Going to the gym with a single 17 year old girl on a regular basis is quite the experience. We have had boys follow us from machine to machine, run on the treadmills next to us even though the rest are free and one even asked my kid if she was double jointed?! WTF! But now it’s going both ways. Today we walked in and both started giggling like morons because a giant, muscle man, covered in tattoos was the first thing we saw. The gym is reducing me to a teenage girl and it’s not okay. I’m so self conscious about doing certain exercises, because I feel I’m being watched, that I avoid them. Or creepily find a dark corner to do my squats and eyeball everyone to make sure they are not seeing my unattractive sitting down on a pretend toilet move.

I convinced Hennie to go with me to the gym one day so I could see what his program is like. I felt very much like it was take your kid to work day. Tall, muscular Hennie lifting 100 lb weights next to me, trying to lift 10 lb weights was hilarious. I was the only girl in the free weight section too. Hennie was making all kinds of working hard noises while weight lifting while I dicked around with my soup can weights. The most comical of all of it was when Hennie asked me to help him put the 46lb weights onto the leg pushy machine thing. I grabbed one and started falling over. I couldn’t even lift it to the rod it needed to go on. Good times. I’m sure all the other gym dudes were snickering at the dude who has to deal with his weakling wifey at the gym… 

I watched a whole football match on the treadmill last weekend at the gym. I totally made stupid faces to myself and threw my hands up like a crazy fan when Chelsea scored! The game was shown with subtitles because there was no sound and I knew a Brit must be announcing because the description kept reading futbol. Yes, British futbol.

I was waiting for my kid at the TANNING SALON, not something I agree with but whatever. And I overheard the lady working there saying to someone else that a particular oil should not be used by white people. And she totally meant pale people. She was so dark she had forgot that she also was once a white person.  It was so Jersey Shore in there y’all. 

I met the new kid I will be working with on Monday. I said I would never look after a 6 year old boy again but here I am. I saw this kid and thought, wow, he looks familiar. I tried talking to him but I am NOT as exciting as Minecraft and I get that. But his mannerisms, his face, his jaw line all looked familiar. And then I thought, oh my god, he looks exactly like a guy I used to date. Oh my god, I only met the Mom. Omg, am I doing glorified babysitting respite for a child of a dude I used to date? Holy shit balls. I looked up the contact info, the Dad’s name was the same as the guy I used to date. OH GOD! I started looking all over the walls searching for family pictures. FINALLY I found a photo, whew not him. Close call. That would have been epic. 

I have been bored lately. I think this happens every year. I pump myself up with a new year, tons of new excitement, big changes and two weeks later, when nothing has happened, I am disappointed. I like brainstorming ways of making my life more exciting, perhaps doing a course, maybe learn something new, maybe becoming a kleptomaniac for a week just to see if the thrill is all that or maybe removing my public speaking filter and just swear openly, like the pirate I truly am all the time, at all my jobs. Or what about dabbling in some hardcore street drugs. Nothing says keeping up with our exciting youth then knowing what they are talking about when they speak of doing Molly on the weekend. I totally thought the first million times I heard about Molly that this was just some magical person that everyone knew. And a bit of a village bicycle because people kept doing her. But no, it’s more along the lines of Mary Jane btw in a lady name drug cover up. Eventually, I figured out what was missing from my life, high intensity drama. An intense tv show to sink my teeth into a la Sons of Anarchy. So to remedy by boring life I will not do cocaine benders or start stealing shit, I have started watching Homeland and renting a lot of action movies, weee life skills! 

So I decided, with much hesitation, that it would be ok for my friend Rob to borrow Tina, my car. I had some reservations but a friend was in need and I knew it was the right thing to do. The only time I had ever been driving with Rob previously, he had backed into a giant yellow post in a Tim Horton’s parking lot, so my reservations were not without merit. So I handed the keys over, told him all the funny character traits Tina had and then asked him to please, please, please not fuck up my car. I was feeling like a really good person and the best friend anyone could ever have when, about an hour later, I got a call from the cops. A man driving a car, registered to me, had just stolen some gas. The cop must have thought I was insane because I actually started laughing and told him how funny I thought that was. We agreed it must have been a misunderstanding, I said I would pay for the gas after I got off my shift. What actually had happened it Rob payed at the pump AFTER he pumped the gas which is not the correct sequence in which that occurs and therefore it didn’t actually go through. But getting a call from the cops an hour after lending someone my car for the first time was pretty darned amusing.