Dear Middle-Aged Poofy-Haired Man at the YMCA:

Hello.  My name is Cristina.  Not sure if you noticed me, but I was the one impaled on the Expresso bike sweating torrents and glaring at you through the glass pane.  You probably didn’t, but I sure noticed you.  I noticed you in your really tight work out pants (by the way, next time please do us all a favor and wear UNDERWEAR - cuz that was NASTY), your $1M dollar sales t-shirt, your extra-poofy hair, your weight lifting gloves and your cell phone.  Yeah, I saw you. I saw more of you than I ever wanted to see.

It would have been hard to miss you.  Generally when people go to the Y, they don’t spend their entire time in the hallway between the weight lifting room and the gym shouting into their cell phone, talking with their hands, and making lots of silly hand gestures (if you did the two thumbs up sign one more time while balancing the phone on your shoulder, I was going to whip a courtesy copy of Cosmo at your head.  Are you aware that the person on the other end of the phone CAN’T SEE YOU?).  I guess I don’t get it.  Did you need the weight lifting gloves to get better traction on your cell phone?  Are you that important that you must spend the entire 48 minutes I was on the bike chatting with 6, count ‘em, 6 different people?  (I counted, buddy.)

And because you bugged me THAT much, I actually timed how many minutes you were actually lifting weights.  I hate to break it to you: it was 4 1/2.  Seriously.  4 1/2 minutes of weight lifting and 43 1/2 minutes of verbal diarrhea on the cell phone while strutting in front of me with your tight pants and little soldier at half mast.  Are you aware how difficult the Expresso bikes are, and how irritating it is to see your big poofy head bobbing around on your neck right outside the glass that separated us?  Every time I focused on the monitor, another phone call came in, and you were there - sometimes not even noticing my hairy eyeball as you stared vacantly through the glass, less than 2 feet from me.  I know your momma taught you not to adjust yourself publicly. 

Mr. Cell Phone guy, working out does not come naturally to all of us.  And while you followed Y protocol by not taking calls while actually on the weight machines, you irritated the living crap out of me.  I was trying to stay focused on my course and my heart rate, and your stupid strutting walk was only missing the chest pounding.  Having a cell phone was cool in, like, 1993.  Everyone has them now - not sure if you’ve noticed, but no one gives a crap if you closed a big deal this week or how important you are that you must take calls during your “workout”. 

As a fellow fatty, I also might suggest you would get more mileage out of your membership if you spent less time exercising your jaws and strutting and more time actually working on that gut of yours.  Do us all a favor next time and sit in your car on your phone feeling important.  Perhaps you are even the guy who had a personalized license plate that said “Shlong” (those on Facebook have seen it, so they know I’m not lying), because that’s exactly the type of guy I think you are.  Leave the rest of us to sweat and grunt and have near-death experiences trying to beat our prior time in peace.

Best of luck in your future workout endeavors.

Yours truly,

Cristina

An illustration of how close this guy was to me:

And proof that someone at the Y actually drives a car with “Shlong” on the license plate:

It was an exciting day in Momland.  Yesterday, I noticed that Lily’s right ear was swollen near the back of her earring.  I could tell her ear was infected, but little miss dirty hands has had lots of minor ear infections.  By the way, not that you asked, but I kind of regret piercing their ears, hers in particular.  Kid paws are bacteria-laden surfaces, and she’s always futzing around with her earrings.  We have least one bloody draining earlobe a month.  Add my squeamishness about blood to the mix and you’ve got an annoyed momma.

Anyway, this morning her ear lump had doubled in size.  The thing looked like it was consuming the backside of her head. It was a lovely evening sunset of colors - purple, yellow, green.  She also has this funky spider-looking spot on her left cheek, and I’ve been meaning to call her doctor, so I did.  After she got off the bus, I shoved them into their leotards and trucked off to the doctor’s office.

Lily’s spidery spot is, and i quote, a telangiectatasia.  This, following Arden’s chalazion.  Can my kids please get health or skin issues I can pronounce??? It’s basically not a big deal.  It’s kind of ugly, but usually they clear up within a year.  I was thrilled that issue #1 was a non-issue.  Issue #2, however, was.  After the initial doctor looked at the back of Lily’s ear, she called our regular doc in for a second opinion.  She was about to send us to an ENT doc, but thankfully my wonderful regular pediatrician said that they could take care of it right there, and right now.  Keep in mind I promised Lily there would be no needles.  Well, a lance isn’t a needle, right?  WRONG.

Poor Lily realized what was happening.  She sat on my lap for a minute, clutching me and whimpering.  Then she stretched out on her stomach and the doctor came back with a swab and the biggest looking thumbtack thing I’ve ever seen.  Unfortunately I was at Lily’s head, holding her hands above it, so I had a clear view of the actual moment of lancing.  What nearly did me in, however, was not the soft squishy *pop* sound. It was the blood than began to drain not just from the lanced spot, but from the front and back of her earring.  Lily was crying by this time and shaking all over, so I sternly said, “Get it together woman.  You WILL NOT PASS OUT.”  Arden was the only one thrilled by the excitement. She kept pushing me out of the way and shouting, “LEMME SEE!  Oooh, GREEN STUFF!”

Lily was a trooper and suffered through the repetitive squeezing (they wanted some extra pus for a lab test, oh yay!). When I told her how brave she was, she pointed her finger at me and said, “I was NOT brave. I CRIED!”  If only she’d known her mom would have just passed out during the same procedure, she would have seen my point of view. 

Here’s a picture of Lily’s ear after it was “drained”.  Sorry for the blurriness but I took this at night and the lighting was crap.  Besides, you’ll be glad I didn’t get a clearer picture of it.  It is big and G.R.O.S.S. 

And another one of the Telangiectatasia. 

If anyone ever deserved ice cream, it was Lily today.  She didn’t get any, but I will make it up to her this weekend. 

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Briefly, a few people asked me if I was going to continue to pepper this blog with my high school and college persona.  I plan to do it on Wednesdays.  Some people do “Wordless Wednesdays” where they just post pictures.  I’m going to make mine “Whiny Wednesdays” and post embarassing things about myself.  I can’t wait!