putrescence.

I stood up and immediately took inventory of the damage. Was anyone watching me who will now think that I drink heavily when I work out? No. Did I hurt anything? No. Is my butt wet? Oh yes! It had to have looked like I'd just wet my pants. Now I admit, after having 6 kids, that I don't have the best bladder control in the world, but this was just ridiculous. I decided to just drive straight home instead of stopping at the grocery store. Then I remembered how much I really needed to get chocolate a few things, so I decided to brave it. I mean, how many people could possibly be at the grocery store at 9:00 on a Monday night?

For the first time in my life, I wished that I had my kids with me at the store so they could provide a distraction. If they were with me, people would be staring at them and not my wet behind. I walked in, and convinced that the lady in the produce section was not actually looking at bananas, but at my apparent lack of bladder control, I quickly removed my thick winter coat and tied the arms around my waist, trying to cover my butt because clearly, walking around a grocery store with a frippin parka wrapped around my waist was a better, more inconspicuous look than a little imperceptible dampness on the seat of my jeans.

And to top it all off - I have a blister on my little toe and I'm quite certain I'll need the jaws of life to extract me from my bed in the morning.



P.S. Thank you to Mary Beth Adomaitis who wrote a really nice article about me on Love to Know - social networking. You can read it here.