How to get Madonna's arms in 78 000 easy steps.

Despite promising in a previous blog to shun all exercise in favor of my couch,
I find myself, once again, a member of a gym.

I joined for 2 reasons.

1:
Cheap childcare. For 2 hours I pay only $9 for a nice play area and a break from the kids. That’s why I joined. I didn’t realize that the nice-looking young man, who got me to sign on the dotted line, was in fact Satan. Sure the kids are having fun. But I’m getting harassed by the treadmill, bullied by the Stair Master, spanked by the butt machine and I think the abdominal weight contraption pulled my hair. All the time I could see Lucifer laughing at me while filing my contract in the SUCKER MOM section of Hades.

2:
Something had to be done about my “Oprah arms”. Even my husband who has always tiptoed (as quietly as a 6.8 giant can) around the subject of flab, has raised an eyebrow at them. He stopped short of actually flicking them when he saw my “Are you shitting me?” look. This is a true story. He will try to deny it.

This is what I think about gyms. They are places where people with outrageously good bodies go to show other people how good their bodies are. I say this, as every single gym I have ever been to has more people standing around than actually working out. And the standers are never the tubsters. Never. The standers are the bodies we want. The bodies we get puffy, sweat-cultivated-acne-pockmarked and beetroot faced to have. The standers never sweat. They never have Lake Erie etched into their t-shirt back. They don’t heave, wheeze, moan or desperately gulp-suck their asthma inhaler for breath. They just stand; “Here is my gorgeous body. Look at me you pathetic excuse for what a human being could be, look at me.”

So why do I bother? Well, I believe that with the right amount of torture, pain and suffering I can reach the point where I will no longer have to go to the gym to work out. I will be able to just stand. I will have achieved ridiculously good body nirvana and the coin you bounce off my well-toned ass will no longer sink into an abyss.

Until then I’ll be using the equipment I’m paying for.