On garages and the gym...

Last week Alicia started going to the gym. Our realtor, in addition to helping us find a house and charging exorbitant fees, gave us a free one month membership to the gym. Alicia, though pregnant, was anxious to get back to working out.

"C'mon. It will be fun. Let's go tonight when you are done with work." She also got an appointment with the trainer there (as part of the initial trial, they match you with a sadistic trainer who instructs us on "proper use of equipment", all of which involves moving weights with strange pully contraptions when you are all scruched up. I think my grandpa had it right. "People DRIVING to a gym to workout, and then PAYING to work out there?!?!!!?! That is as crazy as bottled water!!?!! Why don't they just run to the gym and back, and hey, it's a workout and it's free!"

That afternoon, I was slightly relieved as the surgeries took longer and longer to do. "I don't think I'll make it home in time for the workout," I exclaimed as I called to explain that I would be late. I hurried home and dropped off the car, but she was still late for the gym appointment.

Meanwhile, I had the house to myself. And let me tell you, no exercise regimen can compete with garage cleaning for a good workout. I was busily arranging my new pegboards and tools, sweeping, and cleaning the up the garage. I probably did about 20 METs of exercise just by moving large garage objects. Nonetheless, garage cleaning somehow doesn't count in the exercise world. For instance, while there is a 100 yard dash at the Olympics, there is no "Sweep the Garage really fast" or "Move and empty boxes for a world record" event, though curling may come close.

Note of interest here - When I was living at home, I achieved no pleasure at all from cleaning the garage or doing housework or gardening. I considered them chores of the most painful kind. However, now that I have a home, I find nothing so delightful as cleaning my garage, watering the plants, and doing yardwork. Perhaps my parents just wanted me to have fun when the forced me to do my chores. I have now resolved to force my children to have the same fun of cleaning and organizing the garage that I had.

While I was busy cleaning, a nice little family came walked by. Megan and Matt and their two children (who have names that I can't recall - I will refer the first as girl-child-who-is-two, and the other as small-baby-boy) walked over and introduced themselves. This is a common thing to happen in Salem. We are often introduced to strangers who may be just walking by. Matt works as a computer programmer in Corvallis for HP, and commutes every day ("only thirty-five minutes" he said.) Megan is a stay at home mom. They live next to another real estate agent who works with our agent and lives up the street. Girl-child-who-is-two had a fireman's hat and a fireman trading card. It turns out that it was national neighborhood day, and they were just walking home from a presentation by the local fireman. The fireman gave out fire hats and fireman trading cards (that were, interesting enough, in Spanish - though it was pretty clear that none of the family had any spanish or hispanic heritage - I guess the spanish cards are just the thing for kids nowaday), and I felt bad that I had missed it.

As we were visiting, Alicia drove home. I introduced them, and right away Megan (who just gave birth to small-baby-boy within the past two months), who had heard that Alicia was expecting, invited her to go walking or running sometime. I guess that Alicia had joined that unique club of neighborhood women who exercise and walk their babies together. I'm not sure if it was the workout clothes, the pregnancy or the combination of the two, but she somehow made the club.

In spite of my grandpa's opinion yesterday I did go to the gym. It was a perfect day, cloudless, sunny. I spent about 4 hours arranging things in the garage (at some point everything will be arranged, rest assurred), installing new bicycle racks that suspend the bikes in the garage. It was an enormous workout because I had to balance precariously on a stepstool, and first use a stud finder (add your own joke here) to locate the rafter beams and then use a screwdriver to manually force this 8 inch screw through a piece of hard wood. All while moving my body to a nice Eric Clapton tune and reciting the Gettysburg address. X-games watch out! Here come the G-games. After I really worked out in the garage, we went to the gym. It actually felt relaxing after unloading boxes. I'm sure I'll continue to go - it is kind of addictive to go to the gym, but, to H. Earl, I say, Cheers. Working in the garage is the real workout.