Cords and Fleece

The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself. Well...yes and no . Sometimes what we fear turns out to be OK -- in fact, it turns out to be pretty damned fun. The squadron of peppy cheerleaders turns out to be an extremely quiet guy named Ron and a nice girl named Alison who looks like Hayley Mills (but doesn't know who Hayley Mills is). The gymnastics instructor turns out to be a nice young girl woman who is easy to talk to. And I turn out to be considerably less decrepit than originally feared. Of the three students (!), I'm definitely the oldest by more than a decade. However, I was surprised (and thrilled) to see how evenly matched we were. Where one student is flexible, the other is strong. What I lack in youth, I make up for in pointy toes and perky presentation. While I'm certainly not as fit as the other students, I am not miles behind in skill. (Maybe just a few blocks away.) The first class was primarily an assessment of our current capabilities, so we c

Despite recent evidence to the contrary, it's no secret -- I don't like to exercise. Especially exercise for the sake of exercise... pushups in order to do more and better pushups, etc. To inspire me properly, everything must have purpose . It must be practical. This is why I stopped taking kung fu a few years ago (well, that and it's not easy to execute a perfect roundhouse kick when you're pregnant.) After 2-3 years of working hard to become a great fighter (not that I ever became one), I asked myself, What am I fighting against? I'm not going to join the Army. I don't live in a bad neighborhood. Yet, I'm spending hours and hours of my time learning how to poke some phantom menace in the ojos (that's eyes for those of you who aren't vicariously learning Spanish through your 1st grader). Enough was enough. It just wasn't practical anymore. And thus began the steady process of me falling out of shape. I knew I was in physical decline. T