How come your mom wasn't at the gym?

I have to admit. I was kind of excited to see Lady Hector at the gym tonight. We call her that because she's built like our building super at work, Hector.

So we were all excited for Lady Hector tonight, and then she didn't show. A few minutes into the class, the instructor remarked that Maria (aka Lady Hector) wasn't there to entertain the class tonight. Everyone immediately broke into laughter. Oh what a relief to finally talk about the pink elephant in the room. He was just so stoic when she was freaking on him last week. I was like, "Am I the only one seeing this?"

Anyway, I felt so inspired by Lady Hector's absent spirit that I threw down my weights and did a little hip-thrust, freak dance right there in front of the whole class. I know they appreciated it, because they laughed and laughed. One lady came up to me after class and complimented me on my Lady Hector impression. The first-timers must have thought I was just some random bat sh*t crazy tall lady who liked to randomly break out into sexy dance during the bicep portion of the class. They probably complained about me to the people at the front desk. I fully expect to be asked to leave at the beginning of next week's class.

:-)

Bat Sh*t Crazy

So there's this crazy lady that comes to one of my weightlifting classes and, instead of weightlifting, just does crazy, random sh*t the whole time. Before I explain, let me first paint the picture.

She's a short Latina lady in her mid to late 50's who wears a do-rag on her head and enough black eye makeup to make mine look natural. Last week, she wore a fishnet catsuit with black socks and sneakers. This week, she wore bright orange short-shorts over black leggings.

So here's what she does. While we're all concentrating on slowly doing our bicep curls, she puts her weights down and starts ghetto humping the air. I mean, really shaking her money-maker. Like a stripper gone horribly, horribly wrong. I cannot begin to describe how odd this is when juxtaposed with the weightlifting.

She also walks around the room (while everyone else is stationary), goes up and freaks on the instructor, steals the instructor's weights, tries to carry on unsolicited conversations with him during class, and does every random exercise in the book other than the one the instructor is teaching. Then she dances some more. So distracting...

Last night I was with two co-workers who had to face the sidewall in order to finish their sets without laughing. As we were leaving, another lady said something about the crazy lady being a distraction. My friend suggested we complain, since attendance in the class seemed to be dwindling and we didn't want the class to get cancelled. So we told the lady at the front desk, who didn't seem to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. So I just felt guilty afterword for saying anything at all.

Why should we care that this free spirit is doing her own thing? Well... because it's really f'ing distracting, and it's a group weightlifting class, that's why. It's not solo stripper-cise. And now one of my co-workers won't go back to the class because she can't focus on the exercises. I haven't decided yet whether I'll go back. It's like choosing whether to go to the grocery store with the crazy, homeless person versus the clean, quiet one a little further away. Even if the crazy person is harmless, you'd just rather not deal with it.

I keep going back and forth about it. Were we wrong for complaining? Should we have just minded our own business and faced the wall? Should we go back next week? What's the right thing to do here?

What the f*ck?

This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Ever.

Allison and the Angry Inch

So a few weeks ago, my totally normal-seeming best friend revealed to me that in fact she is, and has always been, a mutant. Apparently, one of her legs is longer than the other, to the point where she is having back problems and is now going to have freak-altering, I mean, leg-lengthening surgery. She's started a blog to chronicle her attempts at normalcy. Visit it often to see if it works. Click here to get freaky-deeky with Allison.