Sunday, August 25, 2013

Late for Dinner

I was late for dinner.  I stopped for a shower.  It was better for everyone this way.

I attended a class which was supposed to help us work on balance.  This went pretty well (although my dad got dizzy in there, and all of sudden, both instructors were surrounding him and giving him water and stuff).  From my point of view, it was something of a refresher of some of the positions I'd learned in skating.  Which is to say, we were instructed to hold several one-foot awkward balancey things, and -- much of the time -- making myself get into that position resulted in a good deal of bobbing and weaving, until such time as I sort of rebalanced myself, and it felt familiar as a skating pose.

(Also:  one foot balance secret I learned skating -- when you lift one foot, it's harder to balance it tucked neatly at your ankle than it is to hold the knee up in front of you.  If you've got your knee up high enough that you can balance a pizza box on your thigh, you can hold that position easy.  And it looks more impressive, too.  Go on, try it.  I'll wait.)

After that, we attended a class called "Desert Drumming."  I envisioned us all sitting in a circle, drumming on drums.  In reality, we were planted fairly close to each other, in a formation where we were each behind a physioball on a plastic stand, about two steps away from the people on either side.  We have drumsticks.  Music is played (it sounds like the super-duper-extended version of "The Rhythm is Gonna Get You") and our teacher directs us to tap both drumsticks on the ball at every beat.  So far so good.  Then alternate drumsticks -- but each time, sort of sway to the side, and hold the stick straight up the air before smacking the ball.  Next thing you know, she's got us doing dance steps over to the sides, and hitting our neighbors' balls (that doesn't sound right), shaking our butts, swinging the drumsticks around our heads (sometimes dangerously), and hitting the sticks on the drum stands and floor.  And it never fucking stops.  (This is why I'm not entirely sure if it was the same song.  It might've gone off into something else, but it just kept going.)  For about 40 minutes, we're doing a high energy dance/drumming routine, and whenever we think we're going to stop, the Evil Taskmistress directs us to drum on the drum as hard and as fast as we can, for what was first 10 seconds, and ultimately worked its way up to 30 seconds.  And then we'd start the routine again from the top.  Once or twice, I wondered how many people in the room were imagining her head in place of the physioballs we were whacking on.  I finished that course drenched.  I could've freaking wrung out the scrunchie from my hair.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I (rather annoyingly) looked pretty good.  It was all that healthy glow business.  Sweating like a pig, face flushed from exertion, hair all curly from the moisture... and I thought I looked healthier than I have in years.  

I followed up with a stretch class -- and, even an hour after the drumming class was over, there was no escaping the conclusion that I was well and truly spent (and in no condition to be around civilized people for mealtime).

I had every intention of stopping by the gym to work out for what would be the fourth day in a row before I leave tomorrow, but I've run out of clothes.  Which is to say, it would be terribly wrong for me to inflict my-post-exercise clothing on people sitting next to me on an aircraft, and all I've got left is one set of clean clothes.  (I hadn't really thought it through when packing -- that I'd need both exercise clothes and vaguely presentable clean clothes for each day.  As it is, my dinner ensemble tonight consisted of the free T-shirt the resort gave me, paired with the other side of a reversible skirt I wore two days ago.  And, yeah, that looks as bad as you'd imagine.  Worse, probably.  But, ohmygod, clean.)

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