Gym Etiquette for Dummies.

Following a recent incident at gym I thought it might be worthwhile to set out some tips on gym etiquette.  Use them.  Seriously.  Stop being a schmuck.

Gym floor etiquette

Never ever use a sweat towel.  There is very little your fellow gym-goer likes more than sitting in your leftover crotch sweat, leaning against your back and head sweat or grabbing weights slathered in your hand sweat.  Hygiene is totally overrated.

Eat while training.  All the time.  A half chewed banana, combined with a slug of protein shake, is exactly what we all want to see dripping from the sides of your mouth first thing in the morning.

Leave your mark.  Make sure, if you use that sticky white shit to get a better grip on heavy weights, that you get it everywhere.  Everywhere.  

Lift heavy.  Rather tear a muscle or snap a tendon that look like a pussy. Plus the heavier the weight, the more you can yell and grunt, and heaven knows we all love a yeller and a grunter!

Be sure to throw those weights down as hard as you can.  The louder the crash, the bigger your balls.  True story.

Guys, you might sometimes encounter a dodge woman who lifts more than you do.  Be sure to go ahead and call her butch or a dyke.  Chicks dig that.

Leave every weight you use all over the floor.  The bigger the obstacle course you leave for everyone else, the more impressive you are. Extra points if someone falls over the weights and breaks an ankle.

Always, always start conversations when someone is mid set.  This is the most opportune time to do so and they will be at their most attentive. 

Be sure to ask anyone else on the floor (especially mid set – see above) what the time is.  The 17 clocks on the walls around the gym are for decorative purposes only.

Sometimes, when doing kickbacks for example, the correct stance involves sticking your out bum. Be sure not to miss this opportunity to stand and stare at the ass of any woman doing this – she loves the attention and will definitely not lob you upside the head with her weights.

Avoid deodorant at all costs.  The best gift you can bring to the gym is the smell of your sweat.  Especially day old sweat.  Even more especially garlic and rum infused day old sweat.  Damn that’s sexy.

Men, you need to stock up on tight spandex and/or very loose very short shorts.  We women are so turned on every time you squat or do a leg lift and either your stallion (!!!) escapes from the barn, or, in the case of spandex, your jumping bean does the Duracell bunny shake.

It is totes ok to monopolise 6 machines at once and call what you are doing super sets.   Mark that shit.  Use your watch, your cellphone, your sweaty sock, your wrist band, your earphones – whatever you have at hand.  No need to share.  Oh and take your time – no rush. 

When encountering larger people in the gym, point and make comments like fatty and dikgat and be sure to add vomiting sound effects.  It’s a public service really.  After all, when you joined the gym you were a perfectly toned, fit and gorgeously bronzed vision of perfection. 

If you are either super skinny or extremely rotund you need to pay attention to your wardrobe.  Shirts featuring logos for EFC, UFC, Tapout and the like are essential.  Shirts with slogans like "Fart now loading" and "Blink if you Want Me" are also acceptable.

Take selfies at the gym.  As many as you can.  And if you see someone hot training nearby, take photos of them too.  They will be so excited to be part of your collage of Instagram gym pics.

If someone is using a machine you wish to use, walk up real close, sigh and tap your watch.  Feel free to lean over the machine and repeatedly ask how many sets they still have to go.

If someone is using a weight / mat / kettlebell that you want, go take it from them.  It’s your right. Nay it's your obligation. 

Women – ensure that your hair is done and you are wearing a full face of pancake like makeup.  No one wants to see your bed hair and wrinkles.  Sies.

Changeroom Etiquette (being a woman, I can only speak from the female perspective so feel free to adapt, as need be, for the men.  Or don’t)

Flushing the frikking toilet is optional. 

Feminine hygiene products are not private.  Communal changeroom areas are exactly the place for sorting this stuff out.  Don’t hide in the toilet stall or private areas.  Own your womanity.  Jirre.

For the love of all that is holy never sit on a towel in the steam room / sauna.  Your leftover snail trails add character to the otherwise boring mosaic tiles.

If you see me using a mirror to put on my make-up, by all means share the space with me and shave your under arms, legs or your pubes.  You will not be dealt a swift blow to the temple. 

Leave your eye liner shavings, used tissues, pad wrappers and empty moisturiser tubes lying around.  It’s called job creation.  That’s what the cleaners are there for.

As soon as someone gets on the scale, peer over her shoulder and give her a sympathetic pat on the butt.  Shame man.  It’s the right thing to do.  Otherwise that chick will never face reality.

Truth be told, there are many more of these nuggets I could offer but I feel that, if you stick strictly to the above, you will be well on your way to making many friends and influencing people. Good luck with that, see.

But that’s just my opinion.

What's up with this stuff?

What’s up with the “peel here” section on food not peeling there?

What’s up with the corners of meat containers poking holes in the plastic bag you paid 45 cents for?

What’s up with the 45 cent plastic bags getting thinner?

What’s up with me not getting thinner?

What’s up with cheesecake being fattening?

What’s up with food between your teeth?

What’s up with loud chewers and heavy breathers?

What’s up with wooden ice cream sticks?

What’s up with still getting pimples when you are as old as methuselah?

