The more things change...

... the more you realize they're exactly the same except grayer, rattier and sporting more wrinkles.

I went back to the gym today. Huzzah for me!!! I hadn't darkened the doorstep of that place, except for the week when I had no water in my apartment and I used it to shower, since October of 2008. Not that I've gotten out of shape, but when I walked into the locker room, I suddenly realized that I was the only woman there whose ass was jiggling despite her Spanx.

I e-mailed my locker combination to myself, lest I forget it and be forced to return to work dressed in stretch pants, a tee shirt and drawstring sweat shorts large enough to fit Santa plus one or two elves with room to spare. Then I huffed up the steps to the dance studio. I was winded by the time I reached the door, but didn't give in to the tempation to call the two story climb a work out and hit the showers.

I picked my spot - the same spot I used to use back in 2008 - and set up my step. The rest of the class and Jim, the teacher, filtered in and suddenly, I was in a time warp. They were all there - the exact same people I left (without a goodbye) in 2008. Most of them were wearing the same clothes, using the same step and doing the same moves wrong that they did wrong back then. One woman had developed a remarkable muscle-butt in the intervening months (I mean she is this teeny tiny thing from the head to the waist, then she has horse haunches attached to her back), but everything else was unnervingly familiar.

Here was the woman in the bike shirt who jumps like Shaq.

Here was the guy in the orange Nike shorts who *still* can't do a half-reverse.

Here was they graying woman (now totally gray) in the spandex unitard and headband who just does basic step, basic step, basic step.

And here was me. Back in my little corner, huffing and puffing and marking half the moves because the one time I tried full arm movements I thought I was going to die of a heart attack.

I thought about quitting 5 minutes after I started, and again 10 minutes after I started, and every three minutes after that, but each time I was ready to plead, "no mas" I remembered that the boys from my office are at a fattening business lunch (that I wasn't invited to even though I'm wearing a suit and look totally respectable) and I could feel totally superior to them if I get through this workout and they come back all stuffed to the gills and food-coma-ed from red meat and wine.

So I made it.

And I jiggle-jiggle-jiggled through a quick shower, grabbed a salad with a tiny bit of fat-free dressing, and dashed back to my desk.

Now here I sit, smug and healthy and happy (except that my thigh muscles are already starting to sieze and it's getting hard to stand up to go to the printer), waiting for the bloated boys to make their return.

Any minute now.

Just waiting.

Boy, would I love to have a cookie....