The Cucumber Incident

Fitness has nothing to do with age. I figured that out yesterday morning during my bootcamp class.

As usual, I had my butt kicked up and down the pavement by these two old broads who are out there for every class, giving it 380%. They use heavier weights than anyone else, they run farther and faster and they are equally trim and jacked.

Watching these women beat me every time creates a recipe that is made up of one part demoralizing, and two parts motivating. It certainly shows that I have a lot of work ahead of me, and if these ladies’ fitness levels are any indication, then at least I know I’m in the right class.

The really good news is that I don’t have to worry about getting out of shape as I get older. Those two trash that theory. I’ll tell you what, those two could break chairs over your head while chugging a stein of brew.

Another item of note (please ignore that these aren't actually items of note and nod politely. Yes, that's it. Thank you for humoring me) is that I ate a pound of cucumbers yesterday.

I was disproportionately concerned that my farmer's market cucumbers would go bad before I ate them, and so I made plans for them. Muwhahahahaha.

For lunch number one, I had cukes in a salad of Greek yogurt, lemon, cayenne and parsley. Self-inflicted solo cuke eating contest number 2 involved soy sauce, rice vinegar, all the ginger in the world and cilantro. I had to do it twice, because cuke salad number 1 ended in a kind of fantastical disaster reserved for bad comedies and world wars.

You know how when you go to stab a piece of food on your plate, but it refuses to be impaled, and instead gets compressed by the pressure of your fork and becomes spring-loaded and then makes a dramatic escape? Well, that happened to me, only this harmless-looking piece of cucumber went on a yogurt-sauce fueled kamikaze bombing mission.

I was so splattered with it, that my first reaction was to laugh, but a second later I felt the cold wetness saturate my clothes and it wasn't so funny anymore. The incident quickly became an icky emergency. I leapt from my sauce-covered chair and threw my clothes in the washing machine. And then I had to turn my attention and wet towel scrubbing power to the chair and the rug. My one regret is that I didn't record photographic evidence before dismantling the crime scene.

Following all of this, I figured it was done raining for the season, thus the perfect time to reinstate The Outdoor Home Office™ so that my chair could dry out. Glad something good came of the cucumber incident.

Comments

[Jess]

I think this is so important. It is totally true that a lot of why we allow ourselves to degenerate with age is that we tell ourselves it's normal and inevitable. But it CAN be combated.

[Katie Morton]

Jess, ain't it the truth? I think a generation ago, it was assumed that after you were of a certain age, there was nothing you could do about keeping fit. But really, when we see people all around us keeping it up, the old way seems so unnecessary.