Three Times

11.9.17

I am beset by paranoia.

It’s not CRUSHING paranoia… but like anyone in relatively unfamiliar surroundings, I do tend to wonder if I’m making an ass of myself and the people around me are simply too kind to laugh out loud.

This was terribly evident yesterday. I bought new work-out wear because all my pants are capri-length, and going outside in this newly-chilly weather with bare calves feels… like I’m making an ass of myself.

So I went back to the same place where my sister Twig found great work-out clothes for me (which is Full Beauty, online) and bought some long pants, and some shirts with sleeves.

They arrived and yesterday was the first day I’d broken ‘em out. But the capri pants – a nice, not-too-heavy cotton mixed with just enough Lycra to hold them up – are very different from the long pants, which must be nothing but pure spandex from muffin-top waist to pudgy ankle. I look like Michael Phelps after decades of inactivity, squeezed into one of those body suits for swimming.

I look like I’m wearing long underwear.

So I begged Grace (one of my two trainers at Body Dynamics) to tell me if I looked ridiculous, but who can believe her? She’s by nature supportive and kind; that’s what she’s doing there. “No! I love your outfit – you look cute!” Paranoia.

(I’m wearing some fat lady long-johns to balance class in a few minutes; I’ll post a photo in my next blog so you can venture an opinion, if only to your computer.)

Wait – I had an entirely different reason for posting. Title “Three Times…” Oh, yeah. Paranoia.

Barbara, my own personal Gandalf, may work very differently with other people; I’m paranoid that to others, she says “Do this impossible exercise twenty times.”

But to me she says “Do this impossible exercise,” and then watches me because she knows that when I’m just about at the limit of my endurance, I’ll cry out for her to tell me to stop.

“Barbara!” I’ll implore, at which point she says the SAME THING EVERY TIME:

“Three more!”

I have no idea if I’m supposed to do twenty and are only making it to eight, or if I’m supposed to do twenty and she’s watching me grind through forty or fifty repetitions (that’s SURELY what it feels like!), but I do know that when I’m about to fall to the ground shivering as my only defense, Barbara will say “Three more!”

And by damn, I’ll do three more. How does she know?!

I’m off to balance class. More later!

See? They’re GREAT-looking pants… but there is a definite sausage-casing effect. Wait until you see the look where my body tends to, um, blossom.