Observations from a public shower

One of the things I dislike is my inability to exercise anymore.

And replace "inability" with "refusal" and that statement would be accurate.

I commented about this phenomenon to someone the other day, and he said "You are waiting for some great motivation. You are waiting to work out until working out is pleasurable. Well, guess what? Exercising is not fun. By definition, it's strenuous. But you still have to do it. It's a chore. No one likes it. Doesn't change the fact that you have to do it."

Ok, that's not an entire quote, but that's a paraphrase of what my friend said.

It was like a light bulb went off over my head. I don't have to like working out.

Now, in truth, my Aussie friend P has been saying this for years. She hates working out, but she does it religiously. And she looks fantastic.

For some reason, though, having my opinion validated that working out is not fun has helped me. To work out. Why? I have no idea. Because I'm mental, probably. Maybe because my mother always talks about how much she loves apples and eating vegetables all the time. And my one sister who adores running and complains how sad she is when she can't go running because her knee is sore. And my husband who loves lifting weights and sprinting on the treadmill.

Give me a break. I love playing tennis and horseback riding and hiking, but the gym form of exercise is dead to me.

Regardless, I joined a gym today. I now workout during the lunch hour.

It's quite a nice gym. The kind with a sauna and a steam room, and hair dryers and mouth wash dispensed in teensy dixie cups and lotion and hair gel and towels, the kind where the staff, genuinely or not, wish you smiling hello's and goodbye's, and the kind with free coffee and tv's and q-tips and curling irons.

And showers.

I went during a busy time, and I was not surprised that there were many other women in the locker room at the same time as me.

I don't know if it's because I'm from the mid-west, or I'm Catholic, or just a plain ol' prude, but I hate showering with other people. It's the one drawback to this gym: the showers are set up in one sort of long room, 8 shower heads, no dividing walls.

There are also 4 showers off to the side with curtains, but (a) I will not admit I am not confident in my appearance and use one of them; and perhaps more importantly (b) when I have used them in the past, the shower curtain static-clings to me and I can never get clean enough after that.

As a result, I was in the shower today with 3 other women. There is nothing good about that except, I suppose, we didn't waste any water and we are now all clean.

But it's weird. I know that as a new gym person I will have to become accustomed to it, but I don't think I ever will.

It's weird. As part of my new self-validation, I will say it again: it's weird to shower with strangers. But oh dear god, it would be more weird to shower with people you know from work. I shudder to think of showering with a judge I have to appear before. Good. God. I think I'd vomit.

At any rate, I still managed to muse about a few things:

~I have quite nice ankles. I am not prone to cankles. That's a good thing.

~I have quite nice hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. I like them very much.

~Unfortunately for me, what was a layered bob hairstyle in September 2008 has now grown into a sad imitation of the Rachel from the 1990s. No amount of styling changes that fact. I just have to wait for it to grow more.

~I need to dye my hair again.

~I can't wait for the French Open to start.

~I need to sign up for a tennis league.

~I wonder if anyone else here has noticed how long it's been since my last pedicure.