Squat! Squeeze!

I have had my abject moments at the gym but this week I hit a new low.

We were in the middle of Pilates and the teacher stopped the class to say, "This is a good time to get a drink of water."

And I just sat there. I do not need water and I do not bring it.

Then she tells everyone to get up. And everyone gets up.

Except for me! I am lying there like a dead person.

Finally everyone else is ready to go and the teacher says: "Mary, are you going to get up?"

Into the mic! With everyone listening!

Then at Mini Body Sculpt -- that great name -- the next day, things got worse.

You have to assemble these steps out of components stacked by the side of the room. I have done this a thousand times. I know how to do it. But I got into class late and so I was trying to put the step together in the middle of the class and I do not know what was wrong, I just could not do it.

I am sitting there like Jerry Lewis surrounded by blocks and boards.

So the Mini Body Sculpt teacher comes over and starts building it for me, while I am just sitting there helplessly. And everyone in the class starts laughing.

I think I was laughing harder than anyone. What's worse, through the rest of the class I could not stop giggling about it.

The music at the gym cracks me up. I wish we could work out to Leonard Pennario but that is me.

Our Pilates class always begins with Ben Lee singing this song. I have gotten affectionate in spite of myself for Ben Lee and his monotonous style. It is sort of comforting. I remember tough times in my life when I would stop the chaos and come to the gym and do Pilates and there would be the wooden floors and the high ceilings and the stretching and Ben Lee singing this silly song.

Then he sings this other monotonous but likable song.

Isn't this fun, this window into my gym experience? Pilates is prettier than Body Sculpt. In Pilates you get to kind of pretend you are a dancer. My friend Gary who teaches dance at Niagara University, he says that dancers have used Pilates exercises for decades. The stance they put you into is the same you use in ballet class, with your knees and your toes turned out.

Body Sculpt is uglier. There is a lot of "Squat" and "Squeeze." That picture at the top of this post is of Body Sculpt. We do that!

Then there is this.


Today at Body Sculpt we had to listen to Gwen Stefani singing "If I Were a Rich Girl." I just looked it up and that was who it was. Ha, ha! It is funny listening to that video clip that they are fine as long as they are singing the song from "Fiddler on the Roof." Then they can't match the melody so it just drops into this same-old same-old monotonous rap-like stuff you always hear.

Can you believe what passes as music? I mean, sometimes I can smile at it and not be crabby about it and even get affectionate about it. But still.

I feel so sorry for people going through their whole lives not hearing this.

Here is a Japanese guitar version of that song.

Then there is this.

I would like to do Pilates to that song.

Maybe I would find it easier to get up off my mat.