Jan 1978 - June 2011. Cause of Death: Zumba

I have heard of the Zumba phenomenon from a number of my girlfriends, all of whom said it was awesome.  Well, when I got home to my parents' house in NJ and saw my mom's gym schedule with several Zumba classes every day, I decided I was going.  Especially when she told me I looked like I was pregnant in my picture of me with Teresa from RHONJ.

Zumba is the latest trend in exercising.  Some genius somewhere realized that she was keeping in shape by going to da' club and figured she could capitalize and make money if she shared the concept of exercise via dancing with other fatties people who want to stay healthy.  Basically, when you take the class, you burn calories by dancing to Latin or hip hop music.  Sounds good enough, right?  Back in the day, I could booty shake with the best of them.  I mean, come on, I was a dancer for 10 years.  I had rhythm.  I had moves.  I could do this, right???  WRONG SISTA!

So off to Zumba I go with my mom - who has also never tried it - and I was excited to see what the class held.  The room was packed with every type of woman you could imagine.  Older women, young women, pregnant women, heavy women.  Even a skinny asian lady who apparently didn't want to wait for the instructor and "warmed up" by doing some of her own moves.  This chick was in it to win it.  Homegirl even had on legit dancer shoes.  What???  So, I see the instructor over in the corner getting the music set up to the song she wanted to start with.  She gets up to the front of the class and just starts doing her thing.  And everyone else knew to start with her!  HUH???  I'm used to the instructors putting on the little headset mic and saying something like: "Hey everyone!  I'm Tammy and welcome to (insert appropriate workout class).  Let's start off with our warm up. Legs apart AAAAAND big breath in..."

Yeah, JLo (that's what I'm going to call her because I'm sure she was a backup dancer for her at one point) starts busting a move ASAP.  Well, I'm not about to look lost, so I start getting my grove on.  We're shakin'. We're steppin'. We're mamba-in'.  I'm sweating so much I look like I just jumped in the damn pool.  My toes on my right foot are numb - probably out of fear - and I can feel my fat on my body shaking just a half a beat off.  I do the best I can since I'm new. *Side note: remember, my 59 year-old mother is in the class too, choosing to go in the back of the room, and I decide not to look at her because I'm sure I will start laughing at her WTF expression that I am positive is on her face.*  JLo stops.  Asian Zumba Lady goes to get her water.  Some ladies reach for a towel and their water.  I want to collapse.  I think: "That wasn't so bad.  Time for the cool down." BWAHAHAHAHAHA!  That was only 10 minutes of the class.  Let me repeat for those who missed that: THAT WAS ONLY 10 MINUTES OF CLASS.  Holy shit, I think I'm going to die.  Tell my daughter I love her. My mother comes up to me and says: "You know, we can leave.  Go get Starbucks." I look at the pregnant girl and the lady who is probably older than my mom and I reply: "Not if preggo and grandma stay."  So commence round two.  Ding Ding Ding.

JLo starts in again, and this time there's more shaking involved. And turning. And stepping with crazy flailing arms.  I find solace in the two other fellow curvy ladies in my area also moving about as well as I am.  They too have the "what the hell did I get myself into" looks on their faces.  What doesn't help is that the music JLo has chosen is Latin music.  Not that I have an issue with it.  It's just that I have never felt as coordinated dancing to it as Latin women are.  It's in their DNA. They come out of the womb knowing how to salsa. Again, JLo stops and I fall for it again.  Whew!  Thank God we're done.  ONLY FIVE FRIGGIN' MINUTES HAVE PASSED.  I now know what hell is like.  My lower back is one more shimmy from going into complete spasm.  I have heard how medical experts say the body breaks down near death.  I have a slight clue what they are talking about.  My mom shoots me a "It's not too late to leave" look.  Again, grandma and mom-to-be are still in the corner gearing up for more.  I grab my water, chug some down, shake my head, and get ready to go.  Not until the pregnant lady and grandma leave.  Round 3....bring it.

