Zoom Bye Aaaaaye Mother Fuckers!!!

There are those who are rhythm-less and then there are the most rhythm-less of the rhythm-less.  When we signed up for Zumba classes I sadly discovered my friends and I belong to the latter group. This is no shit...we suck...big time.

We take up the back row, my Far Side Friends and I.  The Far Sidians...me, Scari, O.F., and Yvettte.  And what a graceless lot we are.  All trying in vain to follow the instructor as she Zumba's her way through the routines.

Who knew the most flexible things on our bodies would be our necks which, contrary to all laws of nature, rotate in true Exorcist fashion so that no matter which way our bodies are going our heads are facing the instructor...to see if we're doing it right...which, more often than not...we aren't.  We may not have mottled green skin and we aren't projectile vomiting pea soup...yet, but I think Linda Blair would be totally impressed at our swiveling neck moves.  For a while I thought I was the only one doing this but when I looked around, all my Far Side friends were doing it too!  I took a ridiculous amount of comfort in that fact.  Still, the whole time I'm secretly praying there aren't hidden video cameras somewhere recording potential YouTube clips of us in all our graceless splendor.

There's a teenage girl who's the daughter of one of the Zoom Bye Aye'ers who sometimes stands against the wall behind us.  I think she's using her phone to take videos of us so she and her friends have something to laugh at.  Do I sound paranoid?????

When we started, our instructor was K, who looks like Frances Fisher.

K is very enthusiastic.  She's trying to motivate us.  I like her because even she screws up sometimes. She gets all big eyed and laughs.  At the end of each class, she gives us a big toothy grin, claps her hands and says "good job" like we we're a bunch of toddlers who'd just put our toys in the toy box for the first time.  I want to turn to Scari and clap my hands and say "good job" in a mocking sort of voice, but I'm afraid K would see me.

The time before last when we showed up, there was a substitute instructor, Andi.
She's much younger than K and is built kinda like a linebacker for the 49'ers.

"Well Zumba doesn't seem to be workin' too well for her" said the always, if by always you mean never, subtle Scari...after which opposite of little Andi kicked our asses. Who knew a chubby white girl could move like that??

When we went to our first class, K the instructor was at the front, facing us.  So I figured when she moved her right foot, we would move our right feet. Au contraire...when she moved her right foot, the whole rest of the class, except me, moved their left foot.  The exact opposite of what the teacher was doing.  It seemed so wrong.  But by doing it backwards, we move in the same direction as the teacher.  You have no idea how hard it is for me to wrap my head around this.

This isn't the only problem I have.  And thankfully, again, I'm not alone here.  See, you're suppose to move your arms at the same time your feet are moving.  The whole point being a nice choreographed routine.  Hah!  If I try to move my arms the way they're supposed to go, my feet never seem to do the right thing...and if I try to do the feet right, the arms move wrong.  I've always thought I was able to multi task but apparently I lose this ability where any type of rhythmic dance movements are involved.  I blame my mother for this...and pretty much every other fault I have.  But this one seems totally real.  She was kicked off the drill team because she couldn't march in time.

Question:  How is it possible for one human being to be so physically inept? Answer:  Physical ineptitude is an inherited trait. I am living proof.

Since we, the Far Sidians, have ensconced ourselves in the back row, it stands to reason that there would be rows in front of us...between us and the instructor.  This presents yet another problem for me in that some of the Zoom Bye Aye'ers are not what would typically be referred to as "thin mints".  Some are able, through sheer body mass, to completely block any view of our instructor.  Not a problem if you know what the routines are, but if you're like me and the other Far Sidians, trying to learn, this creates something of a problem.  The one blocking my view is new too and doesn't know the routines.  She's fumbling and bumbling just like the back row.  The one next to her though, she knows all the routines so I try to follow her. The key word here is try.  No matter how much I try, I still look like a fucking geek.

Everybody, except for me, Scari, and one other Far Side wannabe from the middle row, wear fashionable exercise clothes. I'm sure the wannabe dreams of the back row where the pressure is off but none of us are budging.  We sure as hell don't want to be in the middle row where people can see us from behind.

I thought about getting fashionable workout clothes but I'm too self conscious about my lumpiness to put on skin tight attire.  I stick to baggy sweats.  Plus they hide the giant orthopedic knee brace I wear to keep my left knee from popping out of place. I didn't know I had a bum knee until the first class when I almost fell half a dozen times when it gave out.

Scari & I, again, are the only ones without the fashionable Zumba enhancing weight belt.

OF says they hide the lumpiness...I don't have the heart to pop her bubble.  They're supposed to jingle or jangle when you move your hips.  We also have rubber wrist bands with bells attached that K, the instructor, gave us at our first class.  I wear mine when I remember because I don't want to offend her.  Mine is usually silent though, because of my inability to move my arms if I'm trying to get the feet to move...sometimes I shake it just to show I can make noise too.  Usually when I'm wiping my face or pulling underwear out of my butt.

