"Special as in, 'Stop eating the paste' special?!"

I have now fully recovered from my tantrum yesterday - thanks for your HILARIOUS comments, actually made me laugh my head off and suddenly all was right with the world again. Thank Heaven for blogland - it does strike me as a bit bonkers that a bunch of people whom I have never met 'get' me more fully in terms of this whole healthy lifestyle pursuit vibe, than my actual real world pals - too funny! But I am GLAD you do understand!!! I think I'd have gone insane(er) without y'all so BIGFATLOVE to all my bloggers out there!

Now, allow me to recap (and give you some idea as to why I have titled this post as such...)

I did indeed go to the gymnasium hier soir. Straight from work like a good little girl I trotted off and for some reason halfway there realised that ERROR OF ERRORS I had forgotten a towel. I had my little hand towel with which to cover the display on the treadmill/wipe off the sweat mid-workout BUT I did not have a proper towel to use for my shower, post-workout. OOPS! I have no clue why this bobbed into my head at said point, but it sure did! Never mind, thought I, my gym is in a posh hotel, I am certain I can borrow a towel. You see friends, ordinarily I would have just walked home all sweaty and showered there (I live about 5 mins walk from said hotel), but tonight I was meeting 3 of my gal pals for dinner at the restaurant in the hotel where my gym is conveniently located...the idea being to run off inevitable calories prior to consumption. So I needed to have a proper shower.

I got down to reception and swiped my card in, headed to the desk and gave the chap behind it my most winning smile and asked could I borrow a towel. He handed me one and said 'That'll be £3.00, please.'

'Say what now?!' gasped I

'There's a charge for the towels'

'Are you KIDDING ME?' I spluttered

'No' replied the jackass behind the desk

'So let me get this straight, I pay a fortune every month to attend this gym, I direct out of town guests to stay here when they visit, I have held baby showers for friends here, I have booked you for things for work, I have organised a retirement bash here, I am eating later on in your freaking restaurant and I drink in your pub regularly and you are STILL going to charge me £3.00 for a bloody TOWEL!!!!!!!!!???????'

'Yes'

'Well that is frankly the most insane thing I have ever heard. I refuse to pay for a towel and I shall be writing to the manager.'

At this point I flounced off, tried to exit stage right with dignity but unfortunately my mahoosive gym bag got stuck in the bloody door so I wasn't quite as dignified as I might have been.....oops.


Still, how STUPID is that?! Ooh they are going to get a piece of my mind, let me tell you!

So, still chunnering away to myself about the injustices of giant corporate conglomerates and power to the people yadda yadda yadda, I got changed and realised - horror of horrors - that I had the HAIRIEST pits you ever did see!!!!!!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHA Sorry if this is tmi (believe me, it gets worse) but I hadn't shaved them all week because the weather's gone crap again so I'm all about long sleeved suits for work, plus I haven't even had a chance to blinkin' well unpack my bag from the weekend yet so all my stuff is in there and I couldn't be arsed to get out the shower and get it and get back in again, plus I was late already for work so that just added to one very special needs day. So there I was, hairy as you like, AND to make matters worse I had the gym top on that's flipping well SLEEVELESS!!! OH HONESTLY!!!!!!!! Did I give up, get changed and go home, sacking it off? No I did not. I marched my ass to that treadmill, covered up the display with aforementioned microscopic towel and made sure my arms were firmly clamped to my sides. Because I was still seething about Towelgate I managed to run for 30 minutes without even batting a bloody eyelid. Memo to me: anger makes you run GOOD! I hopped off the treadmill, onto the bike for a 20 minute Hill Climb, watched the news, drank some water and then moved on into the big gym for weights and whatnot. Hang on a minute! WEIGHTS! Aw….CRAP that involves lifting one's arms! ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh bugger!!!!!

So, to buy myself some time, not least because the weights section of the gym was filled with total bloomin’ hotties (and some not so hotties, but equally as proficient in the weight lifting dept), the floor was packed and I didn’t wish to scare the living daylights out of anyone with the pits of hairiness, I did some crunches (200, fronts obliques and lowers)and planks and pec flys (because there was no one else at the mats!), waited till a space cleared and got through my usual sets with minimal interruption - apart from a rather orange, wrinkly elderly woman in a leotard (and little else – YIKES!) who insisted on doing random yoga stretches in the weights section right near my head as I groaned through my dumb bell chest presses (3 sets of 20 thank you very much, with 5’s no less!). I told her to ‘bugger off’ under my breath but because I was listening to Britney rather loudly in my ears, I must have said it a little more loudly than I had intended to, as aforementioned orange woman did indeed bugger off, much to my delight!

By this time it was 7pm and I was meeting the girlies at 7:30pm so I headed to the changing room and got ready for my shower. It was around about then that I realised I had not brought any shampoo…or conditioner….or shower gel…..


So, to add to my towel-less state, I was pretty useless in the taking-a-shower department.

Nonetheless, I soldiered on. I stripped off to sports bra and running leggings, exchanged my trainers for flip flops and took my minute teeny tiny hand towel to the shower along with a change of under wear and a pair of black American Apparel leggings.

I showered using the shower gel from the dispensers cleverly placed in each cubicle, and (oh yes I did) washed my hair with it! OH THE SHAAAAAAAME!

Once clean, yet still hairy hahaha, I dried off as best I could with mini-towel (still sweaty from workout) and put on underwear and leggings and waltzed out of the shower like that to get dressed!!!! This was a big NSV for me, in a really random way, because I DO NOT DO NAKED CHANGING ROOM-NESS. Pas du tout. But needs must and I went with it!!

But the story is not over there friends, no siree bob.

It was around about his time that I realised I had forgotten my super-duper, Clinique anti-ageing, firming, magical turn-back-time Harry Potter stylee face cream. And I didn’t have any moisturiser either so I had to out on make up dry skinned. Which was nice. Not.

THEN I realised that I didn’t have a comb, and by this point was almost delirious with laughter (as I had just read Annabel’s and Jen’s comments on yesterday’s post on my BlackBerry) and couldn’t believe how SPECIAL I was being. I just finished getting ready and went for dinner: 2 small glasses of white, grilled salmon, baked potato and salad, no dressing. Spud was huge, I only ate half. We had a lovely lovely time - Lots of girly goss including 2 of them yakking on and on about the glories of childbirth and being pregnant (no THANK YOU!), and how ‘advanced’ their respective kids are for their ages (doesn’t EVERY parent think that?!) Seriously, I can only hear the word ‘dilate’ so much until that salmon is coming right back up again…….I love them, I really do but MY GOD girls change the bloody record! You still have brains! You still have other interests and opinions on current affairs!!! Express them! I love hearing about your little people I really, truly do but please oh please let it not be the sole topic of conversation or I shall die of boredom.

Ahem.

So that, my lovelies, was my oh-so spesh day. I hope you enjoyed it.

Know what though? A few months ago I’d have let the fact that I wasn’t perfectly prepared for my workout completely be the reason for jibbing it off and going home. Instead, I made do and did the bloody workout. And that, oh hotties of blogland, is one HELLUVA NSV!!!!! Silver lining, and all that jazz…..


Happy weekend dudes, see you next week

Love Lizzie aka BigFatPie xoxo