dogercise

when my husband came home with the elliptical machine i never thought i would also get a personal trainer. or two.

after breaking into a sweat watching my husband and brother carry the hefty piece of machinery to our second-floor crap-room (i fully expected them to scratch the walls), i realized it was time to put up or shut up. my flabby thighs had no more excuses to not get to the gym. the mountain had come to mohammed. fat cells be damned!

besides the fact that my ass had now taken on the proportions of a dancer in a rap music video (shake that booty, booty!), the rest of my clothes were getting tight. so much in fact as when my concave boss announced her pregnancy, i felt sick.

i knew even in her 9th month of pregnancy that i would still weigh a good 30lbs heavier... when i was in my "thin phase". argghh.

when she told the crew of us assembled in her office, she asked is anyone else had an announcement to make. although i cannot say i spoke to anyone to confirm or deny, i swear heads turned towards me.

feeding my tapeworm and cheesy bread addiction led to a startling new discovery:

not only did i think i was the office piglet, but now apparently others thought so, too.

or maybe they were thinking i was pregnant and hadn't told anyone yet. what i really didn't want to tell anyone was that my expanding waistline was due to blindly eating a full bag of meredith's mess -- a scrumptious blend of almonds, chocolate chips, raisins and cashews from 'nuts to you' after lunch. or the cheesy bread course that came with lunch.

it was my own undoing. but now, i have dogercise.

after getting said elliptical machine from my archnemesis -- my mother-in-law -- i needed to actually use it. it only took only one morning to determine that i really am not a morning person.

that coupled with perhaps some of the best sleeping-in weather for the year (crisp and cool, windows open) killed any shot i had about working out twice a day as i originally schemed.

my method of fast-tracking my summer weightloss plan about 2 weeks before the official start of summer was to exercise my ass off. literally. workouts twice a day, 1200 calories, drunk dieting and a plan to stay away from adelle, my enabling drinking partner.

all of which got shot to shit. leaving us to the point in the story where my personal trainers come in. i was panting away on the elliptical one night -- "bouncing" as my husband calls it -- when i realized i wasn't the only one panting. ("things are just bouncing all over the place," he says. the sad part is that he is watching me from behind.)

seems sadie the rocking rottweiler was panting behind me and was none too happy. it seems the movement on the elliptical with arms flailing about on me and the machine made her nervous. it was also her kryptonite -- she was scared to get whacked by either of us and so kept her distance.

now if you know sadie, you'll know she prefers to be within licking distance of me at all times. the longer i stay on the elliptical, the longer i avoid a tongue bath from her. the longer i avoid the tongue bath, the more it pisses her off and will cause her to bark words of encouragement to me, "get down here momma so i can give you a kiss. right NOW, mamma. awww c'mon." pure magic, baby.

next in our circuit training is a tag-team affair. they tend to leave me alone to stretch (their daddy needs to bribe them with a cookie to give me a free 5 mins) before we head into crunches.

lemme tell ya, you have not done crunches unless you do it with these two trainers barking at you. first, sadie sits on your feet, firmly planting her 90+ lb wiggle-butt on top of your toes. chloe stays at your head, encouraging you with feathery kisses on your moving forehead.

after a few minutes, they switch positions. chloe head down to your feet and lays across chewing the rope toy or your shoelaces (whichever it doesn't matter) while the real workout begins with sadie. you know the burn of doing crunches? the sore, pulling feeling in your gut?

now feel it with a 90lb rottweiler flopping across your flabby abs. oommph! if she doesn't succeed in sucking the wind out of you, she gives you more incentives to keep moving -- she's now within licking distance of your face. from personal experience, now its the time to begin working the lateral abdominals muscles by moving side to side. like a crocodile, sadie has trouble following quick side-to-side movements. when you've had enough torture, you can finally release with a few quick stretches.

downward-facing dog was not obviously never practiced by someone with the real thing.