Pre-dawn wakeup calls

Today, for the first time in four months, I went to the gym. I hadn’t stayed away out of boredom or the need to sleep that extra hour or so (well, maybe there was a bit of the sleep is nice thing), but rather because of health issues, namely that I developed asthma. Any shortness of breath led to a coughing fit that lasted a minimum of five minutes, not good when you actually like to breathe. Asthma. At middle age. What the hell is with that? Seriously, how do you develop asthma at this age? But I digress. Again. It seems like I spend half my time digressing from my chosen subject. But at least I can say: But I digress. I love that phrase. OK shaddap Jazz…

Moving on.

So this morning at the break of dawn (or before?), at any rate around 5:30, I rolled myself out of bed and stood up. Interesting feeling being vertical at that time of day (night?), well no, actually not that interesing, but different. Yep, definitely different. Notice I don’t say awake. Awake was so not part of the equation. At. All. I stumbled to the kitchen to mumble mornin’ to Mr. Jazz (or was that a hallucination?) and get a glass of juice. Torture seems a little less pointless if you have a tall glass of OJ first. Tropicana. And no, they're not paying me to plug their product. Not like the Sopranos where in one episode Tony and Carmela stood in the driveway arguing because she got Tropicana with (or was it without? who cares) pulp. That was so wrong, so very very obvious, so totally out of context and character... oops. Say it with me folks: BUT I DIGRESS!

After four months away from the gym, I realized I have lost everything I had gained in that place over the past 6-7 years of regular, if not religious attendance. Fitness-ly speaking I have become a blob. Blob doesn’t even begin to cover it, actually. What is even less fit than a blob?

It’s sad, but it’s gone. All gone. Any smidgeon of fitness has disappeared from my life. A corpse is probably fitter than me at this point.

After five minutes I was huffing, after 10 I was puffing, at 15, I basically would’ve loved to become the aforementioned corpse. After 30 minutes ellipticating I was a shaky, sweaty mess.

But there were no coughing fits. Damn, I love drugs!