I got up this morning at 5:30am, so I could hit the gym before my dogsitting duties. I'd forgotten a little promise I made two months ago; to feed two furbabies this week who live roughly halfway between my house and the office. So I had to figure out how I could both feed the dogs and meet my exercise buddy Becca AND still get to work on time, with cat feeding, personal hygiene, lunchmaking, and breakfast crammed in there somewhere in the middle. 5:30 it is.
Did you know its dark at 5:30, even in the summer? Yeah? I didn't.
I am functionally brain damaged early in the morning so I try to make it easy for myself. All the clothes are in a pile with the shoes and the barrette to pin back my Peppermint Patty football. The drill goes like this:
Alarm goes off
Sit bolt upright, pull on clothes. Try not to garrotte myself on the Uniboober. (Good God. I tried to find an image for this and found a 'Nursing Sports Bra'. Is anyone so busy they need to combine those two activities? )
Socks/shoes/shuffle to the bathroom
Brush teeth (Why? Why not!)
Drive to gym
Stagger across parking lot wondering if I'm insane
There is a group of women in my gym I like to call The Fantastic Four. Boybody runs on the treadmill, then hits the elliptical both forwards and backwards. (I don't mean PEDALING backwards-- she actually STANDS backwards on it-- a maneuver that would surely buy me an ambulance ride.) She's built like a piece of Shaker furniture. The Elliptical Terminator gets on her device of choice and rides it like it betrayed her in some perverse and bitter romance and dammit, its going to pay. Little House on the Prairie WALKS to the gym, works out, and walks home. She has steel rimmed glasses and a Minnesota Pioneer Woman hairdo and wears a black tracksuit with a hood regardless of the heat, riding the recumbent bike with dogged amusement. The Nurse is, you guessed it, a nurse, who apparently never sleeps because she is at the gym at Zero-Dark-Thirty, works out, showers, puts on scrubs, and goes to work. Yet I've seen her at the hospital all hours. She looks capable of putting unruly patients in a hammerlock.
This morning, they were all there, working away, as I crept in to the too bright room with the too loud morning news with Elmira's favorite perky moonfaced girl. (Would someone PLEASE run over Ana's hair with a paddlebrush and some Frizz-Ease during the commercial breaks? Jeez.) My regular attendance apparently now warrants a NOD OF HELLO from one or more of the F4. I'm so proud.
But today there is someone else among us.
His superhero name is
THE MOISTURE.
I sign in and while I'm doing that, I hear the treadmill on the other side of the pillar to my right going great guns. Whoever is on it is just flailing away. At this point, mind, the gym has only been open for twenty minutes. I peek around the corner and get an eyeful of sweat-slicked man teats. The Moisture is not wearing a shirt. Not wearing a shirt and sweating like he's hammering the last mile of the Boston Marathon. He has reached this advanced state of swampage in twenty minutes.
I scurry to the bikes and studiously examine Ana Liss' frizzy hair until the pounding behind me stops. Creeping over for my turn, I can only hope that TM has cleaned up the nimbus of his urgent efforts before leaving. I'm half right. It is apparent that he wiped down the handles and whatnot, but the floor and siderests look as if they were recently occupied by a nervous dog.
I wish Curves was open at 5:30.
Did you know its dark at 5:30, even in the summer? Yeah? I didn't.
I am functionally brain damaged early in the morning so I try to make it easy for myself. All the clothes are in a pile with the shoes and the barrette to pin back my Peppermint Patty football. The drill goes like this:
Alarm goes off
Sit bolt upright, pull on clothes. Try not to garrotte myself on the Uniboober. (Good God. I tried to find an image for this and found a 'Nursing Sports Bra'. Is anyone so busy they need to combine those two activities? )
Socks/shoes/shuffle to the bathroom
Brush teeth (Why? Why not!)
