Batten Down The Hatches

"Maybe your weird is my normal? Who's to say?"-Nicki Minaj

As many of my followers know, I have had my fair share of poop stories. Until last Wednesday, these were strictly animal stories. I will now share my first (and hopefully last) human poop horror/humor story.

One of my day jobs I currently have involves teaching Zumba at several gyms. My all time favorite class to teach is my Wednesday night class at a gym that will remain nameless. The members are rambunctious, hilarious, and ready to WORK. I've been told my classes are the hardest/best workout money can buy and I really pride myself in that. I always make sure to have low and high impact options so anyone from 8 years old to 80 years old can come away and feel like they really exercised, challenged themselves, but were safe in the way they went about it. Zumba is so great because it really feels like you are having a little party, acting like a fool, and best of all it doesn't feel like a workout that you have to convince yourself you can finish and hope you don't pass out.

Yes my classes are hard, but that's why we're at the gym. To make changes and get in shape! I had a special "Kick Butt Thanksgiving Zumba Extravaganza" complete with new songs, lots and lots of sweating in preparation for the 800 cookies, pies, turkeys, potatoes, etc that we would eat the next day. I even had handmade door prizes that I had crafted myself. You can check them out here if you want: www.etsy.com/shop.eclecticgreetings

Little did I know it would go horribly wrong and I wouldn't even know that it made a turn for the worst until Thanksgiving itself.

Thanksgiving morning went really well. My boyfriend, Will and I ran a 10k and finished in a little over an hour. There was a light drizzle, but it felt AMAZING since we were ridiculously warm from not running that far in a long time. We then went home and cooked cream cheese and bacon stuffed poblano peppers and a green bean casserole. Then we made the trek, with our pup Atlas of course, to NC where Will's mom lives to eat all of the delicious food she had made. We were beyond stuffed by the time we made it home. Everyone in the house: cats, dog, and boyfriend were asleep within minutes of sitting down. I curled up with the 5th Game of Thrones book and just relaxed.

We decided to go to Target around 9 so we would miss the massive crowds and still get to shop around for some great deals. Little did I know my entire day would be changed as I walked out of the game section towards the pet section.

I ran into Chris who takes my Wednesday night class and he is super energetic with a fun personality. He is the one who informed me about the "incident". After saying hi and making small talk he leans in and in a hushed voice asks me "Do you know that someone pooped in your Zumba class yesterday?"

First of all, this is not the normal conversation topic I was expecting. Secondly, my brain had trouble processing that information. Thirdly, WHAT THE F@$&?????  I was disgusted, confused, slightly amused, intrigued, disgusted again, horrified, and most of all the feeling of "no...that couldn't have happened."

But happen it did. I was 100% oblivious...not that I would have known what in the world to do if I happened to see someone poo on the floor accidentally. Let's give you some more detail. No not about the poo you weirdo, about the situation.

I had 20 people in class that night and the "perpetrator" was in the back of the class according to witnesses and hear sayers. I always teach at the front and am looking around the room constantly to check form. It never occurred to me to check the floor for rogue bowel movements. A mother and daughter duo are usually at the back almost every class and they had apparently witnessed it happen, but were too confused or horrified to do something about it, which is very reasonable. Many in the class wrote it off as "oh, there's dirt right there".

What horrifies and confuses me the most is the next few facts. 1. She pooped in the middle of a crowded room and knew it happened. 2. She didn't casually excuse herself to clean up the mess on the floor and undoubtedly elsewhere on her person. 3. A WHOLE OTHER CLASS happened in that same room right after and everyone thought it was dirt. 4. She never CLEANED IT UP.    I can forgive someone for pooping on the floor if they have bowel issues. That can't be helped, but preventative measures should be taken like an adult diaper, etc. Not to clean is up is rude, unsanitary, and a slipping hazard to name barely a few of the risks without mentioning how gross the whole situation is.

I'm not the sort of person who focuses on the negative, but I had no previous socially acceptable reaction in my arsenal in which to pull from to figure out how in the heck you respond to something like that.

