Elbow Room

The Littlest Mermaid is being elbowed out by Big Fat Ugly Man. We had fun rolling our eyes at each other when he hogged the best jet in the hot tub last week. He has been shunned.

When she was first at The Good Jet earlier this week he sat really really close to her so he could be the first to take it over when she vacated. Like anyone with a tailgater the best most fun tactic is to drive really really slow and take your left turn realllllly sloowwwwwwwww just to be annoying. I am proud to know The Littlest Mermaid sat there extra long and made him wait.

They were doing "maintenance" in the Ladies Locker Room on Monday so we all had to use the Children's Locker Room instead, complete with smaller lockers, smaller shower stalls, no makeup/hairdrying space except the sinks (conveniently located right next to the toilets so gawd forbid all that exercise made your system work for you and you need a bit of privacy). Puppy Sweet Cheeks took over five lockers for all her things. I think I have some competetion there. Anyway, the funniest part was 8 of us all trying do our makeup, dry our hair, and also make room for those that needed to wash their hands after using the loo in the space of two sinks, including Butch, who, by the way, appears to be female in all respects. We did fine except for blowing a fuse because we had more than two hair dryers running at the same time. What can we say? Sometimes the Y sucks.

The Children's Locker Room has a working scale, FYI. The new chintzy one that they put in the Women's Locker Room is a small, digital scale. Very nice. I weighed myself on it, went for a pee, then came back and weighed myself again and it appeared that I lost 4 ounces. That was satisfying. Except now the battery has already died after just one week. I made a bet with Cookie that within 3 weeks the stupid thing will get stolen. If you want to get in on the bet just let me know.

One of the best reasons for going to the gym early in the morning is Elbow Room. It's not as crowded as later in the morning ("don't these people have jobs"?, you might moan to yourself on those days that you aren't working or get to go to work late), or in the evening (and in the evening it's mostly dysfunctional crazy stressed out working folks and youngins posing and looking for pickups and they do look good, by the way), and bonus points: the toilets are clean. So you've got all this lovely space and some stinky guy decides to take up residence on the bench, or the bike, or the treadmill right next to you when there are many others they could have chosen instead. Grrrrrrrrrrr. Chill out, S.L.B. - everyone needs elbow room to do their thing, including me.

Which is why I left my weekend company to their own devices and ventured forth for a workout both Saturday and Sunday instead of playing hostess, hoping they would all have showered and eaten and had some privacy so I could come back home and eat right away because I Am Starved and then we can just get on with the day. Except that they hadn't showered, or eaten. They Slept In. My cat, Bob, is obviously not doing his job of howling at the top of the stairs the way he does normally. I smooched him and explained the situation and suggested he scratch at some doors tomorrow morning.

We can all get along as long as we know when to make a little room for others in our lives, and when to put our elbows out. Right now I've got my elbows out and company went to the movies and I get some privacy and a chance to do a blog. Life is good.