Not feeling it

I like to write for y'all. I like seeing that counter tick up the page views. It makes me feel good. But I've been feeling angsty lately instead of funny. So give me a moment to work through my funk. Maybe it's just PMS again (for the third time this month).

Hang on, I'll be right back.

...

Okay, I wrote a terribly angsty chapter of fanfic, then I read "Jen"e Sais Quoi and Bloggess, and then I pooped, so I'm ready to make you giggle now.

(I don't know why that's making me laugh. I'm weird.)

...

So, we've got this new chick in my gymnastics class who, like half the class, has never done gymnastics. She's maybe 28 years old, and the coach isn't exactly comfortable telling older women what to do. Our last coach - no problem - he'd leave bruises that made our husbands jealous from grabbing us to help us do tricks until we could do them ourselves - but not this guy. No, he just tells us what to do, then we have to figure out the mechanics of how that motion should feel.

So the new lady was trying to do a basic front flip into the pit (that horrible thing I blogged about in my very first post), but she couldn't quite get all the way over.

The coach tells her to "throw harder." If you don't know how to throw harder, then that advice doesn't help very much. I want to tell her to imagine a pinata hanging from the rafters that she has to break... with her butt. Sling that thing on up there, and gravity will take care of the rest!

But she's new, and I don't want to scare her off by saying something that odd, so I guess I'll let her keep tucking and leaning forward and kinda falling in a flipping motion.

And now that it's summer, the adults don't have the gym to ourselves. The competitive team is practicing at the same time. Oh, if we didn't feel old and out of shape before, we do now. These lithe little things with elastic bones jumping and turning like friggin Flipper the dolphin put us to shame. At this point in our lives, we're a little more like Shamu. (Or, at least, we feel like it.)

But them being there has made me try harder so I don't embarrass myself. It's so much easier when the beginners' class is sharing the gym, because they think we are badasses. "Wow! Did you see your mom flip? That was cool! What was that?!"  "That was a 'full,' son: a layout with a full twist." And everyone's all smiles and pride, even if my full was loose and sloppy.

But when the Team is the peanut gallery, we hear, "Ooh, she needs to pull harder to tighten that up," or "Wow, I bet that hurt." Kid, I don't know you, but I am dadgum Superstar, and it's loose because I'm just here for a fun workout, and it didn't hurt one dang bit. Nyah.

Of course, if I do a great one, the coach is like "wow," and I glance at the Team kids (whose opinions I DO NOT care about), but none of them see it. None. Dang it.