Surviving Zumba

Today’s Attire:  Today I’m wearing a camouflage Hard Rock Café T-shirt (Hard Rock Café, San Francisco overpriced t-shirt) medium dark wash skinny jeans (Gap Outlet) grey with teal details New Balance sneakers (New Balance Outlet $25).

Outfit Justification:  Yesterday Zumba kicked my ass, because I’m out of shape. I’m fighting off a cold and then Nyquil kicked my ass. I went to bed early and overslept due to cold meds. I’m wearing the ultimate casual outfit because my body hurts and I feel like crap. I felt no need to take a picture of this outfit because you’ve seen what jeans and a t-shirt look like. (Sorry Becky)

Side Vent: Dumb Ass Coworkers

(I’m adding this section to my blog because frankly I always have something to complain or bitch about.) 

Let me state for the record, I do like my job. The company I work for is one of the coolest companies I’ve worked for. And frankly I have a movie credit as a result of working here which is pretty awesome.  But in every job I always have a coworker that drives me nuts in some way shape or form. And my passive aggressive side has decided to step up and bitch about this person for a minute. Let’s call this person Urkel. Urkel is a very nice person. He works very hard. He loves to work. He loves to talk and he’s constantly talking especially out loud to himself. This is in itself drives me bonkers.  But I’ve learned to deal with it. My biggest pet peeve with Urkel is that he arrives first, that means he gets to go to lunch first and that means I go to lunch after him. I can’t take my lunch until he takes his. He hardly ever goes to lunch on time. So I’m stuck going to lunch sometimes at 3 or 4pm.  That drives me completely insane.  I’ve talked to him about it several times but he still does it. You would think if you’re not going to go to lunch and you know someone else’s schedule depends on yours, perhaps you could say to other person, “Why don’t you go ahead and go to lunch”. But no, he has to waste time on things that aren’t urgent then eventually go to lunch at like 1:15 or 2. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  Ok I’m done.

Zumba Class: I Survived, Somehow:

I’m struggling a little bit with writing today. As mentioned above I’m fighting off a cold and I’m sore and tired from Zumba. Yesterday I took my very first Zumba class. It was nice because it was free. It was through my gym here at work. People all over Facebook were saying how awesome Zumba class is. The commercials tout how great of a workout it is. I’ve been skeptical.  I’ve taken dance classes at a gym before and have been terribly disappointed.  Those classes tend to overwhelm and intimidate me due to various reasons:

1. The moves are too hard and too fast and I can’t keep up
2. The classes are filled with people who are experts and I feel stupid because I don’t know what I’m doing and am worried about holding the class back because I’m terrible.
3. The teacher sucks because they expect everyone to know what the hell they’re doing and I never know what the hell I’m doing.
4. My fat body isn’t able to do half of what the class requires, so I’d rather be at home alone trying to figure this out.

 I’m really out of shape. I hate working out. Really hate it. I’m angry with myself for letting myself go the way I have. But here I am 60 pounds overweight and knocking at the door of 40 years old. Something has to be done. I would like to be looking hotter by next June when I actually turn 40. I don’t want to be a size 2, I want to be a nice lean size 10 or 12. So here goes the plight to get fit.

I have a few things working for me in my effort to get fit. Work has gym. In fact, they have 2 gyms that I can workout at for no additional cost to me. The main gym over at the studio lot has fitness classes. One of those classes listed was Zumba.   Luckily my friend and coworker Natalie, was nice enough to try this one with me. Since she was new at this, we could brave it together. The class is popular and there’s usually a wait list to get in. We both signed up and yesterday was the day we did this.

I’d like to say that the class kinda fun.  I’m only saying kinda because this would not be my first choice of things to do in my life.  But if you’re looking for something other than running on treadmill this would be a choice. The teacher was pretty nice.  It was a dude, which was interesting in itself. The class was full of women of various ages and sizes. I was definitely the largest one in there, which sucked.   One woman who had taken the class told me and Natalie that the teacher has perma-smile and he’s not laughing at us. So that was nice to know in advance.  The music was a great mix.  It was some salsa music, but also some hip hop pop stuff.  The steps were a mix of aerobics and dance moves.  I’ve taken salsa classes before so it was nice have a little of that background for me. I’ve also taken bellydancing clasess. These gave me the foundation for some of the “sexier” moves.  I did my best to not overdo it.  It’s just shy of two months since I had gallbladder removal surgery and I didn’t want to injure myself.

There was a lot of back and forth, turning around, kicks, raising arms, side stepping, crouching, lunging and twisting to the beat.  Most of the moves were easy to follow.  I had problems staying on beat sometimes, but I managed to find my way back on.  I would look over at Nat she was totally keeping up. Sometimes I noticed she didn’t always have her hands and legs in the correct positions and I felt better about the fact that my feet or hands weren’t always in the correct place either.  I was sweating profusely through the whole thing.  And was thanking God for when the music changed because that meant drinking water and toweling off. 

Sometimes I found myself smiling at myself. I was doing it.  It wasn’t perfect, but I was still keeping at it.  I didn’t fall over.  When something was too intense, I modified it to make it doable. The teacher didn’t yell at me and saying I wasn’t doing it right. When my body hurt, I modified moves to make it easier for me to do.  At some point it felt like dancing.  I think if I keep at this, it will become more fun for me.  We’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.

Message To Readers: Even though this blog is about me and my thoughts on life, I’m interested in what you might like to read about. Send me a message or leave comments on this blog about a topic you want me to address in future blogs.  Today’s topic was Natalie’s suggestion. So thank you Natalie.