What’s up with the wrinkles on my ankles?

What’s up with shoes that pinch your toes and make you hobble?

What’s up with having to shave every few days?

What’s up with prickly regrowth and ingrown hairs in odd places?

What’s up with needing to pee 10 minutes before your alarm is set to go off?

What’s up with no one changing the bloody buggering toilet roll when it finishes?

What’s up with putting your dirty washing on TOP of the washing basket?

What’s up with the “tissue wash”.

What’s up with clothing labels that insist on sticking out the top of your shirt?

What’s up with mood swings?

What’s up with the doos who, when I indicate to change lanes and start to move into the pantechnicon sized space in front of him, accelerates so fast so ensure that I can’t fit in.

What’s up with road rage?

What’s up with having a cellphone conversation in a restaurant?

What’s up with unperforated clingwrap?

What’s up with the black bag full of icky kitchen stuff splitting open and unloading on your kitchen floor?

What’s up with maggots?

What’s up with mosquitoes?

What’s up with calling sunflower oil, fish oil?

What’s up with all the bullying on social media these days?

What’s up with the addictive nature of Farm frikking Heroes?

What’s up with YouTube adverts? No one watches past the “skip ad” point anyway?

What’s up with applauding in a movie?  Seriously people WTF?

What’s up with Christmas in July?  Is one Christmas a year not traumatic enough?

What’s up with never being able to find the start of the sticky tape?

What’s up with hashtags. #truestory

What’s up with all these questions?  What the hell do I know? It’s only my opinion ….

Because 'Murica

The land of the brave and the free.  The land of consumption and gluttony.  The land of the red, white and blue, and justice for all (well for some people at least).  The land of Martin Luther King and Honey Boo Boo.  The land of Rosa Parks and the KKK.  The land of the redneck and the Amish.  The land that has legalised the recreational use of marijuana in four states, same-sex marriages in 37 states but has a state law in Illinois which dictates that “a man’s female companion shall call him “master” while out on a date”. 

Because ‘Murica.

A place where football doesn't mean football, where tomato sauce is called ketchup and where supersize is the new medium.  A place where 100 acres of pizza is served every flipping day, and 7% of the population do not bathe.  Research has been conducted which shows that it would take 4 planet Earths to sustain the current consumption levels of the United States.

Because ‘Murica.

In Maryland it is illegal to take a lion to the movies, and in North Carolina it is illegal to hold more than two bingo sessions per week exceeding 5 hours per session.  You know how dodge those bingo grannies can get!  And should you end up in Oklahoma, you will be arrested on the spot if you get caught with a sleeping donkey in your bathtub after 7pm.

Because ‘Murica.

In America they celebrate Thanksgiving by eating a turkey and marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes.  They have no actual language of their own, speaking only ‘Murican.

They eat FRIED BUTTER. I shit you not.

One of the most fascinating things about Americans is their complete ignorance regarding anything other than their own country.  Of course, South Africa is quite the mysterious savage land.  Being asked whether South Africa is the capital of Africa, whether we ride lions and elephants, and whether we have tarred roads, are commonplace.  (Having said that, with the amount of potholes we have, this may be a valid question). “Do you speak African”, they enquire.  Eish wena.

But when all is said and done, America has given us many many great things, for which we should be thankful. Where would we be, after all, without the incredible people of Walmart to make us feel fantastic about our own country?

But that is just my opinion.

A cynical (or is it realistic) view of motherhood

Have children, they said.  It will be fun, they said.

You recount these words as, bleary eyed, covered in snot and spit and pooh and smelling worse than your wheelie bin on pick up day, people lean over your bundle of “joy”, cooing and aahing.  Mere minutes ago, that self-same angelic demon (see what I did there) was screaming blue murder for something which clearly you were not equipped to provide, whilst simultaneously upchucking sour milk, blowing snot bubbles and squeezing runny poop out the sides of the flipping expensive disposable nappies you practically had to mortgage your house to buy.  They look at you askance, these “put together” people who keep touching your child with their germ ridden fingers, and you can read the disapproval in their eyes as they fix on the stains on your clothes and the rings under your eyes. 

Some time passes and the offspring learns the ability to put more than 2 words together, and to speak in semi-sensible sentences.  Yay, you think.  Now the child will actually tell me WHAT is wrong, instead of just yelling incoherent gibberish.  Turns out that now the child doesn’t stop telling you what’s wrong – with you, with the food, with the brand of bubble bath, with the shoes you picked out, with the way you did their hair, with the fact that pudding comes after the meal and not before.  Oh and let’s not forget the “why” of it all.  Why? Why? Why?  Because I bloody well said so, that’s why.

Years pass and you still have not had a single unbroken night of sleep.  Even if the child sleeps through, you hear phantom sounds of burglars who are breaking into your house to steal your baby.  You lie there, trying to distinguish the difference between your husband’s breathing, your child's breathing and that of the would-be kidnapper.  You hatch plans on how to hoist the kid and yourself up through the trapdoor, leaving hubby to fight the evil-intentioned psycho off with a stick.

