The amount of time that I spend at the gym lately is slightly frightening. And, when you get right down to it, I guess I'm getting a little discouraged. I went to a Pilates class on Tuesday, and that usually cheers me up a bit. But I guess I wasn't in the mood for it. The stuff that I have gotten used to is just a little too easy now, and the stuff that I haven't quite gotten down just seems ridiculously hard. So I sit there, on my little gym mat, amidst a little crowd of 40 or 50 something year old women, all of whom are laboriously trying to throw their legs of over their heads, roll back and forth while clapping their heels together, or perform one of the many other ungracious-looking activities that pass for athletic conditioning in the realm of fad workouts.

And then, as if that were not bad enough, I leave this class and head for my new favorite machine: the stair mill. Not like your ordinary (namby-pamby) stairmaster, this machine is actually like a little revolving escalator, so you have to walk up real stairs. If you have your wits about you, you can make it reeeeally hard. (In some weird way I think of it as my penance for making fun of those poor ladies in my pilates class. It also affords a perfect view of the treadmills. So I get to sit there and look at everyone who CAN run, while I grumble and try to watch the television.) But this is disheartening, too! All of those stairs...and you never get anywhere. Same with treadmills, I suppose. It's hard not to feel utter disapointment. Like a modern day Sysiphus (if I may be so bold as to enoble a completely un-tragic situation.) You do so much work, but as soon as you get to the top, your boulder goes crashing right back down to the bottom of your fake stairwell. (And, your boulder isn't even REAL. They're fake stairs. All of them!) Gah!

And I thought this week off from work would be so pleasant...