Bringin' It

Dustan and I are doing P90X.  It's all the rage.  It's how skinny people get even skinnier, and also totally ripped.  It's how soft, desk-bound people torture themselves at night.  P90X.  We are doing P90X because we were fat.  We hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, but then we moved back in with Mom and she made us chicken pot pie and we got fat again.  Who wants to be an AT thru-hiker with nothing to show for it but calves the size of grapefruits (we both have them) and a sticker on their car? 

So we order this 90-day workout program that will give you muscles in your gums.  It's based on something called "Muscle Confusion."  I don't know if this is a gimmick or what, all I know is that we start the first day doing Core Synergistics.  Core Synergistics is a workout that makes you jump around so much your fat jiggles until it hurts, your face turns red, your throat throbs, and you feel like the chubby kid at basketball practice running suicides.  The next day we were supposed to do Cardio X, but I wilted from my push-up position like a noodle.  It was not a gimmick.  My muscles were definitely confused.  So confused that I just wanted to cry over a bowl of ice cream.  The thing about P90X is that it's old-fashioned.  In Cardio X we do jumping jacks (light fixtures trembling in the bar downstars) and curls and squats and lunges and push-ups.  Next is Shoulder & Arms. This means you put a chin-up bar in your doorway and almost kill yourself. Because right after chin-ups (which I can't do), you get down and do push-ups. Again, wilting like a noodle.  (Food metaphors give me comfort while I'm talking about P90X).  Then there's Yoga.  Now instead of your fat flopping around, you try to stick it into places it was never meant to go.  Now instead of jumping and crunching breathlessly, we are fixating on a spot on the wall, wobbling back and forth, our arms moving in synch, slow as molasses through the air.  Slow as honey through the air.  Slow as caramel sauce through the air...

But I really do like it.  Because there we are.  Two standing birds.  Pelicans on one foot.  Side by side, fibers from the rug all over our workout clothes, happy to be doing something with our blood and lungs and breath again, together. 

I will - inevitably - keep you posted.