They start school. Leaving you crying at the gate, as they start their great walk across the school yard towards independence and phonics.  They bring you homework to do and books to cover, projects to co-ordinate and study rosters to enforce. They insist on you attending sport days and school plays.  And then later on insist that you don’t.  You consider donning a moustache and a bowler hat and going anyway. 

You follow a career path of sorts, resulting in the return of those self-same disapproving looks you received for the puke stains on your clothes that many years ago, from the moms who don't.  Screw it, you say, and pour yourself a big glass of chilled dry white.

They take an active interest in sports.  You buy every single item of clothing or equipment they might need for each extramural.  They quit.  Eventually they find the extra mural that they love – but your finances and enthusiasm are depleted.  

They become teenagers.  The why’s continue.  The smell returns.  All accompanied by a heavy dose of attitude.  You wonder if perhaps your child is legit bipolar because one minute you are the recipient of hugs and kisses and the next second there is a whirlwind of door slamming and “it’s not fair” in the air.  Or sullen silences.  And you are still tired.  And still trying to figure out if your teen will be able to crawl up into the trapdoor without you having to lift them because your damn back is so sore.  And anyway you can’t hold them and your glass of wine at the same time. 

They enter the late teens and shit gets real yo.  You look at tertiary educational institutions and try work out how many internal organs you need to sell to afford to give your child the best possible opportunities, knowing that your liver is unlikely to yield much in the way of returns.  Suddenly the Hot Wheels car is not good enough – they want one which can actually convey real life-sized people.  There are love interests and pimples and hair sprouting in awkward places.  There are brands and bands.  There is a matric dance and matric finals and the stress that accompanies this.  You still do not sleep through the night, although this can mostly be blamed on the need to pee three times a night as a result of the quantities of wine you are consuming to survive parenthood.  You have nailed the trapdoor shut because, bugger it, the child is old enough to help your husband beat off burglar with a stick.

The child is suddenly no longer a child.  You find you have time on your hands again.  Real adult time. Time to spend with your spouse.  Time to watch something on TV other than the Teletubbies or Barney or Hannah Montana or Camp Rock or MTV. You no longer have to pack clothing to cover all four seasons if you want to go away for one night.  You wonder what the hell happened to the last 18 years.

And you realise that whatever else those smelly, exhausting, trapdoor-renovating, liver-damaging 18 years have given you (and taken from you), you have produced a being who will go out and conquer the world.  Or at least their little corner of it. 

You pour another glass of wine and congratulate yourself on a job well done, and then go have a nap. Because that's what it's all about. 

But that's just my opinion.

To tattoo or not to tattoo. Why the question?

I have often been asked what on earth possessed me to start getting tattoos late into my 30’s.  The answer to that is multifaceted and pretty damn boring.  What ultimately matters is why I still do.  There is a life changing element to my tattoos other than me simply being a “late bloomer”. 

I had my first tattoo done at about the same time as I decided it was time to lose some serious weight.  I was in a pretty crappy place in terms of self-confidence and body image.  It’s a small tattoo but was the start of something much deeper and all encompassing.

Numbers 1, 2 and 3 all have some sort of meaning or symbolise something special to me (cheesy meanings perhaps, but relevant all the same).  I had numbers 4 and 5 done simply because I wanted them. And they were beautiful.  And it was good.

After No 1 I realised that people were not joking when they said this shit is addictive.  Less than year later I was back for No 2.  It was not enough.  I wanted bigger and better. 

The reality is though that getting tattoos – by talented artists, at any rate – is expensive.  I saved all my R5 coins for ages and eventually got No 3.  This one took 7 hours and, as I staggered out of the studio, nauseous and shaky, I thought maybe I was cured of the addiction.  Not so much as it turns out.  No’s 4 and 5 followed in rapid succession.

There are two parts of this addiction.  One is purely physical.  The tightening in my gut when I hear the buzz of the needle.  The surge of adrenalin when I feel the sharp burning sensation as the needle touches my skin.  Even writing this, I feel a tight knot of anticipation rising inside of me and my breathing becomes laboured. 

The other side of this addiction, however is purely emotional.  I am my biggest critic as far as my physical appearance is concerned.  I have never been a particularly self-confident woman, always hating the way this wobbled, or that jiggled.  Previously overweight and under-exercised, I decided to change things and ended up 20 odd kilos lighter and a demon in the gym.  All of that, however, means nothing without my art.  My body is now so much more than flesh, freckles and cellulite.  It is a canvass.  There are exquisite points of interest which I want to show off to the world.  This has not only changed my view of my own body but the way I face life.  Whatever.  It’s a fact. I am much more of a confident badass than ever before.  And they make me feel damn sexy. 

“What about when you are old and saggy?”.  Think about it for a second – my tigress will move and stretch and become even more languid and fluid.  As she should.  My butterflies and flowers will grow and change and perhaps even droop – as they do in nature – but they will still be beautiful.  My triskele will forever represent the circle of life and strength of the woman that I keep striving to be.

And one day – far into the future, the angels willing – when I lie on the slab, I hope that my stories, like bushman art in a cave, will tell a story worthy of the life I am living.

It is a personal choice.  One I cannot wait to do again.  And again. 

But that’s just my opinion.