Please say that title to the tune of Rapper’s Delight by Sugarhill Gang.
(I don’t know why my mind works the way it does. But I appreciate your consideration in this matter.)
Well. I didn’t write anything yesterday.
Mainly because my Monday didn’t turn out like I planned. And I realize it’s now Wednesday as you’re reading this but my Monday affected my Tuesday which was yesterday.
(Should I draw a diagram? Good night.)
Anyway, around 9:00 a.m. on Monday morning I received a text from Caroline’s teacher informing all the parents that lice is going around the school and she was sending all her students to the nurse’s office to get their heads checked.
So you can imagine my horror and dismay when my phone rang ten minutes later and it was the school nurse.
“Mrs. Shankle? This is the school nurse…”
I didn’t even let her finish her sentence. “OH MY WORD DOES CAROLINE HAVE LICE?”
(I could feel myself starting to assume the fetal position.)
“No. She doesn’t have lice. She has the stomach bug.”
There has never been a time in my life when those words were like honey to my ears. (Is this a real saying? Because it sounds weird.) Give me a twelve hour stomach bug over pestilence that requires a small-tooth comb and the essence of unicorn horn to get rid of, any day of the week.
I’d signed up for a new exercise class (Oh, stay tuned for that in just a minute) at 9:45 a.m. so I cancelled my exercise reservation and drove up to the school to pick up Caroline. I went ahead and had the nurse check her for lice before we left just to make sure it hadn’t gotten all Egypt up in my house with numerous plagues.
We were clear on the lice front, but Caroline was very nauseated even though she had yet to actually throw up. I brought her home, had her change into pajamas, put her on the couch with a blanket and spent the next several hours watching her like she was a nuclear reactor. But she never threw up. In fact, she was totally fine and begging for something besides saltine crackers by 5:00 p.m.
So I decided I was going to go ahead and go out to dinner with my Birthday Club group. And when she realized it, she suddenly had a relapse. “I feel like I have a fever. Do you think I have a fever? Maybe you should stay home.”
I felt her forehead and declared her fever free. And she’d just eaten four scrambled eggs for dinner so the stomach bug was officially over. And I was in desperate need of a night out with my friends. So I went to go eat Mexican food and, lo and behold, she was totally fine.
She went back to school on Tuesday morning and I had no legitimate reason to not go to my new exercise class. It’s called Smart Barre. A bunch of my friends have been raving about it and there is nothing like trying on sleeveless shirts to make you aware of your need for more exercise than carrying in a bunch of groceries and typing on the computer, which has essentially been my regimen for the last six months. Be on the lookout for my new exercise DVD coming out soon entitled, “Here Are A Bunch of Groceries I Bought at HEB”.
Anyway, it’s a combination of ballet, yoga and pilates. How hard can that be? Isn’t that just some stretching or something?
Yes. If they have stretching in hell.
You know how sometimes you work out and you can feel your muscles start to shake in the middle of something? That was me. There was a point where I had to lift two pound weights (I don’t mean to brag about my impressive strength) until my triceps (I just googled “What are the muscles on the backs of your arms called?) were about to charley horse. I really thought I was about to shame my family name by dropping to my mat and writhing in pain and agony while singing out Swing Low, Sweet Chariots.
If you’ve read this blog for, I don’t know, four or five minutes, you might know that I have a tendency to exaggerate. But not this time. Even as I type this I can feel my triceps trying to cramp up and I had no idea typing even required the use of triceps.
But it wasn’t just my arms. We worked our glutes and our quads and our abs. I thought of a lot of bad words in my head when I had to semi-recline on a rubber ball and work some muscle in my stomach that I had never even been acquainted with prior to that point.
I signed up for the whole month because I knew it would make me feel like I have to go. And so I’m going back again tomorrow.
That is, if I don’t get stuck on the toilet because my quads quit working when I sit down. Because it’s not like my triceps could help me up. They aren’t going to be of any use to me for at least the next thirty-six hours. Or perhaps ever again.
Which I think translates to an inability to go grocery shopping because OH THE SHOPPING BAGS.
Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.