K is going to start a Pi-Yo-Tone class soon.  Some kind of Pilates/Yoga thing.  We all want to go when she does it.  Odd for me, since I actually own a Pilates machine that I bought off QVC.  It sat in my living room holding cat and dog toys until I finally hauled it over to OF's weight room.  OF has a great, albeit unused, weight room...courtesy of her ex (he whose name shall never be mentioned). Her friend, Blondie, used to use the weight room all the time.  She was an exercise fiend. Since she moved away though, it's kinda like the land of lost toys...only for exercise equipment.

I totally get why OF doesn't use her exercise equipment.  It's why I didn't use the Pilates machine. When you see it, it seems like such an easy thing.  You think, hey even I could do this.  But once the butt hits the couch, it's kinda hard to tear yourself away from Justified, or Game of Thrones, or The Real Housewives, or Hoarders, or Duck Dynasty, or Flipping Out...geeeeez...I watch too much fucking TV.  Yep, it's better to leave the house where the exercise gig can have my undivided attention...even if it can't get the required rhythmic movements.  Thanks for the inheritance Mom.

It's the Stoopidist Thing...

Things We Talk About At Work

We don't have the typical work environment.  Meaning we aren't politically correct...or socially correct...or any other kind of correct that comes to mind.  It's not that we don't know how to behave correctly.  Sometimes we have to...but only when there's a stranger in our midst...who would undoubtedly be offended by our lack of correctness.  Also it's kind of a social services agency where our seeming lack of compassion for those less fortunate than us would be severely frowned upon by almost anyone who didn't know us.

Last week I was sitting and chatting with The Princess who shared this bit of information after eating mass quantities of black jelly beans...

Princess:  Not only do they make your tongue turn black, they make your poop kinda blackish green looking.

I didn't know this because I hate the black jelly beans and always give them to her. It never occurred to me to ask her to stick out her tongue and prove it.  If she proved that, I'd take her word for it on the poop thing.  Actually I'd take her word for it on the poop thing anyway.  It would be totally weird if I asked to see her poop just to prove it was made blackish green by black jelly beans.  Even though I may be stoopid, I'm not totally weird.

I do know from personal experience that eating jelly beans will give you terrible gas.  What would life be without personal tidbits of information like this? Why do cute little jelly beans cause copious amounts of gas in the intestinal tract?  How does that work?   OF (Old Friend of undesirable snackage fame) didn't believe me about this.  She thought I was making it up until I put out bowls of jelly beans at our last Bunco game.  The next day at Zumba class she came up to me and said "You were totally right about the jelly bean thing...I couldn't believe it."  Vindication can be sweet...

So anyway, back at the office, in walks Curly who's just returned from the multi stall bathroom in our building.  Picture a forty-something woman with a giant head of hair that's sort of a macabre mix of Shirley Temple meets Woodstock.  Curly would have made a great hippie if she'd been around during that era.  Alas...she was born a little too late.

Curly has way bigger balls than any of us when it comes to discussing personal things.  We all know way more about her husband than any of us should.  To the point where I'm kinda embarrassed to look him in the eye when I run into him. There are certain things you shouldn't have knowledge of about men you haven't been intimate with...

So anyway...Curly plops down in the nearest chair and kinda giggles as she relates her latest bathroom adventure...

Curly:  You know how when you fart and it starts coming out and then gets really high sounding at the end?  I just did that in the bathroom and started to giggle a little while I was sitting there.

Me:  Was there someone else in there?

Curly:  Oh yeah.  There was a lady in the next stall sitting there.

We all start laughing.  Me because if I was trying to sneak a poop or just had an accidental noisy fart escape in a crowded bathroom I wouldn't come back and brag about it.  In fact, I'd still be sitting there waiting for the bathroom to clear out so I could escape without being identified as the loud farter or sneak a pooper.

Since we're on the subject of bodily functions, I decide to ask...

Me:  Why do you raise one of your hips off the chair when you have to fart?

I know I'm not the only person who does this because everybody seemed to understand the question and acknowledged having done it.  If you think about it, it's not like you're gonna get shot into orbit if you fail to raise a hip so why do we do it?

Then we started questioning if it's possible to walk or run while you're peeing or pooping.  I've never known anyone to do this have you?  It seems like even little kids pause when they're filling a diaper doesn't it?  But then a lot of older women, especially ones who've given birth, pee a little bit if they move suddenly.  They even make hygiene products (pee pads) for these little lapses in bodily function control.  Are pee pads any different than sanitary napkins?

Maybe we should all pretend we're astronauts and just wear clothing that accommodates all bodily functions. You know if you stop and think about it might be way less traumatic if we never stopped wearing diapers at all.  If we all just walked around pooping in our pants our whole lives then we'd never reach that critical undignified moment when we get old, lose control of our bladders and bowels and have to start wearing diapers again.  I have to admit though, the thought of sitting in a pile of my own poop is way unappealing...but it doesn't seem to bother babies...okay, they might get a little fussy...but when you change the diaper they're fine.  Would it be the same for us?

What do people in really poor countries use for toilet paper?  And where do the contestants on Survivor go to the bathroom?  Do they have toilet paper?  Because I've never seen it as a "luxury item" they can win in a contest, have you?  I wonder about things like this.

Maybe next week at work we'll have some exciting conversations about explosive diarrhea or projectile vomiting.  I can't wait.  It's the stoopidist thing.