Monday, November 2, 2009

Hobby Discussion Day 1: The Gym ... ???

It has been about a year since I became a stay-at-home mom, which has turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. But when I initially quit my job, everybody (myself included) had a lot of uncertainty as to whether or not I could occupy my days in meaningful, non-depression-inducing ways.

But a year later, people sometimes comment on how busy and scheduled the boy and I are during the day. I feel like I don't give myself enough credit for my motivation to try new and interesting things. In a way, I think now that I no longer have projects related to either school or work, I invent self-improvement projects. (Which, actually, sounds a little pathetic.) Projects like, "This fall, we're going to try something we've never done before," and, "I'm going to attend all 7 of my gym classes this week."

About a week ago, I started to write a post listing all my hobbies and the recent developments with them. The post got very long and unwieldy, and it generally just ventured into "Who the hell would want to read this?" territory. So I thought I would break that post up a little and devote several days to a discussion of my hobbies.

Today's hobby is The Gym. I am not sure I can call the gym a hobby, because, like most people, I have a love/hate relationship with the gym. But lately I have looked forward to going to the gym more and more, so I have decided it's a hobby for me. I mean, I [try to] go 6 days a week, so even if it's not really a hobby, it does take up a lot of my time. And the gym has a daycare that Nathan enjoys, so it gets more appealing as we head toward that time of year when we look for indoor entertainment.

So, as most of you know because you're my friends/relatives, my only God-given athletic talent is swimming. For my first year of gym membership, I only used the pool. Sometimes I took aquacize, but mostly I just swam laps. It was awesome in terms of my mental health, but not so much my physical health because (a) it's generally not the best calorie-burning sport to begin with, and (b) my body was getting too efficient at it, and that made the calorie-burning even more pathetic.

Therefore, in September I decided to try some new activities at the gym. I hate, hate, HATE exercise machines, so I never go to those. The classes really push you, and have the added benefit of being scheduled at specific times, so they are harder to flake on. (On the other hand, it's hard to get there on time because of unforeseen toddler-related stall tactics that make us late.) Anyway, these are the 7 classes I have been taking lately:

Monday: Strong (weight training)
Tuesday: Yoga (don't let the dim lights and calming music fool you; this is a serious workout)
Wednesday: Interval Mix (which was once some other kind of class, but instead has evolved into 1/3 Boot Camp, 1/3 weight training, and 1/3 of the evil spinning)
Thursday: H20 Works (the harder, less-for-old-people version of aquacize, which is still my most pleasant class of the week)
Friday: Zumba (the trendy Latin dance-based workout that I suck at)
Saturday: Back-to-back classes, Power Hour (High/Low aerobics) and then Strong (weight training)
Sunday: Gym skip day (oh, beloved Sunday)

As I said, I attempt to go to all 7 classes, but scheduling conflicts with other non-gym activities usually get in the way of some class or other. And I really feel that my mental health has taken a hit now that I have quit swimming, which is a problem because when the hell am I supposed to squeeze that in? I do not really want to go to the gym more than once a day. I guess I could swim after some of those classes, because Nathan is already at the daycare anyway. Except a lot of my classes end right when the daycare closes, so it's not possible to do anything afterward. (Sometimes, if we're going somewhere afterward, I actually have to retrieve the boy from daycare and make him hang out with me while I take a shower.) So it would not be possible to swim after my Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday classes. And the Wednesday one ends right around dinner time. Swimming before sweaty classes seems like a waste, and you'd have to do the classes with wet hair and chlorine smell.

Anyway, this is not that interesting to you. Bottom line, I might have to start going to the gym twice a day, and I might have to make one of those daily visits before Nathan wakes up. So it's back to the high school dreaded early morning swim workouts.

Oh well, it's a moot point until Thursday when I get these stitches out of my finger. I'm not supposed to do any soaking-based activities.

So, that's the story of the gym. Thank you for joining me on Day 1 of my hobby discussion.

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