and sometimes you spend a week just floating — doing nothing, thinking about nothing.
well, not nothing, exactly. making jewelry and christmas presents doesn’t count as nothing, and neither does making jewelry as christmas presents. but sometimes you look up and it’s a week later and your apartment isn’t clean, your bills aren’t paid, and yesterday’s trash is still in your kitchen.
about a year ago i bought this used low-impact aerobics tape from half price books. the copyright on the back said 1986, so i figured the entertainment value alone would be worth the dollar i spent on it. last night i finally got around to trying it out, and was happy to see that the tape’s contents say 1986, too. in front of a neon pink and blue background, two women with mullets as big as their arm muscles aerobicize to nondescript synth music. their black spandex outfits are decorated with little silver dumbbells. hilarious!
the workout itself seemed similar to ones i’ve seen in the movies (i don’t get much exercise myself, so the movies are where i see people work out). the mulleted women were pretty good instructors, as taped women go; they’d do several repetitions of a leg movement to let you get used to it before they added an arm movement. but i still found it really difficult. i couldn’t get my body to work the way theirs did — my arms and legs wouldn’t move in the proper directions at all, let alone as fluidly. if i was a marionette, my puppeteer was drunk at the helm. once or twice i smashed my foot into the coffee table.
i consoled myself with the following thoughts:
1. it doesn’t matter if i mess up, because nobody can see me, right? checks window again to make sure blinds are closed
2. those women are so buff! there’s no way that a thirty-minute workout was as challenging for them as it is for me, a person whose career and hobbies dictate that she remain seated at all times, preferably on something comfy. besides, it was the eighties! they probably all had a bump before the shoot.
3. hey, this was the eighties! those women are in their fifties now! i could totally kick their asses.
4. this video is probably made up of about a billion takes. if it had been shot continuously, i bet i’d get to see these mulleted women trip on themselves and short out their microphones with all the sweating. if this was on a dvd, i’d totally watch the outtakes.
at the end of the workout, the primary mulleted woman said, “you did a good job today.” thanks, i thought, even though i was only eight years old when she said it. today my abdominal muscles ache a bit, but not as much as i’d anticipated. so i guess i’ll try it again tomorrow, but for now it’s back to the couch.