Sunday, January 8, 2012

Let's get physical, physical.

As I sit on our plush couch with no legs, admiring our near-fully furnished apartment and digesting the mass amount of fibrous food I just consumed, I observe my roommate Erin. At the moment, she's removing her shirt in a sweaty haze and scouring the kitchen for sustenance. For the hunt, she's donned in a sports bra and knee-length running pants that are pulled up to her belly button. "Excuse my fat rolls," she says.

Let us remember, Erin is a 5'11" stalk of celery; long, lean with a heap of hair on top.

After I avert my eyes, I attempt to rise from the world's lowest couch... But... I don't. My legs are too sore to stand up. After living  being a sloth in Austin almost 2 months, I've only recently started working out again. And what have I done? I've conned Erin into buying a gym membership to be my workout buddy. And this Sunday marks the end of week 1. And with that, marks the end of the first week of Erin's Hell.

One time, I played college soccer. That brief stint taught me a little bit about how to work out. One other time, I discovered I had an immune deficiency. That precious blessing taught me a little bit about how to eat. With my vault of nutritional knowledge now open, I'm pulling a Mr. Miyagi and enlightening Erin about the dangers of eating Conversation Hearts for dinner, and how detrimental it can be to your liver if you replace water with Blackstone Merlot.

We're working on it.

Anyway, our athletic endeavors began last week and I was thrilled, THRILLED to have someone to be miserable alongside as I lay my cellulite to rest in cottage cheese hell. Though, on the inaugural session of Mission: Sexy Celebrity Body Double we discovered that Erin, immersed in her classic novel reading and adolescent poetic composing, was never introduced to the wide world of pushups. Or split jumps. Or shoulder presses. Or anything that sorority sisters everywhere can't bob up and down upon. So, I have taken it upon myself to nurture this newborn gym baby. We spent a lot of this week just learning how to do things. And considering I've begun growing a front-ass orb, I didn't mind the easing-into-things.

Now, earlier this week we put pushup-position rows into one of our circuit workouts. Unfamiliar with exactly how to do it, Erin asked I watch to make sure she was executing the exercise at peak athletic performance. Mind you, we had already done about 150 reps of other things so our muscles were already burning. But in the middle of her pushup-position row I see Erin slowly fall to the ground. On the way down to her death, I hear her desperately wheeze out the phrase, "My arm, Sadie... my arm won't hold up my body." And just like the waning moments in the renowned scene of Titanic when a weary Rose lets go of popsicle Jack, down Erin went.

Disclaimer: Erin is a champion. She's been pushing through these workouts with an intense amount of reluctance, but determination to accomplish. And that's admirable. Plus, the counselor who signed Erin up for her membership is spicy hot. Motivation City, population: Celery Stalk.

At the end of every workout, we limp out of the gym as if our brain isn't sending the message "bend" to our knees, all the while discussing how many ripped cut abs we're going to have and how many quarters we will bounce off each other's firm badonks. We are living the lives of real twentysomethings; we have 9-5 jobs, a church we frequent, an apartment that resembles a knockoff Anthropologie store, virtually no money, and a workout regime.

Now, someone to come over and slap this delicious chocolaty treat out of my hand before I eat it and it's 9 other friends.