The Shaffers Go to the Gym

Let's just call a spade a spade, okay?

My husband works out. A. Lot.

He was a wrestler in high school...and he's been working out his entire adult life. He's a walking mass of muscles, and I will not lie to you - I really enjoy that.

It's one of the reasons I was so surprised when he picked me. Not that I think he's so shallow that he couldn't like a girl who um...is a book nerd...but because working out is just such a part of his life, that I figured he would choose someone with that passion in common with him.

Since going to work at WBCL, my gym life has been pretty much non-existent. I am scared to go by myself - and the gyms in Fort Wayne are intimidating to a girl like me who had to read the directions on every machine to see how they work. Those gyms are full of in-a-hurry worker-outers who just want to get in, work out, and get out. They don't want to wait in line behind the girl who brings her book-nerdiness to the gym and actually reads the directions on the machines.

So...we decided to get a membership at the same gym, so we can work out together. {Collective awwww, right?}

And last night was our first trip TO the gym to work out together.

I walked in to this room filled with skinny college girls in their cute little spandex workout pants and perfectly form-fitting tops, hair swinging rhythmically from side to side in sleek ponytails, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

You could call my shirt form fitting in that it seemed to have found my muffin top. And right about the time I settled into a machine and put my legs up on the bar -  I remembered the substantial hole in the seat of my pants.

Whoopsie.

Ryan was so in his element as he whisked me around the room and set up the equipment for our reps. {That's what those are called, right?}

Me? I was still back reading this:

I scooted onto a bench and began to pull a pathetic-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things amount of weight down from the bar above, while sucking in trying to cover that blasted hole in the pants.

And that's when I saw her.

Little miss skinny with her curly side pony, kicked back on the exercise bike, putting away the miles without breaking a sweat. She was oblivious to her reflection staring at me from the floor to ceiling torture mirrors on the gym wall, and I knew the look.

"Seriously? HE is with HER? Mr. Muscles and Mrs. Muffin Top?"

I won't lie. I ruffled at first. But then I thought - YOU KNOW IT, BABY!!! That one is all mine and I don't mind if I do sit back and watch him rip down all those weights like it's nothing!

And so the evening went. Ryan scurried around the gym, lifting heavy black discs and I hung out in the corner with these:

He twisted and turned and did all manner of sit ups while I stood like a two year old learning to balance on these bad boys:

Before you judge - if you've not done that - it's not as easy as it looks.

At least if you have the equilibrium doled out in our family genetics.

And so that was the Shaffers' night at the gym, take one. We'll see how it goes from here. I can only imagine the blog posts to emerge.

Meanwhile, I really need to sew up these pants. Or buy new ones.