Se7en + 1 Joined The Gym….

What can I say: we joined it!!! Yes a insane dimension has been added to my life… I joined the gym when I was pregnant with Hood #8, I needed all the exercise I could get – and a bi-weekly swim up and down the pool a few times was all I needed to keep sane and well buoyant!!! But since the arrival of Hood #8, and yes that is EIGHT whole months ago, I have found it nearly impossible to get back to the gym. and there is not a whole lot of “nearly” involved here!!!

Anyway, it has been really cold and wintry and I haven’t had too much enthusiasm for a daily run on the beach… I can do cold and wet… but cold and windy beaches and little people are not a good combination. So I enquired how much it would cost to join the gym for the “se7en +1” team. And knowing how much a local school charges for homeschool kids to join a single sport per term (gasp) – I thought my kids would never do organized sport on account of this, I thought I would be reeling in horror at the cost of gym membership for the rest of time. Turns out to be such a good deal, finally the hideous cost of our Medical Insurance that we never ever use, (but its a “perk”) paid off… There’s a deal because of the insurance and it was such a good one that I had to contain myself as I seriously nearly skipped out the gym… hang on I haven’t done any real live exercise for so long that I probably couldn’t skip out of there if I tried.

So amidst great excitement we headed over to sign ourselves up for this new and eagerly anticipated activity… After filling in a triplicate page of indemnity form for each kid to get into the gym, we settled down to fill in membership forms, indemnity forms, receipt forms, a lot of forms… two and a half hours later I was still filling in forms… but did the hoods enthusiasm wane – not a bit of it!!! So their very first gym impression was bouncing around a glass office for hours while they waited for me to fill in forms… and then a momentary look at their play area: huge indoor jungle gym, climbing wall and a room for little people packed with more new and exciting toys than they will ever see at home,  and then we dashed home.

Followed by some serious bouncing off the walls at home and waiting and waiting for “the mother person” to say lets go to gym. Armed with new, shiny, funky, cards a day later we headed out the door… And this is when it should have  crossed my mind: “What would I do while they were working out?” I know it is obvious, but wait I had just used all my energy up in signing them off on their great adventure.

Now this was no quick and simple trip… my kids wanted to pack… no we did not need to pack, though we did need to find shorts for everyone who has been wearing jeans for so many weeks that finding shorts was a bit of an achievement  for some of us. Then I had left the car windows open for the car to “air” and a torrential storm had burst from the sky and our vehicle was somewhat sodden… then we were very nearly out of gas and the traffic was awful and the wiper blades haven’t yet been fixed… long story: We got there.

The reception desk is not used to a pack of kids arriving!!! They are friendly but bewildered, they try and call out names as they swipe cards but let’s just say the trip through reception is somewhat interesting!!! And into the kids zone… everybody off to their respective corners and as I drop the last one off the lady in charge says: “Enjoy your workout”… What? Huh? I looked around. She was talking to me!!! She was!!! And guess what I hadn’t thought the whole gym thing through at all… In fact there and then I knew I had committed a grave error of judgement. I am indeed expected to “Work out” during this time… actually exercise. It sounds like such a good idea, until you have to do it!!!

So there I was with time on my hands, miles from my laptop – couldn’t blog, couldn’t do chores and feeling a little out of place – we are talking kitted out in mother gear, nothing athletic here!!! So I stealthily clambered the stairs to a place called “cardio” – Now this is not where you have actual heart attacks it is a place where you exercise your heart!!! I clambered onto a bike… And off and on and off and on, while I tried to figure out what height for the saddle. Let’s just say “it’s been a while” and no height was comfortable… and settled down to peddle for twenty minutes. By this time my kids would be nowhere near ready to go home so onto the treadmill. Now I have never actually been on a treadmill before, not in living memory, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to step onto this lethal weapon. So I asked a super athlete person, dressed in a real track-suit, and she showed me how to to turn the speed down really slow, slow enough to step on it – almost.  She said in a concerned voice: “It doesn’t really go any slower.”  I made it, gripping the handles all the way my legs spent twenty minutes shuffling to keep up with this whipper snapper of a machine – the whole time thinking “How on earth am I going to get off this thing?”  Needless to say I made it off. I knew that my kids wouldn’t want to leave just yet so I staggered, with shaking limbs down the stairs and sat in the change room and stared at the lockers… I called it recovery!!!

When I had recovered sufficiently I grabbed my kids and made a hasty retreat from the gym – into the night and home where the father person had made dinner… Four hours later my cheeks were still glowing from exertion and I have figured out how to beat the winter cold!!! I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk after that happy event but I am proud to say the very next day I was indeed up on my feet and we have returned to the gym for more misadventures!!! I am slightly better prepared and still have no idea where the comfortable spot for the bike saddle is… but there is hope that by the end of winter I will be hoppity-skipping up those gym stairs and taking pity on all mothers who venture to gym in a desperate bid to get the energy run out of their kids legs.

This Post  is part of The Thirty Minute Mom’s Challenge at Steady Mom. There are no images for this post – for very obvious reaso. And I am afraid a couple of posts are only wandering forth from our blog really slowly and that folks is because I am in stagger mode… staggering to keep up myself mode.