So, after gaining a few pounds back I determined I needed to get things under control.  I have a room in my house that is totally under-used.  I call it my piano room. It also served as Mikita’s playpen when she was a puppy. I’ve turned this extra room into my new home gym. This is what I’ve been spending the past few weeks working on:

It has a treadmill, ab crunch machine, 5# 10# and 20# weights.  A bench to do flies and chest press.  A step machine.  A TV and stereo.  And of course, my piano should I just get the urge to sit down and belt out a tune or two.

I worked hard, too, to make it appealing to me to go in there.  I’ve decorated it with a black and white theme. I got the beautiful rug from Overstock.com at a great price with $2.50 shipping.  It’s one of the thick rugs, not the cheap kind you see at discount stores. I found the gorgeous curtains at an outlet store near the Florida Mall. And the photos on the wall above the bench are pictures of the ocean in Cozumel, taken during our 7-night cruise on the Disney Magic last December.

How’s it going so far?  It has only been fully put together for about a month but I’ve been faithful.  I miss the variety of equipment found at a normal gym, but this is serving a good purpose.  It’s really all about commitment.  The mirror is my motivator.

OUCH!  I’ll start with what’s happening this very minute. It is obvious my parents mis-named me by not having my middle name be “klutz”.  As I type this post I’m trying hard not to get droplets of blood on the keyboard since I just ripped half the nail off my index finger. This “ouch” comes just 12 hours after I splattered hot grease on my other hand and upper leg. I’ve got a blistering blister on my leg right now. They say things come in threes so I’m a little paranoid now about what’s next.

6am Serenity:  I enjoy  my early morning walks with the dogs. Daylight is breaking, birds are chirping and it’s generally pretty darn quiet in my neighborhood. Not quite that way this morning. Huge dump trucks were pulling into the subdivision turning onto my street.  I’m talking maybe 20 or more trucks, with loud engines and squeaky brakes.  It appears they’re doing more work at the retention pond at the end of my cul-de-sac. Get past that, I’m walking past a house – keep in mind it’s about 6:15am – all of a sudden the front door of the home we’re in front of,  bursts open and two guys (not men, not boys) storm out yelling at each other. “You’ve got to be f—ing kidding me.” shouts one of them. The other guy tries to calm him down but the shouting continues.  I now want to run from this heated situation but the dogs find something intriguing to sniff in the grass, delaying my swift departure. A) I don’t want to hear their fight B) In today’s world I’m fearful one of them is going to pull a gun or weapon on the other.  I just want to go home.

Tiger Squats:  Monday I tweeted about my encounter with the Tiger Woods at my gym. This was actually the second time I’ve seen him there in the past few weeks.  I had just finished my cardio workout on the treadmill so keep in mind I’m pretty darn grimy at this point. My hair is up in both a clip and a pony tail. Sweat – oh – everywhere. No make-up. Not a pretty sight.  After the treadmill I head over to what I consider “my” corner of the gym.  To give you more perspective, my gym is fairly small, 2 stories, and on average there’s only about 5-6 people there at 6:30am.  This little section of the gym has a set of free weights, an ab machine, squat machine and a few other fun machines. I call it my corner because there’s rarely anyone else there.  As I walked up to “my area” I noticed a backpack sitting in the middle of the floor with no-one around. I stepped over it and started my work-out with squats. As I squat into rep #12, I looked up and see a man wearing a baseball hat approaching me. Yeh – it’s Tiger.  He reaches down to the backpack right in front of me and checks his cellphone . Then he walks over to the squat machine right next to me. Thinking I need to say something since we’re standing withing 5 feet of each other I come up with the fabulous opening line:  “Am I in your way?”  Tiger: “No you’re fine, thanks.”  We proceeded to do our individual squats, kinda together but not really. I’m doing squats holding a 25-pound weight and he’s doing the big manly machine using 5-billion pounds of weights. I realized I was up to rep #22 which is painful for squats without a break, so I had to stop and rest.  He breaked soon and we both grabbed our waters. Feeling the need to say something more and hopefully something slightly intelligent, I then said “Hey, congratulations on your win yesterday.”  He beamed a smile and said “Thanks.”   Feeling a loss of words of what to say next and definitely not wanting to say something stupid, I got up and left.  And that – ladies and gentlemen – is my encounter with Tiger Woods.

Tiger Woods - My squatting buddy