Today's Very Dumb Thing

Sometimes I do dumb things. Like not turning the wheel sharply enough when backing Ryan's car out of the garage, causing the passenger mirror to hit the wall of the garage and snap the plastic housing into pieces. That was one dumb thing I did today, but not the dumbest, not by a long shot.

I have this idea in my head that I can do anything if I try hard enough. I don't know if my mother specifically said those words to me once when I was a kid and she was trying to get me to do my 5th grade math homework, or if it was just implied in an effort to "give me wings" or whatever. Anyhow, the idea stuck, and it's served me well, for the most part. But the dark side of that theory is a little bit of hubris, that feeling like I'm invincible and there's nothing I can't do. Arrogance, I think.

Today's Very Dumb Thing started innocently enough. Ryan and I were looking at the latest in a long line of get-thin-quick schemes, and landed on Boot Camps. I found one that was only thirty minutes a day, three days a week and had a Groupon available. Sounds great, right? Never mind that I weigh as much as I did when I was nine months pregnant with Brad. Never mind that my current exercise regimen consists of ab curls to roll myself out of my La-Z-Boy chair when I'm too La-Z to flip down the footrest. Never mind that the treadmill I bought six weeks ago serves as a 6-inch step for reaching things in my closet. I can do anything if I try hard enough!

Then yesterday, the day before my first Boot Camp session, I'm browsing UVU's website and find buried in the Student Health and Wellness section that the school offers free Zumba classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays from noon-1. I know, right?! I love Zumba! So much! And I'm already at school until 11:50 those days! And it's FREE! How lucky am I to find the class I love at the absolute most convenient time ever and for zero dollars?! I tell everyone in the house about the class and I'm so excited that I have to start right away and check it out. That means Monday, today, the same day as my first Boot Camp class.

How come the dumbness is so blatant in hindsight when the original plan seemed so realistic? I mean, Boot Camp is only thirty minutes long, so how hard can it be? How hard can it be, indeed!

I am now going to skip the details of both the Zumba class and the Boot Camp class and sum it up like this: Bad, bad idea. Pick one or the other, but not both. By the time Boot Camp was over, I had all of the normal hard-workout symptoms: shaky legs, sore muscles, headache. But it's worse. My ears are pounding. I've got this cough. My throat is like sandpaper. My back is shaky, which is wiggling all the back fat. The roof of my mouth hurts. Why would the roof of my mouth hurt? I have no idea, but it does.

I stopped at a gas station at the mouth of Provo Canyon on the way home to get some chocolate milk, which is recommended as a "recovery drink" after a workout. I'm hoping that, due to its location, the gas station employees see red-faced, shaking, sweaty, mouth-breathing post-workout victims all the time. I bet I didn't even stand out! Until, that is, my debit card slipped out of my trembling fingers and it took me a full ten seconds to bend all the way down to the ground and pick it up. And then I messed up the swiping/pin entry/button-pushing three separate times because nothing seemed to be making sense in my head. Now I should put in my pin? No, now? Green is for what?

The bottom line is this: technically, I was right. I can do anything I want if I try hard enough, even if it's dumb things like going from sloth-mode to two workouts in one day. But it's really not a good idea. Not only will it hurt really, really badly, but it will make me want to eat ice cream to soothe my exercise-induced sore throat. Or the Halloween candy that I bought a week early. Seriously, I'm on a roll with Very Dumb Things this week.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to super-glue Ryan's passenger mirror housing back together. Somehow, that seems like a much more manageable thing to do.