In short, if you have to poop, go to the bathroom immediately. Poop waits for no mortal being and it means smelly business. If you do poop accidentally, nonchalantly play it off as it being dirt on the floor and blame it on a muddy dog you may or may not have and excuse yourself and get the proper cleaning tools. That's humiliation free and won't wound any pride, plus it prevents blog posts such as these from unsuspecting Zumba instructors who never see that situation coming.

All in all, I exercised the shit out of someone. Literally. I still have no idea how to feel about that. Holy crap. Pun intended.

"The only thing worse than it raining after you wash your car, is having to poop right after you get out of the shower."--Unknown

Parkour

For those of you who have no idea what Parkour is, it is a sport invented in France and is basically street running and stunts.  Here's a video I found on youtube of the guys who do this in Leicester.

LPA (Leicester Parkour Association)

I met a friend in the dance program who was telling me he taught parkour classes. I, being slightly mental, had this thought process:

1. Sounds like a great workout
2. I liked stage combat so this could be cool
3. I've always wanted to feel like a ninja
4. Jumping off of objects is pretty cool

I'm sure my parents are going to add this to the ever growing list of things that is making them prematurely grey. Whoops.

I arrived with other beginners via taxi and hung around and watched the kids class. Kids don't really have fear. They hurl themselves at walls for fun so they made this look easy. After we paid, we (25 of us) were taken outside for a warm up. We ran around the basketball court, did sprints, jumping jacks, squats, stretches, more running and more squats. That was just the warm up...

We were divided up into skill level and then taken to our first station. It consisted of gymnastics equipment and benches. I can't find a picture on the internet so you guys get to view my amazing drawing skills.

 I feel like this needs some translation. The brown thing is a hurdle and the red creature looking thing is a stool behind it. The green is another large hurdle. We had to run at the brown hurdle put our hand on the wall and scrunch ourselves to make it over. Then we jumped on the floor once and onto the red stool and then directly onto the green hurdle and down to the floor. This was supposed to be fluid... I was not fluid. I jumped directly into the middle of the green one, but managed to drag myself over.

Station 2!

I loved this one! By far my favorite and the one where you could even say I excelled. There were 3 hurdles of various heights and we ran at them and jumped over in random ninja like ways. My butt didn't want to cooperate completely and decided to skid when it was supposed to fly over the hurdles. This was the only station where I didn't wipe out or faceplant.

Station 3... *Sigh*

I felt like I was in one of the movies that makes fun of people in gym class.... Here's a visualization of the stunt set up.

The ladder was attached to a wall with a yellow stool in front with another long bench in front.

We had to jump from the green to the yellow, which was easy enough. I'm pretty short so the distance was rather large... Then we had to fling ourselves at a ladder (there was a padded mat on it) and grab on and hold ourselves there.

Attempt 1: Bounced off the padding and landed on the floor

Attempt 2: Manged to grab with my hands and took the entire mat off the ladder and had it fling out across the floor

Attempt 3-5: Managed to grab on but with awful form

You may be asking yourself how the other beginners were doing?

They were ninjas.... I was the only person to wipe out on the majority of the stations. 

By the end of the hour and a half we spent rotating between stations my legs felt like jello. Were we done? Oh NO we were not...

For the next 30 min straight we did lunges, 10 min of squats, more lunges and then moved on to working out our arms. After that we got to have fun in the gymnastics room.

There was a giant squishy pad we were all trying to jump on and over. I managed to wow everyone again with my incredible falling skills. Man I'm talented.

After all of that I walked home and knew the next day was going to be a bad one for soreness. I went to bed barely able to sit down and woke up feeling like an 80 year old woman. It took me 3 days to be able to sit down without grunting loudly and to be able to dress myself without feeling like my muscles are trying to turn into the hulk. 

You may think I'm crazy, but I'm going back! 

I want to progress from the parkour equivalent of this:

To this:

 (I do not own the last 2 pictures)

While providing prime entertainment during the process. 

"An adventure may be worn as a muddy spot or it may be worn as a proud insignia. It is the woman wearing it who makes it the one thing or the other." -Norma Shearer