Working it out....one smelly gym sock at a time

While cooling down on the treadmill yesterday at my local gym, Lifetime Fitness, my eyes were drawn to a 40ish male gym newbie, (it's easy to spot the first timers, they have to read all the directions to figure out how to operate the machines), who had the entire cast of Scooby Doo tattooed around both his ankles in full color!! They were about 12 inches high and even included some of the villains from the series. It was clear that his tatoo wasn't the result of a drunken night in Tijuana, it must have taken hours, maybe even multiple sessions to get Shaggy and the whole gang inked on his calves!! Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of cartoons like Southpark, Animaniacs, Care Bears, She-Ra Princess of Power, Rescue Rangers, Ducktales, etc...but you're not gonna find me getting Uncle Scrooge or Pinky and the Brain inked on my back for the whole world to see, what kind of obsession must someone have to get a tatoo like that?!? And moreover, what are you trying to tell the world by putting it in a place so highly visible?!?

Anyway, enough about Scooby's tatoo...all this to tell you that it was at this point when I started to realize what a wealth of blogging material the gym could provide. The gym is like a blogger's sweat dream...eww, I just grossed myself out...I think there's enough material about gym culture, gym people, gym clothes, gym etiquette and of course, the infamous locker rooms that I think I can feature my observations about all this weekly!

So, here's my first observation/complaint, and boy is it a doozy!!! I was putting away my dumbbells in one of the studios following my Total Conditioning class on Monday night when I noticed a woman in the next studio doing a step aerobics class in black capri pants and a black sports bra, this is a normal sighting at my gym and usually I just silently curse the girls that have the confidence, and more importantly the good abs to pull this look off but suddenly she did a spin around her step bench and I was horrified to notice her jiggling pregnant belly!!! I called Nick over to check her out and immediately promised to NEVER commit such a ghastly crime! Look, pregnancy is a beautiful, natural, special event but let's be honest, females don't look their best at 6-9 months pregnant! In fact, I plan on staying under house arrest once I can't fit into my own jeans! I know it's harder to do normal stuff when you're pregnant and it's great you're trying to stay fit but if you got the sports bra on can't you go the extra step and don a shirt of some sort?!? I don't care if you're 5 months or 9 months along, if people can tell you're prego then cover it up at the gym. It's not a pretty thought having to wonder if the little bitty baby inside you is being jostled around getting a concussion so please, please, please, stop putting the fact that you have a bun in the oven on public display especially in a step aerobics class where you're bouncing all over the place!!