So rather than go through my slow and painful demise, I will give you the condensed version.  Several more sessions of "dancing" occurred during which I realized I should have not only packed a sports bra for my trip, but also worn it.  My poor twins were in places they had never been before.  I noticed several other women checked out of the class early opting to save themselves in order to see another yoga class.  JLo just kept right on bouncing.  She had to have sucked down about 10 Red Bulls prior to the class because if she's like this normally, I may have to resort to drastic measures.  What sustains my endurance is thinking to myself: "your mom said you looked pregnant" and not wanting to be perceived as such.  What makes me laugh - and I say that loosely because laughing would have required breathing which was something I was struggling with by 20 minutes in - was when JLo asked why she couldn't hear anyone having fun.  It's because we were all too busy trying to keep up and not die.

Now let me take a minute to reflect on the dancing aspect of this particular form of exercise.  I was pretty confident in my ability to dance and keep rhythm my whole life.  Like I said, I was a dancer.  Following beat was something that came naturally to me.  I remember my girlfriend telling me that her ability to dance left after she had a baby.  I told her she was silly and that she could still dance.  Her reply was that she looked like an old, white lady rather than someone who could keep up with the crowd she went to high school with.  I remember thinking, "Pshhh, that won't be me.  I will maintain my mad dance skills after I have a baby."  I hate it when I'm wrong.  It's almost like, without any sort of control over the change, your body begins to respond to music in a way never before experienced.  You think you can still move and grove like the good old days at da' club, but in reality, you look like a woman from a bad '80s movie.  I think when you're in the hospital either pushing your kid out or having a c-section, what the doctors don't tell you is that your ability to dance is removed along with the placenta.  You don't have a choice.  Unless you're a celebrity or very rich, you are unable to afford a cure.  You are forever diseased with looking like a rah-tard on the dance floor.

Well, finally, Zumba is completely over.  If there was a heart monitor attached to me, it would be flatlined.  Grandma and preggo are over thanking the instructor. I want to punch her in the face, but can't move my legs to get over there.  Despite all of this, I must be a masochist because rather than thinking "OMG I am so never doing this shit again," instead I think "I am so doing this again".  Why you ask?  Because I refuse to let something that I used to be good at defeat me.  I refuse to go gently into that good Zumba class and allow some booty shakin' to kill me.  I don't want to be a fat mom and get to the age of 50 or so and look back thinking I wasted my 30s.  So come Monday, I will be in Zumba again with my game face on.  Bring it JLo. Bring it.

So flying can suck

So we were supposed to fly out today this morning to NJ to see my family.  I have been looking forward to going home for some time and I felt I was totally prepared for this flight.  CARES system for keeping CSC in her seat - check; Lollypops for take off - check; Snack and juice cup - check; Crayola color wonder markers - check; Cell phone, iPad, and appropriate chargers - check; More clothes than I'll wear all summer for both myself and CSC - double check; Sanity - still looking.  

Because I always panic and am convinced I will forget something, I was up until about 2am.  I felt I was as prepared for this flight as I could possibly be.  I had prepped CSC about getting excited for flying. I was good to go....literally.  So we just park the car and are getting out when I get a call from my dad.  

"Hey Aim, the flight is cancelled"

"Huh?"

"The flight is cancelled and you need to go inside and ask them to put you on the 1:30 flight or the 6:20."

Great.

We go inside, The Husband takes CSC to walk around while I wait in line to talk to an airline rep.  Bad news is she and I are not on the 1:30 flight.  Good news - we are already booked on the 6:20 flight.  Ok, we can go home and relax a little bit until we have to go back.

What I'd like to know is when did flying become such a pain in the ass?  I have flown a great deal in my life and it never used to be this dreadful.  It's gotten to the point where you try to figure out how to get to your final destination without flying....like if I drive three hours to the train station there, I can take a train and then hitchhike to get where I'm going. I'm going to blame it on 9/11.

Gettin ready to head back to dirty Jerz

I am so excited for my favorite time of the year - aside from Christmas - and that would be my annual trip with my daughter back home to "my people" in Jersey.  I'm excited it's summer and the weather is nice - not so excited to be back in a bathing suit - and I'm always glad to catch up with my friends who I miss all the time.  I get to see family I don't see enough of....all around good time.

Each year, we go to my parent's "Delaware mansion", as I like to call it, and spend 4th of July going to Rehobeth Beach and the boardwalk and watching the fireworks while eating Dairy Queen.  That place is one of the most peaceful places.  It's so nice just to be able to sit and relax on the back deck with a book and a nice glass of wine.  Like I said, I look forward to this trip every year.

