My Archenemy

Yesterday, I was confronted with a demon. Just as the Bible foretells, it portrayed itself as an angel of light, until I had given it my soul. Once it revealed itself, I was able to see it for what it truly was: a Specter of Utmost Evil.

I'm talking about....

....an exercise instructor.

Just not any exercise instructor, mind you. This is an exercise instructor on DVD, which is even more frightening. I swear, this chickie makes not only the hair on the back of your neck stand up, but makes your entire head of hair form itself into a mohawk. Not at all attractive on most females, I must say. 

To explain, my new surrogate big sister, Micah, and I decided that we were going to start doing pilates together every evening. We both have some weight we'd like to finish losing, and we knew that we'd never be motivated to do it by ourselves. She got home from a horrendous day at work (I may have to tell you about it this evening, but we'll see -- I'm afraid it's a little too frightening, even for this blog) and I was experiencing a small case of first-day-of-school blues. So Micah and I went digging through the freezer for food and ultimately made lean pocket pepperoni pizza subs and fried some french fries and opened a bottle of sparkling strawberry juice left over from my birthday. I know, it all sounds so nutritious and conducive to better eating habits! But hey, we won't make a habit of it, and we had a blast. We ate dinner while watching Sixteen Candles, the quintessential eighties teenage movie. If you haven't seen it, I heartily urge you to do so. It's a little, um, raunchy in places, but it's well worth it. The only downer about the movie is knowing that the extremely gorgeous male lead is probably fat and bald by now. Sadness. But 'tis the joy of growing old!

Anyway, after we ate dinner, I was tired and ready to call it an evening, but nope. Micah wasn't going to let me get away with that, even though she, too, was less than enthused about doing pilates at eight in the evening after a meal of greasy french fries. So, with much whining from the both of us, we appeared in the living room and popped in the DVD. 

Onto the screen waltzes this perky little blond Suzanne Summers type of woman. She seems friendly and knowledgeable, so Micah and I prepare ourselves for a workout, congratulating ourselves on our Initiative and Resolve. Along with the Suzanne Summers' type of woman (whose name was Marianne, ironically enough) were six other people dressed in thin purple workout clothes that looked like they'd been thrown off the holodeck of the starship Enterprise just after Worf, Deanna, and Dr. Crusher finished doing that weird martial arts workout they all did together on the show. These purple people were all stunningly beautiful, of course, and seemed to lack the ability to break a sweat or grunt. There was one guy doing the workout with the beautiful dancer purple people, no doubt in an effort to prove that pilates could be just as manly as lifting weights and squatting and spitting and whatever else it is that guys do at the gym. The dude was pretty ripped, so maybe he would have gotten away with it if he hadn't kept pointing his toes so beautifully. 

Marianne started us on our first exercise, and it was hard, but Micah and I were proud of ourselves for completing it and somewhat keeping up with Marianne's fast pace. 

This high and elevated reaction to the exercise didn't last long, sadly. No less than ten minutes later, I began to fear Marianne emotionally. She somehow didn't seem quite as pretty and perky as she had before. Micah started saying, "Are you serious, Marianne?" over and over. She forgot, no doubt, that Marianne was a two dimensional figure on the flickering screen of our TV. And Marianne, unaware of the sheer hatred she was evoking in her less than enthusiastic pupils, kept on saying encouraging things like, "Now this exercise is so powerful that we're only going to do it three times!" 

Translation courtesy of Katie: it's going to hurt like an acupuncture gone terribly wrong, so I'm only going to make you do it a few times so that you don't show up at my house one night in order to beat me to death with the big rubber pilates ball."

That woman/demon had us doing things that I didn't know were possible for anyone outside the dancing or contortionist professions. The upside was that I'm far more flexible than I knew. The downside is that I have absolutely no strength at all. Go empowerment. It was when she had us trying to practically do a handstand that the cursing began. I'm really glad that a pastor doesn't live next door, that's all I got to say. I could hear my mom snickering the next room. I watched in amazement as Marianne spouted horns and a whip appeared in her hand.

Finally, after an hour of torture, we finished the routine. Micah had been able to do a lot more than I had, but then, she's faced Marianne before. I'll get better as time goes on. I spent the last fifteen minutes encouraging Micah to keep going with things like, "Bathing suits! Smaller sizes!" and so on. I think it was encouraging. Micah certainly didn't offer to rearrange my face like she was with Marianne.

Of course, I had trouble walking for the rest of the night. And guess what? I'm going to put myself through the exact same thing tomorrow night. The only reason I'm not doing it tonight is because I'm going to be stuck in a night class until ten. Saved by Spanish! At least that class will be good for something...