Soooo, you know how sometimes you can wear an outfit that is totally appropriate for one setting? And then you walk into another setting? And the once perfectly fine outfit becomes wildly inappropriate?
Rogue made Fall Risk and I go to the 5am Full Body HIIT Class at PlayFITStayFIT this morning. Because apparently all of the leg days and arm days and Spartan course breakdowns and house building this week missed a spot on my body.
No idea which spot.
The muscle soreness felt pretty complete when I pulled myself out of bed this morning.
But I do what I’m told.
We’ve established that.
And Skratch and Goatfinder were going.
And Goatfinder never gets up for 5am class. Except all the times she has.
And I’ve heard stories that maybe J-Vicious isn’t quite so vicious in the 5am class.
Which is untrue.
At one point this morning, he Gibbs-smacked me upside the head like my name was DiNozzo.
I mean, I probably earned the smack. It’s maybe been a long time coming.
But I was pre-coffee, so my defenses were down. And I really can’t remember what word or finger gesture from me might have prompted it.
Do you know how early I have to wake up to get to this class?
And my college kids are home again. And they did some celebrating last night.
Which meant about 2 hours of sleep for me.
And I’m not Rogue.
I can barely maneuver society on a solid 8 with a full pot of morning coffee.
But Rogue made us do this.
Whatever.
So at 3:30 am I pulled on a pair of workout shorts and a tank top and drove myself into Vinton. Coffeeless, I might add.
Totally appropriate outfit for the workout we were doing.
And for the somewhat questionable dancing that may have happened between Rogue and I. And almost with Fall Risk. Except that she gave me a look that said I should definitely not try to grind on her.
No means no.
I respect that.
Rogue never gives me that look.
And my outfit still felt appropriate when we rolled into Sweet Donkey for breakfast. And commiserated about dating and mental health and the state of the world.
It even felt appropriate as I pulled into the parking lot at work. Because at 7:45 in the morning, it was already 5,000 degrees outside.
But the closer I got to the Higher Ed Building, the less appropriate it became.
Until it started sliding way over to the low cost street hooker side.
My plan was to sneak in before everyone else got there. Take a whore’s bath in the bathroom. And change into some work appropriate attire. But not too work appropriate. It’s Friday. Before a holiday weekend. I do need to be comfortable.
But the thing is, RHEC doesn’t want folks to be able to sneak in. They’ve become all safety conscious and shit.
There’s now a security guard stationed at the front entrance.
So as I’m casual creeping in and trying to beeline straight to the bathroom, I make a critical mistake.
I made eye contact.
Eye contact never works out well for me. So I mostly don’t do it.
When I do do it, awkwardness is certain to follow.
Like the big, attractive dude at Kids Spartan that introduced himself as Ray after I forgot to make myself invisible and avoid looking at him. (It was the shoulders, man. I couldn’t not.) And so when he tried to be charming and said something like, “If we got together people would call us a Ray of Sunshine.”
My obvious best response was, “My son’s father’s name is Ray. People used to say that shit to us. Until we broke up.”
And because that little bit of sunshine wasn’t enough of a warning signal, poor guy made the mistake of trying to engage in conversation again later by asking if I thought my son’s father and I would ever get back together. So clearly I had to launch into a diatribe about abandonment and $9 a week in child support and $1700 tuition payments and living in poverty and …
Yeah. He stopped trying after that.
Freakin eye contact.
But I obviously didn’t learn my lesson, because I looked straight the hell into the eyes of the security guard this morning. And smiled. And said morning.
Morning?
What the fuck, Sunshine?
Which prompted a 20 minute conversation about Memorial Day and work schedules and 7-day work weeks and bosses were starting to roll in and I’m standing in the middle of the Higher Education Center in a freakin tank top and booty shorts surrounded by appropriately dressed professionals. Desperately trying to figure out how to make the talking stop happening.
So I finally just blurted out “Coffee!”
“Huh?”
“Coffee! I need coffee. STAT. Life is bad. Coffee’s good.”
“Oh sure. You go get some coffee. And you have a nice day.”
“You, too!”
Why do people think I make a good talking companion? I’ve never been a satisfactory talker.
But thanks to my quick 20 minutes of thinking and brilliant maneuvering, I managed to get away. And work my way to the bathroom.
Eyes down. Head low. They can’t see you if you can’t see them.
Got my “bath” and my semi-appropriate work clothes on and escaped into my office. Where I was only required to communicate with my YouthBuild kids and co-workers.
Because they understand. They don’t have high communication expectations of me.
And they definitely don’t make me do eye contact.
I’m wearing sunglasses all of the time from now on.
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