I committed the sin of pride today at the gym. Though I am repenting most earnestly already, I will no doubt be suffering for the next couple of days.

I have two weight routines that I like to trade off between, so today after I hopped off of the elliptical machine, I headed over to weight area of the gym in search of a barbell. Just in case you don't already know, I've never been athletic. Never, ever never. I can't play volleyball without hurting myself. Frankly, most days I can't walk without hurting myself. It's hard to be me. And me in a weight room, well that's just not a sight that should be beheld by anyone. Alas, I'm approaching the ripe old age of 35, and I need some muscle mass to keep up with these pesky boys that are always climbing, jumping and swinging on me. I also wouldn't mind looking hot in my tankini, but I'll settle for not sending people screaming for the hills. I don't ask for much.

For today's routine, I needed a barbell, which is why I like my other routine that only requires girly little dumbbells. The dumbbells are in the girly-er part of the gym, with all the machines that I don't quite understand. The barbells are in the manly part of the gym, which you know you are entering because the indoor/outdoor carpet ends and the manly tile begins. I find this area even more bewildering. It doesn't so much have machines as places to lean or lay or stand upon while using free weights. Usually, I can find a barbell left over from BodyPump that a personal trainer has (I assume) brought upstairs for wimpy clients like myself. I love it when that happens. Since I couldn't find one today, I decided to walk, without tripping, over to the man side and get the smallest barbell I could find, then quickly bring it back over to my side of the gym, again hopefully without tripping. Naturally, there were about five body builder guys standing right next to the barbell stand, and I didn't want to take my jiggles by them. But I did, and with nary a trip!

As I started back to the girl side with my booty (literal and figurative), I was thinking "dang, this thing is hea-vy." That's because it was a 40 lber. No, I'm not that buff. I usually use two 8 lbers, so this was well over what I normally would be lifting with. But those guys were looking at me (L says they were no doubt thinking I was a dumba**, and I have to agree) and I wasn't going back. And I wasn't NOT going to use it. I'd gone to too much trouble now. So I looked at my little sheet, which called for deadlifts, and instead of doing 2 sets of 12, I decided to scale back to just a couple. I was really feeling it by 5, so I set the bar down and did some other excersizes. But then I felt pertty good, so I did 5 more. And then I did some rowing with the barbell, and it wasn't so bad either. I was stoked to discover that I was so non- wimpy. Who knew?

I put my barbell back with pride, but decided to skip my walking lunges because I have a propensity to over-do it at the gym, and I didn't want to spend the weekend in misery. That was a good call. After a quick trip to WalMart, I came home and discovered, to my horror, that it was painful to hold the bowl which I was eating my lunch out of. And just so you know, it's hard to type too. My arms and legs feel week and oh so very tired. And if I feel this bad now, I can't imagine what tomorrow is going to be like. So, in conclusion, I'm an idiot. Have a nice day.