What I don't look forward to, however, is the preparation that goes into traveling.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE LOVE LOVE to travel.  I regret giving up a job offer out of college that would have required me to travel as a chapter consultant for my sorority.  What I don't love about traveling is packing.  And what I hate worse than packing is UNpacking.  I am convinced every time that I have forgotten something, and the funny thing is, I usually do.  What is annoying is that it's usually something of no importance (i.e. a toothbrush) and it can be easily replaced, thus not destroying my enjoyment of the trip.  It's just an irritation.  Well, my husband, daughter, and I just returned from our second home of Wilmington, NC, for our 5th anniversary/Father's Day weekend trip.  I love it there and we wonder all the time why we moved away....it really does show you don't know what you have until it's gone.  We had a great time going to the beach every day and swimming in the pool.  But now that we are home, I have a mound - quite literally - of clothes to wash before I pack them back up again for our flight on Wednesday.  Talk about being worried I'm going to forget something!  Fortunately, I'm not planning on packing much since I have no clothes really - at least none that make me happy - and I plan on doing a great deal of shopping when I'm in NJ and DE.  I always like to take advantage of the tax-free shopping when I can....who wouldn't.

I may have mentioned in my last post that I stepped back on the scale recently and hated what I saw.  I knew it was going to be ugly because my clothes had been fitting a little tightly.  I really hope that I can keep trying to work on getting it off while I'm home.  My mom is a very healthy eater and hardly ever has "junk" in her house, so I know what I eat will be good.  It's just that I saw some pics that were taken of me in my new bathing suit I bought for our trip to Wilmington, and while I thought I didn't look bad, the pics made me look like I was pregnant!  WTF!  I HATE looking at pics because I feel so discouraged, ya know.  Like, I thought I looked ok, but now I think I want to attempt home lipo just to that it doesn't look like I have more jowls than a friggin' bulldog!

Summertime...and the livin' is easy

So today was my last day of school for the year - man it flew, THANK GOD!  I had one of the roughest years teaching since I started in 2001.  Now that it's over, I get to relax and enjoy some much needed, extended down time with myself and my family.  I'm mostly looking forward to having more "Mommy and CSC" time.

The first vacay of the year is to good old Wilmington, NC.  TJ and I constantly ask ourselves: "Why did we move away from there, again??"  There's a certain vibe there that I can't find anywhere else - even at other beach towns.  We are going there because we will be celebrating our 5 year wedding anniversary/Father's Day.  We had originally wanted to go away to a resort, but quite frankly, it's too much for us to be spending at this time.  We'll have fun, I have no doubt.

I originally started this blog to chronicle my journey to MILF-dom.  That hasn't been a topic I've really discussed in a while!  So I decide to check out my weight - something I don't normally do - because my clothes have been fitting a little tight lately.  I'm sure due in large part to the amount of shit food I have been ingesting in the past few weeks.  I just about passed out when I got on the Wii Fit and looked at my weight.  I had gained back about 10lbs!  WTF!  Not that I didn't expect a weight gain, but talk about a slap in the face from reality!  And the ironic part is that I pay for an online subscription to WW, and I haven't touched it pretty much since they changed to the new points system.  Basically it boils down to me being plain, old lazy.  I wish it was as easy for me as it appears to be to some, but it's not.  I am going to have to work really hard if I want to get down to a weight that I am happy with, but even more importantly, I am going to have to work on getting healthier. 

As stated above, summertime and the livin' is easy. Despite the Africa heat, summer is one of my favorite times because of all the traveling I do to see family and friends.  I can't wait for my annual trip to Jersey this year.  CSC and I will be up there for about 10 days.  I know I'm going to want to do at least another weekend or 2 at the beach after that.  Other than the traveling, I get to be a SAHM and spend some much needed quality time with my beautiful daughter.  Another thing I'm looking forward to this summer - hopefully in the next couple of weeks - is hearing about a job I interviewed for.  It's at one of the community colleges and I would be teaching Developmental English.  I have taught that before and the possibility of teaching college again is so exciting.  I really hope I get this job because I desperately need a change of scenery with the whole teaching career.  But if it doesn't work, there is always prostitution. ;)