Here I come, Dancing with the Stars!

I have this mental list of things I absolutely refuse to do. Things like this random sample: skydive, return to Mexico, watch Old Yeller, ever attempt post-graduate studies and...go to the gym. One of these things has been removed from the list.

I went to the gym.

Exercise and I do not play well together. I never even had the “Get in Shape, Girl” playset. My only real attempt at any sort of athletic pursuit was a hellish couple of seasons in girls’ softball. My wonderful and equally daydreaming friend Amanda and I often split the position of catcher, and argued over who would remain in the dugout. But then I hit a pop-up into my own eye and was allowed to gracefully retire from my team.

I take that back……I also took dance lessons for years. Tap and jazz at the CEA with Miss Julia Hope and later Miss Jennie. I can work a step-ball-change and I can shuffle off to Buffalo, but the jazz skills are lacking. I did, at one time, join the junior jazz group of a different local dance/gymnastics center. For one sweet, shining moment I was a Tumbletown All-Star. And then I singlehandedly ruined our chances to win the Kiwanis Kapers due to my complete inability to perform the Bobby Brown. (Or the Roger Rabbit, whichever you prefer.) "Pump Up the Jam" still gives me a panic attack.

So, you see, physical prowess is not my strong suit.

Angie & Dr. Brenton are trying to change that. Angie is on this health kick, which I am really not excited about, as it removes her cube steak from my diet for the forseeable future. And she makes really good cube steak, with home-made mashed potatoes and everything.

So Angie starts talking about how she’s so excited about starting this thing called Zumba, and I thought she was playing bridge or something. I was so confused. I think I got it mixed up with Mah Jongg and I couldn’t figure out how that was at all healthy, because I thought it was some game named for the Chinese word for gossip.

Turns out Zumba is Latin dance aerobics. And Angie loves it. She loves it so much she’s already talking about starting Pilates, too. But her enthusiasm won me over, and I went to my first Zumba class this past Saturday.

I had this image in my head of becoming like a Southern Jane Fonda crossed with Salma Hayek, but I think I came out of the class a little more like Charo. But I finished it, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared.

Maybe next week I can work my way up to being Suzanne Somers.

Called Out.

So, my 93-year-old Aunt Marian is in the hospital after the latest in a series of strokes. She can't swallow. She can't walk. She has trouble talking clearly. BUT….she can still ride my ass. While she was getting some tests run this morning, Lulu's new boyfriend (Brandon) met some of my extended family. Later, after Brandon had left and Aunt Marian had returned to her hospital room, this is the conversation that occurred.

Lulu: "See, Aunt Marian, everyone else met Brandon and they don't think he's too old!"

Aunt Marian: "He looks too old. How old is he?"

Lulu: "He's thirty."

AM: "How old are you?"

Lulu: "Twenty-Six."

AM: "It's time for you to get married"

::All eyes in the room swing towards me, the thirty-year-old single sister.::

Lulu: "Jamie's not married and she's older than me!"

AM: "Well, Jamie's an old maid."

I will let you know when my new deck of cards is coming out.

Too Sexy for My Sunburn

Embarrassing moment #1 Not in my entire life, just since this blog started, and that’s only if you don’t count the fact that I admitted my new affection for He-Man.org. Over the past weekend, my friends Paisley and Nicole accompanied me to the amazing and wonderful Callaway Gardens. It was Nicole’s inaugural visit, so I originally planned to ride the paddleboats and see the circus and visit the chapel, the Sibley Center, the Butterfly Center…you see where this is headed. But we decided to stay on Robin’s Lake Beach. Which, by the way, was missing both the ferry and the little train, a matter I fully intend to investigate. What’s a trip to the Gardens without riding around the woods on a train? I can’t count box turtles without it!


This whole tangent made no sense to anyone who didn’t grow up in this area, and I am sorry for the confusion. And for your loss, by the way. Because if a child can’t grow up counting box turtles from a kid-sized train hurtling through the Georgia pine forest, what good is being a kid?


Y’all just don’t know - the beach was wonderful. I am the whitest woman in at least the state of Georgia if you don’t count actual albinos, so I loaded up on the sunscreen. We had a fabulous day. Lay out for a while, go swim out past where the kids were to lower the odds that we were swimming in baby pee (Thank you, Paisley for bringing that subject up.), then go let the sun dry you off. It was perfect, and the snack bar was serving up some pretty delicious chicken fingers! Chicken fingers are always an important part of the equation. And the sweet tea was stellar.


Somehow in all of this lazy day, I neglected to reapply the ol’ SPF to my upper back. Later that night, I was putting out close to enough heat to toast a Pop-Tart. I tried the aloe thing, the lotion thing, and I was all set to try the vinegar thing but that’s just no fun for anyone that has to be around you.


This morning the peeling started in earnest. I’m not trying to be offensive or anything, but it’s pretty gross. You know those snake skins your science teacher would keep on a shelf in her classroom? I feel like that snake. So this morning I was itching terribly, but my office looks like a goldfish bowl. It’s just not the best place to contort the body so that you’re able to scratch that little spot just under your shoulderblade yet above your bra strap. That little spot that you can almost get your hand on, but just not quite. And it was driving me nuts. Nothing would work. Not a pen, not my fingertips, not the corner of a file folder. And then it struck me – my boss likes to use this fun little machine (This might not be a big deal to you but I had never seen one until I started working here.) that makes little books with those round binders. Sweet, bendy, binders. Let me tell you, if you have an itch, those things will scratch it. So my poor, peeling, sunburned self is pushed into a corner where nobody can see me with a bendy book binder down the back of my shirt, scratching like fire…..when I hear a “Hello?”


I love the Todd and all, but there was the cutest little real estate agent standing there, looking at me like I was the world’s biggest freak. I mean, he totally busted me, and he was so polite, which meant that of course he had seen the whole thing and was just too nice to mention it. So I was totally humiliated, and too freaked out to use my wonder-binder for the rest of the day.


Case in point: if Callaway Gardens still had a train, I would have been in the SHADE, not gotten a sunburn, and then not been caught with a book binder hooked under the back of my bra.