I am not very smart

(If you are an agent, possibly drawn here by my query letter, please look to the right and see the link "The best artciles on this site" and read some of those first. Thank you.)

Apparently the quest to become the ultimate metrosexual is endless.

Wendy has asked me multiple times if I wanted to go to the gym with her. My reply has always been “no.” My logic has always been: I need to run, and I need to do pushups and I don’t need to pay for anything. If I can focus on that, I can be in the shape I want.

And now, I am so exhausted I can barely type.

For some reason, the other day I said “yes, I will go to the gym with you." It’s a new very modern gym that we just wanted to check out with a free day pass. Wendy did an aerobic dance class and I did free weights. I used to work out a lot. Not a little, a lot. Of course, I was in my twenties then and I am forty-four now. But, doing bench presses was like embracing an old friend. I grabbed the bar and I was surprised how much weight I could still do, which was encouraging. I did bench presses, curls, incline bench, triceps, shoulder press, sit-ups, biking, all of it, and it all felt great. I got a good workout in but didn’t push myself too hard because I know you’re not supposed to on your first day back.

I am done with running. I don’t know why but I have not been running in months. It no longer appeals to me. I have not worked out in twenty years and I loved it. It was more fun than I have ever had working out. We did it again two days later and I pushed myself to exhaustion.

Then I went downstairs to the best part of this gym. They have a spa with a steam room, a sauna, a cold pool, a warm pool, and showers that hit you from three directions at once all over your body. (Honestly, we haven’t figured out how to get those to work right yet.) Oh yeah, and the warm pool has different places where you press a button and water comes out of this big water spout and massages you with crushing force and they have places to sit, press a button and it becomes a Jacuzzi.

It is very cool.

Yesterday I went shopping for Halloween. I am not very smart. I have never loaded a cart up so much that I needed to carry extra bags home as well as the wheeled shopping tote we use to being groceries home. We are having a Halloween party this weekend so in the tote was a twelve pack of beer, six bottles of wine, a twelve pack of Diet Coke, eight diet Fanta limon, a six pack of non-alcoholic beer, seven jars of cocktail weenies in water which weighed 5 lbs all together, cheese, random beer called “Hell” and “Judas” and I don’t remember what else. It was the heaviest tote I have ever wheeled home AND I had a bag of groceries (eggs, tomatoes, pepper, other stuff that isn’t light), toilet paper and paper towels in the other hand.

I always think I can do anything. I don’t know why, but I do. There is nothing I cannot carry, no one I cannot defeat, nothing I cannot do. I have carried, literally, hundreds of pounds up five flights of steps to our apartment. Today was different. It took me so long to carry up the first load, then rest, that Wendy actually called my cel to see where I was. I was on the stairs, resting between floors as I tried to carry the rest of the groceries upstairs. As I type this, I am still tired. I don’t know if I have ever been this physically exhausted. I remember two times when I was awake for over thirty-four hours and I was exhausted, but in a different way. This is muscle exhaustion like I have never experienced. This isn’t “please, can I go to sleep” this is “please don’t make me move.”

As I said, I am not very smart.

I am going to the gym today but only to use the steam room and the warm pool.

Then I’m going to approach another twenty agents about my book “I’m not an Alcoholic, I’m just European.” So far I have received a bunch of rejections, one request for a partial and one guy who rejected me but said the title was hilarious, so, I’m on the right track with that at least.