Gym, 8 am

So, my husband thinks I should have a blog (hi, honey!). I think he's just tired of my random stories about all the strange things I encounter in my daily life...or maybe it's my awareness of these things that bugs him. I like to think I have a highly developed sense of the ridiculous - and almost every day, I encounter a person or situation that reminds me of just how goofy we as humans are. While I'll probably still share my favorite anecdotes with him, I also wanted to put them "out there" in case someone else finds them as amusing as I do. Life in flyover country may be a bit staid (but after the last few years, boy, do I love staid...) but there is always something that makes me laugh.

Today it was a woman at the gym. Not very original, I know, but hang on, and I think you'll see why she was particularly amusing. I was at the gym later than usual, so it was a different group than the usual my-god-it's-way-too-early-for-amusement crowd. So there I was, minding my own business on the treadmill, wondering why on god's green earth anyone in this uber-liberal (yay), crunchy town puts Fox "News" on the gym tv every.single.day, enjoying a long run. Typical morning at the gym for me.

In walks distraction, in the form of...gosh, I wish I had my camera with me. Well, it was a woman. A young-ish woman, although she was either college aged and looking a bit older thanks to her perma-tan, or a bit older and trying to recapture her college years. So, she could have been 20 or she could have been 35. ANYway (do you see why my husband prefers that I write this out instead of talking his ear off???), the first thing was the hair. Bleached (obviously so) and long and ratty and pulled into a ponytail on the top of her head. But she hadn't pulled the end through on the final pass of the elastic, so she had this huge poofy thing on top of her head. A bleached blond thing on top of her brown hair. Um, ew. So, poofy girl grabs a magazine (most of them are from c. 2002, I've found...although they're kind of funny to read - who is this person? in what tv show?) and goes over to an elliptical machine. She proceeds to stand there for 2-3 minutes, reading the magazine, looking at the tv, and, um, not getting on the elliptical.

Short-shorts girl then gets off another of the elliptical machines, waaay down at the other end of the - otherwise empty - row, and poofy girl heads to that machine. Not sure why - but hey! Who am I to questions p-g's motivations? She gets on, programs it, takes two strides, and then stops to reset the machine. All the while reading the magazine. Then she steps off that machine and stands there, still looking at the magazine. She's been there for, I don't know, 5 minutes at this point? And she hasn't gotten ON the machine.

And then I notice the best part of the whole thing. Her pants are halfway down her rear end. And she is not wearing any underwear. So I get the, ahem, pleasure of seeing half of her butt crack. While I'm killing myself on a 50 minute run. And she is completely, completely oblivious. Thanks, poofy girl! I needed that! She eventually did get on the elliptical, and she did pull her shirt down to cover her butt (but did not pull her pants up...what is up with that??), but man. I could have lived the rest of my life without seeing that.