I will have to recap my delightful Thanksgiving shenanigans at another time, as memories of the boozing and the fooding and the latenighting re-queases my quease gland. Can you believe I was not an english major?

Instead, I will relate to you my virtuous morning (in case it looks like I’m bragging, keep in mind that the rest of the day was a total writeoff* ).

If you have read any “Devil’s Cake” posts (request the password if you want to read a lot of jibberjabber about my health regime), you are familiar with one of the instructors at my YMCA, the one I call the Marine Drill Sergeant Lady. She gave us a holiday gift today by teaching a 9am 12″ extended mix extra-special 100-minute version of her Step/Pump/Jump class. There was weightlifting, there was stepping and stomping and lunging, there were jumping jacks, there was jumprope, there were abs. Oh were there abs. All the while being encouraged by the loudmouth Sgt. Lady.

It was a little rough. More than a couple people (hambox included) had to pause and put their heads between their wobbly knees as the visions of sugarplums grew a little … vivid. My mind dully marked the passing minutes by watching the ass of the young woman ahead of me: a perfect half-circle of sweat darkening her pants grew and grew and finally overtook the lower half of her body. She maintained a maniacal grin on her face, so yay for her, I guess?

The room got so sweaty and swampy the mirrors on the wall got all fogged up. There was extra condensation on the areas where big circles of adhesive had been applied to the back of the mirrors. I was disappointed that the mirror-installers had done their job in a methodical manner — it would have been great to see a happy face or “phil rules!” emerge, secret-message-style, as the humidity rose.

The CD blasted weird remix disco-workout covers of vintage R&B and hiphop tunes.** As Salt N Pepa extorted us to “push it real good”, Sgt. Lady had the gall to say “Yeah, push it! I didn’t see you pushing yourself away from the table yesterday!” (How dare she? Even though she totally called it?) We also had to do that MC Hammer tippytoe dance during “2 Legit 2 Quit.” Enhance the visual by imagining our 100% Caucasion, mixed-gender class of people ranging from 16 to 70+ years.

A Hulk Hogan-esque dude was waiting, presumably, for his Old Lady to get out of the class. As we filed out, saying our goodbyes to Sgt. Lady, he was all “yeah, you’re thankin her now but you’ll be cussin her in an hour.” Oh Ventura.

I got all googly in the car, savoring the endorphin rush, not even minding the mall traffic that lays between me and home*** and getting all cute-overloady over a little ladybug running along my windshield wipers.

* Seriously. I took a two-hour nap then lounged in bed the rest of the day sucking on the mind-bong that is a What Not To Wear marathon. Ate two turkey drumsticks and the rest of the green bean casserole. Am hoping that the improv audience tonight won’t judge me for my sad sad bedhead.

** I also got into a brief yelling discussion with Sgt. Lady, after she wondered aloud why AC/DC’s [sic] “Walk This Way” was on a hip-hop CD. I tried to explain that it was actually Run-DMC (and Aerosmith), it was the first merging of rock and rap, the idea of sampling, blah blah, then gave up and called Sgt. Lady a “damn white girl.” The hypocrisy was not lost on me as, after class, I started up my playlist full of Van Halen, Radiohead and (shuddup) Coldplay.

*** It is very easy to get all anti-Black Friday when one is broke. I Bought Nothing Today! More virtue from the turkey-strewn sanctuary of St. Hambox.

nablopomo 07 day 23