Drive to gym
Stagger across parking lot wondering if I'm insane
There is a group of women in my gym I like to call The Fantastic Four. Boybody runs on the treadmill, then hits the elliptical both forwards and backwards. (I don't mean PEDALING backwards-- she actually STANDS backwards on it-- a maneuver that would surely buy me an ambulance ride.) She's built like a piece of Shaker furniture. The Elliptical Terminator gets on her device of choice and rides it like it betrayed her in some perverse and bitter romance and dammit, its going to pay. Little House on the Prairie WALKS to the gym, works out, and walks home. She has steel rimmed glasses and a Minnesota Pioneer Woman hairdo and wears a black tracksuit with a hood regardless of the heat, riding the recumbent bike with dogged amusement. The Nurse is, you guessed it, a nurse, who apparently never sleeps because she is at the gym at Zero-Dark-Thirty, works out, showers, puts on scrubs, and goes to work. Yet I've seen her at the hospital all hours. She looks capable of putting unruly patients in a hammerlock.
This morning, they were all there, working away, as I crept in to the too bright room with the too loud morning news with Elmira's favorite perky moonfaced girl. (Would someone PLEASE run over Ana's hair with a paddlebrush and some Frizz-Ease during the commercial breaks? Jeez.) My regular attendance apparently now warrants a NOD OF HELLO from one or more of the F4. I'm so proud.
But today there is someone else among us.
His superhero name is
THE MOISTURE.
I sign in and while I'm doing that, I hear the treadmill on the other side of the pillar to my right going great guns. Whoever is on it is just flailing away. At this point, mind, the gym has only been open for twenty minutes. I peek around the corner and get an eyeful of sweat-slicked man teats. The Moisture is not wearing a shirt. Not wearing a shirt and sweating like he's hammering the last mile of the Boston Marathon. He has reached this advanced state of swampage in twenty minutes.
I scurry to the bikes and studiously examine Ana Liss' frizzy hair until the pounding behind me stops. Creeping over for my turn, I can only hope that TM has cleaned up the nimbus of his urgent efforts before leaving. I'm half right. It is apparent that he wiped down the handles and whatnot, but the floor and siderests look as if they were recently occupied by a nervous dog.
I wish Curves was open at 5:30.
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14 comments:
Ewwww - nothing worse than sweat everywhere and naked jiggling manboobs before breakfast.
*shudder*
Exactly why I do not frequent the gym, but curves was a goodtime.
Manteats...shit, we just had that guy move from the house behind us. He never wore a shirt in any weather and he was seriously freckled to boot.
For your viewing pleasure - a hilarious site I found:
http://www.manboobs.co.uk/submissions/topten
Oh man. I've got to stop reading you before I go to bed. I laugh so hard I cry and almost wake up The Child.
Oh man..Manboobs at Dawn!
At first when I looked at that..I was so tired...I had to look again.."what the heck" I says to myself..why I must read this one.
Thanks for the comment.
Man boobs creep me out..
hehe
cleaning up your own sweat is just basic gym etiquette. shame on him.
HahahahaHAHAHAHA!!!
Oh, I love your descriptions of the gym women. That elliptical woman could be me (not the backwards-walking one). Maybe you should've asked The Nurse about the Nursing Sports Bra?
Congrats for getting up early to work out. Sorry you had to see wet man-boobs at that hour. Gaaah.
JD at I Do Things
u poor bastard....lol
great post.
Some men are proud of their manteats.
Um, yeah. Thanks for that image. Excuse me while I go pour bleach in my eyes to get rid of the manboobs that are burned into my retinas.
Dead. OMG. I'm laughing so hard at your mental image. Thank you for commenting on my blog because now I have found yours and I look forward to reading more! Yay!
Scary pic. Thanks. NOT.
And I do believe that 'The Moisture' is one of the best nicknames I've heard. ROFL!
Holy Jeebus. I read your title, looked at the picture, and thought, "I actually don't need this post to do more for me than this. I am laughing and gagging already." Then I kept reading, because I'm a reading whore, and I got all happy and distracted by everything else in your post, like being "built like Shaker furniture." By the end, I was just cruising along, and then eff-all if you didn't go and hit me with the main point of your post, which was the reality of those shirtless boobs doin' all that.
As I said, Holy Jeebus.
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